Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Q&A #8.
I think it's been a whole year, a little bit over a year of Q&A
S and I'm really happy about that.
The last one was in January, so it's been a while, but I have
some exciting topics today, Salary negotiation, how to get
your foot in the door, some technical topics, time
management and much, much more. So sit down listening and enjoy
recording. It's been a while.
Still a bit jet lagged by the way.
I woke up at 5. All right.
Based on your experience, how do you negotiate salary in an
interview? Very interesting.
I think it's one of my favorite things to think about, but one
of my non favorite things to actually do in practice.
And that's actually what I tell the other people as well.
This is not my favorite thing. However, I do think it's
important and I think it's a great opportunity to show what
you think you're worth and see if it's a really good match.
If you get to the stage where you're already negotiating
salary, they like you to the point where they made you an
offer and now you can basically Give your opinion of the offer.
Now your opinion cannot be wrong and you probably think you can
be misconstrued into being greedy and and something like
that. But for me, I've always viewed
it as a dialogue. When I got this job at CBI, got
an offer and I mean there was a recruitment party in the middle
and I really didn't want to go through them directly.
So I I mostly talked to my at the time manager that was hiring
and I told the recruitment party because I still need to keep
them in the loop because of relationships and stuff like
that. The things I didn't want to
think about basically I said to them I'm going to negotiate
because I got the offer I thought I could have a little
bit more wiggle room and they were like please do not
negotiate. The fact that you got an offer
is really, really good in general, so that's a red flag in
my opinion. I think you should always open
up the conversation, see what's possible.
If it's nothing salary related, you might go to the signing
bonus route, you might go to the extra stock option route, or you
might go to the All right. I would like to re evaluate my
salary earlier than usual, so I'll accept this now and we can
talk again in a few months. Now I didn't get anything money
wise, so my salary stayed exactly the same as it was on
paper and then I went to the next phase which was basically
OK, when we when can we re evaluate this.
I threw in an optimistic in two months and my manager was like,
OK, let's look at it in half a year from now.
Now with the yearly review cycles for me that was a win.
I basically got something and I think it's really good to get at
least something. Not to say that you shouldn't be
happy with what you get in general, but I really wanted
something. And then at the time when it was
the six months, then at the time when the six months passed, I
had the conversation with my manager, he immediately was
like, yeah, that's right, we I promised that basically.
And within a few weeks he gave me a raise above what I asked
basically in the salary negotiations, which was honestly
really nice. I didn't have to say anything.
I just said we were going to re evaluate.
We didn't really have a conversation about what I had
delivered or my performance. He just was like, I think this
is what you're worth and I was like, I'll take it.
So that was a really good step in his.
I'll always remember that. I think what he did as a
manager, and I'll take that with me.
What I've seen with regards to other people in my network is
that they get a first offer and they might think, OK, this is it
basically because that's what the recruiter tells them.
Now who you're talking to I think is very important because
the recruiter might say, well this is it, this is the maximum
we can offer, but they're not actually calling the shots.
It's either the hiring manager or the person that hires you
that will be your manager if that's not the same person.
So talking to the recruiter and being like, OK, this is what I
think I'm worth or this is what I think is my value or can I
talk to the hiring manager or can I talk to my manager?
Is the next step that you can play?
I think eventually if you say I don't accept this or this is too
low, or at least tell them what you're thinking, your honest
truth, and you have to have some numbers in your head, We'll get
to that later. I think it's a really good step
to keep the conversation flowing because I'm thinking
specifically of a person that was most recent that did this.
They got an offer and they were happy with it.
It was a bit lower than what they were earning, earning
currently at their current job. So that's what they said.
It's lower so and so it's not what I expected.
Also and setting the expectations early on is very
important in this. Now the recruiter said this is
basically the Max, then she said well thank you for the offer.
Again, because of these reasons, I don't think I can take this
now. Immediately the recruiter was
out of the picture. The hiring manager stepped in.
They're like OK and they opted by, I think it was 5% at the
time. Now that person still said, OK,
thank you for the offer, so and so.
And they actually put a number in front.
This is what I would be happy with.
And the number was way higher. It was let's say 1520% higher
than the initial offer, but they came back and they increased it
with 10% and gave them a signing bonus as well.
So you went from this is the Max to a 10% higher plus a signing
bonus. Yeah, that's already a big win
in my book. They then did not go for that
yet. They went to their existing job
and actually said, OK, I got a offer, this is what they offered
me. And then the existing job
countered. So leveraging the position you
have and negotiating from a position of strength, I think, I
mean goes miles basically, Then it doesn't matter whether you
want the new job or you state your existing job, The fact that
you already can leverage whatever you have in getting a
raise is a really good thing. Now I touched on the topic of
knowing your numbers, basically doing your homework.
I think this is a part that gets underestimated a lot.
You can do your homework in a way of talking to your potential
team members or the people that have that role within the
organization you're applying for.
And people are very open and honest to sharing anything about
the company, same person that did the negotiation, they did
their homework and they reached out to people that would be
directly in their team and people that had the same
position in another team. Now, I don't know how they did
this, but they basically had a conversation of, OK, how's the
culture in this company? This is what I've heard.
How is it with regards to raises and promotions?
Because that's a very important thing.
This was an organization that prides itself in promoting
people yearly or in two years and then talking to the people
that actually worked at that company, they confirming it is
very powerful. Now.
I don't know how they did that, but the people got so
comfortable that they also shared probably they asked what
they were earning at the time and that was 100% valuable
information. Going into negotiations 'cause
if you get a number near to that or if you get a number far, far
below that. Doing your homework and knowing
the numbers based on the people that actually work there, not
just what you can find online, is 100% a move or a play that I
would do. Talking to the people themselves
and then using that information and trying to get the maximum
out of this negotiation. You can only negotiate once at
the beginning and ensure probably throughout in
performance reviews. But the biggest start you can
have a head start is the most valuable thing you can do.
So definitely don't do yourself this justice and don't
negotiate. Even though people might tell
you don't negotiate, I don't think it's harmful.
I think it shows admiration, it shows eagerness and it shows
confidence in what you're worth. But yeah, it's a hard, hard
path. Good luck.
Hi, Patrick. I'd love to hear your thoughts
on networking and getting into companies.
It's the thing I'm struggling with as a fresher.
I've talked to people, I've gone to events, but I still don't
know how to get a potential employment out of it.
Very, very interesting, especially as a person with
their first job. I think landing a good space is
really important. But the market right now is
really, really hard on junior people.
And I know that because my brother graduated, It took him a
long time. He has a job now, but it was a
hard and long journey, so I'm really going to leverage the
conversation I had with Khaki a few episodes back.
I think it's exactly 151 where she laid out that doing your
homework and reaching out to network or network of network of
people is incredibly valuable in just saying hi.
I'm saw this position online. Let's say it's at a company that
say it's at Google or booking or whatever company you're looking
at. I saw this.
I saw this position online. I have a few questions.
Would you be willing to talk about it?
That's it. Simple as that.
You might get a yes. You might get a no.
I know someone in my network that actually did that.
That opened up the conversation with the potential manager of
that position. They got a conversation out of
that. They got to ask the questions
like what is the culture? Like, what is the vision on the
team? What are they actually going to
do in a day-to-day, not just the mumbo jumbo.
That's on paper an incredibly valuable conversation.
And even though they didn't get the job directly because all of
a sudden the position wasn't open but went to internal, at
least the manager explained that to them.
They didn't think it was them and failing an application or
not being good enough, the manager was like, no, we've
decided to keep this internal. When it goes open, I'll remember
you and I'll put your name forward.
Now something like that would have never happened, might not
ever happen, and I'm extremely naive, but I believe this is the
truth that the manager is speaking.
I think it's incredibly valuable to just open up those
conversations. Might not be now, could be.
In the future. That conversation and that
connection might be very valuable.
Someone might remember you just by virtue of you having reached
out and striking up a conversation like that.
I think it's something that's very, very underestimated.
Now a job doesn't come free, so doing your homework is 1 mapping
out the market as a second. Knowing exactly who your manager
might be or people in your team might be reaching out to them.
And having that conversation is a really good thing.
The only thing you can then still do is kind of do your
homework. When it comes to the actual
technical side of things, when you actually get your foot in
the door and you go through the application process, you should
have done your homework. So you need to be prepared
Whether that's a leave code interview, whether it's
architectural design, whether that's OK show me what you've
done in the past and what your value is.
You need to be prepared in that and a portfolio and little pet
peeve projects can really help with that.
What gives you energy? What can you do and what can you
build and what can you create in value?
And then the technical side, how do you do that?
You can learn along the way, but it's really awesome to show them
what you've done and what you've achieved in that way, especially
when it comes to not really having prior job experience in a
similar field. So yeah, getting your foot in
the job, getting your foot in the door, and getting your first
job is is a journey for everyone.
I think once you land the job, you can either be content with
that, or you can continue to look and see if this is actually
where you want to learn, if the environment is there for you to
grow as fast as possible, or if that is elsewhere.
But then at least going back to negotiation, you're negotiating
from a position of strength. You already have a job, so then
the second job is not far away. Again, good luck.
Negotiating for jobs, fun stuff, memories brings me back.
All right. I was wondering how you would
recommend going about balancing work, school and hobbies.
I tend to spend a whole week doing work and school things,
then I get burnt out and then I spend weekends doing hobbies,
then I get burnt out. It's a vicious cycle of just
burnout. Then when I try to set aside
time for hobbies during the week I feel guilty for not working on
other stuff. I was wondering if anyone runs
into the same problems. Any solutions or recommendations
to go about stopping this cycle? Now I'm going to start this
with. I might not be the best person
to answer this because I sometimes work, I sometimes
overwork, and on the weekends I crash and I do nothing.
Sometimes, sometimes my weekends are busy, but I have high highs
and low lows when it comes to rest and recovery basically, and
I don't think that's a good thing.
Now I'm working on it, I'm trying to get better on it, and
one of the things I'm working on is doing everything kind of
gradually in the day, finding routine for both education for
your hobbies as well as work. And sure, it's not going to be
perfect, but if you fit in kind of all of it in the same day,
then the next day you do that again and you build up this
habit of at least fulfilling those needs, right?
Because you didn't mention friends and family, but I I
mean, that's in there as well. Relationships that you have,
they all have to have time and attention from your side, but
you get to decide the balance. So whether you want to just work
one day, then have hobbies and rest and relaxation and friends
and family the other day, it's all up to you.
What I found works for me. And again, I'm not the best
person to answer that is to try and do everything kind of
gradually throughout the day and don't be harsh on myself when it
actually doesn't work out as I planned it.
I'm a horrible, horrible planner.
So yeah, usually my day involves waking up doing some form of
exercise, whether that's going for a walk, whether that's
hitting the gym, whether it's doing a workout at home, because
I have all the stuff for that and I really enjoy that.
That's how I like to start my day off.
If I don't do that, I'm not 100% throughout the day and I noticed
that. So I really need some form of
exercise. As soon as I wake up then
obviously it's work and I try and do meetings in the morning.
I try and have focus time. I try and manage my own agenda
so other people don't manage my agenda.
I have no problem saying no to a meeting if I don't know the
agenda. Like what's the agenda?
People are like, oh we'll figure it out.
I'm like, no, then we do everything all asynchronously.
I'm not going to jump in a meeting, mini rant.
Then at the end of the day, it's relaxation.
I love cooking, I love putting up music.
I love putting up a podcast. I listen to a lot of
instrumentals, so not even text stuff, text stuff.
In any case, I like calling people, checking up on them,
seeing how their day is. I don't text as much anymore.
I'm a caller. And yeah, and then sometimes
sports in the evening as well, hanging out with friends and
family, sometimes paying someone a visit.
I try to do everything. And yeah, I think if you overdo
one or the other, it kind of, yeah, creates this void of
fulfilment on the other side. So if I only work, then yeah,
what about my hobbies? I need some rest and relaxation
then as well. So that's why I try and keep
everything kind of gradual and fulfil all the needs here and
there. What I think helps is kind of
checking in on yourself. Also maybe keeping a journal.
I hate writing. Similar for my hate of reading.
So I don't do that but I do do a little check insurance.
I love reflecting and it's just getting lost in my own thought.
But yeah, it helps. And having conversations with
people also helps. If someone says, I mean depends
if you have a partner at home, I have one when she says how was
your day. I love reflecting and being
like, OK, this is what I did and so and so I'm either drained or
I have energy and I want to use this energy for something or
let's do something or I need rest and recovery, relaxation,
Let's do something else. So yeah, no one's perfect.
Don't be too hard on yourself. I'm not the best person to give
this advice. I'm I'm learning every day and I
think you'll learn every day too.
Is that a conclusion? I'm not sure if I like that
conclusion. Learn every day.
Learn every day.
Keeps the doctor away. Everything, every day keeps the
doctor away. Only question four.
Would you please give some tips on how to travel and work
remotely? My favorite, favorite topic.
So I've gone to Barcelona, it was two years ago, one month.
Then last year I went to Portugal one month and Barcelona
one month. Super lucky, two months.
And I just came back from Sri Lanka.
So Asia, never been to it one month and that's the only time
where I did one week of travel and three weeks of working
abroad remotely. So some of type of experience,
use that whatever you may. I think picking a country where
you can do what you want to do because you probably have a goal
or an aim, something you want to do is really important.
So we picked Barcelona and we picked Portugal and even Sri
Lanka because we like kind of a city vibe.
And then also having a beach component to it, very sunny
nature aspects as well where you can just drive off to a
different city and go sightseeing.
Sri Lanka specifically had hiking, Portugal as well, so it
fulfils all those needs. Now we're based in Europe, based
in the Netherlands, so Barcelona and Portugal are kind of nearby
ish to go to. So that's where we started.
Barcelona was the first one and it was really OK, a whole
experience very much planned in advance.
We went for Airbnb because Airbnb gives you a discount if
you go for a month or longer or at least a similar length in
that way. And we were out of an apartment
back then, two years ago, so it was a perfect moment.
We put everything in storage and then we went to Barcelona.
We picked a place that was close to the beach.
I think for me this is one of the best decisions because the
ability to close down your laptop, walk a minute, two,
maybe 5, and go to the beach and just lay down, honestly is the
best when it comes to recovering from whatever mental load you
have. The breeze just washes away the
problems. You might go in the water, you
might just lay in the sun, do some reading, play some games,
watch something, listen to something.
It's the best experience of combining work and then having
kind of a really good Energizer and recovery next to each other
when it comes to tips. And that was one, do your
homework, pick a country that suits your needs, find the
location that you like and then it's planning basically, when do
you want to go? Does it make sense seasonality
wise? How's the tourism?
Is it monsoon season? We had to be mindful of that
when going to Sri Lanka. It was not mango season, so
sadly not a lot of mangoes to go about and yeah, bring about
whatever you need to work at that location.
For me, it's an external mouse, it's an external keyboard.
I used my luggage, it's kind of a platform for my laptop.
Then I had a really good screen I knew I would have had.
I knew I had great Internet in whatever I went to.
Even Sri Lanka. We picked our apartment which
was in collaboration with a Co working space and that Co
working space, I mean we paid for really good Internet but
provided extremely good Internet.
There was a point where electricity was down, there was
maintenance and we went to the Co working space because they
had generators. So we were really confident that
work would not be an issue because whatever you do, if you
go working abroad you don't want anyone to think that you're just
lazing off and having a holiday work is work.
So take that seriously, and I think we did.
And I'm really proud that we found a routine that worked for
us because especially if you go outside of your time zone,
routine gets really important. When we went to Sri Lanka, we
basically did our life in the morning.
Wake up, go surf, do yoga, work out, do whatever, Go to the
beach and then around 11:12, have lunch, go homework the rest
of the day till 8-9, go have dinner, have some fun, round it
off, do it all over again the next day.
Finding a routine and finding a habit there as soon as you land
is, I think, really crucial. The first week is always very
interesting because you land, you have a new environment, you
don't know where anything is. So finding a supermarket, are
you going to cook? Are you going to go out for
dinner? What do you cook?
There's not a lot of ingredients.
Similar to probably where you are is really reinventing the
wheel of OK, how do we do this here and how do you live in
combination with working? So that first week is very
crucial. I would say give yourself a few
days, either the weekend or take a day off here and there and to
really kind of land. And then once you figure out
where the things are fitting that in a work routine is just,
yeah, you get better at it. So you have to start somewhere.
What's really fun is when you're abroad, there's no friends and
family, so weekends all of a sudden open up and you don't
have to stay at the same location.
What we do is obviously with the Airbnb, we stay at the same
location, but weekends, sometimes we go away.
You can find a lot of like little trips that bring you 2
hours away in a bus and all of a sudden you're in a different
city, different beach, different environment and make a little
day trip out of it. Why not?
At least fulfil the needs that you have.
Go sightseeing, energize and then yeah, get back home.
Go back to work. I really loved it.
If you have the opportunity, I would advise you to take It.
Doesn't have to be for a month. Go for a week or two, see if you
like it, see if it is for you. I'm not sure if it is for
everyone, it's definitely for me.
And yeah, enjoy it to the fullest.
It's an extremely unique opportunity, so don't miss out.
All right, Next one, What is the balance between evolving soft
skills and tech skills? I mean, how much should I be
spending time on networking, communication, time management
in comparison to tech subjects? Very interesting.
First of all, I don't think there's a 100% correct answer
for this. How I did it is technical
skills. I learned mostly on the job
because I was fortunate enough to have people around me and
their job was to educate me and make sure I can do it by myself.
Very lucky for that I did some trainings here and there when it
comes to tech specific, but I think you're not going to learn
much in a training. It might give you a head start,
but I think nowadays there's so much content online that you can
educate yourself on the technical rather than going to a
training. Maybe it's trainers are going to
hate me for that, but I think the content online is is
valuable enough and you just have to find it basically then I
really focused on the soft skill side of things.
First of all, I think that's comfort.
I think that's something I have been good at kind of from the
start. And what you're good at already,
you can be better at. I think you need both.
So you need the technical side and you need the communication
side. You need to be able to deliver
something, so your technical skills need to be there and you
can always learn on the job. No one expects you to know
everything you are expected to learn though.
So educate yourself on the job, sometimes off the job, whatever
excites you. Just go down a rabbit hole,
read, try it out. Hopefully the environment is
open to that. Hopefully the deadlines are not
too stringent and if they are, that's where the communication
part comes in. Why do we need this?
Can we deliver for this? Can we cut these things out and
then still make the deadline? Or is do we need to stretch the
deadline? Basically having the
conversation, not moving away from difficult conversations and
learning and growing also on the job, also off the job,
practising, playing around with it, I think is incredibly
valuable. That's where it's really hard
because I don't think you can say OK, you need this and you
need that. You need to be able to explain
things and I think there's real value in explaining things very
simply. So to your teammates as well as
to stakeholders, to people that are technical, simply is still
incredibly valuable. Make sure that you listen and
see if they actually understand you.
Ask for feedback in whatever it is you're doing, both on the
technical side as well as on the communication front, the soft
skills side and grow continuously.
I asked for feedback and the feedback was actually quite
confronting. It was when I joined here,
someone told me I expected your technical skills to be kind of
better. Sometimes you're a bit slow on
the pick up or you go down a rabbit hole and I don't see you
for a few days and then you come out and we have a discussion and
it needs to go in a different direction, very, very to the
point. Direct feedback.
Now I could have been like man, I don't like that person or so
and so, but I took it to heart. I was like, OK, let's let's do
pair programming. And I really, really focused on
what made them more productive. And a lot of it was knowing
their IDE, knowing how to navigate and not going
immediately into the code, but actually stepping back,
thinking, OK, how can we solve that?
What options do we have? Immediately touching base with
team members and being like, OK, these are the thoughts, so and
so solution directions, Which one do you think?
How do we want to tackle this? Picking an approach, seeing and
testing as quickly as possible if it works, if it does,
expanding it, finalising it, making a production ready.
Those little details I think I could have only learned while
pair programming. So I'm really fortunate to have
peers next to me that I can pair program with, that I can learn
from. And hopefully nowadays if
someone tells me I'm slow, I at least want to know why, Because
back then I I think I agreed. Now I'm pretty confident in
actually being productive, being effective with with whatever I'm
doing. So yeah, but it's been a while
so I haven't code in a while. I'm a product manager now.
We'll get into that in a bit. It's really a balance of soft
skills and technical skills. I think the people that are
around you, especially your manager, your team members, they
can set the expectation, they can be like, well, we think
you're you could learn more on this aspect or maybe you could
try this. I think it's very good to.
I think it's very good to distinguish what is advice and
what is feedback. So when they say I've seen you
done this and this and it had this effect, that is feedback.
If they say, well I think you should do this, that is advice.
So if they say I think you should do this, you can ask why?
Because then the feedback comes out.
So yeah, I think the most important part, getting the
feedback, seeing what you want to do with it.
Feedback is always a gift. So you decide what to do with
it, take it to heart, leave it next to you, focus on whatever
you want to do and keep growing, keep educating yourself 5.
This is a fun one. By being a product manager, do
you get to see the business side of how things work different
than being a software developer? Yes, yes, 100%.
I think the people, the person that asked this might have
actually known. But this is a really fun one
because I did this recently. I think as a software engineer,
especially me, I still wanted to know why we do things, why we do
the things we do. And I did like to challenge kind
of the value and solution direction and so on and so
forth. Now on the product management
side, first of all it depends on when you step into a role.
For me, there was already a road map, so I had to understand, OK,
what features did we promised to deliver.
And then there were already deadlines.
So I didn't set the deadlines. I had a conversation on are
these deadlines realistic? What do we want to deliver?
It's a real open conversation, but it's only open if you make
it open, basically. You can also accept the
deadlines as they is and really put pressure on the team.
But that's not what I like, because obviously from the team
aspect, I don't like someone putting pressure on me without
having a good understanding of why the deadlines are the way
they are now. What really helps in a
conversation is being mindful of people.
Love thinking of solutions, love thinking of features.
Oh, we need this. We need notifications.
We need an implementation for so and so.
Oh, we can do this instantly, one solution after the other
instead of figuring out what the problem is, What should we
solve? What are other options than just
this one solution? Really having that in your mind,
bringing that to the conversation doesn't even matter
if it's the business side. Also, with the technical team by
the way, is really going to have value of you as a product
manager, product owner On that team especially being able to
communicate that not every feature is valuable.
Basically not everything needs a solution.
Is this a real problem? Let's test our assumptions.
I think this comes with experience and I've had a lot of
those conversations within the team on the technical side and
now it's just a blast having that on the product side with
people that think that technical side.
I don't know what they think actually to be honest.
But it's just a blast to have that conversation also with the
business side because from their point of view, they don't need
to care necessarily about any tech that you have any solutions
that are easy versus ones that are sustainable.
They just, I feel like want features and they want value and
they have a specific budget for that, probably because they're
sponsoring your team or what structure you have.
So they want to create value out of the money that you have.
It's basically your job to be like, OK, how do we amplify this
value? Or is this really the value that
we're looking for? Or do we have any other option
here? And sometimes you have to say
no, sometimes you have to say put your foot down.
If people keep asking you about deadlines and about timelines,
you can be like, can't even work like this.
So something just got triggered. Maybe not really, but in any
case, it's your job to open up that conversation, and I really
like the conversation I had with Marta Domain, he said.
The product owner, the product manager is like the what's the
term for it, the orchestrator or the orchestra?
The conductor, maybe that's the word.
The person that basically has the stick.
Now, especially as a kid, I always looked at the guy and
went like, what is he actually doing?
Because to me it made no sense. And still, as an adult, it makes
very little sense. But at least I've read that the
band, the orchestra plays better when there's actually conductor
and when the conductor is really good.
Now I'm not a specialist, but I'll take that to heart.
And the product management, product owner role is very
similar to that. A well oiled team can do really
well without a product manager, without a product owner.
But someone to glue the holes, to orchestrate, to have the
conversations with the people, to make sure that it's actually
valuable, To make sure that the orchestra can play the best
music they can continuously and sustainably, with resilience in
mind. That's the role of a product
manager and a product owner, focusing also on the sounds.
So the value of the output, incredibly important, managing
the expectations and the conversations incredibly
important. So it's different, definitely a
different ball game. I think you can take those
skills and especially if you're technical, go back into the team
and be an individual contributor.
Again, I think it's incredibly valuable.
I think you can also step out of the team, take up some of the
responsibilities or a full responsibility and learn a lot
from that and do whatever you want with it.
I think they're also life skills because it's a lot with regards
to soft skills. It's a lot managing politics,
figuring out how the incentive structures work, how to make
people move and get by in. So yeah, it's a different ball
game, but a lot of fun. All right.
I have a few more questions. All right, my question is
regarding code bases. How does one learn a large code
base on the job? What was your first experience
like with large code bases and any way to practice getting
better at them? Practice.
I would say open source contributions looking at the
code that is out there. Usually those are of a scale
that are a bit larger than maybe your your typical e-commerce
implementation. In any case, one example came to
mind immediately and it was in the health field, similar to an
e-commerce application, but a different user base, different
needs. Now I came into that project and
from the surface level I got a demo of the project of the
product. It looked fairly straightforward
right? And also with my e-commerce
experience, I could kind of see the things that we had created
under the hood, though it was quite a large code base, a lot
had to do with kind of the architecture and I specifically
focused on the back end even though I did look to the front
end code as well. It was an event driven
architecture, it was DDD kind of in its own shape and form and it
was event sourced. So how you get specific domain
objects, Where the information comes from, how the information
is stored and resilient and doesn't get stored twice or
interject with each other. Very interesting concepts to see
someone have put in practice basically.
And I came into the project and the project, the product was
already three to four years old so that it had a history as well
as the people working on it. The original people already
gone. I think the most senior person
was already there for a year and a half when it came to the back
end architecture. And luckily the front end person
was there from the origin, but they had worked separately by
themselves for a long, long time.
So you could also see that the front end kind of, yeah gained
roots and kind of was a wildfire of implementations here and
there, sometimes not really finished, sometimes hard to find
component wise very specifically obviously in the mind of this
person, but not really standardised for other people to
easily jump in. Now the way I went about kind of
getting comfortable in that is first of all having a
conversation with the team, letting them and their
experience, kind of leveraging their experience, allowing them
to explain kind of how they think it works as well as what
they think I should focus on when going through this
application. That's how it started.
So getting an getting an overview from your teammates,
leveraging the experience they have.
Then secondly is trying to pick up something obviously in
discussion with their team that that they think is doable coming
in from a fresh person with a fresh pair of eyes.
I think that information is very valuable.
And then just trying to get it done and seeing and getting
feedback either in a code review or in a pair program, either in
a code review or in a pair programming session.
I think pair programming is way better for that because you get
instant feedback rather than asynchronously with a pull
request. Yeah, hearing myself talk, I
feel like there's not really a silver bullet.
It's really finding a small task that is small enough trying to
figure out how to do it, getting feedback either instantly or
asynchronously. And I think it's not.
I think the more you work with large codes code bases, the more
you get comfortable with it. The concepts of event sourcing
were completely new for me. So I really had to figure out
that first of all, event sourcing is you start with a
blank slate and you build on top of whatever domain you need
domain object with events that have happened in the past.
So for example, when it comes to an order, you might have an
initial or the creation object, then you might have order
updates. When it comes to shipping
information, you might get e-mail notifications on top of
that. So your order reflects the
status that it has been sent, yes or no.
Building up a domain object like that, stacked with layers of
events. Now the concept sounds kind of
simple in theory, but then in practice you have to figure out
that, OK, when we create an order, we just fire an event and
then in a separate location of the code base, that's where the
event gets picked up. And how does it get stored?
And what happens when something gets delayed or we lose
information? Oh yeah, we have retry
mechanisms and this is actually stored there in an event store.
So every single event separately.
And then when we need an order, what actually happens?
Or we read out all the events specifically for this aggregate
for this order and then they stack on top of each other.
Oh interesting. And where does everything happen
in the code base? Oh, it's actually very
conventional. So the hardest part I would say
after this long long rant is a code base without conventions.
So the larger code base get, the more important conventions are.
So put them in at the earliest stage of a project.
And if a project is already quite far without conventions,
try and figure out if they're actually no conventions and
otherwise figure out how to put the conventions back in there
retroactively. Yeah, fun stuff, large cut
bases, trying to make them small in your head.
Try to focus on specific aspects.
It's very hard not to create kind of shallows and kind of
separate silos of the main knowledge within team members.
So pair of programming and collaborate as much as you can
and yeah, grow from experience. It's a it's a hard one.
Then as a mechanical engineering student and web developer, I'm
also interested in exploring opportunities in fields
influenced by AI. Do you have any advice on how
someone with my background can pivot towards AI related roles?
First of all, I read mechanical engineer, student, student and
web developer. Still learning early on and
thinking about AI. Probably because everyone's
talking about AI, there's a lot of AI solutions.
But I think if you have experience with web development,
what my advice would be is to leverage that experience and see
how you can fit in AI, work in delivering value to whatever
application you're building. So anything user facing on the
web, I think then you can leverage web development, you
can Start learning on OK what and how do I fit in a model,
what value can I provide to users and how do you actually
put it to production. Because the experience that
people have putting LLM basically the newest AI
solutions to to production is very scarce.
That's where you can distinguish yourself in my opinion
leveraging whatever skills you have, not fully focusing and
going gung ho on AI specifically.
I think it's better to do that gradually.
So figuring out what solutions are there, I think Lang chain is
a very interesting concept. It's a framework to put LLMS to
production actually with web development experience.
So you might want to start there and then trying that out and
seeing how you can do that and provide the value that way.
Then step by step within that process, within having learned
how to put that to production, you can go into more of the how
LLM works, more of the how LLMS work or operate or what other
solutions are out there or specifically then step by step
moving to the other AI solutions that are non LLM based.
So yeah, recommendation algorithms, machine learning,
they're still out there, they're just kind of being outshined
right now. So it really depends on kind of
your appetite for AI. If that's really a field that
you see yourself in for the long term or it's more of a hype
bubble right now and that's why you're kind of getting
interested in it. Leverage what you have put
things to production, game production experience and then
yeah, find like minded people, have discussions on
implementations and learn all the way through.
Good luck last one and certainly not the least no undo typing.
I have a question, beyond collaborating with new guests,
how do you keep your content fresh and ensure it remains
engaging and exciting to your audience?
Then extra I'm sure a lot of Youtubers come across this
problem where after posting a lot of content to get burnt out,
they find it challenging coming up with new ideas.
So how do you face this and make sure these ideas are still worth
creating content for best example I have, for me it's the
Q&A. It's something we thought of
more than a year ago, An interesting concept.
I saw someone else do it, love stealing ideas and see if it's a
good fit. And then we tried it out and I
gained a lot of energy from it. I think it's really good to
engage with people that are actually listening in with
questions that they have. My perspective is not holy.
I tell them I do my best to answer and obviously it's not my
answer as the highway or the. I don't know how to say that
saying. Obviously my answer is not the
only answer out there. I'm just here trying to give my
perspective and being as honest and open as possible.
This is a really fun kind of new thing that we've tried out and
it's not really new anymore since it's been a year.
Secondly, you already mentioned it.
Every guest interaction I have is new for me.
Finding out what someone likes, what their passion is, what
makes them tick, what really interesting experiences they've
had, finding the gold in those conversations is what I love and
is the only reason, I think, why the podcast has made it this
far, because that is continuously fresh and
interesting. Now this might be controversial,
but I don't really think as much to what my audience might think
is interesting or exciting when it comes to a topic with the
conversation in mind. I am kind of listener first, so
I try and get to the gold quicker.
It's something I'm experienced, it's something I'm experimenting
with and still playing around with, but high over on a topic
level. I just pick topics that first of
all resonate with the person sitting across from me, the
guest. Something that is in their zone
of passion and something that just I think is interesting.
And that last bit. I think a lot of things are
interesting. To be honest.
I think, especially if someone's passionate about it, I would
love to have a conversation with them.
Something to keep it fresh and interesting.
I think it's kind of switching up the formula.
We always have kind of a pre show conversation can be about
anything, Food, love, food. If people are in the same area,
what are the favorite restaurants, favorite foods,
remote working, their way of working, whatever they do, what
makes them take any type of hobby they have can spin into
kind of an awesome conversation And then we go into more of the
topics we discussed and now I'm switching up with the formula.
What type of pre show conversations?
What questions do I ask? Where in editing do we actually
start the conversation? Is it in the pre show?
Is the pre show actually really interesting and entertaining or
do we get to the gold quicker and actually start when we hit
the topics and then see how that plays out, analyse whatever we
have, reflect, adapt and doing all over again.
I yeah, I think it's the it's the best part of the job.
It's kind of the learning process and obviously to your
point, I think the learning curve in anything you do YouTube
related in the beginning is going to be the highest figuring
out a way that makes it sustainable.
I think you have to keep experimenting, you have to keep
learning, you have to have fun with it.
This is for me incredibly fun. So have fun with whatever you do
because I feel like it's kind of a a dread as well I have.
If you lose that, then that's when you get into the cycle of
it's just becoming work and it becomes the cycle of not giving
your energy and it becomes the cycle that has towards a burnout
or maybe a big break. Now funny enough, I do take big
breaks and before that I make sure that I can take big breaks
because I like consistency from the start.
So for example, the last four weeks, 5 weeks, I have to, I
actually haven't recorded anything and I've really missed
it. So I'm really excited for this
part. So yeah, keep it interesting,
keep it fresh, still take a break here and there.
I think that's the only way to make it resilient.
Then when it comes to new content, ideas and kind of the
challenge there, I let a lot of things inspire me.
I just mentioned the little stealing of ideas.
I listened to a lot of podcasts, I mean previously, way more than
I do now. But from there I really reflect
and think of, OK, is there something I can change?
There's something I can incorporate.
What do I love and what is different and what can I not do?
Because this is just not the same formula.
Being inspired by others, I think, is a really good way of
coming up with fresh ideas, having a conversation and having
people in your corner that you can have conversation with
brother that you can have conversations with because
they're just as passionate as you, or at least in the same
ballpark. When it comes to the passion
that you have is really valuable as well, because then you can
bounce off ideas, finding community and getting feedback.
It can also be your audience, but it can also be other content
creators. Yeah, it's.
I think it's a necessity to make it sustainable for the long run.
That is it. That is it.
Yes, that is it.
Thank you so much for listening in.
Thank you so much for the people that sent me their questions.
I hope I did justice while answering them.
If you still have questions, put them in the comments below the
like button are obviously you can find me on Twitter and on
LinkedIn where I get most of the questions in any case.
So yeah, thank you so much for listening.
This has been a blast. It's been a while since the last
Q&A, so hopefully the next Q&A can be a bit sooner.
We'll see how it goes. Thanks again for listening.
We'll see you on the next one.