Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Akio, and if
you're interested in developer advocacy, the right way to build
communities, and how to recover from a burnout, this episode is
for you. Joining me today is Leanne Lee.
She's Developer Advocate at Loft Labs and Chief Karaoke Officer
and organizer at Kuwaroki. I'll put all her socials in the
description below, check her out.
And with that being said, enjoy the episode beyond.
Coding, I guess. I just have these videos where
it's like just me getting frustrated over and over.
It's like, oh man, I've just said it wrong again.
I can't just can't. You know, I write everything
myself as well. So you would think that it's in
my head, but as soon as you're in front of the camera, just
looking at it, nothing. Yeah.
Nothing. Yeah.
In any case, it's like a process.
I've. I was looking at old videos that
I made with my family members and it was just so cringe, like,
this is terrible. It was a good sign.
Means I got better. Yeah, yeah, I have that one.
I look at earlier episodes, I'm like, man, like, not even the
qualities, just the conversations.
Like you said, something which was completely unrelated, like
you weren't actually paying attention.
I was listening to a podcast that I did a couple weeks ago,
and then I was like, someone asked me a question.
I didn't reply at all. Yeah, I was just.
Going on up on the tangent, which is definitely gonna happen
here as well. Yeah, yeah, I get that.
But that's it's not that bad. Also, like it always.
I feel like if you're creating something and you have this idea
and then it doesn't turn out that way, you're your harshest
critic. Yeah, but everyone else, like,
no one's paying that close attention.
No one's like. But then you didn't exactly
answer that question. As long as the conversation's
good, I used to be very critical.
Like still I think I'm, I'm highly critical of the episodes.
And I would NIT bacon, but it would just be frustration on my
end. Yeah.
And then I would still release the episode and I'd be like, OK,
this is not as good as it could have been or as I want it to be.
This is the best we got for this week, right?
And then we move on, because next week is another one.
Yeah, you have to do this again. Yeah, that's a high turnover
rate. Do you cut them yourselves, edit
anything? No, not anymore.
I used to, yeah. And through that I think I
improved a lot. Now it all the roads is doing
it, but then it's only like it's like, OK, we cut at the
beginning and then we cut at the end.
Not much to catch. Yeah exactly.
Do you edit your videos yourself?
Some of them, not all of them. So there are some videos where I
have a clear idea and a script and then I.
I won't let anyone else touch it because I have such a clear
vision in my head. But there's a lot of stuff that,
like tutorial videos or something where there's a lot of
cutting of the console over the face and everything.
Yeah. And like, this is too much work
for me. So we have it.
A technical marketer who's really into video editing, So
he's probably happy to do it. Leave it to them.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Good stuff. And when it comes to blog
content, going to conferences and standing on stage or video
content like, do you have a preference for one or the other
you like? It all stage stage is the best.
Yeah, this is definitely interesting for our conversation
later. But I always wanted to do like,
stage performance. Yeah.
And there was a time when I got so frustrated with the tech
industry that I was like, I'm gonna leave this industry.
I'm just gonna do stage performance from now on.
I was like I already lined up some auditions.
And I was really committed. Yeah.
But then I had a very good conversation with my CEO.
OK, you know what? I'll give this one more chance,
cuz it's tough to be an artist. It's like, not good money.
And it's really tough to get gigs.
Yeah, I would, you know, like working in tech is kind of
cushy. So I was like, OK, I'll give it
one more try. I think with Devrel, I mean you
get to do that more, no, especially compared to what you
did previously. Yeah, I don't even think it's
that much more because before I was a consultant.
Yeah. And some of it is also obviously
talking to people and maybe even almost like an internal meet up
you, you share knowledge. But a big part was also trying
to get people to, you know, for hiring purposes.
Yeah, or just to like sell our professional services.
So a lot of it was also going to conferences.
I think now I'm just being measured by that.
You know, before it was like I was doing that on the side and
now it's there are metrics now you have to like prove that if I
go there and the company pays for it that it actually has some
return. Exactly.
Oh, OK. Do they measure it that strictly
or is it still kind of? Malleable I do.
I want to know. I want to know the impact of my
work. Like, does it make more sense to
go to like a small community conference or?
To a big one. Yeah.
You know, like, which kind of audiences does it make most
sense to speak to my talks, Which audience should it be
geared towards? I just wanna have an idea
because yeah, when I started it was like, we're just, we were
really busy. But I didn't know, like, is this
actually making an impact? Is it making a big impact, a
small impact? So I just started like, OK,
let's set up some kind of. Metrics.
There's this really good book called The Devil.
I think this is called The Devil book or something Okay, where
they go through this thing called the developer Journey.
So from the point that someone learns about your project up
until they want to scale it up and you know onboard other
people from their organization, like what are the steps in that
journey and how can you move people from one phase to the
next one And that's where you can measure like.
How many people, if you have telemetry on your project, how
many people actually manage to successfully spin up a virtual
cluster, for example? Yeah, if you just look at people
who download it and then people who actually use it, you can
already see like what's the drop off?
If it's like 50%, maybe our documentation is not good
enough, maybe we need a wizard or something.
So these are the things that you could measure and then decide.
Maybe we need this kind of content or we need to improve
our tutorials here? Just to be more impactful with
your work, yeah, I like that a lot because one of the
challenges I had like I'm not a Devil.
But I've had this conversation with Jason Dengstorf before and
and he has done a lot of stuff with the rest of marketing and
and Devil as well. He said a very clear distinction
between your output and the outcomes of what you're doing
right. You can measure output.
You can say, oh, I've stood on stage X amount of times we've
been to X meetups, where we've hosted meetups.
But what is the actual impact of those things?
Right? Those are harder metrics.
Exactly. And then there's some metrics
that might just be vanity metrics, like how many followers
do you have on Twitter? Yeah, it's a number, But what
does it mean for your business? And also, if you're super
popular with other devrels, that's great.
But then does that translate into money for your business?
Yeah, Devrel is really, really tough like.
Area to measure because it's kind of to me the the psychology
of successful devil is not quite clear it's it's hard to say ohh
if you're really good at giving talks that yeah translates into
this thing for the business. It's just it's it's different
with let's say marketing or sales where the numbers might be
clearer or the the objective might be clearer and that might
just have to do with that devil is pretty young as a role yet.
So we have. We don't have.
That many iterations and the many like sophisticated metrics
and tools to track success in dev row.
Yeah. So that might still happen in
the next couple of years. Yeah, I would say it's
interesting because it I feel like it's up and coming.
Maybe it's because of doing this podcast.
I've talked to more people that have that role or want to pursue
that role. Yeah, it's even kind of latest
spark in me that it might be kind of an option in the future,
right. And I always compared to
Engineering Manager, which kind of the track that you laid out
or that you were on, which I'm interested in.
But before we do that, for me, Devrel and kind of the
measurements when you set kind of the project journey or a
product journey that a user might go through, for me that
makes sense, right? You go from reading
documentation, spinning up whatever it is that the company
is building basically and seeing kind of where they drop off and
basically when the drop off is too high, that's where technical
form content cuz in the end it's a tech company can help users
kind of go through that. Users are usually developers or
at least they have a technical affinity because it's a tech
product at the end of the day. And that I could see how the
value in measuring that. But then still for me the
unknown part is okay. What does Devrel contribute to
that? And is that the only path that
you would measure? Or have you found that measuring
other things also is helpful in that way?
Yeah, it's a good question cuz it really depends on what Devrel
is. In your organization, there's a
bunch of some devrels are under marketing, some are under
product, some just are their own departments.
So in our organization, Devrel is part of marketing.
So obviously to us it's most important like.
Do people know about our projects?
Do they understand the capabilities of them and are
they able to actually successfully use it and move it,
move them along again up to the point where they wanna scale up
and then that's where a commercial product comes in that
can help them with a lot of stuff.
And so if you're doing that, obviously the developer journey
is probably the best. Gives you the best points to
measure. But if you're doing.
Let's say product related dev row, where it's more about
relaying feedback from your user base back to the engineering or
product team. Then you might wanna measure
other things like how many people actually are involved in
contributing to your project, how good.
I mean this is always a big thing.
It's like how good is your documentation both for using and
contributing. Yeah, yeah.
This really depends what's important to you and your
organization. There's so many things that play
into this, like which state of the startup are you in?
Are you, like, really trying to raise money right now or did you
just raise a bunch of money and now you can chill a little bit?
Yeah, Yeah. It's difficult to say just for
everyone. If I if I know the answer, I
will write a book about it and make a bunch of money.
Yeah, I mean the biggest, the biggest reason I have that
question is like, sometimes I apply to jobs, right?
And there was this devil post that came or someone came to me
with this devil job and it was very much aligned with like
personal interests of mind and it was kind of a next step
moving away from consultancy And I I how do you say that I talked
to the people basically I applied is basically the formal
way of saying, I guess just to see what would my role be.
They didn't really have a develop department, I would be
the first one basically. And they themselves also didn't
really know how or what I would be doing.
And that scared me because I was like, OK, you come from a
position where you kind of know what you have to do.
Right now I'm a software engineer.
I know what software we're building.
I know the user stories, the product features.
It's way more clear. Yeah.
And then this position would be OK.
I can make video from content. I can do a podcast.
I like doing podcasts. I can write blogs.
But then what is it contributing towards?
What should I do? Where's the value?
Those are so many unknowns that in the end I didn't do it
because of that and also because I didn't really love the product
they were building. So then I was like, then I'm
probably not gonna get energy talking about this product or
creating content about it. Yeah.
So it just wasn't a good fit at the end of the day.
Yeah, it was very hard stepping into that role, I felt like.
Yeah, when I am. So to me, I feel in retrospect,
I've always been doing Devrel, even before I had the title of
Devrel So. Since I wasn't just a software
engineer, just a software engineer.
Since I wasn't software engineer, I was always
interested in sharing knowledge and listening to what
interesting things other people are working on.
Yeah, and that was a big part of what I liked about tech.
And then I was doing consultancy cuz I got bored with working on
the same product forever. And then even with the
consultants, I felt like I could have more impact if I even if
I'm able to talk to even more people at once.
So that's why I felt like Devre was the next step, maybe similar
to how your thinking is. And I also joined a company that
had no Devrel team. There was a person on there who
was a more experienced Devrel. Unfortunately, they left after
like two months. They were supposed to kind of
help me on board me, and they left and I was.
It was a very small startup and I was kind of left to myself.
You figure it out, whatever you want to do, it's fine.
Yeah. On the one hand it was great cuz
I got a lot of support from the CEO and I had a lot of freedom,
but then I had no idea what to do, how to do it, how to help
the company. So I wasn't quite happy there.
I stayed there for about half a year and then they got bought.
So it was kind of like an easy way for me to leave.
And I joined my current company and both of them are in dev
tooling, which is something that I was super interested in, how
to empower and enable engineers. And now we're in the face where
kind of also we were quite busy the last year trying things out,
but now I'm really pushing for Okay.
Let's see. How do we actually help our
users? So things we need to do more is
to understand our user base really better, really talk to
them a lot more, and then collect the numbers.
It's something that not everyone loves about, like marketing
stuff, but it's a numbers game. Ultimately, marketing is always
a numbers game, so you have to see if there's. 200 people who
would want to use our product, but they just can't get past the
first couple steps because the tutorial is not good and the
demo doesn't work. Yeah.
Or there are 20 people who would like to scale it up and actually
become customers. Then it depends on the business
to say, like, OK, maybe the 20 people who will actually pay us
money are more relevant to us. So we were going to focus on
that more than the 200 people in the beginning.
Another company might say no, no, we want to focus on the 200
people in the beginning, it's very, very dependent on what
your focus is. So if you're trying to raise
money, maybe the, the potential customers are more important and
once you've raised that money, now you, you care more about the
mass, yeah, the quantity. So now you're focusing on the
200 people. How much do you let kind of your
own opinion of things guard you in those conversations?
Cuz I can imagine you're very close to the people that are
using it. You have to be, because
otherwise it's hard to create content for those users.
Yeah. And if the organization then
says no, we have to focus on this.
It's kind of an organizational decision.
Yeah, I can see the discussion there.
Yeah, for sure. And that's, I mean that's just a
part of business and life. You sometimes disagree on
things, and I think it's important because even though I
understand why the business or maybe the sales team just
focuses on selling the product, I'm a devil and it's literally
in my name to advocate for. Developers, So I can bring my
perspective and I will bring my perspective.
But ultimately, you know, there's usually someone who
makes that decision in the end, either the CEO or maybe, I don't
know, probably the CEO. So then it's important to I
think it's more important to understand what the arguments
are and the reasoning is. And even if I disagree with the
result, I still understand why we're doing it and what the goal
is. And yeah, it's fine to disagree
I. I think it's important that, you
know, in a professional setting, we're all able to disagree on
things and yet still be remain professional and be able to
commit to the result, even though, you know, afterwards,
you can always say, I told you so, yeah, yeah, I mean, I I like
the most that you point out that you have to understand, right?
Because for me, that's where a lot of personal frustration
comes from, is I if I have this kind of slew of arguments, why
we shouldn't do this and we still do this and I don't
understand why, right? That would be frustrating for
me. Yeah, but I mean you work in a
consultancy, so maybe you have also experienced that with your
customers, cuz I did that a lot where most of that or not most
of the time, but a lot of times it's more about the
communication that's breaking down in these organizations that
need consultants to come in than it is about, you know, the
developers are usually fine, like they want to do things and
the management also usually wants.
The developers to be successful, it's just really that top level
management makes decisions and doesn't communicate them down.
So then the developers that they think this is important, they
work towards it and then they're being told actually this is not
important, this other thing is not important and they don't
understand why because they never understand kind of the
higher level business goals and most of the time it's really
like once you create this. Shared understanding of like,
well, this is what their goals are and this is what your goals
are. And This is why there's this
friction. It really, you know, it
alleviates a lot of this, especially like this
interpersonal like, ooh, there, he's just like making life
difficult for me. And it's like, no, he's just
doing his shit. Yeah, probably doesn't even care
about you or he doesn't know exactly.
Exactly. So, yeah, talk to your
colleagues, I like that a lot like it would, it would
alleviate this us versus them feeling.
Yeah, because I feel like, I mean, you've joined an
organization and you're all in this together, right?
Yeah. And somehow weird decisions get
made, but it's all from a certain point of view, right?
Could be your point of view or a different department things,
other things are weird. And if it just stays like that,
then it would always be like that and you'll have clash of
departments. Yeah.
But when there is a shared understanding, everyone, I feel
like who I've worked with is a reasonable human being.
If we understand, then it's like, Oh yeah, this makes sense
all of a sudden. Yeah.
Because you know, kind of the foundational logic that is there
And then you're like, OK, I might still disagree because I
think we can do other things as well.
But then at least you understand and you're like, OK, this is the
decision. It has been made.
You can lay down whatever pitchfork you had and go with
the flow in that way. Yeah.
And in your daily work, you can also understand better if you
need to make like small decisions.
Oh, now I understand the business goal is this.
So when I make my decision, I will have that in mind and make
better decisions for the business.
Yeah, perfect. I wanna dive deep into kind of
the moment where you took the plunge in going into dev rail
cuz I looked on your LinkedIn and your bio and you came from a
software engineering role. You did more so machine learning
than cloud native software development and even I saw some
engineering management roles and responsibilities in there that
is for me right now. If I look at myself, I do
software engineering more so on the day today.
I recently got some adjacent responsibilities that are like
inherent in engineering management, which I did on
purpose because that is one of the areas where I think it could
be interesting growth path wise. I like people, I like self
development, I like those conversations, but then I really
like content creation. I mean that's this whole podcast
as well. I feel like there might have
been kind of a similar track or thought going in your head as
well. Can you kind of lay out the
career progression that happened there?
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, As I said, even.
As a software engineer, so I started in web development, and
even then I really loved talking to people.
So to be honest, I don't think I'm that great of a software
engineer. I think I'm good enough.
I can learn things if I have to. Actually, I learned things
pretty quickly, I think. But I just don't have that
burning passion for let's optimize the last couple of
bytes out of this algorithm. It's not something that I burn
for. And it was really starting to go
to tech events, finding kind of my crowd and trying public
speaking that I really felt like there's a place for me that I'm
really good at and where I can also provide value to the
community, give back to the community.
And yeah, from there, this was my constant kind of this is the
only constant that I had. And other than that, I was
really trying to explore a lot of what was going on in the tech
space. Yeah, so machine learning was a
thing that I did a course, like an online course.
And then I felt like, well, this is an interesting mix of me
being a software engineer who understands the basics of
machine learning. Maybe I could, like, find a job
where I could learn more about it and see if I can wiggle my
way into that industry. And yeah, I worked for a startup
and it didn't go the way that I was hoping it would.
So actually, we were living in Hamburg in Germany at that time,
and we were both. So my husband and I were
thinking about moving abroad, just like shaking things up a
bit, like see how life is in a different country.
We didn't want to go too far, so that's why we ended up with the
difference. So yeah, I like just because I'm
very privileged in that I found on Twitter a person who they
were looking for, you know, consultants for their cloud
native consultancy. And yeah, I got to talk to them
and they invited me for an interview and it just really was
a really good fit and was there for four years as a cloud native
consultant. When I started, I had never
heard about copernets before. I knew a bit about Docker, but I
never used it in production, not not knowingly, and I went from a
senior software engineer to a junior cloud native person.
Yeah, that was a bit tough, I have to say, because it's it's
always tough to feel like you're the person in the room who
understands the least of something.
But they were super nice. And especially as a consultant,
I learned the importance of asking why or like just asking
very basic questions that sometimes feels a bit, you know,
you might feel like like an impostor maybe, but actually
it's very important to ask those basic questions.
And especially I feel like as a consultant, you are not the
expert on the subject matter. That's the people who work
there. You are, you know, you can be an
advisor, you have some knowledge in cloud or whatever that you
can bring to the table. But really, the people who are
the experts and the people who should solve the problem are the
people that you are consulting. And yeah, so that was kind of my
philosophy all along was just like really just help people.
And I feel like engineering management kind of is in the
same general area, right? It's about, you know, your
career the best and you know what you're good at and you know
where you wanna go. And I'm just here to kind of
help guide you, ask the right questions, maybe.
Yeah. And just like, challenge you,
these kind of things. I really love that.
Then Corona had, so we were all locked into her apartments and I
was working a lot. I was working like 16 hours days
for a long time and then I just burned out.
During COVID, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I took like about half a year
off from work and then I was like, OK, now maybe is a good
point to move into dev row. I still felt like I probably am
not good enough. But hey, you know, in the end,
as long as you can find a job and you can find the space to
learn and to grow, who's to tell you that you're not good enough
or that you're not ready to do it?
So yeah, as I said, the first half year as a dev role, I don't
think I've been super successful because I didn't even know what
success meant. But yeah, I'm here now.
I feel like we're doing good with our product and everything
so. I think you're set under selling
the journey a little bit there. Yeah, that's how I learned it.
You know, we just like always under under promise over
delivery. Then it's always good.
I like that a lot. Coming from because you just
because you pointed it out, coming from kind of a senior
role and going to a junior role, was that also what you
experienced in moving into Devrel in that way?
Not at all, because in Devrel I really, I feel like I had more
of an idea what I was doing and no one else kind of knows what
you need to do as a Devrel, right?
Like everyone has their own interpretation of it.
I was really focusing on the things that I was good at.
But unfortunately, one of the things that I'm good at is to
engage with community in person. But it was Corona, so that was
really difficult. So there were only like online
meetups and I was focusing more on content and improving our
docs, which is also something that I enjoy.
But I feel like I couldn't really live.
I couldn't apply my best, best skills, so that that was a bit
difficult. But I didn't have this same
feeling of everyone in the room knows better about the thing
that I'm supposed to know than me.
So that was that was tough. But I knew going in that this
was gonna happen. And on the other hand, I did
have a lot of experience with software engineering, which in
this cloud native space, there's a lot of people who don't have
that. Yeah.
So it's kind of it's a good balance especially in our team
like my colleague Rich, he's more from the system
administration side and I'm from the development side.
So we really different together. We make like one.
Super. Exactly.
I like that a lot that you still leverage kind of your whole
journey in there. Yeah.
Oh, and I used to study law.
So I feel like that also helps me actually, because there's a
lot of what I learned in in university about drafting, like
drafting regulations or drafting legislations about like
psychology of how do you write something that's fair is
actually super helpful when it comes to, you know, when there's
a clash between teams or something.
And then you have to figure out like what's a fair solution.
There's like, I'm not going to go too deep into it, but there's
like ways to to have that conversation to ensure that, you
know, like it feels fair. Yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, I'm curious about it, and I don't know how much you
want to cover it, but you mentioned you're working 16
hours a day. Especially during COVID times
like I caught myself working from when I woke up to when I
would go to bed some days. Just because you're in this
mode, you can't go anywhere anyway.
I mean food. You make sure you have food for
the rest of the week because that was advised and toilet
paper. Like everything you needed.
I still remember seeing empty shelves like when it started.
But in any case, I feel like a lot of people went through that
phase over working themselves or working way longer than they
might have done otherwise. Phrase it like that, I feel like
for sure. Right now we're still kind of
working remote and. You're not in lockdown, so we
can go outside. Like, how have you kind of coped
with this newer way of working in that way?
Yeah. So when the pandemic started, I
still remember I just came back from London from a business trip
because I used to travel a lot for work also.
Yeah. And I remember I was like, I'm
gonna set up my laptop in the living room just for now, just,
you know, just for the next two weeks cuz I need to.
And then that turned into two years or something.
And I think I also developed some very unhealthy habits with
alcohol, trying to just deal with the boredom.
And I used to just go out a lot and meet friends and suddenly
all that went away and it's just at the beginning.
It was just about getting through the day, getting through
the week, having some kind of social interaction.
And then it turned into, so that was so long time, right?
The first couple of months it was just dealing with stuff and
then we kind of found this new normal.
And then in our company, because we're a consultancy, the first
thing that companies cut when they are in financial trouble is
usually R&D and that usually includes consultancy.
So we did have a very tough time business wise.
So that would put a lot of pressure on all of us.
And then and then during the pandemic we moved into, we
started this engineering management program because we
didn't have that before. And I just felt so I guess
responsible to make this a success.
Yeah, I've been with the company at that point for like 3 years.
I knew everyone and everything kind of.
And I just really wanted to, yeah, push it and make it
successful. And I didn't have anything else
to do, just as you said. So it kind of felt like, Oh
yeah, just let's just work 60 hours a day, cuz you wake up and
you think about this. And it probably is also a
distraction from, you know, the reality.
Exactly. Cuz it wasn't just the pandemic
then. There was also like, obviously
the climate crisis and then, you know, protests in the US and all
kinds of stuff that was just like it was just like thing
after thing after thing. Yeah, and like dominoes.
Exactly. And like working.
Seemed like like a nice vacation from reality, actually.
Yeah, but yeah, you know what? Actually, I realized that I
needed to take a break because I started like, in the mornings I
would actually like, cry before client calls, cuz I felt like
there was so much pressure and I just couldn't really deal with
it anymore. But I also at that point felt
like I put this responsibility on myself.
So, like, there's no way for me to get out of it.
Yeah. And that.
Yeah. So I talked to my colleagues and
I was like, okay. I think I really need a break.
It's like I can't do it anymore. And yeah, so there I forgot the
word. But thankfully it was totally
fine. I took some time off and then I
left the company and there was also fine.
No one was happy about it. But I think people understood
cuz I wasn't the only one burning out.
I think there were a lot of people burning out during the
pandemic, not just at that place and a lot of people also had
like 10 year long relationships that they broke ended, right.
These people, you would think that they would be together
forever and then they have to spend all day, every day
together and they're like actually I don't like this,
yeah, I don't want this. For us, it was also because we
lived in Amsterdam West in a very small apartment and we were
like, we have to find a bigger place because we either way we
knew that we would be working remotely, both of us and.
You need some space. I was like, I need my own space
because I was like still living in the working in the living
room. And my husband was always like,
if you had to go to the bathroom, you would just like
walk past me and you need a door to close.
That's the minimum for an office, I think.
Exactly. Yeah.
I think, I mean, whenever I
heard people kind of spiraling into a burnout, it's interesting
because I feel like people with a high sense of responsibility
and ownership, those usually the people that take on.
Maybe a bit too much, right? Or that one.
Yeah. To do such a great job that they
overwork themselves in the case, right?
Yeah. And it can be kind of escaping
reality. But even when things are normal,
it still happens. Ohh.
Yeah. You just completely want to
focus on this thing and do it right and they overwork
themselves. I think it's a I don't know if
it's a shame, like it's a it's just the thing.
And we have to be mindful of it for ourselves and for other
people. Yeah, because once this is what
I've heard, because I've never had a burnout, but I've heard
from people that have gone through a burnout, it's like.
There's a really long time to recover from it.
It's it's so because when you already I think when you notice
that you have a burnout, it's probably too late.
You're probably already in it and it's so gradual.
It's like the frog boiling on hot water.
It's you because you're just you just feel stressed.
You're just like as you say those are mostly people who are
working hard anyway who maybe are really passionate and really
love it. Like, I didn't notice for a long
time because I just wanted to do it.
I loved it so much. And then it gets to the point
where the things that you used to love, they don't give you any
joy anymore. Like, nothing gives you joy
anymore. And I was like, oh, I'm just
gonna take like, a month off. But yeah, as I said, I was like,
not working for half a year. And it took me maybe like a full
year to feel like I'm myself again because you lose so much
of yourself. A lot of things I loved just I
just couldn't do them anymore and I was.
There was a lot of times when I was wondering, can I, will I
ever be the same person again. And I guess the answer is no.
I don't think I am the same person.
I think I'm I'm different but not worse.
I've become a bit cynical maybe and I've definitely I'm
definitely much more careful with like I will, I hope I will
notice the signs a bit sooner and definitely also like I will
never work a job that I'm not 100% convinced as like something
I want to do. Yeah, because I know now how it
feels. And once you are in this burnout
it's like so tough to get out and you just you're just like
you don't not even sure who you are anymore.
That's a terrible, terrible feeling.
Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah.
I mean, you laid out some of the things like looking after the
symptoms of yourself to kind of prevent it happening again,
looking at the role that you have and making sure you Love
Actually what you're doing. Yeah, like, genuinely.
Is there anything else that you kind of put in place to keep you
from spiraling into this burnout again?
Well, definitely the being very aware of yourself and how you
spend your time and how much you like the things that you do like
instead of just being busy and constantly doing stuff just to
take regular timeouts. Yeah, I've changed also the way
like the time of day that I work.
So now I work like from afternoon after lunch to
evening. So I have the mornings to myself
and then I can like do meditation, do some exercise,
whatever I need doing. And that really shifted kind of
also the way that I look at my day.
So instead of waking up and the first thing you do is like think
about work, what needs to be done.
The first thing I think about is like, ohh, how do I like take
care of myself today? And then I do my work, and I do
work late sometimes still, but it's not, it's not the the very
first thing I think of when I wake up.
Yeah. I think that helps a lot.
Like I've always tried to have a morning routine and when work
got more busy, like I let go of that and I do feel the
repercussions of that. Like I would be exhausted going
to bed and it's still tired waking up, basically.
And because I didn't do me time in the morning, I would feel
tired to work again when I brought that back and I'm I'm
still kind of like we're not perfect.
My morning routine is still not perfect.
Sometimes I I still fail to do it, basically.
But when I did do it, and when I kind of got into the habit of
doing it, I would feel so much better, right?
Like, and I would miss that. But for me, it was like, OK, I'm
in this mode. And once you've been in a mode
for a long time, it becomes this habit.
And then it's hard to get out of.
Yeah, I feel like, for sure. Yeah.
And there.
And also the other thing is like, you can't be too hard on
yourself and not doing everything perfectly because
that also will keep you from being better.
Like, OK, I didn't do my morning routine today.
Fine, Not great, but that's what it is.
Don't beat yourself up over it. Just, like, plan it for the next
day, right? Like keep the keep the the
hurdle to getting started very small.
Like, I don't know, there's some tips about ooh, maybe if you
like, keep your running shoes on during the night, you know
there's not the whole thing with them exactly.
Then you're already like you're already dressed for running so
you know you can do it. I don't know if it works, but
this is like what they tell you like.
A life hack? Yeah, no, I'm sleeping in your
gym. Shorts will actually help you.
But you know what? Why not try it?
We can, yeah. I've never done that.
I mean. Sleeping gym shirts.
But then it's just pajamas, I guess.
Yeah, now we just live in our I mean, like, I I usually like
very put together above. Yeah, the waist.
And then it's just like gym shorts or like some old
sweatpants below. Relax, like no one's no one's
looking at that. No.
Fine. No, I get that.
But you're still working mostly remote.
I mean, you mentioned before coming in here, yeah, it's all
remote still, right? Yeah, so my, my, my company is
based in San Francisco. My team, my dev, the devil team,
the marketing team is I think all of them are on the West
Coast, so I'm the only one in Europe.
We do have people from all over the world, really, from India to
Europe to the US and that's why I tend to work late.
But that's also because I want to.
And yeah, I have my own little office in in my house now.
We moved to Amsterdam north because now we don't have to be
close to the city anymore. Yeah.
So that was, that's nice because it's very quiet there.
There's no tourists, no offense tourists.
But when there were, when Corona happened, the inner city of
Amsterdam was so nice. It was so beautiful.
Like, oh wow, this is like what it's like to really chill in the
city. Like even now it's like it's so
full again have. You been recently?
Yeah. It's way more full now.
Yeah, because everyone's know this is the last time we could
do it. Actually, now I know that we're
trying to get rid of the English tourists.
So I feel like. I feel like that made it even
worse because now people are like, man, we have to come back
to before we can. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, it's tough. And our office used.
So when I was still going to the office, it was right at the
Central station. So every day I would like, go
home and just elbowing my way through the tourists.
It was really annoying. Yeah, but I can understand it.
I used to be a tourist in Amsterdam as well, so it's
really beautiful. I get it.
But there's just not enough. It's not a lot of space.
Yeah. Sometimes I wonder, like, if I
go abroad, is it like, am I the tourist that.
Yeah. You're you're that kind of
tourist. Am I?
Am I the. Yeah.
Probably. But everywhere else in the
world, there's more space on the, you know, the pedestrian
walkway. Yeah, yeah.
It's just the herd in Amsterdam. It's been rough lately.
But yeah, I was thinking back to kind of Devrell and and what
you're doing there. I've heard a lot of people say
Devrell's also being involved in communities and sometimes
creating communities as well. And I wonder what the similarity
would be because I haven't had any experiences in either.
The only community we're kind of building is.
The podcast listeners, I guess if you can call that a
community, but it's not really conscious.
Yeah. Is it similar to how you would
build a team like structure wise?
The thought process that goes into it is that comparison I can
make. I think there's a lot of
similarities. I don't know what the official
definition of the word community is, but to me it's about a
shared, shared experience. It's more than it is about
anything else. So if you are, let's say you
have like a meet up and you have the community around that meet
up, then it's not as much as only the people who go to this
meet up are part of the community.
But it's really like everyone who has an interest.
And if we talk about a topic that has something to do with
this meet up, then we are both part of this community, right?
And even if you're just reading stuff, you're still part of the
community. You're still consuming the value
of the community. Yeah, I think it's, I know that
there's a lot of companies now who are doing open source.
They've noticed that open source is a big, like brand booster and
they want to build communities around those brands or around
their projects. Yeah.
And I think that's it's kind of difficult because community
needs to grow organically. Like the core of a community
needs to grow organically because it's very, very
difficult to just create one. As a goal?
Yeah, exactly. Like just to put people together
and just expect that ohh, now they're gonna be best friends
and they're gonna hang out and answer each other's questions.
It's just not. There's so many things that go
into it. Like do people actually are
people interested enough in this to spend time and provide value?
Yeah. And time and effort to provide
value to other people, other members of the community, you
know do they get something out of the community as well?
And. You know, what's the what's I
mean, what's the brand of this community?
Is it like if it's like a, I don't know, like a very
unpopular thing? I'm not gonna name any names
because I don't wanna. Sure.
But if it's something that's kind of unpopular, then everyone
who has something to do with it might be conceived in a negative
light. So it's it's easier to just let
a community develop, like a small one, and then invest in
it. So if you're saying like the
community around the podcast, I'm sure there is a community.
I'm sure the people who listen to your podcast maybe leave a
comment. Maybe they don't leave comments,
but they in some way share stuff with each other.
So to me, that's a community. So now how do you nurture it?
How do you do stuff? I don't know.
Do an MA. I saw you.
You've done that. Yeah.
That's fun. Yeah, exactly.
With teams, I think it's very similar.
I mean, teams are different in the way that they're forced
together. Yeah, but there are similar
things that you can do, like create a very safe environment
so everyone is feels comfortable, you know, making
comments, raising their issues, that kind of stuff.
Maybe also creating some regular things so people know that, oh,
once a week there's a podcast or once a week we have this meeting
together where we can just air out or grievances.
I think it's very similar. The only thing is that in a team
you usually get paid to be there.
So people will be there and come and and provide value.
The community, especially if you do open source, it's a bit more
difficult to get people exactly, not even to get people to to do
things. That's not that hard.
It's to keep people consistently doing things that they come back
and that they will plan in the long term.
That's that's much more difficult in open source.
But yeah, I feel like in very many ways it's the same.
Yeah, I feel like a big component is what when I talk to
people that contribute a lot to open source, a big component for
them is like the fulfillment they get from creating something
and the engagement from a community using whatever they
created. Yeah, like that feeling of
fulfillment apparently is so big for them that they they come
back and they do it again. Yeah, or.
Also some people I've heard they created this thing and it
actually span out of control and more people are using it than
they can handle and they don't wanna let go of this cuz they
feel like it's an important component now for other people,
right? That's also another thing that I
also learned that the hard way is when you redo stuff for the
community, it's not your thing anymore.
Like you're giving it to the community.
And it's also important to understand that no matter how
great your vision is and your idea, and maybe you're like
really good at these things, but generally speaking, if there are
more people working on something, it's probably gonna
be better in the end. Yeah, it's probably gonna.
They're gonna have better ideas that you could have had and
you're probably gonna build something better that you could
have done by yourself. But if you started it and you
feel responsible for it and it's your baby, it's very difficult
to let that go. So when I moved to Amsterdam and
then one of the first things I did was one of my colleagues
asked me if I wanted to help him organize Serverless Days
Amsterdam, which is a community conference around Serverless.
And we did this and he left and then came back, whatever.
But it was very difficult for me to let go and let other people
in and not try to control and micromanage everything because I
had a very specific idea of how I wanted the conference to look
like, to feel like. And yeah, I would, even if I
delegated stuff to other people, I would still like control, like
how do, how do you do this and blah blah.
And it was only after a while that I realized, if I just don't
do that anymore, if I let people just do whatever they want to do
or that they feel is the best way to do it, it's first of all,
it's much better for me. But then also, you're doing it
for the community. It's not Leon days, right?
It's serverless days. So everyone who's part of the
community should be able to contribute and to create
something that applies to their vision.
Yeah, so I've since then really tried to, when I built
communities, for example the community that currently I'm
building or the last community that I started was Kuberoki
which was Kubernetes Karaoke. And you know, it started with
just me going to places and like asking people to join me.
And then we had this official more or less official party.
You can't see me doing air quotes probably.
There's a lot of video the air quotes official party in
Amsterdam, which isn't great, and now we want to do another
one in Chicago, but I'm not going to Chicago because I don't
want to. And now it's like, OK, someone
else is organizing it. And this time around, I'm like,
you know what? This is all the information that
you need. Yeah, just do it.
I don't even care that much. It's like, this is this brand.
Even though I started, it's not me, right?
It's this is a separate thing from me.
And I feel like that is the now. I feel like I'm really doing
community work now. I'm doing work that is for the
community, not for myself. Yeah.
And then once you do these kind of things this way, the, you
know, all the praise and the fame, it will come back to you
anyway. You don't have to put your name
on it because people will know who started all these things,
right? This is the last part of the
event. There's a book called Tribal
Leadership and it's like one of my favorite books.
It really helped me understand a lot of things about the culture
of groups of tribes. And they are basically, they're
saying there's five different cultural levels.
And level one is kind of like where everyone just hates life.
And Level 5 is like, everything's possible.
We're so awesome. And there is like this thing
that Level 3 people or Level 3 behavior or thinking is about.
I'm the best one, and that's why I maybe try to even sabotage
people in the worst kind of scenario or just try to keep all
the information to myself. Because information has power
and I want to remain in a position of power.
Whereas if you move to stage 4, you're really just giving
everything to the group. And ironically, by doing that
you will get more praise and you will get more stuff done than if
you were trying to do everything by yourself.
And that really like when I kind of like understood this and
start to implement it in my work, that I feel like that
really propelled me and my career forward like a billion
yards. Yeah, that's awesome.
I feel like a lot of people say that, right?
The art of delegating. No micromanaging.
But for me, it really shines. When people have gone through
that, when they've realized that, oh, this is what I was
doing actually. And it's kind of if you love
something, if you want it to go well, then obviously you want to
make sure that all the the eyes are dotted, basically.
Yeah. And if other people are
responsible for dotting the eyes, you'll be like, okay, have
the eyes been dotted? You'll be.
You'll be there, basically. And once you have realized that,
oh, that is what you were doing, right.
Because if it's an outside story, you can be like, oh, you
shouldn't do that, right. Then obviously then it's obvious
all of a sudden when it's you, you might have to be reflect and
be like, oh, this is what I was actually doing.
Yeah. And I feel like when the
realization hits, for me, it's still been difficult.
I still catch myself being like, Oh yeah, Or maybe I double check
or maybe I did this while I really should have given it
away. But yeah, you think about it
differently and all of a sudden. I think it alleviates kind of
this feeling as well, where you can do this as a team, right?
And you don't really feel like the person that is so
responsible for making sure everything goes well.
No, it's a team responsibility. At the end of the day, yeah, you
might be a big driver, but at the end of the day, it's a
shared thing. It's not just you.
Yeah, again, it ties into the I will be the person who enables
and who helps and who gives advice.
But ultimately, this is not me doing it.
It's more like us as a team doing it.
And that's why I also said like not Level 3 people, but Level 3
behavior, because you could even have this epiphany, as they call
it, and still behave in a way that you kind of then realize is
not the best way. And I noticed it for myself that
if I'm really stressed about just things I'm not in a good
emotional place or mental place, then I tend to be more
micromanaging and, you know, like, have less grace, extend
less grace towards other people. Then I fall into these, like,
why is he not doing this the way that I think he should be doing?
And it's really like, so much of interpersonal friction is in
your head. Yeah.
It's really a lot of stuff that you just make up in your mind.
And if you ever just talk to the person, it would maybe turn out
that you have more things in common than you think, that
you're actually trying to achieve the same goal.
You just go around about it in different ways.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
I see so many similar is there and I feel like it's fine to
make those mistakes right. We're still human.
You're never going to be perfect.
I catch myself and I and I apologize sometimes even where I
didn't behave the way I wanted, I'll make sure the person knows
that in the future I'll try and do better, right.
That's not what what I wanted to do basically.
And it can be sometimes explained with behavior or or
tiredness or anything else, or sometimes you just.
Happens, I feel like. And it's still fine.
It's good to know that. I mean, for me, it's good to
know that what my triggers are. So if I know that I'm having
kind of like a bit of a tough day, then maybe I just don't
have my one on ones today. Maybe I'll do them tomorrow.
Yeah. These are just like small things
that I feel like. It's good to know what your
emotional triggers are cuz you don't wanna, I don't know.
You don't wanna be like difficult with other people if
you can't avoid it. Absolutely, yeah.
The self-awareness there. I've really enjoyed this
conversation. Man, this was a lot of fun.
Is this kind of what you experienced or expected going
into it as well? I don't know.
No, no, you're great. I didn't expect much, honestly,
because I was too nervous about there being.
No, I I really enjoyed it. I really like to talk about the
kind of like not as technical side.
In the end, I believe that all technical, like all tech
problems are fundamentally human problems.
Yeah, we're just using tech to solve them.
And if we could solve them with no tech or low tech, I think
that would be even better because every single line of
code is tech debt. Yeah, that you have to maintain
it. So the more we focus on like how
do we communicate better, how do we understand each other better,
the better our tech and products will be.
Yeah. So I think this is actually very
important a conversation to have.
Awesome, I completely align with that.
Usually I'm like. Do we actually need to create
something, or is this a soft problem?
No, everything's soft. Exactly.
Cool. We're going to round it off here
everyone. I'm going to put all the Ant
socials in the description, bro. Check her out.
Let her know you came from our show.
And with that being set, thank you again for listening.
We'll see you on the next one. And I kind of blabber at the end
there. Thanks.
Bye.