Career Advice Every Developer Needs Right Now

Hundreds of questions have come in for these Q&A episodes, and today I have the latest batch. They're questions on the future of engineering, career growth, strategy, product thinking and impact, AI and agents. Lastly, what products do I use for my hair? If you're curious about any of these in this episode, you'll find out. All right, let's start with the start. What can one do to get better at identifying what the next big thing is? I think it's very interesting that I see videos and podcasts of people being like, I predicted the 20-something crash, and I predicted Bitcoin, and I have read a book where the book predicted all of this AI and agent stuff. People predict things all the time, and they are only right when reality actually happens to be that way. For me, it's not really that important to predict the next big thing. I do think it's interesting that you are aware of what problem solvers there are, or you are able to think of what problems people have and how it can potentially be solved. Think of your own life. Think of the minor nuances that are there. Think of what you do on a day-to-day, or specifically with your domain of expertise. For software engineers, what are they doing on a day-to-day? They stand up, they talk to people, they love the creation of software. It's changing now, so maybe people love to type code. Typing is now kind of going away quite quickly. They might like working with agents. Not everyone likes working with agents. They hate it. It's even a meme that there are too many meetings that are not as effective. You see people really get demotivated if all they do is talk, and they don't really get to create. Is that a problem? Yeah, for some people it is. Can you solve that? And how are people solving that? People are now solving that through auto transcription and trying to make people more effective in following up on whatever is discussed in those meetings in the first place. Or you don't even need to be in those meetings because the transcript is there and you get a summary in the first place. So only a few people are needed and not the whole team anymore. So those are problem solvers for pain points that people experience. I think that is the skill that you want to cultivate. And I think the easiest is to just journal. Be like, what did I do today? And did I like my day? Did I waste my time? Do other people, do I think other people actually have similar pain points? Or can I find my own pain points? And can I just solve that for myself? And if you solve that for yourself and you communicate about it, other people might be like, actually, I also want that solution. Which is really cool. Those are the best solutions. And even if no one else has that same pain point, you've still solved it for yourself. The skill of then solving problems you're already working on. And I feel like the more problems you solve, the better you are at identifying what problems there are to solve. And potentially, you might actually understand bigger movements of how specific things come together and what a big occurrence or a big event or when something actually gets announced as a technology, how that can create a ripple effect and eventually become the next big thing. That's how I think about it. What is a piece of advice that people get that you often disagree with? Maybe I wouldn't say disagree. I just hate it when people say it is what it is. And I think that reflects in some of the answers that I gave. It feels like you've accepted defeat and I hate accepting defeat. I would like to have the feeling that I did whatever I could. And now I feel like I've just hit a wall. And I either have to accept it or I have to remove myself from the situation. So whether that is a job that just doesn't fulfill me anymore and I communicate that it doesn't fulfill me and I want to switch to a new role and in the end, I either get the role or people say, no, you're going to be here and you're going to be stuck for five years. Then I feel like, can I do anything else? Can I go to my manager's manager, skip level? Can I go to the director? Can I even go to the CEO? And at some point, I feel like I don't have any other options or all of the options that I still have, I really don't want to do, I'm done. Then I remove myself from the situation. It's really hard for me to accept. It is what it is. I would much rather have, I've tried everything and I can't get through. That's me, all right? I own that. I cannot get through. And I either accept that. So I can't get through and I've accepted that. I'm focusing my energy on this or I can't get through, I'm out, all right? I'm working on removing myself from the situation. Might sound harsh, very black and white. That's my opinion. I hate it when people say it is what it is. What's one career mistake? You're genuinely glad you made and why? One career mistake. I shared many times that I started my career in operations and I had one major mess up in production where everything just messed up. We had this big orchestration thing where files were linearly being sent and picked up with certain folders and then sent to other APIs and integrations and it was kind of linear, but also sometimes in parallel. And somehow I copy pasted that exact outline and there were now two running. Files were no longer being picked up or messages were being sent to other workflows where they shouldn't have gone and system was just screaming in my face, like, what have you done? And it was so early in my career, I had no clue what I had done because I was just warming up to kind of being responsible in operations for the system. And it happened and my phone rang. Immediately, my phone rang and I knew what happened. I knew exactly, maybe not how I had done it, but definitely the consequences of what I had done because it didn't look right. And then I picked up the phone. I never wanted to pick up the phone, by the way. I wanted to run away, but running away is not an option. And luckily, my colleague was the chillest person ever. They were like, they didn't even tell the name. I recognized the voice. They were like, what happened? And I was like, I have no clue. All right, I know what's wrong, but I don't know how I did it. I don't know how to fix it. I need help. And they were like, okay, where are you? Because back then, five days at the office, I was on one floor, they were the floor below me. They came and they sat next to me and he walked me through how to solve this. He also made it very clear that this was quite a big ****-up, but also that it was okay. And then he looked at other people and he was like, do you remember when you did this thing, which was also an even bigger ****-up, mind you. And then people laughed about it and he pointed to another person and that also he shared what they did. And then he shared himself to me, what they did early in their career or not even that early in their career. It really normalized the fact that things can go wrong and that it's okay. The focus is keep your head calm, solve the problem first, then discuss and figure out all the learnings there. Things will go wrong. And in the end, it's fine. It's how you act when things go wrong. So I really, I'm glad with those experiences, especially in operations. I take those with me everywhere. And I wish everyone would experience and have people act around them in that manner because that really left an imprint on me. I've shared this story before and then people in the comments have said completely the opposite. They get yelled at and they get potentially even there's bigger consequences to whatever happens in their job. I'm just happy that this was my situation. And I wish whenever something happens to another person, I am able to react and kind of distribute that kindness in the same way. And I also wish that for you when you're listening to this. Hi, Patrick, I've been an old fan of your podcast series and I have heard that managers ask too much output from developers in tight deadlines nowadays because of integrating AI into their workflow. Is this true in your workspace? Funny thing is in my workspace right now, I'm the product person. I did product management. Then I went back to hands-on because I had the biggest FOMO and I wanted to go more agentic engineering and experience what it is to work with AI and agents in production, creating functionality. And now I'm back to a product role being responsible of thinking of how people work with agents and how we enable them from an education perspective, from a tooling perspective, from an infrastructure and platform perspective. So that's my role right now. But I have the benefit of having been a software engineer when I do so. So my perspective is I set a goal. So, okay, this is what we're trying to reach potentially in X amount of time, but typically it's within a quarter or within a few months. This is the goal and this is what we're aiming to achieve. And this is how we're going to measure things. Then we have a discussion with the team and we start working on it. The only thing I don't like is when people deviate, when they go way too wide and they do many things at the same time and nothing really moves. So that's what I'm trying to be sharp on. And otherwise, are they too much in meetings? Do they waste their time on other work? Those are the things I kind of keep an eye on. And it's nothing that I'm tracking. It's literally just by being part of the standup, by looking at what people are working on a ticket basis, not even in their pull requests or what they do on a day-to-day, trusting the people I work with in that aspect. If they are open and transparent, I don't really have to know what they are working on necessarily on a detail level. I don't need to know what you did today or what you did yesterday and what you're going to do today. I'm focused on the items that are on the board and why are they not moving? And if they're not moving, it's fine. Are you blocked? Can we help? Does someone else need to step in? Do I need to clarify anything? If all of those are green light, then we're going as fast as we can go, at least to the capacity of a person. Now, how people work with AI, we're still kind of trying to figure things out. So right now my approach is, especially in this industry with the team, try and stay as flexible as possible. It might just be that a new model drops and everything overnight changes, which means that if we have too much rigid process, if we have a roadmap that is way, way too long, then we're going to be inflexible when change comes our way. Sometimes we create change, but in this industry nowadays, especially with Gen AI agents and agentic engineering, a lot of change is like inbound and sometimes you have influence over it and sometimes you don't. So we need to act because if you don't act, you also run the risk of being outpaced by your competitors. So I try and be as flexible as I can. Now, this question of managers putting pressure on engineers for deliverables is nothing new. And even with the identifier of AI, it's really unfortunate that some people just really don't get it. If they haven't actually worked with agents, they might not know these interactions or the nuances or how long it actually gets you as an engineer to get up and running and be faster. With everything that you learn, you're going to be on equal level of productivity. You learn something new, it's going to take a dip and this is what I've experienced with AI. At some point things click and then you up your productivity, but this up in productivity, that's kind of nuanced for everyone working on it, right? How fast do you typically pick up a new tool or familiarize yourself with a SaaS or a piece of infrastructure and things just click with your big picture thinking? A lot has to do with the experience you have and how often you've done that. So if this is completely new, it's going to take a bit longer. And unfortunately, if your leadership team doesn't understand that, then this can indeed feel like pressure or they might actually put pressure on you. It has to do with your work environment, your deadlines, your deliverables. Like if you work at a startup and it's make or break for the startup and if you don't deliver, then it's the end of the startup. I understand that people are stressed and that stress is definitely going to bleed down to the people actually doing the work. So it's really dependent on your environment, plus also sometimes what I forget to say, in the culture. I work in the Netherlands. I work in Europe. I've never worked in Asia. I've never worked in North America, South America. I know those cultures are very, very different. The biggest example I have is I love anime. I love everything Japan and I know the working culture there is horrid. So I would love to live there. I would love to copy paste my life and live there. But the work dynamic would just be terrible. I see people hopping on the train. I was there for a month last year. I saw people hopping on the train. They were already sleeping on the train. Their train stop is there. They just wake up in a panic and they rush out of the train. Yeah, you don't want to be that. But that's the cultural part that could be different, which makes it hard to fix because my default kind of problem-solving mindset is take yourself out of that situation. But the hiring market is not great, especially if it's a cultural difference than anywhere else in the organizations. It might be kind of similar, the organizations around you. So what can you then do? My advice would be to talk about it. I don't know how many people on purpose actually put on pressure. I've never been in that situation, but I would want to understand where that is coming from. And if you can have a conversation and say, well, this pressure that you're putting on the team or specifically on me as an engineer is actually demotivating me, is actually distracting me from my work, is making me lose sleep. All of those are not going to make you happy. And we know that developer happiness equals developer productivity. If you're happy at your work, then typically you are more productive. So that's the conversation I would have. That's the advice I have. For early career engineers in the AI era, how should they balance learning fundamentals, building real projects, and using AI coding tools without becoming overly dependent on them? First principles thinking. So you can use a tool, you can be effective with a tool. It's really fun. You can get really, the feeling of productivity is really there. Even dopamine. I've heard people lose sleep because of the tools that they have available or the credits they have available on a monthly basis, on a weekly basis, sometimes even in the span of a few hours. For example, with cloud code, and they want to maximize their usage. That's the period we are in now. So you can learn how to be effective with a tool, but if the tool changes, you're kind of screwed. But the underlying principles of what is a model? How does that turn into an agent? So an agent loop, what does an agent actually use in terms of tool calls and skills and memory management? And when you have an interaction with an agent, where does that live on your machine? And can you learn from those interactions? Can you codify behavior? Instead of trying to steer the agent to do what you think it needs to do out of the box, but how can you codify that behavior so the next time it actually does that out of the box, out of the get-go, then you've orchestrated your agent engineering workflow. And that's right now a skill that is very fresh, that is very new. There's many YouTube videos on there to inspire you on how to do things. And then I would say experiment. So build it up from the foundation, try and understand those topics in and of its own, and start creating. The biggest benefit right now is that everyone is a builder, but what you build is still up to you. So my advice, I've been building really cool projects. And before AI and agents, I hadn't really done so. This time investment that I had in my mind, if I want to build this, it's going to take X amount of evenings and X amount of time. And I love podcasting, I love watching anime and all of my other hundreds of hobbies, as well as just regular work, which I also enjoy doing. I just never prioritized it. But now with agents, in one day, I get time from the organization to just do a hackathon or innovation. I can build little projects and all of a sudden they're up and running. One of the latest things I did was I built kind of an agent orchestration, genetic engineering workflow that you open cloud code, there's a set of skills and a set of kind of default coding templates available. And you just say, I want a game, I want an RPG. I'm thinking about having HP and mana and swords and magical items. And I want to fight goblins and bosses at the end of the round, there's going to be a boss, create me a game. And whatever you come up with, it will create a game for you in kind of a retro style. Because I chose that style because I like that style. And it does it. And I've done it with myself. I've created five games with it. I've created three games for my little brothers with it. I gave it to my friends and I was like, whatever you do, speech to text, talk about a game that you want to create. And people made the most creative games. It was hilarious. And they were very amazed that it works out of the box. Small project. If I were to build that, I don't think it was possible pre-agents because there's kind of a non-deterministic part. English is like the programming language, but then in the end, it creates the game. It's a really cool project. I love gaming, love kind of retro style. I love enabling people and not just building the thing, but having other people build it. And then the joy of building becomes the thing. Like I could have built a game, but I took it one step beyond. And now I have a thing that builds games and everyone can now build games. So that's an example of a project that I built. And it really says a lot about me. It's now available on GitHub. Check it out if you want. It's not perfect. It's definitely like a very much MVP. I have on a branch, another redesign, which I'm not really happy with, which I then paused. But these are projects that you can kick off. You can think of, how do I build this? You can do that even multiple times and figure out how to get to the right version through any of your orchestration that you have put in place. And those are really great learning examples. I feel like many organizations are trying to figure that out, but then on scale in production, for features, for systems that have been live for many, many years already. But these tiny projects, they will make a difference in the conversations that you will have with them because your experience is very relevant for what they're trying to do. And if their engineers don't get the time to experiment in the first place, then this is where, regardless on your level of career, you can make a difference. And I truly believe that, especially nowadays, this kind of way of working, it might change slightly. I do think the fundamentals will stay. And although it might be a bubble from a financial standpoint, in the last episode, my guest said the internet was also a bubble and the internet is here to stay. I also feel like AI and agents in whatever form it's going to have in the future, it will be here to stay. It's maybe not going to be anthropic. It's maybe not going to be open AI. It might not even be the titans of Google, Microsoft, and even Meta. I know Amazon is also making models. Never heard of those before, but they are there. It might not be any of those, but I do think the technology is here to stay. So leverage that, learn from a first principles kind of thinking, fundamental level, start building, start experiencing and experimenting. That's my advice. But I'm also very pragmatic, practical oriented. I love doing hands-on things rather than thinking of theory, although I do like theorizing. Will AI ever get good at distributed systems? So there's a nuance in there. Definitely, you think then AI is not great at distributed systems. And I haven't really worked in distributed systems environment as of recently, but I can imagine that it has a few components, why it's not good currently. So context is scattered. That's one. Likely it's easy to follow happy paths. It's not as easy to follow paths that are not happy. Next token prediction is usually a typical case. Distributed systems are, I would say, more atypical, quite specific for an environment and a level of scale and complexity. This is likely where you need the most context management, and you're not going to get it out of the box with your model. This is where I feel like you need to orchestrate around and systemize the behavior that can be used as verification for an agent in the first place. So I don't think this is going to be baked in a model that out of the box just works in your distributed system. The fact that your system is distributed means you have to engineer around it. So AI or an agent can actually have verification, can see what it's doing wrong, can traverse different code paths, or at least you have the context managed in such a way that it has access to the information it needs from a reasoning perspective. There's never going to be a silver bullet in the first place, right? You will always have some form of blind spots or errors, and you can context engineer around that as much as you can. But in the end, it's still non-deterministic, next token prediction that's just inherent in the model. So it is a complex problem. I do think with orchestration, you can get better right now already. I think the models are fantastic if you enable them with the right type of information and tooling and verification loops. So yeah, I don't see any issue in starting right now and why agents can't be good at distributed systems as well. It requires effort, but I don't think it's impossible. How do you think about the balance between being a specialist versus generalist in engineering? How do you recognize when it's time to lean into one over the other? So here, like I just know how I've acted and I never really strategize my career too much. I like going where I think things are interesting. And early on in my career, that was really on the backend. I loved Go as a programming language. And when I felt like I could do things and there weren't really many things on a surface level that I wanted to learn, I wanted to know, okay, how do I make my feature actually complete? Which means in the end, I worked in e-comm, it was end-user facing. So I also needed to learn something about the visualization and how my backend logic in the end ends up on the eyes of a user. So then I went into more frontend. I learned about React. I learned about HTML, CSS, the CSS framework that we had in place at that time specifically. And then the integration layer that we had. So I hopped from one thing to the other thing based on where I thought, okay, that's interesting. This is where things are fresh. I don't think I'm a person that gets bored easily. However, I do like it when things are new and interesting in the first place. I am a person that goes deep to a certain level where I feel like I can be effective. And when I need to go deeper, it's really on a use case by use case level. To me, it feels easier to educate yourself. When I got stuck, I needed to ask a colleague and I didn't mind that. That was the advice I get. Don't be stuck for too long. Ask a colleague when you need help. We need to be effective as a team. And when you're on an island for days and we don't know what's going on, we're not as effective as a team as we can be. And when you are responsible for delivering a feature and in the end that doesn't go out, some other things might be dependent on that and they can also not go out. So let's collaborate. When you're stuck, ask for help. When someone can give you an answer in five minutes, ask that question rather than being on an island for a few days. So I did. And I did do that. And now I feel like if I have a topic where some things just really don't click, like in my mind, it doesn't make sense. I really rely on my interpretation of does it fit in the big picture on how I think the world works or how I think software engineering works? Yes or no. I do a lot of thinking. And if a new topic comes in and it doesn't really click, that's why I love talking to my community of engineers or my peers or my colleagues or they don't even have to be engineers. I just want to brainstorm with people. And now you can also do that with an agent. And that agent can browse the web or can have specific context that it has inherently to actually ask you and see if you understand it from a first principles thinking. Usually it can interview you or you can ask it. Treat it like you're trying to find where the gaps in my knowledge are or what the extent of depth is on this topic that I'm trying to explore. And then it will share its findings with you. So you learn from that process. You learn by kind of mirroring and you can now do that without a human in the loop. Now, I think it's beneficial to have both. But if in your environment, especially let's say you're early in career or you're studying, it's fantastic to do that without a human in the loop nowadays as well. If I needed to do research, I would go to the internet and I would read articles and I would read papers and I would watch YouTube videos on other people trying to explain it to me. Now you have another ingredient, which is an agent that can do similar things or can be kind of this distilled funnel and can educate you or can help you self-educate, maybe I should say, which is fantastic. So long story to say that I feel like you can go both deep depending on when you need it as well as width depending on your interests. At some point, you will hit a kind of ceiling in your career where you feel like maybe I'm not growing as much, maybe I'm doing more of the same. And all of these topics, they are comfortable, but they are comfortable because I've already seen them. And then what is interesting is that especially in this field, you can go a little bit more broad. So if you're a backend engineer, you can go to kind of more of the front-end part or you can go to more of the infrastructure part, where does the code actually run on? And if you think those are interesting, familiarize yourself in a little bit more depth on those fields, right? If you're really product-oriented and you want to speak to customers, then why not? If you want to figure out on how to set long-term goals and how to do road mapping in the first place and ideate and how features actually come to your plate and what decisions get made, you can also do that. There are many opportunities for you to go in with. So it's really up to you. Act. For me, that's the most important part. When you do something, communicate what you want and act. I also, from a product management perspective, I love asking, if you're in this team, what do you want to do? What is your ambition? What do you want to achieve, right? If we're looking three months down the line or at the end of this year, what are you proud of if we actually have achieved that? Let me know so I can put you in the place for you to shine, right? If I know that's your motivation, then it's my job to make sure that you are in that position to actually execute on that. Because again, if people are happy, they're more productive. And I'm not just this person that only looks at productivity. I also think it's really fun to go as fast as possible. That's just my inherent way of thinking. But if people are happy, it's just nice to work with them, right? I want to work with people that are happy with what they do. I don't want to work with people that don't want to be there. That makes no sense to me. Oh, this is a big one. Visibility is king. What is the best way for early career people to become more visible within their org or generally? And not just X, I mean more habits, workflows, spending on an editor so they can continue to ship. Spending on an editor. Let's just pin that. Let's start within the org, right? When you create something, who's communicating that? And that's not even with you being an engineer. I have heard recently in my network that there are people where they create something and then the manager takes all the credit, is communicating about it, talks about what has happened and this person then doesn't really have a voice. That's a huge red flag, all right? If you create work that you're proud of, you should be able to communicate it to whomever it is relevant for. Don't just be a person that only creates work that other people then take credit for. There you have to be very vigilant, all right? I believe in a world of meritocracy. If you add value, then that's where your value add is and people should know that. I'm not saying brag about it. I'm saying people should know that that was you and it's not okay if someone else steals their credit. That has to do with internal visibility. I think a lot of working within organizations is relationships. So the best thing you can do is understand the people that influence certain decisions, get to know them on a relationship level. Say, just let's have a coffee, learn about what they do, what is important to them and how you from your position can make a difference and ask, ask for advice. Ask for perspective. Say, I'm working on these things or these actually the right things or should we pivot? And also ask within your environment, what is important to you and how can I make sure that that also comes across? How can I communicate that best to the people that are those decision makers? And at some point, if you do that over and over again, you will start to understand what makes the decision maker stick and at some point, you will be able and will equip to be one of those decision makers yourself, either within that organization because you've proven your value over and over again. People know you and they know this is what you have delivered or brought to the table or within another organization because if you have a conversation with more decision makers that are interviewing you, the fact that you have gone through this likely makes it so that you can communicate as an equal, not just as a person that executes and that's very important. A lot has to do with communication style. A lot has to do with networking, relationship building and typically if you're executing, it's fun to just focus on what you're executing. It is fine to focus on what you're executing and you can do really well in that. However, I do agree that personal branding is becoming a bigger and bigger thing. It is one of the things that can distinguish you from other people when you're applying to a new job. It doesn't just have to be within the organization. It can be outside of the organization but even if it's just within the organization, I got a new person on my team and I really fought for this person because I thought this person would bring immense value to what we're trying to achieve, what the goal is of our team and then I learned that my director and other people that I work with closely know this person because he was one of the best engineers in their previous organization and they were like, this is a no-brainer. Let's get this person on board. Fantastic. If people talk about you like that, if the fact that your name already makes people say, is that the person from that organization that I used to work with? It is a no-brainer. That's fantastic, all right? This person is not known outside of organizations it's a very small bubble of network of people that they know him. However, they know him to such a degree and he has such a legacy in the other organization that is a no-brainer to get this person in. That's fantastic. You can do that within an org, you can slowly build up your personal branding outside of organizations as well which is a whole nother topic. I feel like I've spoken about this many, many times also because it is one of my favorite topics. Now, the advice I typically give is look at what you consume. If you like reading, you might like writing. If you like watching videos, you might like creating videos. If you like listening, you might like broadcasting. Last one might be a leap but it was true for me which is why I advise that. And you don't have to create for other people, you can create for yourself. Create something for your past self, create something that whilst creating makes it so you actually understand topics better, right? The art of creating will make you a better communicator, it will hone your fundamental knowledge, you will have to figure out how to communicate that to such a degree that people who don't understand it understand it. And that's a life skill, right? If you're explaining some technical topic or you're explaining a topic in general, how do you organize your thoughts? How do you tell a story? How do people remember that? And specifically, how do you bring that across your point that you're trying to make or an argument or a perspective? You will learn through content creation. That's the benefit. That can be the main goal even. I want to be better and this is going to be one of the ways I get better. As a side effect, and it can still be your main goal to work on personal branding, people will see that at some point. And at some point is really difficult. I used to believe that you can create and they will find you. If you create really good content, then people will find you. I used to think that on YouTube specifically, and YouTube is where I've done the most research because I think it has the highest discoverability from a video perspective and because the podcast is video also from a podcast perspective. What is most important from a YouTube video? I thought the content. Content is king. And if your content is great, then people will find it and they will stay for that content. I was wrong. 100% my opinion has shifted. What is most important for YouTube first and foremost is has everything to do with marketing. And it is something I undervalued for years to a point where I feel like if I did that from the start, the podcast would be way, way bigger. However, I could have never known because I had to go through these learnings to get to these conclusions in the first place. Now, what I mean by marketing is and everyone says that and I just never understood it. It never clicked. Title and thumbnail, right? How do you communicate the content? If I give someone a gift, I want to make sure that that gift is attractive enough for people to open it and be excited about what's inside. But if I give the gift and the gift looks like ----, I'm like, here you go. People don't even know what's inside. They might just put it on a shelf somewhere and it might never get opened and they see it and then they go to other things, they go about their day. It's a very weird example, all right, I acknowledge. However, YouTube is kind of similar. Everything is important in the eyes of whomever consumes it. So if you don't just want to create content for yourself, but in the end, you want to make a difference for how other people consume that content and learn and be a factor in their learning journey, then you have to do what is most important, at least for the platform of YouTube that I know of. I don't know if it's the same, by the way, about newsletters or any type of email, content distribution or LinkedIn. Maybe LinkedIn I know a little bit about, but for YouTube, it's the marketing part, which is sad because I wish I could just be focused on content, right? It's the same within an organization. I wish I could just do my job and then other people can talk about my job. In the end, that's not okay. So if you want to do well, you have to engineer the process around what you're trying to do. For me, that is the creation of a video, all the way from idea to recording to creation of the editing, then the packaging, and then this is what a user sees, the full journey. All of that to say, there's levels to this. So you can work on your personal branding. LinkedIn is a fantastic platform to do so as well. Treat it as a platform. Don't just treat it as a digital resume, is what one of my previous guests has said, which was a fantastic way for me to think about it because yeah, LinkedIn for the most of my career has just been a digital resume. Now it has become a platform. People get to know each other. People can brainstorm with each other. People can offer perspective, give advice, interpret advice, just partake in community discussions nowadays. And if you do that with similar people that are like-minded, if you do that over and over again, your name might just stick with them. And that's good. All right. They remember you, which is part of your personal brand as well. Workflows. At some point, you will do things over and over again and you will think of efficiencies. If I pick up these things back to back, is it more efficient? Am I then happier? If I bunch all the work that I don't want to do and I do that in one go, does that work for you? Or do you need to work at it and chip at it a little bit at a time every single day? For me, it's different compared to likely for you, but that's how you adjust your workflow. And especially if your goal is to be consistent and for example, to do weekly podcast episodes, make your workflow as easy as it can be for you. At some point, your plate will just be full, right? Especially if you have a regular day job, time is limited and you cannot create more time because there's only 24 hours in a day. The way you can have more time for the things that you don't actually do is by prioritizing. And priorities also means that some stuff you just cannot do any longer. So if your plate is full, then you can think of what do I actually like doing on the things that are on my plate? What do I not enjoy doing? Where does most of my time go to? And with those thoughts, you can make a decision on does an editor now make sense for me and my workflow? Do I need help with regards to outreach or do I need help with regards to brainstorming and research? And bit by bit, those workflows, parts of those workflows can be delegated to other people and then you form a team around you. It's very hard to be like I want the best editor on the planet because the best editor likely is not gonna work with me. So I have to work with people that can also grow alongside this journey where we have a bit of back and forth and we have a shared understanding of this is what we want the video and the end product to be. And that has a learning journey. That's why I really love the people I work with because whenever someone new steps in, it again has this kind of learning curve before it can go really fast and be really productive in this way of working in collaboration. So Jose, really happy with everything you're doing. Jose is my editor. Please don't leave me. What does being a force multiplier within an organization mean to you? How do you intentionally enable and uplift people around you beyond just delegating work? One of the things I already touched on was I understand what people want to do or at least I ask. And by asking, I get a better understanding of what they want to do. So then I try and put people in those positions where they can shine. That's how I try and uplift people. I think that's the first example that comes to mind. When it comes to being a force multiplier, sometimes I have a hard time staying what people have defined as my lane because typically we have a multitude of people working on a singular outcome. And if I have an opinion on what that outcome should be or what's the fastest path to get there and do I see risk in any of the approaches that we have and is this actually good for the organization, I have no problem opening up those communication lines and talking about it because I need to believe in what we're doing. If I don't believe in it, it's very hard for me to contribute. If this huge operation, as an example, is building a house and I am responsible for all of the doors in that house and I feel like this house is never going to be built because there's crappy foundation, I don't believe people can put up the walls and the isolation and the people that are fixing the roof, I don't know why, but the roof is completely fine. It doesn't need any fixing. They're just perfecting it and we have the doors ready, but somehow we can't just put them in place because there's no walls. So we have to... Okay, I think I went a little bit beyond with this example, but I hope you get what I'm saying, right? The whole operation needs to work for, in the end, the outcome to be achieved. And if I just am like, I'm the person that builds doors and the door building is going great. So yeah, we're doing well. No, that's not how you make impact within an organization. And it has a little bit to do with finesse. It has to do with charisma and a lot with communication skills, but your ability to have those conversations, to think of the big picture, to ask and understand what we're trying to achieve and what is important right now and get the big picture and also have people communicate that to you because not everyone wants to, to be honest. Our skills that you will develop throughout your career and they can only be honed by you doing that and by you not being afraid of stepping on people's toes and just being curious and asking and trying to figure things out. If people, and this is what I've noticed, if they see you come from good intentions and you really want to help and you want to understand, they will make the time, especially if they believe that you're well-suited to help them achieve that, right? People would love to have people come to you and be like, how can I help you? How can I help with the ambitions that we have or you as a leadership team, the goals that you have committed to, maybe even uncommunicated to? They want all the help they can get, right? From the right people, from people that they believe can execute. So that's how I try and kind of understand organizations and try and make organizations move. One of the things I really hate is when teams point to other people and be like, no, no, no, we can't go because they're slow. And they haven't even opened up a communication line and they haven't really had a dialogue on what's the bottleneck and how can we help and is there something we can do? Can we come up with a proposal so things can go faster? And do we actually understand the big picture before we point and say, no, no, no, it's them. It's not us. I really don't like that. So from that standpoint, I never want to be the person that does that. If there's an issue, I'll go and I'll try and understand what the issue is. And I'll think along and maybe I'll even think outside the box and people will be like, well, we never thought about that. Oh, oh, we can't do that. And I'll be like, why not? Is there anything that seriously prevents us from doing this out of the box thing that we just thought of where we see a lot of value, but we say we can't do that? Then I have to understand why is there this thought that we can't do that? And is there something I can kind of need so we can still do this? Those are the thoughts that come to mind when answering that question. It's a hard one, but I do feel like if you achieve then what you're trying to achieve within your team, within your organization, and you have the feeling of, I really tried to make a difference and I feel like I did. I feel like I achieved that. It's one of the best feelings in the world. Fulfillment. What's the best way to evaluate whether building something will lead to high impact versus building something else? High impact. You have to define what impact means for you. So is it users? How many users? Or is it how long your users use your product? Or is it how well they are able to achieve whatever your product helps them to achieve? Is it a satisfaction score? Is it people leaving reviews? In the end, it's starting by defining your impact. Whatever you're going to do, it has a certain level of risk and you're taking a bet. You're saying out of all the options we have, I believe this one makes the most sense in terms of what we're trying to achieve. So you will have to understand what you're trying to achieve in the first place before making any of those decisions. Then you can always look at, there's many product frameworks on estimating the work that is there or estimating the type of value in terms of what you're trying to do. But then I feel like you're well-equipped to think along. And in the end, you have to think about managing risks, right? So if the same piece of work is going to require the same amount of time, but one is doing more of what we're already doing and one is doing something completely new, is the thing that is completely new, is it really worth the risk that you're taking? Because you're not really doing that, which means inherently, there's a risk of doing something new compared to doing the same thing. And right now, can you afford to take that risk, right? You, your team, your organization with the goals and ambitions that they have, you need to take kind of all of that, at least to a certain degree, into account. Now, this is very theoretical and this is definitely the ideal world where you have all the information. The reality is you don't have all the information and you still have to make decisions. That's this product person's responsibility in the end, make decisions and own them. Now, the fun thing is while building, let's say you've said, okay, with all of what I know and all of what I don't know, which I acknowledge, we're going to do this thing because I believe that this thing has the least risk, we can have the fastest returns and I feel like this is the right call. Even though people might not agree, you can still make that call, that is your responsibility and you also can own that. You do that. Now, new learnings might come in because the world moves fast, especially in this industry with AI and agents nowadays, it might not make sense what you're building anymore. Pivot, all right? Nothing stops you from being like, I was wrong, all right? All of you were right and we have now the evidence that the other path is the best path. You would never have the evidence otherwise if you had never chosen to start in the first place. So you have to balance at some point, starting, executing, continuously figuring out, is this still the way to go? Does this still make sense? Definitely not falling into this fallacy of sunken cost. We've gone for too long. I've already committed. I've communicated to everyone. I would look like a fool if we backtrack. That is never the case, all right? It is fine to pivot. It is fine to admit that you were incorrect. It's fine to prove that we started this way. Now we know this is better, so we're going to do that. Be open and honest. And for me, that's kind of how you navigate your way towards making impact in the first place. How to enhance product level thinking with less experience? So for people that are early in career, how do you get good at being a product person or responsible for product? I have the most pragmatic approach probably that you might hear. For me, I learned a lot about doing, but I learned from the seat of a software engineer working with product people, and then I formed an opinion. At some point, I got the responsibility to make those calls. A little bit as a software engineer, to be honest, but in the end, also having the role. I feel like I did interviews to interview and be like, I want to be a product manager. This is the role I want. And the organization had an interview process which taught me a lot. And those interview processes, especially from big tech, which is what I applied to, they are available to a certain degree online. And YouTube, in my opinion, one of the best free education platforms. So if you look at, for example, Google product manager interview, there's going to be ideas that are discussed. Talk to me about this new future project that allows people to teleport to a random place in the world. We are the company that sells those teleportation devices, and we can only make a few per quarter. And these are the costs that it costs us to make it. So what is going to be our price point for selling? How are we going to market that to the users? And who is our primary audience, primary users that are going to purchase these very likely, very expensive things in the first place? Those conversations you learn a lot from because you're going to think of, okay, product that we have costs to make it, price point to sell it for, for whom is it in the first place? For which personas? Does it actually make sense? Is that one specific user? Is that a multitude of users? And then how do we communicate it to those users in the first place through which platforms they already are? Or do we need to first educate them? Because this is a teleportation device. All right, everyone has an idea, but this is how it works in practice in this fabricated world of the example that I'm giving you. For me, I learned a lot just watching people go through that, watching people brainstorm, thinking along, and then thinking of, okay, in my domain, and e-com is the biggest example, likely some of the biggest experience I've gained. Can I replicate that? All right, do I understand how e-commerce works in the first place? Everything from procurement to warehouse management to what does a user see and how did they land on our website? And how do those price points, how are they determined? And are we the seller or do we have other people that sell through our platform? And in the end, is the payment process really smooth? Can a user actually pay for what they want to pay? Or do they drop off somewhere? Is there anything we need to optimize there? Understanding the big picture through kind of this pragmatic way of learning from other people. I know there's a lot of books. I know there's a lot of theory. This is what I do. This is what works for me. And also, I think this is a lot of fun. I love combining education and entertainment. I think they call it enterducation. That doesn't sound good. Edutainment. I think they call it edutainment. Yeah, that's my preference. It's inspiring to see your curiosity in action. Thank you. How do you manage your time and sustain the drive to keep learning and engaging across so many areas? I feel like I'm well aware of what gives me energy and what drains my energy. And especially with things that I'm in the end responsible for. And if I need to have the discipline to do this in a marathon manner, not just a sprint manner, I need to remove myself or I need to remove the things that drain my energy. That could be having certain conversations about certain topics. I just won't partake. I'll communicate. But I also say, this is really draining my energy. I'm no longer going to invest in this because it's going to take away from X, Y, and Z. This is what I communicate to the people that I collaborate with and they then understand it. When it comes to curiosity, it's hard to communicate. Like I have siblings and I feel like I'm just very inherent curious because I like to understand how things tick. I'm just genuinely interested in a lot of different topics. I have many different kind of hobbies even. I love to do many things. I love to do many more things compared to the things I don't like doing. And it's hard to then communicate when people don't really have it, when I just don't see that spark. I wish everyone had that spark that gives them energy. And if I wouldn't have it, I think I would experiment. I would try out a lot of things and just see what sticks in the end. I feel like everyone has certain topics or certain ideas or certain things they're working on that gives them a lot of energy. So for me, it's the act of doing more with that and then using that energy and experimenting with different things and just being open-minded as well. I think a lot for me has to do with a mindset. When someone says something, I really try and not be defensive. I try and understand where they're coming from. I try and understand, can we actually find each other? Do we understand each other before I give my opinion? And if I disagree, I have no problem saying I disagree. This is actually my perspective. And if that person is not as open-minded, for me, it's a conclusion of, well, that's a shame, right? Not everyone can be like me. And at some point, we can agree to disagree and I'll tell that person, I don't think you're going to convince me. I've heard you. I understand you. It's fine. Let's agree to disagree. Some people really have a hard time doing that and I have no problem doing that because if I would push and I would want to convince someone over and over again and I don't feel like they're being convinced, it's going to drain my energy. And a lot has to do with energy management. I'm not always like this though. There are definitely points where I feel like I am drained and I'm just exhausted. And even days where I feel like getting up out of bed is, yeah, tougher on this day than on other days. And that has to do with me probably distributing my energy in the wrong way or not sleeping well. Then I think of, okay, what gives me energy? I do that that day. I feel a lot better and I try and fix it by doing things that give me energy. Man, in this little snippet, the amount of times I use the word energy, it's a bit much. I'll just leave it at that. How are you thinking about defining success for yourself in 2026? Typically, I don't define success in advance. I want to reflect on the year and think of the things that I have done and be proud of those. And I typically also set a high bar. I don't really stand still and celebrate successes. It's something I'm horrible at. So that makes it quite difficult, to be honest. I recently got this question. It was with a quarterly review. It was, how do you kind of keep track of your milestones or your achievements? My answer was, I just have good memory. I just memorize them. I try journaling. It's not really for me. I'm still trying, but this is how I do it, which also makes it really hard to celebrate successes. I think big picture, am I happy with what I've learned this year? Am I happy with the relationships or the impact that I've made on projects or what I've built or what I've gained? Am I happy with that? And if the answer is yes, I feel like it was a good year. I do try and make the most out of every situation, every opportunity, every interaction. This year, it was really Google I.O. was a highlight of this year, potentially a career highlight, potentially a lifetime highlight. I've never been treated like that. I've never had an opportunity like that. I've never been to San Francisco, met so many like-minded people, been in an environment where everything was facilitated so well. I felt like a VIP, even though I was one of many. It's the feeling that I got, and that's something that I never expected. I don't really even feel like I necessarily earned it. It was through relationships. It was through practice of kind of putting out content and giving back. It's not something I had as a goal. It's something that came upon my path, something I'm really proud of, something I'm really happy with. So those are the things that I then think of, kind of end-of-year-ish, or sometimes when I just have a conversation with people and they ask me and I reflect like this. One of my biggest goals, because podcasting, in the end, is something that I really love, is to make this the biggest podcast that it can be, specifically for software engineers, and that's the long-term goal. I don't know when I'll achieve that. I don't know if I will ever have a feeling that I have achieved that, and it has a lot to do with, I don't even know how to measure that, right? Metrics and listeners is just one thing, but I feel like if I go to an event and people come to me and say, I know you, I know you from that podcast, I love what you're doing, it's a fantastic signal. I want more of that. I want more where people communicate what this podcast has meant to them, what it means for them from a learning perspective, from a career perspective, educational perspective, entertainment, enter, no, it was edutainment perspective. That, for me, is the best. That's the goal. That's what I'm doing this. I wouldn't say that's what I'm doing this for, but it's definitely one of the biggest benefits of doing this. All right. Now, I have never heard this question before, and it's a bit personal. What products do you use for your hair? We're going to do hair talk. So, I have this hair primer that helps with heat reduction. It's from Bumble and Bumble. My brother recommended it to me. That's the only reason I'm using that. I blow dry my hair, likely every day, because I take a shower every day. I don't wash my hair with shampoo every day, so I just wash it, wet it with water, trying to grow out my hair. No clue what hairstyle it'll be. So, if you watch these episodes weekly, at some point, I will have longer hair. Just got a haircut. Sides are short. I used to use Moroccan oil, the flowy curly cream. Don't like that anymore because my hair is now too long. And my barber recommended this statement. It's STMT pomade. I feel like it's a bit strong. I'm trying to figure out how to use it. But by virtue of answering this question, thank you. Because it made me feel like you think my hair looks good. That's it. That's the end of the Q&A. Thank you. See you next time.