Hey there, welcome to Betatalks the podcast in which we talk to friends from the development community. I'm Rick. And I'm Oscar. Hey there Rick, what you've been up to? A couple of things actually. So as far as work is concerned, we've had the end of fiscal year so then there's a lot of stuff that needs to happen that needs to be finished off and prepared for the next fiscal year so there's that. And of course I have a lot of contact with
my customers as well. But another fun thing is as you know we bought a house that needed some re-modeling quite some time ago. And then the last couple of weeks I've been busy with the front yard which was horrible horrible. The green stuff. The green stuff. Well there was a lot of brown stuff. Not so much of the green stuff anymore left over. So actually we removed seven big big what's that called and the thing that you put behind the car.
Trailers. Thank you. So we removed seven trailers of sand from the front yard just to make it even. There are seven trailers of sand in your front yard. Yeah without the trailers. Oh okay. I just saw a picture of my man. Dude man. It's also so difficult to talk to sometimes. Yeah I know. Sorry. I love it. No but so there we removed seven trailers worth of sand
in the front yard. And then last week we actually put in some grass and I love software development and I love being able to work with cloud and new technology and AI and all that kind of stuff. But sometimes it's also fun to just do stuff with your hands right. It's rewarding right? It is. Yeah I like like I like a bit of construction myself like building some big scale things wood or put a wall in somewhere. It's fun like you. And basically it's somehow it feels like
it's much more of a mass you're changing like really yeah it's it's it's there. It's tangy. You can touch it. It's visible. And basically like you do stuff in a day and you're done sometimes and it's really fun because like sometimes in a day I remove a line of code. And I check to see that everything still works. Yeah so it feels much more productive somehow and you also have some other chores that you don't see at all and takes days but
still I know it feels rewarding to have some sweat and a result. It does actually so and presumably this might have been this might have been influenced by the fact that my oldest has his birthday this Saturday and we get some people over and visitors. We have some visitors coming in.
But that's also the cool thing about doing stuff like this is people see it and they might have opinions on it and that's not always the case with when you're building software especially if it's software that's built for a niche market or for a specific type of person. Yeah and while unless you're counting progress because everyone has their opinion on that one. Wow that was such a nice one. So easy. Ask her who is our friend of the day. Our friend of the day is Daniel Marbach.
Daniel is a software engineer at particular software makers of N ServiceBoss and the Microsoft MVP for integration. He can bend minds and spoons with any synchronous programming and has contributed to many open source projects. In his free time Daniel enjoys weightlifting, dark roasted coffee, playing with his son and writing more code. At least until midnight when his self-imposed router hack kicks in. Welcome Daniel. Hey everyone. Welcome.
Nice to meet you all. Nice to meet you. That's actually there's some fun things in that buyer right there. So let's start off with that last one. I mean you have a self-imposed router hack. Is that from keeping you using internet beyond your normal hours? Yeah correct. So actually when I first started contributing to open source I was maintaining a resharper plug-in and it was sort of a specification by example I recall the machine specifications
and I just I couldn't control myself. So what I ended up doing is it was first was midnight and one am in the morning 2 am and sometimes 3 am in the morning it was just like fiddling around with code and at some point I was like this has to change. Luckily I did always set the alarm clock to the same time. I didn't postpone sort of my start into the day but at some point I was
like yeah you're just getting really tired. You know along yourself while the working hours and I was like okay this has to change and I tried to control myself but I couldn't at some point I was like okay I need to find a hack and then I was like doing some research and I found that my router at that time already had this sort of sort of on-off switch where you can build in a schedule for for a week and then you can say every midnight turn off the internet around at midnight
and turn it on again at 6 am 7 am in the morning. So I applied that and that was super cool because usually when I got stuck while coding and I was like oh I need to google Bing this stuff right and that's like I opened my browser and to the few things and hit enter and then it was like no internet connection. Yeah my friends. Yeah but then I was like okay. I would be afraid of of like debugging deep into the night and then finding out oh yeah my network connection got lost
somewhere. But I can also imagine that there are times where you think oh crap not now I'm okay I'm going to enable it just for half an hour more. I've done that I confess so I have reenabled it a few times and when I was really desperate I've also used my cell phone connection to reenable it but to be honest I think I can count it down probably with all the fingers on my hand
per year so it was only a few times and it was rectified to do that so yeah it's it's funny because I'm actually quite self disciplined when it comes to other things so for some you said sweat right and also have it in my bio I go to the gym I do sort of weight lifting and I do that consistently like a hundred two hundred ten times a year but when it comes to like coding activities and making sure I have enough sleep hygiene I needed this hack because I just couldn't stop myself
it's weird. But it's actually a good point that you're saying that I mean sleep is is very maybe for some people even underrated since there were studies that people who were sleep deprived
act the same as people who are slightly intoxicated on alcohol. Yes yes yeah I've read that one as well it's and I can even feel it myself for me it's like I need I know I need seven hours I can go occasionally go to six hours but then I yeah I can only do it once once a week and then I need to catch up again with sleep otherwise I'm I'm not capable of like solving complex problems or when when I'm doing mundane tasks I I can see that I'm constantly procrastinating and moving around
and yeah I need enough sleep definitely. Yeah I also know like working or like a deep in the night to figure out the problem like basically it's better to just walk away and next one you get up and you'll solve it right away like nine or ten times anyway. It's true. Yeah for me to gym yeah yeah for the gym room. So yeah so my teammates they they sometimes say yeah this is a hard problem let's just let's just make sure Daniel goes to the gym and when he comes back the
problem is probably solved. Yeah really it's it's funny yeah because I don't know when I'm when I'm training and I allow myself to free my mind and then I usually have the best ideas sometimes they turn out to be trash but it at least it gives some progress when you're working on a hard
problem when you have that different avenues you can explore and get going. I think that's everybody probably has their own thing that that enables them to free their mind like you said and want let it wander so that it eventually helps you with the potential problem that you have. So people do biking people do weightlifting even know people who really really really love watering their garden because it's also really soothing it just standing there like okay and you
can I like to wash the car that's my my Zen mom. Nice nice nice but we we jumped right in Daniel first of all let's have a look at who you are and what your current job is since you're a software engineer at particular could you maybe give us a short introduction of yourself and how you got to
where you are right now. Okay yeah so yeah my name is Daniel I'm from Central Switzerland I'm native Swiss German I have a son he's now 10 years old and a wife and I live in a town called Criens it's in the Canton of Lucerne and we are famous for Mount Pilatus and the chapel bridge and
yeah so I well what do I do in in my day job so I work for a company called Particular Software with the makers of NSW or the Particular Software Platform so my my main focus in the past few years have have been distributed systems messaging sort of concurrency acochrome
as code and performance optimizations I'm my my job title is a bit a little bit difficult because I sometimes call myself a software engineer sometimes I call myself a solutions architect sometimes I'm a developer advocate so now I gave myself a new title and they call myself principle chocolate
lover because I really I really told I really it's really hard to categorize myself what I'm doing and to be honest I also don't want to be sort of categorized that much because I think in a in a compil like ours there is plenty of things we have to do and we need to stay flexible sometimes
it's more architecture sometimes it's code centric things sometimes it's representing the company to the outside world and making sure people understand what the platform is and what we're doing and stuff like that yeah I like to to sort of divide my work hours into the different activities and I mean it's the it's the change in context that probably keeps it interesting right?
yeah it is the change oh you definitely but I mean that also comes with a few challenges right because you probably know that as well when you're when you're doing it too much then you feel like you're you're not going deep enough in certain areas so it requires to still have a sort
of a good balance and also make sure that the activities that you're doing they sort of align with your energy level throughout the day and and stuff like that but so far I think I've been managing those things pretty pretty well yeah do you find that you sometimes go a bit like for
a longer period go into a certain direction and I come back because I have that bit like sometimes a bit more high level and then I really miss the details and then I need a couple of weeks or a couple of months like in an nitty gritty problem to make myself feel useful again yeah I can
definitely share that as well so for me especially when it comes to so far I mean one of the top is like performance optimizations right so it's like I mean you can read books about it and you can you think then you understand it and then you start like trying to apply then I think you're
required to stay sort of in the zone for a while it can be over multiple days or weeks that doesn't really matter but you need I at least I need to spend significant amount of time to essentially because I call myself a practical learner I'm not sure if that's the right term but I'm basically
saying I need to apply the principles and practices many times in the century do try and there and fail until it really clicks in my mind it's like I cannot just read a text and then I usually feel my mind tells me oh you got it figured out but then when I'm actually sitting in front
of the problem I have a hard time to connect the things that are right to the things so I basically have to start and fiddling around and and then I reread the things that I've read before and then suddenly clicks and once that happens I've realized that then I'm also becoming quite a good sort
of teacher or coach that I can essentially then transfer the knowledge that I gained with tears and sweat sort of to other people and that's why I'm also doing quite a few sort of public speaking activities because I feel like I have a good way to explain complex code centric problems to people
and so far the feedback has been has been pretty great when I was doing these types of sort of presentations in various conferences I think also to be able to do that you always need to have like a next level understanding of something I'm always also before I use a technology or whatever
I always go one level deeper almost if it's physical I would almost take it apart and assemble it again just just to know like what's behind yeah yeah I mean I usually do sort of a layered approach I feel like it's okay to not know everything everything inside out from the beginning right but I
start sort of exploring things and ignoring certain things deliberately right saying oh this is too deep in the stack let's not go there for but let's figure out how the entry point works into I don't know the component or the architecture or not and then I go deeper and deeper until I reach
I reach sort of the bottom layers I mean would it be helpful if I give a concrete example here always always okay cool so for example when I I remember when I one of the things that I do a lot is like a contribute to open sort of stuff and so for example I started contributing to the
Azure Azure.net SDK in around 2019 and essentially what I did there I started with like simple things like adding configure await false where it was required or maybe removing tasks that runs that were not necessary and so so I started exploring that way sort of a code base and then I then go
sort of for example with Azure Service Bus I started sort of looking at to the client interaction what are the client methods what are they doing so from a user perspective and then I go down into how is this method implemented right and then I go basically like deeper into the stack like for
example Azure Service Bus uses the MQP protocol to communicate with the broker and then I go maybe read a little bit of the protocol specification then I read a little bit of the or sort of implementation details and I see oh this is managed by an external library and then I go to look into the code base of that external library and then I do a few sort of iterations that's how I usually learn to like fully understand a given code base that I'm working in.
Yeah and I think having having that knowledge and done that once you get an exception you will be able to read the stack and understand where the problem is straight away. Hopefully yeah yeah or at least you have what what is also good even if you're not just like cannot directly say what it was at least you have you have sort of concept buckets where you can say oh this is probably from this part of the stuff. Also this means that it's not a waste right that's most important.
Yeah exactly yeah yeah we just recently had such a case where we sort of had a customer that reported they're using a feature of Azure Service Boss that is if it's getting too nerdy you stop me right. You got two people with more than 20 years of software development experience go ahead
and we can do this all day. Okay so we so we have the customer that ran into problems Azure Service Boss has a feature that is called send via and it uses a concept that is called trans trans first that allows you to essentially enlist multiple outgoing messages to the broker into sort of the
transaction of an incoming message and what that gives you it gives you sort of a ethnicity guarantees that you either have sort of acknowledge the message that you received and send out all the messages or you have rolled back the message and no outgoing messages
happened and that is kind of a really nifty sort of enterprise feature especially when you are also dealing with legacy code where you might not be able to make everything item potent right or I mean and making everything item potent and it's sort of the pipe dream of every developer
and architect but sometimes it's just not feasible because you have time to market and not right so you can rely on this sort of feature to make sure that you have no messages that leak out but unfortunately in a specific combination the customer was sending more messages and the
transaction allowed to actually contain and normally the service should actually return you sort of an exception and say hey you send too many messages but in this specific scenario what happened was essentially messages started to leak even though they shouldn't leak right
and then in such a case when you also understand sort of the underlying layers of the tools that you're working with right because you start oh maybe something with our product is wrong right and then you like figure out sort of what's going on on the product then and then it turns out
that probably in the product nothing is wrong and then you go one layer deeper and then you see oh there is the Azure Service Bus SDK is it maybe something in the SDK until then we found out that it's actually not in the SDK and then it turned out to be a service problem right but then you
can sort of start pinpointing and sort of almost like when you're waiting through the jungle and you're trying to find the treasure right you sort of use techniques to orient yourself and sort of a big knife to cut through the jungle until you know where you are and I think these
techniques are understanding the stack fully is super helpful at least to me but especially if if you're diving into it an issue like this into such detailed level it must feel awesome to finally find out there it is yes yes I mean it's kind of the the rocky scene right when he like
runs up to stairs that then he holds up his hands and then there is an awesome song in the background yes but to be honest I mean those types of issues they can also be extremely exhausting right always when you're diving so deep into something then after after a few days it's good that
you can also sometimes put things away and say you know what now I have solved it I'm pretty happy but you cannot handle or well I shouldn't say you I should say I cannot handle more more than a few of these sort of very very deep investigations because it occupies your mind so
much that it even influences sometimes my my sleeping quality right yeah or maybe even personal relationships outside of work right yeah you know what is I think being married and still wanting to stay married is this is kind of a helpful technique deal with that and and and also sort of
a my kids is is also quite important he he brings me back to reality when I'm geeking out right saying hey daddy you want to let's go to the playground and then you're like let's play some basketball or whatever and then you're like yep yeah let's do that because the problem can wait
for a while and then and then we recognize again what's really most important in life right oh absolutely absolutely but the problems like that like and yeah for me also like I wouldn't be able to pick up the next one of that category straight away like you need a like it takes so much
energy you need a couple of weeks to balance out sometimes yeah yeah yeah normal work yeah but that's what I like about my job right when I said the principal chocolate lover instead of calling myself soft-to-regiony solution architect presales customer success team manager whatever I basically
I like when I can essentially go in deep where it's required but also have the possibility to say you know what there are also other people that share sort of the maybe sometimes not so glamorous work I mean it's glamorous when you solve the problem but it's not so glamorous when you're like
needy into trying to solve something and then it's it's great to have that balance it is it is but I just want to confirm one thing because you mentioned the rocky feeling up to stairs am I the only one that actually physically also don't look like that when I stop something at least
my hands go open the air and then I look around and I think okay I'm alone in a room I'm sitting with my engine there yeah why I do it with headphones on in a room for people even I don't care like solve that you feel like a garden at that moment yeah I also throw up the hands and then I
also go back home and I I excitedly tell the story to my wife and she looks at me with a blank stare what did you do I actually do yeah my wife she developed her she asked for more details that is true lucky you she was probably next to you helping you fix that issue yeah yeah we both
have that sometimes it's really fun no but like I'm sometimes a bit like I'm not weird for actually like cheering now but no no we're not I think celebrating success is important right and sharing it with others and getting recognized at least to me it kind of it gives
to sort of this intrinsic motivation to myself that you are worth something and and we actually at a particle software we actually have a high five channel in Slack where we encourage each other to basically share high fives when you even if it's your own or even even more important if you
sort of experience something with someone else in a in a team when you worked on something that this person did I don't know awesome facilitation or like solve this bug or whatever it is right you you basically shared with the rest of the company so that these things are actually
getting recognized and I think this is extremely energizing no that's so cool you just to read it right yeah we use the we use the praise in teams for that mm-hmm on the sense as well because yeah it helps and it gives insight into but also it's
it's the form of validation right that you that you actually helped someone or that you actually fixed something that was a big issue it might be really interesting for other people to know hey but if he worked on that and he knows about that maybe I should ask him next or her next time
mm-hmm I run into that issue because so it also is maybe not the most highest form but it is a form of information sharing as well yeah absolutely I mean we but we also try try to do I I mean we're not always like successful but in the maturedest time we're successful we're essentially
trying to when something like that happens to also sort of not each other to say hey the knowledge that you gained there have you written it down somewhere or have you extracted sort of maybe a process into sort of how do I debug a complex block as an example right and even if it's just
a few pointers every time someone does that finds the documentation they start to extend it and then suddenly you have like a great documentation for anyone even let's say someone that is early in their careers they can essentially read this up and they can learn how to effectively
debug a complex problem and I think that's extremely valuable right not just like sharing the information that oh Daniel knows this or Rick knows that and then Rick or Daniel always becomes sort of the go-to people and at some point maybe you Rick would say well you know what actually
I'm tired of always being the guy that has to solve these these types of problems I want to move on rather than this essentially enables the organization by having written down knowledge sharing for anyone to essentially be a Rick or a Daniel or a Noskirt right for lack of better examples yeah
yeah yeah but I agree I agree one other thing that actually stands out is the fact that you did so much things on open source because if you we look at your GitHub you have a lot of repos and a lot of stuff moving there I can also imagine that this might have had an impact on your on your career
even yeah well I can definitely say that so for example the the fact that I have the possibility to work for example for particulars of so it comes from the fact that when I was working as a consultant I was building sort of an open source extension for for an open source project that the company
maintained the plugged into answer response and that's how I got to know answer response and then I also got to know Udi Dahan and it was recognized that they understand these things and that's essentially was a door opener a few years ago to even have even be recognized and say yeah I'm
okay that's good because we don't have to ramp up that person that much and especially when you're sort of at that time a particular was also sort of an earlier-ish startup smaller company right then having people that already understand the product quite a bit is crucial so that you're
not losing too much time and yeah it definitely was a door opener in that in that regard for my professional life yeah this is definitely a specific set of skills like even being into messaging and yeah all the different products out there with all the different libraries on top with all
the different languages and then even creating another abstraction layer on there like I can imagine it's not just any developer that can just pick up a tool like that and start adding value well I didn't know about that I mean there's definitely the aspect of when you work for a sort of
platform or let's say library frameworks sort of company where you have this product you get exposed to I mean I got exposed to table storage mongudib, cosmos, db, postgres, sequel, my sequel and all sorts of types of things and all sorts of sort of broker systems but I think I mean
when you're working as a consultant as an example you might also don't want to spend I don't know five years at the same customer right you might be sort of want to expand your sort of technical horizon then you might move between if you approach it and you also get exposed to I don't know
different persistence layers sorry storage types and TCP IP, GRCPC or whatever or HTTP or rest interfaces and I think that's also a good way to expand the knowledge and I think generally I do believe as software engineers if I'm wearing that hat it is a crucial skill to develop to be
able to sort of quickly and I'm doing air quotes here quickly dive into various technology stacks and problems and also business problems I don't want to put the emphasis just on the technology side of things because that's definitely wrong because at the end of the day I feel like you're not
successful projects you're not winning successful projects because you chose a specific technology system stack because you win it because you're constantly talking to your stakeholders you understand stakeholder needs and you have pragmatic solutions via technology and programming skills
you turn into some valuable assets right that actually are used by customers but that being said I think the understanding technologies and being able to sort of conceptualize things and also be be comfortable with ambiguity when you don't understand everything from the start but you're
sort of you stay open-minded to say you know what maybe I don't understand everything but let's get started somewhere I think these are crucial skills as engineers to do we we need to have and build up I totally agree on that one and that might even that might even be what you need to
move into the realm of being an architect right where you let go or at least initially let go of specific types of implementations or frameworks where you just say hey I'm going to on a higher level determine what the solution should look like and then based on requirements and team knowledge and
all these other influences we're going to determine whichever framework or tool fits better yeah absolutely I personally have sort of decided for myself at least for for a while I want to stay I'm using the word hands on so I still feel a lot of a lot of energy to not just
not I well they were just this problem a bit misplaced but not not just essentially do the conceptual part of things but also sort of wait through the sea of uncertainty and all the implementation details until a conceptual things becomes too live right and to see all sort of
the frankenstein monster building up in front of you I kind of like to be so involved in various parts I'm okay to not like fully finish it to into all sort of edge cases or not but at least in the transition phase from the concept implementation I really love to be involved and so for me personally
and I I wouldn't feel comfortable in sort of a pure architectural and I don't want to say they're not needed or anything don't get me wrong it's just for me personally I need to stay 50% sort of hands on otherwise I also feel I don't feel well and I don't feel really engaged and empowered in
the things that I'm doing I don't know it's it's weird it's just something that I recognize over the years is still important to me that's actually something that comes back to sorry that's actually something that comes back with a lot of the people that we talk to
is that you need to find your passion right because if you're just doing it to be doing it chances are you won't be able to to see it through for a really long period of time and if you really want to be energized and and be doing the things that you like doing you need to find
your passion and make sure that it gets enough attention for you to stay invested in what you're doing yeah I definitely I definitely agree there I think I would like to add though that essentially sometimes we tend to sort of overemphasize a little bit on the passionate because I think one of the
Udi set is once to me and it's sort of kind of clicked it's like for example when you look at the world class tennis player and if you want to be a world class tennis player I mean you think that you get up every day and you're like yay I'm going to the court again and I'm training and I have
to take an ice bath to sort of cool down my muscles to do quick recoveries and whatnot there is probably also lots of elements to something like that where you sometimes have to suffer through a little bit and I think we sometimes even you're just focusing on sort of the passion part
we tend to get unhappy when during the times when there is chores to do and I try to incorporate those into into my mental model that there are needs of a company that also involve chores I can't just always assume that I have to be passionate every day and for me it's more sort of a
spectrum but I say that I say okay if the spectrum of being passionate and to ziastic is I don't know I'm just making up something 50 60% 80% whatever that is that you personally find for yourself then it's good enough right and it's also not every day sometimes you have days where you just
you're like you're sitting in for example for me I love reading documentation and I love the end result when I wrote a documentation but once to get started with documentation I really dread this I don't know but it's just but I know it's crucial and it's important so I'll force myself
to do it and my passionate during that phase no I'm not but it's just a necessity that needs to get done as sort of in my professional life right so and it's important to do those things yeah and I totally understand but what I do at least for myself see that if I have to if there are some
chores that I need to do and I don't really necessarily like doing them I do mind them less if I know they contribute in the end to the thing I love doing oh I agree yeah that helps that's what that's good mental model something really it feels like a bit the gardening or whatever like
even though it's not spectacular like you're feeling that you're completing something like a making something hundred percent and that is good feeling true and I'm going to say something really horrible okay so I've had some back issues so that that took me down for a bit but I'm I'm recovering
and I had to do those seven trailers of sand and then the downside with the municipality I live in is we you go to the dump but there's a container so you need to also scoop it out of the trailer into the container that they have with over there you can't just dump it you need to
physically do that with with a shovel and the first time I was there I was actually a bit annoyed but then I thought I have time their son out and this is a free exercise and I started seeing it literally as free exercise because I would position myself between the trailer and the container
and I could really work my back to throwing sand over each shoulder so I saw it as an exercise and I actually was quite okay with doing the next six trailers because hey I'm here I feel my arms burning and I get stuff done so it's also about mindset how you think about things and
what they can actually contribute to to the long goal yeah I can absolutely I think it's a good remark about the don't over emphasize the passion because I might sometimes do that and but you might also give a wrong impression that this is not involved in that like that you're always
both-costing or you're always somewhere talking about technology or you're a superhero unfortunately and then yeah but like no then someone getting into tech might feel challenged like I don't have this feeling all day so I don't belong here or might not be doing
it right yeah yeah so but I think indeed like I love my job and I love to do this all day and find problems and I will without restricting myself also go deep into the night to solve a problem but that's the the things remember right the the energy burst you get from something
well I think this week I cannot even maybe did some PRs but didn't write any proper code but I definitely helped with moving some production data into right state so we can do the next migration and I was really boring tedious work and I was like how's your love records but like it
felt like completing something felt good afterwards also but that's that's part of the work it is making it work like you scooping your send up it wasn't contributing on your garden loop wasting that away but it did complete the whole thing you're doing the whole project yeah
but I like that we are essentially now need deep into one of the topics today I'm also say to a lot of my peers and people that I interact with and coaches that I feel that these days it's no longer enough that you're just good let's say in Azure right in a technology stack or whatever
it is sort of technology oriented I think we require much more in order to be successful in the IT industry we need to have good communication skills we need interpersonal skills self-reflection and retrospection and also skills so as techniques and tricks to motivate
ourselves right in those sort of more difficult times to to move forward and I think well around the engineer if you want to use that label is more than just a good technical person and that's why for example I also personally try to sort of read up on and listen to podcasts that
talk not just tech stuff but also for example stuff like a dopamine cycles of your brain and how that things work because sometimes you're getting less sort of their hints that can help you to to slightly change certain things and those sort of compound one percent improvements that
you're doing to yourself they essentially end up making a significant impact in your career and yeah I love doing things and sometimes it's silly things like getting up every day and taking a two-minute cold shower as an example right you learn that trick and somewhere wow I'm way more
energized every day and why is that what did I change right it's funny it's still the engineering you're trying to even like see yourself as a system is like how can we it's work better it's heck your brain yeah yeah yeah yeah and I think and I think those are really important little things
just like you mentioned that can actually help you get better yep ask it yeah is it time it is time it's time for totally random question Daniel what has been on your to-do list the longest well I have no to-do list it can be mental as well making it to do list yeah
yeah I think I can okay yeah cleaning up the desk at home I'm sometimes a messy person and when it comes to my desk I definitely should clean that one up and I think that has been on my to list for the longest but you probably know exactly where everything is I know that yeah but
you know me and my wife we have this deal because she and she's way more organized and that sometimes let things stand around in in in the apartment and then she got annoyed but now we have this deal that instead of her just putting back where it belongs she just piles it up on my desk
and yeah so the desk pile gets bigger and bigger and I should definitely clean up my desk I think it's your mind or actually some pile somewhere but like if there's something on my desk like I cannot think like I really I need to turn off my monitor and like empty it out like I'm so
okay yeah I have that with my desk top on my on my machine I have only only the the recycle bin no no not even I have it on recycling but wait I have it in the bottom right corner just like macrosinavitch put on Twitter last week it did it was awesome but that's the only thing on my
desktop I needed to be clean because I also whenever I'm using either browser tabs or or file explorers or even visual studio or visual studio code as soon as I think I'm done I'm closing that down yeah because I'm really annoyed with a 10 000 things open on my laptop because I don't know
what I'm doing anymore I need to have it only open what I'm using at that point I'll close the rest down I'll I'll find myself opening up a same PowerPoint or visual studio project or whatever six different times because I wasn't finished although I thought I was oh same here but if I think
I'm done I'll close it yeah but I look one like even going to the next project I'll close visual studio open a new instance like somehow it feels better it's a mental model and I do have during the day have stuff on my desktop I throw everything there like I make a note I open
note that like 20 a day same here there are all kinds of things and small to do list but end of the day is like what is there or sometimes in the beginning of next day it's like oh yeah I was busy with this I forgot like just to finish and then everything needs to clear out and then organize
it if it needs to organize and throw it out start afresh but I have that like with the physical environment around me like it needs to be start a bit fresh like if there's stuff especially someone else's stuff I go crazy yeah if it's someone else's stuff just push it off the desk
just like my tolerance just like that it's quite high yeah for me as well I can work on a messy desk but preferably not with other people's stuff that's true if it's my notes from the data that I'm working or from yesterday it's okay otherwise I'd like to keep it pretty tight as well
well so Daniel I want to switch gears a little bit because one of the things that you sent out was that you might have made a career decision recently that maybe not necessarily worked out the way you planned could you maybe share a little bit on that one yeah and I think
it's also related to some of the things that we've already discussed sort of finding sort of the passion so what I at some point I was thinking maybe I want to extend a little bit more into sort of the architecture area and that was looking out for a shop and sort of platform our architecture
area and I got a job and I was from the beginning I was essentially telling you sort of also in the interview process that I'm a hands-on person and I like to stay hands and then the company also said yeah they're looking for people like that that are sort of architects but also stay hands-on
what happened when I joined the job was that I turned out this would is what the company tells they want but it's not really what the company needs and also where I got sort of pushed to due to the needs of the company I felt like and I this created sort of a big conflict for me
and the conflict was sort of an internal conflict that I even sort of got hem health issues so I got sleeping problems trembling suggestion problems and it really affected me me a lot and I so I then essentially started to even lose sort of myself a steam and I started
to reflect about why is this happening and I started communicating very early on sort of to the company what's happening to me how I feel how we discussed things sort of in the hiring process and they were extremely open about it and try to help where they could but at the end of the day
I sort of realized I should probably probably change the job again but one of the things that I was faced with I was faced sort of with the fear that when I would for example go back in my previous job or or just go in a company that I was looking after six months I was looking into being there
and then go after six months where I was like yeah how does that look on my CV and then when I whenever I looked at LinkedIn and I saw like all the successful people out there and I was like yeah you're a big failure it's an incredible you even have to think about going back to your previous
job and that was a tough time emotionally very dark time until essentially had sort of the courage to say you know what you were super clear about what you need this company probably can't give it to you although the people are really nice and it's a good company so maybe it's better that
you depart sort of in in in peace with them and I actually had the courage to say you know what I'm thank you very much for this experience for getting to know each other but I think I need to do something else and I ended up essentially going back into into the chop I had which is particular
and that was a great learning experience because I essentially learned that I can trust sort of my mental model of who I am and who I want to be and what sort of when I'm when I'm not in that state what it essentially creates in sort of an emotional standpoint and also health standpoint
and what I also learned to sort of understand again this like when you are looking at like social media and LinkedIn and all these things you're only seeing people that share their successes you rarely ever see people that shared the sort of the dark side of things and that's why I was also
I wanted to talk about this because I think it's important that maybe people are looking up to some other people and they when they only see success and never their failures or sort of their failures in quotes or the missteps right then you think you have to be perfect as well but
at the end of the day sort of that learning experience was not even a failure it was just something on my path the essentially strength and the feelings the the picture of myself and it also ended up to be a good thing because the company they liked me I got the good recommendation letter right
and now I'm back to something that I love doing and then I think that's better for me it's also better for the company because then the company doesn't have to use the word before and not so passionate employee right so yeah I wanted to share that with other people to essentially whenever you see
all the other people sharing successes think about they also are making mistakes and missteps they're just not open about it and if you can be sort of mentalized at and say you know what it's okay to to make decisions and move on and it's also okay to revert decisions and and learn
something from it and move on and that's not the failure in life and on the contrary it actually is the pure definition of experience right it is not only experience of course also learning but first of all kudos to you that you're sharing a story but also a lot of kudos to both you and
the company that you worked for in the fact that you make this addressable and that you make this discussable and that you actually looked into yourself and thought well this is this probably isn't going to work for me what's the best way forward even though it might be the step back to
particular for you that was the best way forward and I do think that sometimes we tend to forget to listen to ourselves and we think I'll just power on through which might also be the reason that burnouts are occurring more and more these days so I think it's really powerful that you
that you felt that but that you also took the time to investigate where that feeling came from and how to address it absolutely yeah so I and that is a part of I do my own red retrospections quite quite often I did it in that time but the problem there was I realized
I wasn't sure if I can trust my own sort of decision making anymore because I was in such a emotional and sort of unhealthy state so I actually seeked out to get help so a good friend of mine he's doing sort of a coaching and mentoring education at that time and he helped me to do sort of
a Disney analysis where you basically look into sort of a decision that you're about to make and you look at it from different perspectives that was really helpful and I also did in sort of retrospection after I already made the decision I also did another sort of look back with an
a coach that essentially went with me through that whole learning experience to discover why I was in such an emotional state and I can I mean of course I'm privileged that I have also the possibilities to do that I know that I'm aware of that but if you have the possibility
and sometimes it doesn't have to cost money sometimes it can be a good friend or someone that you know in your neighborhood or a good like workmate that you trust right that you can sort of bounce around sort of these ideas and hopefully if they're good colleagues good friends they will
also be open to share sort of their sort of things that happen to them and give you great new perspectives and if they're also good friends they will also tell you when they think your your you should course correct something right and that is extremely helpful I do that a lot like
and it did it also in that time like the external coaching but also talk to various people because for me talking about the problem helps me to reflect what's going on and to become clearer in sort of my mental state why I'm there and what the next steps could be I think this is
a really important and powerful message that you're sending Daniel thanks for that one yeah it's super to hear this so open I recognize a few parts in it and I hope we yeah we will help some other listener making better decisions in their life when they're not happy yeah I really love this
conversation thank you so much for it thanks me too yeah and thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak about it yeah of course is there anything else that you would like to get back to what we talked about today and or maybe something that you would add where you think hey we really need
to address that before we sign off on this episode no no I'm good I think it was a good good wrap-up with the last topic I think so as well so thank you very much for being our guest I really enjoyed talking to you and like Wes we'll see you out there somewhere definitely thanks okay bye bye thank you for listening to better darks the podcast we publish a new episode every two weeks you can find us on all the major streaming platforms like Spotify and iTunes see you next time bye