Developer Advocacy, Burnout Recovery and Communities with Lian Li

Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Akio, and if you're interested in developer advocacy, the right way to build communities, and how to recover from a burnout, this episode is for you. Joining me today is Leanne Lee. She's Developer Advocate at Loft Labs and Chief Karaoke Officer and organizer at Kuwaroki. I'll put all her socials in the description below, check her out. And with that being said, enjoy the episode beyond. Coding, I guess. I just have these videos where

it's like just me getting frustrated over and over. It's like, oh man, I've just said it wrong again. I can't just can't. You know, I write everything myself as well. So you would think that it's in my head, but as soon as you're in front of the camera, just looking at it, nothing. Yeah. Nothing. Yeah. In any case, it's like a process. I've. I was looking at old videos that I made with my family members and it was just so cringe, like, this is terrible. It was a good sign.

Means I got better. Yeah, yeah, I have that one. I look at earlier episodes, I'm like, man, like, not even the qualities, just the conversations. Like you said, something which was completely unrelated, like you weren't actually paying attention. I was listening to a podcast that I did a couple weeks ago, and then I was like, someone asked me a question. I didn't reply at all. Yeah, I was just. Going on up on the tangent, which is definitely gonna happen

here as well. Yeah, yeah, I get that. But that's it's not that bad. Also, like it always. I feel like if you're creating something and you have this idea and then it doesn't turn out that way, you're your harshest critic. Yeah, but everyone else, like, no one's paying that close attention. No one's like. But then you didn't exactly answer that question. As long as the conversation's good, I used to be very critical. Like still I think I'm, I'm highly critical of the episodes.

And I would NIT bacon, but it would just be frustration on my end. Yeah. And then I would still release the episode and I'd be like, OK, this is not as good as it could have been or as I want it to be. This is the best we got for this week, right? And then we move on, because next week is another one. Yeah, you have to do this again. Yeah, that's a high turnover rate. Do you cut them yourselves, edit anything? No, not anymore. I used to, yeah. And through that I think I

improved a lot. Now it all the roads is doing it, but then it's only like it's like, OK, we cut at the beginning and then we cut at the end. Not much to catch. Yeah exactly. Do you edit your videos yourself? Some of them, not all of them. So there are some videos where I have a clear idea and a script and then I. I won't let anyone else touch it because I have such a clear

vision in my head. But there's a lot of stuff that, like tutorial videos or something where there's a lot of cutting of the console over the face and everything. Yeah. And like, this is too much work for me. So we have it. A technical marketer who's really into video editing, So he's probably happy to do it. Leave it to them. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Good stuff. And when it comes to blog

content, going to conferences and standing on stage or video content like, do you have a preference for one or the other you like? It all stage stage is the best. Yeah, this is definitely interesting for our conversation later. But I always wanted to do like, stage performance. Yeah. And there was a time when I got so frustrated with the tech industry that I was like, I'm gonna leave this industry. I'm just gonna do stage performance from now on.

I was like I already lined up some auditions. And I was really committed. Yeah. But then I had a very good conversation with my CEO. OK, you know what? I'll give this one more chance, cuz it's tough to be an artist. It's like, not good money. And it's really tough to get gigs. Yeah, I would, you know, like working in tech is kind of cushy. So I was like, OK, I'll give it one more try. I think with Devrel, I mean you get to do that more, no, especially compared to what you

did previously. Yeah, I don't even think it's that much more because before I was a consultant. Yeah. And some of it is also obviously talking to people and maybe even almost like an internal meet up you, you share knowledge. But a big part was also trying to get people to, you know, for hiring purposes. Yeah, or just to like sell our professional services. So a lot of it was also going to conferences. I think now I'm just being measured by that.

You know, before it was like I was doing that on the side and now it's there are metrics now you have to like prove that if I go there and the company pays for it that it actually has some return. Exactly. Oh, OK. Do they measure it that strictly

or is it still kind of? Malleable I do. I want to know. I want to know the impact of my work. Like, does it make more sense to go to like a small community conference or? To a big one. Yeah. You know, like, which kind of audiences does it make most sense to speak to my talks, Which audience should it be geared towards? I just wanna have an idea because yeah, when I started it was like, we're just, we were really busy. But I didn't know, like, is this

actually making an impact? Is it making a big impact, a small impact? So I just started like, OK, let's set up some kind of. Metrics. There's this really good book called The Devil. I think this is called The Devil book or something Okay, where they go through this thing called the developer Journey.

So from the point that someone learns about your project up until they want to scale it up and you know onboard other people from their organization, like what are the steps in that journey and how can you move people from one phase to the next one And that's where you can measure like. How many people, if you have telemetry on your project, how many people actually manage to successfully spin up a virtual

cluster, for example? Yeah, if you just look at people who download it and then people who actually use it, you can already see like what's the drop off? If it's like 50%, maybe our documentation is not good enough, maybe we need a wizard or something. So these are the things that you could measure and then decide. Maybe we need this kind of content or we need to improve

our tutorials here? Just to be more impactful with your work, yeah, I like that a lot because one of the challenges I had like I'm not a Devil.

But I've had this conversation with Jason Dengstorf before and and he has done a lot of stuff with the rest of marketing and and Devil as well. He said a very clear distinction between your output and the outcomes of what you're doing right. You can measure output. You can say, oh, I've stood on stage X amount of times we've been to X meetups, where we've hosted meetups. But what is the actual impact of those things? Right? Those are harder metrics.

Exactly. And then there's some metrics that might just be vanity metrics, like how many followers do you have on Twitter? Yeah, it's a number, But what does it mean for your business? And also, if you're super popular with other devrels, that's great. But then does that translate into money for your business? Yeah, Devrel is really, really tough like.

Area to measure because it's kind of to me the the psychology of successful devil is not quite clear it's it's hard to say ohh if you're really good at giving talks that yeah translates into this thing for the business. It's just it's it's different with let's say marketing or sales where the numbers might be clearer or the the objective might be clearer and that might just have to do with that devil is pretty young as a role yet. So we have. We don't have.

That many iterations and the many like sophisticated metrics and tools to track success in dev row. Yeah. So that might still happen in the next couple of years. Yeah, I would say it's interesting because it I feel like it's up and coming. Maybe it's because of doing this podcast. I've talked to more people that have that role or want to pursue that role. Yeah, it's even kind of latest spark in me that it might be kind of an option in the future,

right. And I always compared to Engineering Manager, which kind of the track that you laid out or that you were on, which I'm interested in. But before we do that, for me, Devrel and kind of the measurements when you set kind of the project journey or a product journey that a user might go through, for me that

makes sense, right? You go from reading documentation, spinning up whatever it is that the company is building basically and seeing kind of where they drop off and basically when the drop off is too high, that's where technical form content cuz in the end it's a tech company can help users kind of go through that. Users are usually developers or at least they have a technical affinity because it's a tech product at the end of the day. And that I could see how the

value in measuring that. But then still for me the unknown part is okay. What does Devrel contribute to that? And is that the only path that you would measure? Or have you found that measuring other things also is helpful in that way? Yeah, it's a good question cuz it really depends on what Devrel is. In your organization, there's a bunch of some devrels are under marketing, some are under product, some just are their own departments. So in our organization, Devrel is part of marketing.

So obviously to us it's most important like. Do people know about our projects? Do they understand the capabilities of them and are they able to actually successfully use it and move it, move them along again up to the point where they wanna scale up and then that's where a commercial product comes in that can help them with a lot of stuff. And so if you're doing that, obviously the developer journey is probably the best. Gives you the best points to measure. But if you're doing.

Let's say product related dev row, where it's more about relaying feedback from your user base back to the engineering or product team. Then you might wanna measure other things like how many people actually are involved in contributing to your project, how good. I mean this is always a big thing. It's like how good is your documentation both for using and contributing. Yeah, yeah. This really depends what's important to you and your

organization. There's so many things that play into this, like which state of the startup are you in? Are you, like, really trying to raise money right now or did you just raise a bunch of money and now you can chill a little bit? Yeah, Yeah. It's difficult to say just for everyone. If I if I know the answer, I will write a book about it and make a bunch of money.

Yeah, I mean the biggest, the biggest reason I have that question is like, sometimes I apply to jobs, right? And there was this devil post that came or someone came to me with this devil job and it was very much aligned with like personal interests of mind and it was kind of a next step moving away from consultancy And I I how do you say that I talked to the people basically I applied is basically the formal way of saying, I guess just to see what would my role be.

They didn't really have a develop department, I would be the first one basically. And they themselves also didn't really know how or what I would be doing. And that scared me because I was like, OK, you come from a position where you kind of know what you have to do. Right now I'm a software engineer. I know what software we're building. I know the user stories, the product features. It's way more clear. Yeah. And then this position would be OK.

I can make video from content. I can do a podcast. I like doing podcasts. I can write blogs. But then what is it contributing towards? What should I do? Where's the value? Those are so many unknowns that in the end I didn't do it because of that and also because I didn't really love the product they were building. So then I was like, then I'm probably not gonna get energy talking about this product or creating content about it. Yeah. So it just wasn't a good fit at the end of the day.

Yeah, it was very hard stepping into that role, I felt like. Yeah, when I am. So to me, I feel in retrospect, I've always been doing Devrel, even before I had the title of Devrel So. Since I wasn't just a software engineer, just a software engineer. Since I wasn't software engineer, I was always interested in sharing knowledge and listening to what interesting things other people are working on. Yeah, and that was a big part of what I liked about tech.

And then I was doing consultancy cuz I got bored with working on the same product forever. And then even with the consultants, I felt like I could have more impact if I even if I'm able to talk to even more people at once. So that's why I felt like Devre was the next step, maybe similar to how your thinking is. And I also joined a company that

had no Devrel team. There was a person on there who was a more experienced Devrel. Unfortunately, they left after like two months. They were supposed to kind of help me on board me, and they left and I was. It was a very small startup and I was kind of left to myself. You figure it out, whatever you want to do, it's fine. Yeah. On the one hand it was great cuz I got a lot of support from the CEO and I had a lot of freedom, but then I had no idea what to do, how to do it, how to help

the company. So I wasn't quite happy there. I stayed there for about half a year and then they got bought. So it was kind of like an easy way for me to leave. And I joined my current company and both of them are in dev tooling, which is something that I was super interested in, how to empower and enable engineers. And now we're in the face where kind of also we were quite busy the last year trying things out, but now I'm really pushing for Okay. Let's see. How do we actually help our

users? So things we need to do more is to understand our user base really better, really talk to them a lot more, and then collect the numbers. It's something that not everyone loves about, like marketing stuff, but it's a numbers game. Ultimately, marketing is always a numbers game, so you have to see if there's. 200 people who would want to use our product, but they just can't get past the first couple steps because the tutorial is not good and the

demo doesn't work. Yeah. Or there are 20 people who would like to scale it up and actually become customers. Then it depends on the business to say, like, OK, maybe the 20 people who will actually pay us money are more relevant to us. So we were going to focus on that more than the 200 people in the beginning.

Another company might say no, no, we want to focus on the 200 people in the beginning, it's very, very dependent on what your focus is. So if you're trying to raise money, maybe the, the potential customers are more important and once you've raised that money, now you, you care more about the mass, yeah, the quantity. So now you're focusing on the 200 people. How much do you let kind of your

own opinion of things guard you in those conversations? Cuz I can imagine you're very close to the people that are using it. You have to be, because otherwise it's hard to create content for those users. Yeah. And if the organization then says no, we have to focus on this. It's kind of an organizational decision. Yeah, I can see the discussion there. Yeah, for sure. And that's, I mean that's just a

part of business and life. You sometimes disagree on things, and I think it's important because even though I understand why the business or maybe the sales team just focuses on selling the product, I'm a devil and it's literally in my name to advocate for. Developers, So I can bring my perspective and I will bring my perspective. But ultimately, you know, there's usually someone who makes that decision in the end, either the CEO or maybe, I don't

know, probably the CEO. So then it's important to I think it's more important to understand what the arguments are and the reasoning is. And even if I disagree with the result, I still understand why we're doing it and what the goal is. And yeah, it's fine to disagree I. I think it's important that, you know, in a professional setting, we're all able to disagree on things and yet still be remain professional and be able to commit to the result, even though, you know, afterwards,

you can always say, I told you so, yeah, yeah, I mean, I I like the most that you point out that you have to understand, right? Because for me, that's where a lot of personal frustration comes from, is I if I have this kind of slew of arguments, why we shouldn't do this and we still do this and I don't

understand why, right? That would be frustrating for me. Yeah, but I mean you work in a consultancy, so maybe you have also experienced that with your customers, cuz I did that a lot where most of that or not most

of the time, but a lot of times it's more about the communication that's breaking down in these organizations that need consultants to come in than it is about, you know, the developers are usually fine, like they want to do things and the management also usually wants. The developers to be successful, it's just really that top level management makes decisions and doesn't communicate them down.

So then the developers that they think this is important, they work towards it and then they're being told actually this is not important, this other thing is not important and they don't understand why because they never understand kind of the higher level business goals and most of the time it's really like once you create this. Shared understanding of like, well, this is what their goals are and this is what your goals are. And This is why there's this

friction. It really, you know, it alleviates a lot of this, especially like this interpersonal like, ooh, there, he's just like making life difficult for me. And it's like, no, he's just doing his shit. Yeah, probably doesn't even care about you or he doesn't know exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, talk to your colleagues, I like that a lot like it would, it would alleviate this us versus them feeling.

Yeah, because I feel like, I mean, you've joined an organization and you're all in this together, right? Yeah. And somehow weird decisions get made, but it's all from a certain point of view, right? Could be your point of view or a different department things, other things are weird. And if it just stays like that, then it would always be like that and you'll have clash of

departments. Yeah. But when there is a shared understanding, everyone, I feel like who I've worked with is a reasonable human being. If we understand, then it's like, Oh yeah, this makes sense all of a sudden. Yeah. Because you know, kind of the foundational logic that is there And then you're like, OK, I might still disagree because I think we can do other things as well. But then at least you understand and you're like, OK, this is the decision. It has been made.

You can lay down whatever pitchfork you had and go with the flow in that way. Yeah. And in your daily work, you can also understand better if you need to make like small decisions. Oh, now I understand the business goal is this. So when I make my decision, I will have that in mind and make better decisions for the business. Yeah, perfect. I wanna dive deep into kind of

the moment where you took the plunge in going into dev rail cuz I looked on your LinkedIn and your bio and you came from a software engineering role. You did more so machine learning than cloud native software development and even I saw some engineering management roles and responsibilities in there that is for me right now. If I look at myself, I do software engineering more so on the day today.

I recently got some adjacent responsibilities that are like inherent in engineering management, which I did on purpose because that is one of the areas where I think it could be interesting growth path wise. I like people, I like self development, I like those conversations, but then I really like content creation. I mean that's this whole podcast as well. I feel like there might have been kind of a similar track or thought going in your head as

well. Can you kind of lay out the career progression that happened there? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, As I said, even. As a software engineer, so I started in web development, and even then I really loved talking to people. So to be honest, I don't think I'm that great of a software engineer. I think I'm good enough. I can learn things if I have to. Actually, I learned things pretty quickly, I think. But I just don't have that burning passion for let's optimize the last couple of

bytes out of this algorithm. It's not something that I burn for. And it was really starting to go to tech events, finding kind of my crowd and trying public speaking that I really felt like there's a place for me that I'm really good at and where I can also provide value to the community, give back to the community. And yeah, from there, this was my constant kind of this is the

only constant that I had. And other than that, I was really trying to explore a lot of what was going on in the tech space. Yeah, so machine learning was a thing that I did a course, like an online course. And then I felt like, well, this is an interesting mix of me being a software engineer who understands the basics of machine learning. Maybe I could, like, find a job where I could learn more about it and see if I can wiggle my

way into that industry. And yeah, I worked for a startup and it didn't go the way that I was hoping it would. So actually, we were living in Hamburg in Germany at that time, and we were both. So my husband and I were thinking about moving abroad, just like shaking things up a bit, like see how life is in a different country. We didn't want to go too far, so that's why we ended up with the

difference. So yeah, I like just because I'm very privileged in that I found on Twitter a person who they were looking for, you know, consultants for their cloud native consultancy. And yeah, I got to talk to them and they invited me for an interview and it just really was

a really good fit and was there for four years as a cloud native consultant. When I started, I had never heard about copernets before. I knew a bit about Docker, but I never used it in production, not not knowingly, and I went from a senior software engineer to a junior cloud native person. Yeah, that was a bit tough, I have to say, because it's it's always tough to feel like you're the person in the room who understands the least of something.

But they were super nice. And especially as a consultant, I learned the importance of asking why or like just asking very basic questions that sometimes feels a bit, you know, you might feel like like an impostor maybe, but actually it's very important to ask those basic questions. And especially I feel like as a consultant, you are not the expert on the subject matter. That's the people who work

there. You are, you know, you can be an advisor, you have some knowledge in cloud or whatever that you can bring to the table. But really, the people who are the experts and the people who should solve the problem are the people that you are consulting. And yeah, so that was kind of my philosophy all along was just like really just help people. And I feel like engineering management kind of is in the

same general area, right? It's about, you know, your career the best and you know what you're good at and you know where you wanna go. And I'm just here to kind of help guide you, ask the right questions, maybe. Yeah. And just like, challenge you, these kind of things. I really love that.

Then Corona had, so we were all locked into her apartments and I was working a lot. I was working like 16 hours days for a long time and then I just burned out. During COVID, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I took like about half a year off from work and then I was like, OK, now maybe is a good point to move into dev row. I still felt like I probably am

not good enough. But hey, you know, in the end, as long as you can find a job and you can find the space to learn and to grow, who's to tell you that you're not good enough or that you're not ready to do it? So yeah, as I said, the first half year as a dev role, I don't think I've been super successful because I didn't even know what success meant. But yeah, I'm here now. I feel like we're doing good with our product and everything so. I think you're set under selling

the journey a little bit there. Yeah, that's how I learned it. You know, we just like always under under promise over delivery. Then it's always good.

I like that a lot. Coming from because you just because you pointed it out, coming from kind of a senior role and going to a junior role, was that also what you experienced in moving into Devrel in that way? Not at all, because in Devrel I really, I feel like I had more of an idea what I was doing and no one else kind of knows what you need to do as a Devrel, right? Like everyone has their own interpretation of it. I was really focusing on the things that I was good at.

But unfortunately, one of the things that I'm good at is to engage with community in person. But it was Corona, so that was really difficult. So there were only like online meetups and I was focusing more on content and improving our docs, which is also something that I enjoy. But I feel like I couldn't really live. I couldn't apply my best, best skills, so that that was a bit

difficult. But I didn't have this same feeling of everyone in the room knows better about the thing that I'm supposed to know than me. So that was that was tough. But I knew going in that this was gonna happen. And on the other hand, I did have a lot of experience with software engineering, which in this cloud native space, there's a lot of people who don't have

that. Yeah. So it's kind of it's a good balance especially in our team like my colleague Rich, he's more from the system administration side and I'm from the development side. So we really different together. We make like one. Super. Exactly. I like that a lot that you still leverage kind of your whole journey in there. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and I used to study law.

So I feel like that also helps me actually, because there's a lot of what I learned in in university about drafting, like drafting regulations or drafting legislations about like psychology of how do you write something that's fair is actually super helpful when it comes to, you know, when there's a clash between teams or something. And then you have to figure out like what's a fair solution.

There's like, I'm not going to go too deep into it, but there's like ways to to have that conversation to ensure that, you know, like it feels fair. Yeah, that makes sense.

I mean, I'm curious about it, and I don't know how much you want to cover it, but you mentioned you're working 16 hours a day. Especially during COVID times like I caught myself working from when I woke up to when I would go to bed some days. Just because you're in this mode, you can't go anywhere anyway. I mean food. You make sure you have food for the rest of the week because that was advised and toilet paper. Like everything you needed.

I still remember seeing empty shelves like when it started. But in any case, I feel like a lot of people went through that phase over working themselves or working way longer than they might have done otherwise. Phrase it like that, I feel like for sure. Right now we're still kind of working remote and. You're not in lockdown, so we can go outside. Like, how have you kind of coped with this newer way of working in that way?

Yeah. So when the pandemic started, I still remember I just came back from London from a business trip because I used to travel a lot for work also. Yeah. And I remember I was like, I'm gonna set up my laptop in the living room just for now, just, you know, just for the next two weeks cuz I need to. And then that turned into two years or something. And I think I also developed some very unhealthy habits with alcohol, trying to just deal with the boredom.

And I used to just go out a lot and meet friends and suddenly all that went away and it's just at the beginning. It was just about getting through the day, getting through the week, having some kind of social interaction. And then it turned into, so that was so long time, right? The first couple of months it was just dealing with stuff and then we kind of found this new normal.

And then in our company, because we're a consultancy, the first thing that companies cut when they are in financial trouble is usually R&D and that usually includes consultancy. So we did have a very tough time business wise. So that would put a lot of pressure on all of us. And then and then during the pandemic we moved into, we started this engineering management program because we didn't have that before. And I just felt so I guess responsible to make this a success.

Yeah, I've been with the company at that point for like 3 years. I knew everyone and everything kind of. And I just really wanted to, yeah, push it and make it successful. And I didn't have anything else to do, just as you said. So it kind of felt like, Oh yeah, just let's just work 60 hours a day, cuz you wake up and you think about this. And it probably is also a distraction from, you know, the reality. Exactly. Cuz it wasn't just the pandemic

then. There was also like, obviously the climate crisis and then, you know, protests in the US and all kinds of stuff that was just like it was just like thing after thing after thing. Yeah, and like dominoes. Exactly. And like working. Seemed like like a nice vacation from reality, actually.

Yeah, but yeah, you know what? Actually, I realized that I needed to take a break because I started like, in the mornings I would actually like, cry before client calls, cuz I felt like there was so much pressure and I just couldn't really deal with it anymore. But I also at that point felt like I put this responsibility on myself. So, like, there's no way for me to get out of it. Yeah. And that. Yeah. So I talked to my colleagues and I was like, okay. I think I really need a break.

It's like I can't do it anymore. And yeah, so there I forgot the word. But thankfully it was totally fine. I took some time off and then I left the company and there was also fine. No one was happy about it. But I think people understood cuz I wasn't the only one burning out. I think there were a lot of people burning out during the pandemic, not just at that place and a lot of people also had like 10 year long relationships that they broke ended, right.

These people, you would think that they would be together forever and then they have to spend all day, every day together and they're like actually I don't like this, yeah, I don't want this. For us, it was also because we lived in Amsterdam West in a very small apartment and we were like, we have to find a bigger place because we either way we knew that we would be working remotely, both of us and.

You need some space. I was like, I need my own space because I was like still living in the working in the living room. And my husband was always like, if you had to go to the bathroom, you would just like walk past me and you need a door to close. That's the minimum for an office, I think. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. I think, I mean, whenever I heard people kind of spiraling into a burnout, it's interesting because I feel like people with a high sense of responsibility and ownership, those usually the people that take on. Maybe a bit too much, right? Or that one. Yeah. To do such a great job that they overwork themselves in the case, right? Yeah. And it can be kind of escaping reality. But even when things are normal,

it still happens. Ohh. Yeah. You just completely want to focus on this thing and do it right and they overwork themselves. I think it's a I don't know if it's a shame, like it's a it's just the thing. And we have to be mindful of it for ourselves and for other people. Yeah, because once this is what I've heard, because I've never had a burnout, but I've heard from people that have gone through a burnout, it's like. There's a really long time to recover from it.

It's it's so because when you already I think when you notice that you have a burnout, it's probably too late. You're probably already in it and it's so gradual. It's like the frog boiling on hot water. It's you because you're just you just feel stressed. You're just like as you say those are mostly people who are working hard anyway who maybe are really passionate and really love it. Like, I didn't notice for a long time because I just wanted to do it.

I loved it so much. And then it gets to the point where the things that you used to love, they don't give you any joy anymore. Like, nothing gives you joy anymore. And I was like, oh, I'm just gonna take like, a month off. But yeah, as I said, I was like, not working for half a year. And it took me maybe like a full year to feel like I'm myself again because you lose so much of yourself. A lot of things I loved just I just couldn't do them anymore and I was.

There was a lot of times when I was wondering, can I, will I ever be the same person again. And I guess the answer is no. I don't think I am the same person. I think I'm I'm different but not worse. I've become a bit cynical maybe and I've definitely I'm definitely much more careful with like I will, I hope I will notice the signs a bit sooner and definitely also like I will never work a job that I'm not 100% convinced as like something I want to do. Yeah, because I know now how it

feels. And once you are in this burnout it's like so tough to get out and you just you're just like you don't not even sure who you are anymore.

That's a terrible, terrible feeling. Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah. I mean, you laid out some of the things like looking after the symptoms of yourself to kind of prevent it happening again, looking at the role that you have and making sure you Love Actually what you're doing. Yeah, like, genuinely. Is there anything else that you kind of put in place to keep you from spiraling into this burnout again?

Well, definitely the being very aware of yourself and how you spend your time and how much you like the things that you do like instead of just being busy and constantly doing stuff just to take regular timeouts. Yeah, I've changed also the way like the time of day that I work. So now I work like from afternoon after lunch to evening. So I have the mornings to myself and then I can like do meditation, do some exercise,

whatever I need doing. And that really shifted kind of also the way that I look at my day. So instead of waking up and the first thing you do is like think about work, what needs to be done. The first thing I think about is like, ohh, how do I like take care of myself today? And then I do my work, and I do work late sometimes still, but it's not, it's not the the very first thing I think of when I wake up. Yeah. I think that helps a lot.

Like I've always tried to have a morning routine and when work got more busy, like I let go of that and I do feel the repercussions of that. Like I would be exhausted going to bed and it's still tired waking up, basically. And because I didn't do me time in the morning, I would feel tired to work again when I brought that back and I'm I'm still kind of like we're not perfect. My morning routine is still not perfect. Sometimes I I still fail to do it, basically.

But when I did do it, and when I kind of got into the habit of doing it, I would feel so much better, right? Like, and I would miss that. But for me, it was like, OK, I'm in this mode. And once you've been in a mode for a long time, it becomes this habit. And then it's hard to get out of. Yeah, I feel like, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And there.

And also the other thing is like, you can't be too hard on yourself and not doing everything perfectly because that also will keep you from being better. Like, OK, I didn't do my morning routine today. Fine, Not great, but that's what it is. Don't beat yourself up over it. Just, like, plan it for the next day, right? Like keep the keep the the hurdle to getting started very small.

Like, I don't know, there's some tips about ooh, maybe if you like, keep your running shoes on during the night, you know there's not the whole thing with them exactly. Then you're already like you're already dressed for running so you know you can do it. I don't know if it works, but this is like what they tell you like. A life hack? Yeah, no, I'm sleeping in your gym. Shorts will actually help you. But you know what? Why not try it? We can, yeah. I've never done that.

I mean. Sleeping gym shirts. But then it's just pajamas, I guess. Yeah, now we just live in our I mean, like, I I usually like very put together above. Yeah, the waist. And then it's just like gym shorts or like some old sweatpants below. Relax, like no one's no one's looking at that. No.

Fine. No, I get that. But you're still working mostly remote. I mean, you mentioned before coming in here, yeah, it's all remote still, right? Yeah, so my, my, my company is based in San Francisco. My team, my dev, the devil team, the marketing team is I think all of them are on the West Coast, so I'm the only one in Europe. We do have people from all over the world, really, from India to Europe to the US and that's why I tend to work late. But that's also because I want to.

And yeah, I have my own little office in in my house now. We moved to Amsterdam north because now we don't have to be close to the city anymore. Yeah. So that was, that's nice because it's very quiet there.

There's no tourists, no offense tourists. But when there were, when Corona happened, the inner city of Amsterdam was so nice. It was so beautiful. Like, oh wow, this is like what it's like to really chill in the city. Like even now it's like it's so full again have. You been recently? Yeah. It's way more full now. Yeah, because everyone's know this is the last time we could do it. Actually, now I know that we're trying to get rid of the English tourists.

So I feel like. I feel like that made it even worse because now people are like, man, we have to come back to before we can. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's tough. And our office used. So when I was still going to the office, it was right at the Central station. So every day I would like, go home and just elbowing my way through the tourists. It was really annoying. Yeah, but I can understand it. I used to be a tourist in Amsterdam as well, so it's really beautiful. I get it.

But there's just not enough. It's not a lot of space. Yeah. Sometimes I wonder, like, if I go abroad, is it like, am I the tourist that. Yeah. You're you're that kind of tourist. Am I? Am I the. Yeah. Probably. But everywhere else in the world, there's more space on the, you know, the pedestrian walkway. Yeah, yeah. It's just the herd in Amsterdam. It's been rough lately.

But yeah, I was thinking back to kind of Devrell and and what you're doing there. I've heard a lot of people say Devrell's also being involved in communities and sometimes creating communities as well. And I wonder what the similarity would be because I haven't had any experiences in either. The only community we're kind of building is. The podcast listeners, I guess if you can call that a community, but it's not really conscious.

Yeah. Is it similar to how you would build a team like structure wise? The thought process that goes into it is that comparison I can make. I think there's a lot of similarities. I don't know what the official definition of the word community is, but to me it's about a shared, shared experience. It's more than it is about

anything else. So if you are, let's say you have like a meet up and you have the community around that meet up, then it's not as much as only the people who go to this meet up are part of the community. But it's really like everyone who has an interest. And if we talk about a topic that has something to do with this meet up, then we are both part of this community, right? And even if you're just reading stuff, you're still part of the community. You're still consuming the value

of the community. Yeah, I think it's, I know that there's a lot of companies now who are doing open source. They've noticed that open source is a big, like brand booster and they want to build communities around those brands or around their projects. Yeah. And I think that's it's kind of difficult because community needs to grow organically. Like the core of a community needs to grow organically because it's very, very difficult to just create one. As a goal?

Yeah, exactly. Like just to put people together and just expect that ohh, now they're gonna be best friends and they're gonna hang out and answer each other's questions. It's just not. There's so many things that go into it. Like do people actually are people interested enough in this to spend time and provide value? Yeah. And time and effort to provide value to other people, other members of the community, you know do they get something out of the community as well?

And. You know, what's the what's I mean, what's the brand of this community? Is it like if it's like a, I don't know, like a very unpopular thing? I'm not gonna name any names because I don't wanna. Sure. But if it's something that's kind of unpopular, then everyone who has something to do with it might be conceived in a negative

light. So it's it's easier to just let a community develop, like a small one, and then invest in it. So if you're saying like the community around the podcast, I'm sure there is a community. I'm sure the people who listen to your podcast maybe leave a comment. Maybe they don't leave comments, but they in some way share stuff with each other. So to me, that's a community. So now how do you nurture it? How do you do stuff? I don't know. Do an MA. I saw you. You've done that. Yeah.

That's fun. Yeah, exactly.

With teams, I think it's very similar. I mean, teams are different in the way that they're forced together. Yeah, but there are similar things that you can do, like create a very safe environment so everyone is feels comfortable, you know, making comments, raising their issues, that kind of stuff. Maybe also creating some regular things so people know that, oh, once a week there's a podcast or once a week we have this meeting together where we can just air out or grievances.

I think it's very similar. The only thing is that in a team you usually get paid to be there. So people will be there and come and and provide value. The community, especially if you do open source, it's a bit more difficult to get people exactly, not even to get people to to do things. That's not that hard. It's to keep people consistently doing things that they come back and that they will plan in the long term. That's that's much more difficult in open source.

But yeah, I feel like in very many ways it's the same.

Yeah, I feel like a big component is what when I talk to people that contribute a lot to open source, a big component for them is like the fulfillment they get from creating something and the engagement from a community using whatever they created. Yeah, like that feeling of fulfillment apparently is so big for them that they they come back and they do it again. Yeah, or.

Also some people I've heard they created this thing and it actually span out of control and more people are using it than they can handle and they don't wanna let go of this cuz they feel like it's an important component now for other people, right? That's also another thing that I also learned that the hard way is when you redo stuff for the community, it's not your thing anymore. Like you're giving it to the community.

And it's also important to understand that no matter how great your vision is and your idea, and maybe you're like really good at these things, but generally speaking, if there are more people working on something, it's probably gonna be better in the end. Yeah, it's probably gonna. They're gonna have better ideas that you could have had and you're probably gonna build something better that you could

have done by yourself. But if you started it and you feel responsible for it and it's your baby, it's very difficult

to let that go. So when I moved to Amsterdam and then one of the first things I did was one of my colleagues asked me if I wanted to help him organize Serverless Days Amsterdam, which is a community conference around Serverless. And we did this and he left and then came back, whatever. But it was very difficult for me to let go and let other people in and not try to control and micromanage everything because I had a very specific idea of how I wanted the conference to look

like, to feel like. And yeah, I would, even if I delegated stuff to other people, I would still like control, like how do, how do you do this and blah blah. And it was only after a while that I realized, if I just don't do that anymore, if I let people just do whatever they want to do or that they feel is the best way to do it, it's first of all, it's much better for me. But then also, you're doing it for the community. It's not Leon days, right?

It's serverless days. So everyone who's part of the community should be able to contribute and to create something that applies to their vision. Yeah, so I've since then really tried to, when I built communities, for example the community that currently I'm building or the last community that I started was Kuberoki which was Kubernetes Karaoke. And you know, it started with just me going to places and like asking people to join me.

And then we had this official more or less official party. You can't see me doing air quotes probably. There's a lot of video the air quotes official party in Amsterdam, which isn't great, and now we want to do another one in Chicago, but I'm not going to Chicago because I don't want to. And now it's like, OK, someone else is organizing it. And this time around, I'm like, you know what? This is all the information that you need. Yeah, just do it.

I don't even care that much. It's like, this is this brand. Even though I started, it's not me, right? It's this is a separate thing from me. And I feel like that is the now. I feel like I'm really doing community work now. I'm doing work that is for the community, not for myself. Yeah. And then once you do these kind of things this way, the, you know, all the praise and the fame, it will come back to you

anyway. You don't have to put your name on it because people will know who started all these things,

right? This is the last part of the event. There's a book called Tribal Leadership and it's like one of my favorite books. It really helped me understand a lot of things about the culture of groups of tribes. And they are basically, they're saying there's five different cultural levels. And level one is kind of like where everyone just hates life. And Level 5 is like, everything's possible.

We're so awesome. And there is like this thing that Level 3 people or Level 3 behavior or thinking is about. I'm the best one, and that's why I maybe try to even sabotage people in the worst kind of scenario or just try to keep all the information to myself. Because information has power and I want to remain in a position of power. Whereas if you move to stage 4, you're really just giving

everything to the group. And ironically, by doing that you will get more praise and you will get more stuff done than if you were trying to do everything by yourself. And that really like when I kind of like understood this and start to implement it in my work, that I feel like that really propelled me and my career forward like a billion yards. Yeah, that's awesome. I feel like a lot of people say that, right? The art of delegating. No micromanaging.

But for me, it really shines. When people have gone through that, when they've realized that, oh, this is what I was doing actually. And it's kind of if you love something, if you want it to go well, then obviously you want to make sure that all the the eyes are dotted, basically. Yeah. And if other people are responsible for dotting the eyes, you'll be like, okay, have the eyes been dotted? You'll be.

You'll be there, basically. And once you have realized that, oh, that is what you were doing, right. Because if it's an outside story, you can be like, oh, you shouldn't do that, right. Then obviously then it's obvious all of a sudden when it's you, you might have to be reflect and be like, oh, this is what I was actually doing. Yeah. And I feel like when the realization hits, for me, it's still been difficult.

I still catch myself being like, Oh yeah, Or maybe I double check or maybe I did this while I really should have given it away. But yeah, you think about it differently and all of a sudden. I think it alleviates kind of this feeling as well, where you can do this as a team, right? And you don't really feel like the person that is so responsible for making sure everything goes well.

No, it's a team responsibility. At the end of the day, yeah, you might be a big driver, but at the end of the day, it's a

shared thing. It's not just you. Yeah, again, it ties into the I will be the person who enables and who helps and who gives advice. But ultimately, this is not me doing it. It's more like us as a team doing it. And that's why I also said like not Level 3 people, but Level 3 behavior, because you could even have this epiphany, as they call it, and still behave in a way that you kind of then realize is

not the best way. And I noticed it for myself that if I'm really stressed about just things I'm not in a good emotional place or mental place, then I tend to be more micromanaging and, you know, like, have less grace, extend less grace towards other people. Then I fall into these, like, why is he not doing this the way that I think he should be doing? And it's really like, so much of interpersonal friction is in your head. Yeah. It's really a lot of stuff that you just make up in your mind.

And if you ever just talk to the person, it would maybe turn out that you have more things in common than you think, that you're actually trying to achieve the same goal. You just go around about it in different ways. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I love that. I see so many similar is there and I feel like it's fine to make those mistakes right. We're still human. You're never going to be perfect.

I catch myself and I and I apologize sometimes even where I didn't behave the way I wanted, I'll make sure the person knows that in the future I'll try and do better, right. That's not what what I wanted to do basically. And it can be sometimes explained with behavior or or tiredness or anything else, or sometimes you just.

Happens, I feel like. And it's still fine. It's good to know that. I mean, for me, it's good to know that what my triggers are. So if I know that I'm having kind of like a bit of a tough day, then maybe I just don't have my one on ones today. Maybe I'll do them tomorrow. Yeah. These are just like small things that I feel like. It's good to know what your emotional triggers are cuz you don't wanna, I don't know.

You don't wanna be like difficult with other people if you can't avoid it. Absolutely, yeah.

The self-awareness there. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Man, this was a lot of fun. Is this kind of what you experienced or expected going into it as well? I don't know. No, no, you're great. I didn't expect much, honestly, because I was too nervous about there being. No, I I really enjoyed it. I really like to talk about the kind of like not as technical side. In the end, I believe that all technical, like all tech problems are fundamentally human problems.

Yeah, we're just using tech to solve them. And if we could solve them with no tech or low tech, I think that would be even better because every single line of code is tech debt. Yeah, that you have to maintain it. So the more we focus on like how do we communicate better, how do we understand each other better, the better our tech and products will be. Yeah. So I think this is actually very important a conversation to have. Awesome, I completely align with that.

Usually I'm like. Do we actually need to create something, or is this a soft problem? No, everything's soft. Exactly. Cool. We're going to round it off here everyone. I'm going to put all the Ant socials in the description, bro. Check her out. Let her know you came from our show. And with that being set, thank you again for listening. We'll see you on the next one. And I kind of blabber at the end there. Thanks. Bye.