Q&A #8: Salary Negotiations, Remote Working Abroad, Managing Time & More with Patrick Akil

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Q&A #8. I think it's been a whole year, a little bit over a year of Q&A S and I'm really happy about that. The last one was in January, so it's been a while, but I have some exciting topics today, Salary negotiation, how to get your foot in the door, some technical topics, time management and much, much more. So sit down listening and enjoy recording. It's been a while. Still a bit jet lagged by the way. I woke up at 5. All right.

Based on your experience, how do you negotiate salary in an interview? Very interesting. I think it's one of my favorite things to think about, but one of my non favorite things to actually do in practice. And that's actually what I tell the other people as well. This is not my favorite thing. However, I do think it's important and I think it's a great opportunity to show what you think you're worth and see if it's a really good match.

If you get to the stage where you're already negotiating salary, they like you to the point where they made you an offer and now you can basically Give your opinion of the offer. Now your opinion cannot be wrong and you probably think you can be misconstrued into being greedy and and something like that. But for me, I've always viewed

it as a dialogue. When I got this job at CBI, got an offer and I mean there was a recruitment party in the middle and I really didn't want to go through them directly. So I I mostly talked to my at the time manager that was hiring and I told the recruitment party because I still need to keep them in the loop because of relationships and stuff like

that. The things I didn't want to think about basically I said to them I'm going to negotiate because I got the offer I thought I could have a little bit more wiggle room and they were like please do not negotiate. The fact that you got an offer is really, really good in general, so that's a red flag in my opinion. I think you should always open up the conversation, see what's possible.

If it's nothing salary related, you might go to the signing bonus route, you might go to the extra stock option route, or you might go to the All right. I would like to re evaluate my salary earlier than usual, so I'll accept this now and we can talk again in a few months. Now I didn't get anything money wise, so my salary stayed exactly the same as it was on paper and then I went to the next phase which was basically OK, when we when can we re evaluate this.

I threw in an optimistic in two months and my manager was like, OK, let's look at it in half a year from now. Now with the yearly review cycles for me that was a win. I basically got something and I think it's really good to get at least something. Not to say that you shouldn't be happy with what you get in general, but I really wanted

something. And then at the time when it was the six months, then at the time when the six months passed, I had the conversation with my manager, he immediately was like, yeah, that's right, we I promised that basically. And within a few weeks he gave me a raise above what I asked basically in the salary negotiations, which was honestly really nice. I didn't have to say anything. I just said we were going to re evaluate. We didn't really have a conversation about what I had

delivered or my performance. He just was like, I think this is what you're worth and I was like, I'll take it. So that was a really good step in his. I'll always remember that. I think what he did as a manager, and I'll take that with me. What I've seen with regards to other people in my network is that they get a first offer and they might think, OK, this is it basically because that's what the recruiter tells them.

Now who you're talking to I think is very important because the recruiter might say, well this is it, this is the maximum we can offer, but they're not actually calling the shots. It's either the hiring manager or the person that hires you that will be your manager if that's not the same person. So talking to the recruiter and being like, OK, this is what I think I'm worth or this is what I think is my value or can I talk to the hiring manager or can I talk to my manager?

Is the next step that you can play? I think eventually if you say I don't accept this or this is too low, or at least tell them what you're thinking, your honest truth, and you have to have some numbers in your head, We'll get to that later. I think it's a really good step to keep the conversation flowing because I'm thinking specifically of a person that was most recent that did this. They got an offer and they were happy with it. It was a bit lower than what they were earning, earning

currently at their current job. So that's what they said. It's lower so and so it's not what I expected. Also and setting the expectations early on is very important in this. Now the recruiter said this is basically the Max, then she said well thank you for the offer. Again, because of these reasons, I don't think I can take this now. Immediately the recruiter was out of the picture. The hiring manager stepped in. They're like OK and they opted by, I think it was 5% at the

time. Now that person still said, OK, thank you for the offer, so and so. And they actually put a number in front. This is what I would be happy with. And the number was way higher. It was let's say 1520% higher than the initial offer, but they came back and they increased it with 10% and gave them a signing bonus as well. So you went from this is the Max to a 10% higher plus a signing bonus. Yeah, that's already a big win in my book. They then did not go for that

yet. They went to their existing job and actually said, OK, I got a offer, this is what they offered me. And then the existing job countered. So leveraging the position you have and negotiating from a position of strength, I think, I mean goes miles basically, Then it doesn't matter whether you want the new job or you state your existing job, The fact that you already can leverage whatever you have in getting a raise is a really good thing. Now I touched on the topic of

knowing your numbers, basically doing your homework. I think this is a part that gets underestimated a lot. You can do your homework in a way of talking to your potential team members or the people that have that role within the organization you're applying for.

And people are very open and honest to sharing anything about the company, same person that did the negotiation, they did their homework and they reached out to people that would be directly in their team and people that had the same position in another team. Now, I don't know how they did this, but they basically had a conversation of, OK, how's the culture in this company? This is what I've heard. How is it with regards to raises and promotions? Because that's a very important thing.

This was an organization that prides itself in promoting people yearly or in two years and then talking to the people that actually worked at that company, they confirming it is very powerful. Now. I don't know how they did that, but the people got so comfortable that they also shared probably they asked what they were earning at the time and that was 100% valuable information. Going into negotiations 'cause if you get a number near to that or if you get a number far, far

below that. Doing your homework and knowing the numbers based on the people that actually work there, not just what you can find online, is 100% a move or a play that I would do. Talking to the people themselves and then using that information and trying to get the maximum out of this negotiation. You can only negotiate once at the beginning and ensure probably throughout in performance reviews. But the biggest start you can have a head start is the most valuable thing you can do.

So definitely don't do yourself this justice and don't negotiate. Even though people might tell you don't negotiate, I don't think it's harmful. I think it shows admiration, it shows eagerness and it shows confidence in what you're worth. But yeah, it's a hard, hard path. Good luck.

Hi, Patrick. I'd love to hear your thoughts on networking and getting into companies. It's the thing I'm struggling with as a fresher. I've talked to people, I've gone to events, but I still don't know how to get a potential employment out of it. Very, very interesting, especially as a person with their first job. I think landing a good space is really important. But the market right now is really, really hard on junior people. And I know that because my brother graduated, It took him a

long time. He has a job now, but it was a hard and long journey, so I'm really going to leverage the conversation I had with Khaki a few episodes back. I think it's exactly 151 where she laid out that doing your homework and reaching out to network or network of network of people is incredibly valuable in just saying hi. I'm saw this position online. Let's say it's at a company that say it's at Google or booking or whatever company you're looking at. I saw this.

I saw this position online. I have a few questions. Would you be willing to talk about it? That's it. Simple as that. You might get a yes. You might get a no. I know someone in my network that actually did that. That opened up the conversation with the potential manager of that position. They got a conversation out of that. They got to ask the questions like what is the culture? Like, what is the vision on the

team? What are they actually going to do in a day-to-day, not just the mumbo jumbo. That's on paper an incredibly valuable conversation. And even though they didn't get the job directly because all of a sudden the position wasn't open but went to internal, at least the manager explained that to them. They didn't think it was them and failing an application or not being good enough, the manager was like, no, we've

decided to keep this internal. When it goes open, I'll remember you and I'll put your name forward. Now something like that would have never happened, might not ever happen, and I'm extremely naive, but I believe this is the truth that the manager is speaking. I think it's incredibly valuable to just open up those conversations. Might not be now, could be. In the future. That conversation and that connection might be very valuable.

Someone might remember you just by virtue of you having reached out and striking up a conversation like that. I think it's something that's very, very underestimated. Now a job doesn't come free, so doing your homework is 1 mapping out the market as a second. Knowing exactly who your manager might be or people in your team might be reaching out to them. And having that conversation is a really good thing. The only thing you can then still do is kind of do your

homework. When it comes to the actual technical side of things, when you actually get your foot in the door and you go through the application process, you should have done your homework. So you need to be prepared Whether that's a leave code interview, whether it's architectural design, whether that's OK show me what you've done in the past and what your value is. You need to be prepared in that and a portfolio and little pet peeve projects can really help with that.

What gives you energy? What can you do and what can you build and what can you create in value? And then the technical side, how do you do that? You can learn along the way, but it's really awesome to show them what you've done and what you've achieved in that way, especially when it comes to not really having prior job experience in a similar field. So yeah, getting your foot in the job, getting your foot in the door, and getting your first job is is a journey for everyone.

I think once you land the job, you can either be content with that, or you can continue to look and see if this is actually where you want to learn, if the environment is there for you to grow as fast as possible, or if that is elsewhere. But then at least going back to negotiation, you're negotiating from a position of strength. You already have a job, so then the second job is not far away. Again, good luck. Negotiating for jobs, fun stuff, memories brings me back.

All right. I was wondering how you would recommend going about balancing work, school and hobbies. I tend to spend a whole week doing work and school things, then I get burnt out and then I spend weekends doing hobbies, then I get burnt out. It's a vicious cycle of just burnout. Then when I try to set aside time for hobbies during the week I feel guilty for not working on other stuff. I was wondering if anyone runs into the same problems. Any solutions or recommendations

to go about stopping this cycle? Now I'm going to start this with. I might not be the best person to answer this because I sometimes work, I sometimes overwork, and on the weekends I crash and I do nothing. Sometimes, sometimes my weekends are busy, but I have high highs and low lows when it comes to rest and recovery basically, and I don't think that's a good thing.

Now I'm working on it, I'm trying to get better on it, and one of the things I'm working on is doing everything kind of gradually in the day, finding routine for both education for your hobbies as well as work. And sure, it's not going to be perfect, but if you fit in kind of all of it in the same day, then the next day you do that again and you build up this habit of at least fulfilling those needs, right? Because you didn't mention friends and family, but I I

mean, that's in there as well. Relationships that you have, they all have to have time and attention from your side, but you get to decide the balance. So whether you want to just work one day, then have hobbies and rest and relaxation and friends and family the other day, it's all up to you.

What I found works for me. And again, I'm not the best person to answer that is to try and do everything kind of gradually throughout the day and don't be harsh on myself when it actually doesn't work out as I planned it. I'm a horrible, horrible planner. So yeah, usually my day involves waking up doing some form of exercise, whether that's going for a walk, whether that's hitting the gym, whether it's doing a workout at home, because I have all the stuff for that and I really enjoy that.

That's how I like to start my day off. If I don't do that, I'm not 100% throughout the day and I noticed that. So I really need some form of exercise. As soon as I wake up then obviously it's work and I try and do meetings in the morning. I try and have focus time. I try and manage my own agenda so other people don't manage my agenda. I have no problem saying no to a meeting if I don't know the agenda. Like what's the agenda? People are like, oh we'll figure it out.

I'm like, no, then we do everything all asynchronously. I'm not going to jump in a meeting, mini rant. Then at the end of the day, it's relaxation. I love cooking, I love putting up music. I love putting up a podcast. I listen to a lot of instrumentals, so not even text stuff, text stuff. In any case, I like calling people, checking up on them, seeing how their day is. I don't text as much anymore.

I'm a caller. And yeah, and then sometimes sports in the evening as well, hanging out with friends and family, sometimes paying someone a visit. I try to do everything. And yeah, I think if you overdo one or the other, it kind of, yeah, creates this void of fulfilment on the other side. So if I only work, then yeah, what about my hobbies? I need some rest and relaxation then as well. So that's why I try and keep everything kind of gradual and fulfil all the needs here and

there. What I think helps is kind of checking in on yourself. Also maybe keeping a journal. I hate writing. Similar for my hate of reading. So I don't do that but I do do a little check insurance. I love reflecting and it's just getting lost in my own thought. But yeah, it helps. And having conversations with people also helps. If someone says, I mean depends if you have a partner at home, I have one when she says how was

your day. I love reflecting and being like, OK, this is what I did and so and so I'm either drained or I have energy and I want to use this energy for something or let's do something or I need rest and recovery, relaxation, Let's do something else. So yeah, no one's perfect. Don't be too hard on yourself. I'm not the best person to give this advice. I'm I'm learning every day and I think you'll learn every day too. Is that a conclusion? I'm not sure if I like that

conclusion. Learn every day. Learn every day. Learn every day. Keeps the doctor away. Everything, every day keeps the doctor away. Only question four.

Would you please give some tips on how to travel and work remotely? My favorite, favorite topic. So I've gone to Barcelona, it was two years ago, one month. Then last year I went to Portugal one month and Barcelona one month. Super lucky, two months. And I just came back from Sri Lanka. So Asia, never been to it one month and that's the only time where I did one week of travel and three weeks of working abroad remotely. So some of type of experience,

use that whatever you may. I think picking a country where you can do what you want to do because you probably have a goal or an aim, something you want to do is really important. So we picked Barcelona and we picked Portugal and even Sri Lanka because we like kind of a city vibe. And then also having a beach component to it, very sunny nature aspects as well where you can just drive off to a different city and go sightseeing. Sri Lanka specifically had hiking, Portugal as well, so it

fulfils all those needs. Now we're based in Europe, based in the Netherlands, so Barcelona and Portugal are kind of nearby ish to go to. So that's where we started. Barcelona was the first one and it was really OK, a whole experience very much planned in advance. We went for Airbnb because Airbnb gives you a discount if you go for a month or longer or at least a similar length in that way. And we were out of an apartment back then, two years ago, so it was a perfect moment.

We put everything in storage and then we went to Barcelona. We picked a place that was close to the beach. I think for me this is one of the best decisions because the ability to close down your laptop, walk a minute, two, maybe 5, and go to the beach and just lay down, honestly is the best when it comes to recovering from whatever mental load you have. The breeze just washes away the

problems. You might go in the water, you might just lay in the sun, do some reading, play some games, watch something, listen to something. It's the best experience of combining work and then having kind of a really good Energizer and recovery next to each other when it comes to tips. And that was one, do your homework, pick a country that suits your needs, find the location that you like and then it's planning basically, when do you want to go? Does it make sense seasonality

wise? How's the tourism? Is it monsoon season? We had to be mindful of that when going to Sri Lanka. It was not mango season, so sadly not a lot of mangoes to go about and yeah, bring about whatever you need to work at that location. For me, it's an external mouse, it's an external keyboard. I used my luggage, it's kind of a platform for my laptop. Then I had a really good screen I knew I would have had. I knew I had great Internet in whatever I went to.

Even Sri Lanka. We picked our apartment which was in collaboration with a Co working space and that Co working space, I mean we paid for really good Internet but provided extremely good Internet. There was a point where electricity was down, there was maintenance and we went to the Co working space because they

had generators. So we were really confident that work would not be an issue because whatever you do, if you go working abroad you don't want anyone to think that you're just lazing off and having a holiday work is work. So take that seriously, and I think we did. And I'm really proud that we found a routine that worked for us because especially if you go outside of your time zone, routine gets really important. When we went to Sri Lanka, we basically did our life in the morning.

Wake up, go surf, do yoga, work out, do whatever, Go to the beach and then around 11:12, have lunch, go homework the rest of the day till 8-9, go have dinner, have some fun, round it off, do it all over again the next day. Finding a routine and finding a habit there as soon as you land is, I think, really crucial. The first week is always very interesting because you land, you have a new environment, you don't know where anything is. So finding a supermarket, are

you going to cook? Are you going to go out for dinner? What do you cook? There's not a lot of ingredients. Similar to probably where you are is really reinventing the wheel of OK, how do we do this here and how do you live in combination with working? So that first week is very crucial. I would say give yourself a few days, either the weekend or take a day off here and there and to

really kind of land. And then once you figure out where the things are fitting that in a work routine is just, yeah, you get better at it. So you have to start somewhere. What's really fun is when you're abroad, there's no friends and family, so weekends all of a sudden open up and you don't have to stay at the same location. What we do is obviously with the Airbnb, we stay at the same location, but weekends, sometimes we go away.

You can find a lot of like little trips that bring you 2 hours away in a bus and all of a sudden you're in a different city, different beach, different environment and make a little day trip out of it. Why not? At least fulfil the needs that you have. Go sightseeing, energize and then yeah, get back home. Go back to work. I really loved it. If you have the opportunity, I would advise you to take It. Doesn't have to be for a month. Go for a week or two, see if you

like it, see if it is for you. I'm not sure if it is for everyone, it's definitely for me. And yeah, enjoy it to the fullest. It's an extremely unique opportunity, so don't miss out. All right, Next one, What is the balance between evolving soft

skills and tech skills? I mean, how much should I be spending time on networking, communication, time management in comparison to tech subjects? Very interesting. First of all, I don't think there's a 100% correct answer for this. How I did it is technical skills. I learned mostly on the job because I was fortunate enough to have people around me and their job was to educate me and make sure I can do it by myself.

Very lucky for that I did some trainings here and there when it comes to tech specific, but I think you're not going to learn much in a training. It might give you a head start, but I think nowadays there's so much content online that you can educate yourself on the technical rather than going to a

training. Maybe it's trainers are going to hate me for that, but I think the content online is is valuable enough and you just have to find it basically then I really focused on the soft skill side of things. First of all, I think that's comfort. I think that's something I have been good at kind of from the start. And what you're good at already, you can be better at. I think you need both. So you need the technical side and you need the communication

side. You need to be able to deliver something, so your technical skills need to be there and you can always learn on the job. No one expects you to know everything you are expected to learn though. So educate yourself on the job, sometimes off the job, whatever excites you. Just go down a rabbit hole, read, try it out. Hopefully the environment is

open to that. Hopefully the deadlines are not too stringent and if they are, that's where the communication part comes in. Why do we need this? Can we deliver for this? Can we cut these things out and then still make the deadline? Or is do we need to stretch the deadline? Basically having the conversation, not moving away from difficult conversations and learning and growing also on the job, also off the job, practising, playing around with it, I think is incredibly

valuable. That's where it's really hard because I don't think you can say OK, you need this and you need that. You need to be able to explain things and I think there's real value in explaining things very simply. So to your teammates as well as to stakeholders, to people that are technical, simply is still incredibly valuable. Make sure that you listen and see if they actually understand you.

Ask for feedback in whatever it is you're doing, both on the technical side as well as on the communication front, the soft skills side and grow continuously. I asked for feedback and the feedback was actually quite confronting. It was when I joined here, someone told me I expected your technical skills to be kind of

better. Sometimes you're a bit slow on the pick up or you go down a rabbit hole and I don't see you for a few days and then you come out and we have a discussion and it needs to go in a different direction, very, very to the point. Direct feedback. Now I could have been like man, I don't like that person or so and so, but I took it to heart. I was like, OK, let's let's do pair programming. And I really, really focused on

what made them more productive. And a lot of it was knowing their IDE, knowing how to navigate and not going immediately into the code, but actually stepping back, thinking, OK, how can we solve that? What options do we have? Immediately touching base with team members and being like, OK, these are the thoughts, so and so solution directions, Which one do you think?

How do we want to tackle this? Picking an approach, seeing and testing as quickly as possible if it works, if it does, expanding it, finalising it, making a production ready. Those little details I think I could have only learned while pair programming. So I'm really fortunate to have peers next to me that I can pair program with, that I can learn from. And hopefully nowadays if someone tells me I'm slow, I at least want to know why, Because

back then I I think I agreed. Now I'm pretty confident in actually being productive, being effective with with whatever I'm doing. So yeah, but it's been a while so I haven't code in a while. I'm a product manager now. We'll get into that in a bit. It's really a balance of soft

skills and technical skills. I think the people that are around you, especially your manager, your team members, they can set the expectation, they can be like, well, we think you're you could learn more on this aspect or maybe you could try this. I think it's very good to. I think it's very good to distinguish what is advice and what is feedback. So when they say I've seen you done this and this and it had this effect, that is feedback.

If they say, well I think you should do this, that is advice. So if they say I think you should do this, you can ask why? Because then the feedback comes out. So yeah, I think the most important part, getting the feedback, seeing what you want to do with it. Feedback is always a gift. So you decide what to do with it, take it to heart, leave it next to you, focus on whatever you want to do and keep growing, keep educating yourself 5.

This is a fun one. By being a product manager, do you get to see the business side of how things work different than being a software developer? Yes, yes, 100%. I think the people, the person that asked this might have actually known. But this is a really fun one because I did this recently. I think as a software engineer, especially me, I still wanted to know why we do things, why we do the things we do. And I did like to challenge kind of the value and solution direction and so on and so

forth. Now on the product management side, first of all it depends on when you step into a role. For me, there was already a road map, so I had to understand, OK, what features did we promised to deliver. And then there were already deadlines. So I didn't set the deadlines. I had a conversation on are these deadlines realistic? What do we want to deliver? It's a real open conversation, but it's only open if you make

it open, basically. You can also accept the deadlines as they is and really put pressure on the team. But that's not what I like, because obviously from the team aspect, I don't like someone putting pressure on me without having a good understanding of why the deadlines are the way they are now. What really helps in a conversation is being mindful of people. Love thinking of solutions, love thinking of features. Oh, we need this. We need notifications.

We need an implementation for so and so. Oh, we can do this instantly, one solution after the other instead of figuring out what the problem is, What should we solve? What are other options than just this one solution? Really having that in your mind, bringing that to the conversation doesn't even matter

if it's the business side. Also, with the technical team by the way, is really going to have value of you as a product manager, product owner On that team especially being able to communicate that not every feature is valuable. Basically not everything needs a solution. Is this a real problem? Let's test our assumptions.

I think this comes with experience and I've had a lot of those conversations within the team on the technical side and now it's just a blast having that on the product side with people that think that technical side. I don't know what they think actually to be honest.

But it's just a blast to have that conversation also with the business side because from their point of view, they don't need to care necessarily about any tech that you have any solutions that are easy versus ones that are sustainable. They just, I feel like want features and they want value and they have a specific budget for that, probably because they're sponsoring your team or what structure you have. So they want to create value out of the money that you have.

It's basically your job to be like, OK, how do we amplify this value? Or is this really the value that we're looking for? Or do we have any other option here? And sometimes you have to say no, sometimes you have to say put your foot down. If people keep asking you about deadlines and about timelines, you can be like, can't even work like this.

So something just got triggered. Maybe not really, but in any case, it's your job to open up that conversation, and I really like the conversation I had with Marta Domain, he said. The product owner, the product manager is like the what's the term for it, the orchestrator or the orchestra? The conductor, maybe that's the word. The person that basically has the stick. Now, especially as a kid, I always looked at the guy and went like, what is he actually doing?

Because to me it made no sense. And still, as an adult, it makes very little sense. But at least I've read that the band, the orchestra plays better when there's actually conductor and when the conductor is really good. Now I'm not a specialist, but I'll take that to heart. And the product management, product owner role is very similar to that. A well oiled team can do really well without a product manager, without a product owner.

But someone to glue the holes, to orchestrate, to have the conversations with the people, to make sure that it's actually valuable, To make sure that the orchestra can play the best music they can continuously and sustainably, with resilience in mind. That's the role of a product manager and a product owner, focusing also on the sounds. So the value of the output, incredibly important, managing the expectations and the conversations incredibly important. So it's different, definitely a

different ball game. I think you can take those skills and especially if you're technical, go back into the team and be an individual contributor. Again, I think it's incredibly valuable. I think you can also step out of the team, take up some of the responsibilities or a full responsibility and learn a lot from that and do whatever you want with it. I think they're also life skills because it's a lot with regards

to soft skills. It's a lot managing politics, figuring out how the incentive structures work, how to make people move and get by in. So yeah, it's a different ball game, but a lot of fun. All right. I have a few more questions. All right, my question is

regarding code bases. How does one learn a large code base on the job? What was your first experience like with large code bases and any way to practice getting better at them? Practice. I would say open source contributions looking at the code that is out there. Usually those are of a scale that are a bit larger than maybe your your typical e-commerce

implementation. In any case, one example came to mind immediately and it was in the health field, similar to an e-commerce application, but a different user base, different needs. Now I came into that project and from the surface level I got a demo of the project of the product. It looked fairly straightforward

right? And also with my e-commerce experience, I could kind of see the things that we had created under the hood, though it was quite a large code base, a lot had to do with kind of the architecture and I specifically focused on the back end even though I did look to the front end code as well. It was an event driven architecture, it was DDD kind of in its own shape and form and it

was event sourced. So how you get specific domain objects, Where the information comes from, how the information is stored and resilient and doesn't get stored twice or interject with each other. Very interesting concepts to see someone have put in practice basically. And I came into the project and the project, the product was already three to four years old so that it had a history as well as the people working on it. The original people already

gone. I think the most senior person was already there for a year and a half when it came to the back end architecture. And luckily the front end person was there from the origin, but they had worked separately by themselves for a long, long time.

So you could also see that the front end kind of, yeah gained roots and kind of was a wildfire of implementations here and there, sometimes not really finished, sometimes hard to find component wise very specifically obviously in the mind of this person, but not really standardised for other people to easily jump in. Now the way I went about kind of getting comfortable in that is first of all having a conversation with the team, letting them and their

experience, kind of leveraging their experience, allowing them to explain kind of how they think it works as well as what they think I should focus on when going through this application. That's how it started. So getting an getting an overview from your teammates, leveraging the experience they have. Then secondly is trying to pick up something obviously in discussion with their team that that they think is doable coming in from a fresh person with a fresh pair of eyes.

I think that information is very valuable. And then just trying to get it done and seeing and getting feedback either in a code review or in a pair program, either in a code review or in a pair programming session. I think pair programming is way better for that because you get instant feedback rather than asynchronously with a pull request. Yeah, hearing myself talk, I feel like there's not really a silver bullet.

It's really finding a small task that is small enough trying to figure out how to do it, getting feedback either instantly or asynchronously. And I think it's not.

I think the more you work with large codes code bases, the more you get comfortable with it. The concepts of event sourcing were completely new for me. So I really had to figure out that first of all, event sourcing is you start with a blank slate and you build on top of whatever domain you need domain object with events that have happened in the past. So for example, when it comes to an order, you might have an initial or the creation object, then you might have order

updates. When it comes to shipping information, you might get e-mail notifications on top of that. So your order reflects the status that it has been sent, yes or no. Building up a domain object like that, stacked with layers of

events. Now the concept sounds kind of simple in theory, but then in practice you have to figure out that, OK, when we create an order, we just fire an event and then in a separate location of the code base, that's where the event gets picked up. And how does it get stored? And what happens when something gets delayed or we lose information? Oh yeah, we have retry mechanisms and this is actually stored there in an event store. So every single event separately.

And then when we need an order, what actually happens? Or we read out all the events specifically for this aggregate for this order and then they stack on top of each other. Oh interesting. And where does everything happen in the code base? Oh, it's actually very conventional. So the hardest part I would say after this long long rant is a code base without conventions. So the larger code base get, the more important conventions are. So put them in at the earliest stage of a project.

And if a project is already quite far without conventions, try and figure out if they're actually no conventions and otherwise figure out how to put the conventions back in there retroactively. Yeah, fun stuff, large cut bases, trying to make them small in your head. Try to focus on specific aspects. It's very hard not to create kind of shallows and kind of separate silos of the main knowledge within team members. So pair of programming and collaborate as much as you can

and yeah, grow from experience. It's a it's a hard one. Then as a mechanical engineering student and web developer, I'm

also interested in exploring opportunities in fields influenced by AI. Do you have any advice on how someone with my background can pivot towards AI related roles? First of all, I read mechanical engineer, student, student and web developer. Still learning early on and thinking about AI. Probably because everyone's talking about AI, there's a lot of AI solutions.

But I think if you have experience with web development, what my advice would be is to leverage that experience and see how you can fit in AI, work in delivering value to whatever application you're building. So anything user facing on the web, I think then you can leverage web development, you can Start learning on OK what and how do I fit in a model, what value can I provide to users and how do you actually

put it to production. Because the experience that people have putting LLM basically the newest AI solutions to to production is very scarce. That's where you can distinguish yourself in my opinion leveraging whatever skills you have, not fully focusing and going gung ho on AI specifically. I think it's better to do that gradually. So figuring out what solutions are there, I think Lang chain is

a very interesting concept. It's a framework to put LLMS to production actually with web development experience. So you might want to start there and then trying that out and seeing how you can do that and provide the value that way.

Then step by step within that process, within having learned how to put that to production, you can go into more of the how LLM works, more of the how LLMS work or operate or what other solutions are out there or specifically then step by step moving to the other AI solutions that are non LLM based. So yeah, recommendation algorithms, machine learning, they're still out there, they're just kind of being outshined

right now. So it really depends on kind of your appetite for AI. If that's really a field that you see yourself in for the long term or it's more of a hype bubble right now and that's why you're kind of getting interested in it. Leverage what you have put things to production, game production experience and then yeah, find like minded people, have discussions on implementations and learn all the way through. Good luck last one and certainly not the least no undo typing.

I have a question, beyond collaborating with new guests, how do you keep your content fresh and ensure it remains engaging and exciting to your audience? Then extra I'm sure a lot of Youtubers come across this problem where after posting a lot of content to get burnt out, they find it challenging coming up with new ideas. So how do you face this and make sure these ideas are still worth creating content for best example I have, for me it's the

Q&A. It's something we thought of more than a year ago, An interesting concept. I saw someone else do it, love stealing ideas and see if it's a good fit. And then we tried it out and I gained a lot of energy from it. I think it's really good to engage with people that are actually listening in with questions that they have. My perspective is not holy. I tell them I do my best to answer and obviously it's not my answer as the highway or the. I don't know how to say that

saying. Obviously my answer is not the only answer out there. I'm just here trying to give my perspective and being as honest and open as possible. This is a really fun kind of new thing that we've tried out and it's not really new anymore since it's been a year. Secondly, you already mentioned it. Every guest interaction I have is new for me.

Finding out what someone likes, what their passion is, what makes them tick, what really interesting experiences they've had, finding the gold in those conversations is what I love and is the only reason, I think, why the podcast has made it this far, because that is continuously fresh and interesting. Now this might be controversial, but I don't really think as much to what my audience might think is interesting or exciting when it comes to a topic with the

conversation in mind. I am kind of listener first, so I try and get to the gold quicker. It's something I'm experienced, it's something I'm experimenting with and still playing around with, but high over on a topic level. I just pick topics that first of all resonate with the person sitting across from me, the guest. Something that is in their zone of passion and something that just I think is interesting. And that last bit. I think a lot of things are interesting. To be honest.

I think, especially if someone's passionate about it, I would love to have a conversation with them. Something to keep it fresh and interesting. I think it's kind of switching up the formula. We always have kind of a pre show conversation can be about

anything, Food, love, food. If people are in the same area, what are the favorite restaurants, favorite foods, remote working, their way of working, whatever they do, what makes them take any type of hobby they have can spin into kind of an awesome conversation And then we go into more of the topics we discussed and now I'm switching up with the formula. What type of pre show conversations? What questions do I ask? Where in editing do we actually

start the conversation? Is it in the pre show? Is the pre show actually really interesting and entertaining or do we get to the gold quicker and actually start when we hit the topics and then see how that plays out, analyse whatever we have, reflect, adapt and doing all over again. I yeah, I think it's the it's the best part of the job.

It's kind of the learning process and obviously to your point, I think the learning curve in anything you do YouTube related in the beginning is going to be the highest figuring out a way that makes it sustainable. I think you have to keep experimenting, you have to keep learning, you have to have fun with it. This is for me incredibly fun. So have fun with whatever you do because I feel like it's kind of a a dread as well I have.

If you lose that, then that's when you get into the cycle of it's just becoming work and it becomes the cycle of not giving your energy and it becomes the cycle that has towards a burnout or maybe a big break. Now funny enough, I do take big breaks and before that I make sure that I can take big breaks because I like consistency from the start.

So for example, the last four weeks, 5 weeks, I have to, I actually haven't recorded anything and I've really missed it. So I'm really excited for this part. So yeah, keep it interesting, keep it fresh, still take a break here and there. I think that's the only way to make it resilient. Then when it comes to new content, ideas and kind of the challenge there, I let a lot of things inspire me. I just mentioned the little stealing of ideas.

I listened to a lot of podcasts, I mean previously, way more than I do now. But from there I really reflect and think of, OK, is there something I can change? There's something I can incorporate. What do I love and what is different and what can I not do? Because this is just not the same formula.

Being inspired by others, I think, is a really good way of coming up with fresh ideas, having a conversation and having people in your corner that you can have conversation with brother that you can have conversations with because they're just as passionate as you, or at least in the same ballpark. When it comes to the passion that you have is really valuable as well, because then you can bounce off ideas, finding community and getting feedback.

It can also be your audience, but it can also be other content creators. Yeah, it's. I think it's a necessity to make it sustainable for the long run.

That is it. That is it. That is it. Yes, that is it. Thank you so much for listening in. Thank you so much for the people that sent me their questions. I hope I did justice while answering them. If you still have questions, put them in the comments below the like button are obviously you can find me on Twitter and on LinkedIn where I get most of the questions in any case. So yeah, thank you so much for listening.

This has been a blast. It's been a while since the last Q&A, so hopefully the next Q&A can be a bit sooner. We'll see how it goes. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you on the next one.