The bar for offering customer service that doesn’t suck is extremely low these days. Nothing can be more frustrating than needing to speak with a person, only to have to waste time talking to a chatbot. Or, after getting past the chatbot, get frustrated with the lack of attention from the support team. In a world where AI (cough cough) is the answer for every problem, attentive customer service and human touch are what I desperately crave....
“I am having a hard time asking for help at my new job.” After a couple of hours of being stuck, I sent that message to my friend, Caroline. I shared how hard it was for me to be in a place surrounded by talented people. How I felt like I was not worthy of being there. I needed help but I didn’t want to show I needed help. After all, if I were good enough, I should have known how to solve the problem!...
When I decided to start Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT), I embarked on a quest: I wanted to find out why my brain was my enemy. I didn’t get it. If my brain’s goal was to keep me alive, why was I wanting to not be alive anymore? It didn’t make sense. I wanted to find out what was wrong with my brain. After years of therapy, meditation, and neuroscience research, I got to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with me....
Nothing kills confidence more than waiting to feel confident to do something. You will be waiting forever. Attention and Determination is what you need to achieve your goals – no matter how scary they are. Learning about the power of Attention and Determination made me fall in love with this series about achievement orientation from the First Person Plural podcast. It’s one of my favorite podcasts (after hexdevs, of course ;)....
Writing is easy. Anyone can write a post of 500 words. But what does it take to go from a writer to becoming a writer with readers? Insights gathered by trying different things, willingness to make mistakes, and working in public. Therefore, I always get curious when I find people who have successfully created writing careers, or businesses on top of their writing skills. This curiosity led me to read “The Art and Business of Online Writing”, by Nicolas Cole (my co-founder, Thiago Araujo, also recommended reading it)....
I know how hard it is to give everything you got for job interviews only to be rejected every time. It’s so hard to keep going because every time you get a rejection, it makes you doubt if you’re a good developer. In my experience, the feeling of not being a good developer never goes away. It’s something worth learning how to handle so it doesn’t keep sabotaging you. Truly said, nobody wants to hire people with less than 3-5 years of experience....
What differentiates perfectionism from excellence? I only learned the difference recently. Reading this quote from the book “Work Clean: The life-changing power of mise-en-place to organize your life, work, and mind”, changed how I approached my work. I used to feel proud by saying I was a perfectionist. That meant months, years of planning every single detail of everything. Setting the stakes higher as time went by. Perfectionism is a great excuse for trying to control the results....
Hi, welcome! The posts under “/notes” are just that: notes about things I’ve read or watched. I used to just write them for myself. I figured sharing them is more helpful than keeping them just to myself. Enjoy! Sharing a few notes about Imposter Syndrome based on the work of Dr. Vanessa Bohns and Dr. Randy Patterson. The Science of Influence I finished watching this interview with Dr....
You’re focusing on finding that first Ruby job. You’ve been practicing for months or years. You’ve been applying to entry-level jobs, even internships. You polish your resume. Tweak your portfolio. Attach your CV. Press Submit. Chirp, chirp, chirp 🦗 Nothing happens. Worse: you do an amazing interview, people loved you. But then they say they are moving forward with someone else that has more experience. Welp, next time is going to be different....
When you get stuck, it’s really easy to block yourself from creatively solving your problem. You start asking “why am I so dumb?”, or thinking that you don’t have a programmer’s brain, or feeling that you’ll never understand anything. How is that helpful? It isn’t. The way we talk to each other (even to ourselves) impacts our performance. It’s not self-help BS. It’s how our brain works....