Why do I care?

It's not even my business. It's not going to make me any more happier and richer if I do things right.

So why do I care about your products? About your company? About your money? About your users?

I don't have a great answer to that, but how about this one?

It's literally in my job description as a software developer to make great products for the users. It's in my job description that I do that with the best interest of the company that hires me.

It's also because I just so happened to spend 5 years studying the very same engineering principles which I'm trying to employ in order to make great products.

And maybe just maybe because I have been doing this for a while now. And experience does mean I have seen how leaders fails, and how great products crumbles and how companies burns.

It's because of you lazy and uninterested leaders who take your position for granted and make it irrelevant.

You lead, I will follow.

It's simple as that. Otherwise, let us lead and you follow.

Just step away.

I always had to do above average effort for barely average results.

I hated this.

My wife turn it around. She said: "The more you struggle the more your success feels good."

We both passed driving test, she did it with zero problems just casually learning over the app. Me? Well I was studying like never in my life.

Difference is that when I passed it felt like I win a lottery.

It's good to be average. I believe it runs the world.

I learned more from a good junior than a great senior. Because seniors tends to be highly opinionated and not willing to open their minds. Juniors especially good ones, will not challenge you BUT due to their eagerness to learn will ask questions which will make you think twice about how correct your approach is.

This is why great teams should have a healthy balance of seniors vs juniors.

I am increasingly frustrated with React developers (I am one of them) always trying to be smart, super smart, or even too smart. Being too smart often means being delusional, thinking that every decision during development needs to be super clever, abstracted, and, without exception, innovative.

Which tech stack does not suffer from over engineering and is a LOT more opinionated while at the same time has decent DX?

Letter to God.

I see suffering of so many people. I see them doing each other evil. I'm scared. There's seems to be no voice of reason. There seems to be no love.

When my son was born I cried together with him. It was the most beautiful moment of my life. Never have I been as close to you God as that day.

Can you do for others what you did for me that day?

Can you show them how love can be absolutely unconditional? Or is it on me to share this message?

If so, I will do it.

People, I know God loves us, we need to recognize God in us and see God in each other. And love the God in and out of ourselves.

God. Help us see you. And forgive us, forgive me, as the absence of love in my surrounding is getting better of me.

Peace has a price. Massive one. Peace is payed in Love, for each other and for God.

I believe in Love.

So... Being married and having kids are two things one can expect to gain so much from.

Ofc, love and meaning and purpose but also it can make you work harder and more smarted.

It also, will make you sleep less.

I love you my little boy ❤️

Speaking from the heart ( hope it won't backfire )... ❤️

• I happen to be able to get a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
• Serve many clients and companies during what is now my 8th year working as web developer.

• I am far from your best ever (Google, Meta, Deep Mind etc) friendly developer.

  But I do believe that I left no company, team, or client dissatisfied with my work and results.
  I acknowledge the fact that I must and can be better tho.

  Here comes the meaty part, you ready? 🥩

  I am suspected to have dyscalculia, something that has been a challenge for me since forever.

  Things I find difficult on a day to day basis:

• Analog clock, I have to multiply 9 * 5, recognise that clock hand MUST be before the number and only then I can tell the time, takes around 30s.
• I know only half of multiplication table, rest I calculate from the known one by doing subtraction.
• I have insane amount of anxiety (shame) when I have to do math in public setting.
• Oh many other issues as well with both my native language and second one where I mix similar words. (Then vs Than just one example)
• I don't know the date of birth of my family members (my mom yes, as she was born on 8th of March) 🌹
• I missed important doctor appointments many times as I confused the dates.

• etc

  You might assume (rightfully so) that I will not be a decent developer, however, I might not be the most talented out there, but I am focused and I work work work....

  I use calendar for everything, task manager for absolutely everything (I would literally put task "think about how you can solve <insert problem>"). I never missed a single meeting as again thank God we have calendars.

  I recognise that I have to do more to be the average at best, but I do very often perform above expectations. There is no feedback from my line managers that was ever concern about my professionalism, my skills and my results in a negative way. As a matter of fact, most of the time I am being told to take a step back, not to push that hard, not to over achieve as I tend to experience burnouts.

  Why am I talking about this now?

  Because I am angry, sad, frustrated and hurt by in which direction our industry is going, it has been in a downfall for some time already, which is weird because with all the super cool stuff we are building with the AI you would assume the opposite.

  I am seeing a massive trend of companies who are as a first interview doing IQ tests. To make it even worse, test is not your typical IQ test, it is based in quick math, testing your so called "numerical thinking" that one people like me have a huge problem with.

  So yes I failed one, more then one...

  I won't fail any moving forward, as, well, I won't be taking any. 🙅‍♂️

  Questions I have for our industry?

• What happen with inclusivity efforts?

• What happen with diversity (neurodiversity in this case) efforts?

  Were they ever genuine?

Reasons why I experienced burnout many times is for example being denied growth opportunities even though I fullfil all the expectations set by my manager.

Being assigned on tasks which are extremely simple and not challenging.

Having to deal with things which has nothing to do with product / software development, example long discussions about how to change git branch name.

Incompetent leadership, and incompetent employees who are blindly following, creating terrible software development practices harming the business but somehow making stakeholders happy, until, well layoffs...

By far the biggest reason I burned out is because , I care about my work, I care about the customers, I care about the people and I absolutely put business success at the top of my priorities but somehow non of those qualities are being valued, appreciated and never reworded.

I had terrible micro management, a tone of responsibilities at certain companies and a lot of work. Never have I ever experienced burnout due to "too much work".

Sleepless nights, cold sweats, back pain and more serious symptoms which I'm not comfortable sharing ALL stopped when I reduced how much I care.

I feel like they won.