Welcome to my journey!

Illusions can be fun, but also dangerous. Today I went to the museum of illusions. When you have illusions about your career, this is dangerous. Staying in the same place, without any chance of progress, is usually bad (not always). But when you go to a show, or museum, illusions can be very entertaining. It is also hard to change other people’s illusions. So be careful what illusions you are creating and what illusions you believe in. Because they might cost you a lot.

 I can't imagine a society without laws. There is no such thing in the modern world. But it is even harder to imagine a prosperous society without fair laws and trusted system. This is how big organizations work as well. The HR are not your friends; they are here to protect the senior management and the company. So when you want to make a change or to report a problem, usually you will be the one to be blamed. No wonder why most of the company's defects and problems are found by end users or fraudulence entities. Can we change that and can we make a fair system where people will be truly encouraged to report misconducts? This is something we still need to see. There are many examples of organizations that have an ethics department, just to be fired when they were doing too good job. So next time when AI organization or big media site tells you they comply with ethical standards, first see who are the people who enforce those standards and you might be for a huge surprise. The r

 Who are the motivation sessions organized by organizations for? It feels like a propaganda, because their objective is not to listen to what makes people slow and what processes are obsolete. They want you to know that you, the organization, and everyone around you are the best. Why they serve that purpose? The delusion is a way cheaper method to “solve” issues than actually solving them. Organizations don’t want change, even if this is the only thing they talk about. But sometimes when the attrition level is low, they are forced to do something about it, and always the first plan is to introduce some sort of motivation training. Not to solve the issues, but to try to keep problems “out of sight, out of mind”. Only when this plan backfired it will be time to actually force some sort of change in the organization. Therefore, all the motivation trainings are useless, but needed phase in the organization change and adaptability.

 Remember how everyone convinced us that working remotely is provides the same benefits and even more compare to working in the office? Well… it seems like the things are shifting back to the status quo. And the reason is simple. Control! It is far easier to control people when they are in the office compared to when they are not. Also, there is a risk for many low-level managers to become obsolete if people indeed start to self-organized and solve their own problems. You might ask yourself: “What about the productivity and the benefits for the company? “ It seems like the personal interests and politics supersede the shareholder interests. The era of flexibility and productivity is coming to a close and monitoring and constraints will make a comeback.

 Today I needed to take a train. In the past, I would have gone to the train station and buy it directly, because there is always space in the train. But a friend of mine told me that the reserved seats finished very fast two days ago and therefore it is better to buy it on-line as soon as possible. So I did it, and everything was really good… for me. There were many people who weren’t able to find a seat on that train. Therefore, in today’s world where you can buy a ticket faster and convenient on-line, there is no excuse in being surprised if you can’t find a place to sit. This makes the old generation and people who don’t like or accept innovations in a very disadvantage place. Technologies, like fax and teletext, are already obsolete. We as species need to evolve and adapt to live a convenient life or join the rest who can’t find seats on the train.

 Investing is a complex topic. Don’t just jump on it without first assessing the risk. Ask yourself what is your risk tolerance level, usually low returns equals low risk. Do you want to take a bigger risk? What is your investment window (1,5, 10 years)? Look at your mortgage. What is your current interest rate? Do you plan to refinance it in the next 3,5,10 years? Another alternative is to go 80/20 and pay this extra 2k per month and reduce the time you need to return your mortgage. Would that work for you? Also, look at the cost of the investment instruments. One Financial adviser tried to sell me, unsuccessfully, a ridiculously expensive investment with lots of fees. Don’t fall for such traps and make your own research before trusting the internet for financial advice. I hope those questions help you figure out what you really want to do.

  It is important to achieve a balance between Junior and Senior people in your team. Recently I had to explain to someone why making class abstract is not the way to go when you need to implement a utility class. And today I did an assessment on an implementation we need to extend to another customer. I know the business flow and use cases very well, even if I was working on a UN project for the last few months. But thrilled with the architecture I had created and how easy it is to implement and integrate another customer to the system. The moral is to give the freedom to senior devs to design a solid system that can be extended and give them time to mentor junior people on how to get better.

 One of the easiest and hardest thing to do when you work or build a company is to create a trust. If you hire “A” players, trust is easy. Such people naturally want them and people around them to succeed. If you hire “B” players, this is another issue. They are worried someone else will take over what they do. They will be focused on controlling people and, at the end, trust will never be a norm and a company culture. If you hire “C” players, forget about culture changing. They will over-promise and under-deliver. They won’t know how to approach such task and they rarely are incentive or innovative. Unfortunately, from time to time I need to work with “C” players and it is frustrating, but for the sake of my sanity I am getting better in letting go of my need to innovate and apply the best solutions just to avoid conflicts with people who are unable to process new ideas. Then it is very hard to have trust when you know that people you work with don’t have the same level of passion and

 It is hard to be productive and feel productive when you are stuck in a unproductive meeting. But what you can do is break the script. Change the expectations. Think and do things differently compare to the rest of people who allow themselves to be bored. My philosophy is that life is worth living and then it is important to live better and improve yourself. If we all do what everyone is doing, then we risk to be as mediocre as everyone else. Don’t settle for mediocrity. Do things better than others and create a better life for yourself. In that way, you can become productive with your time.