28 Sep 2025 #writing
After maybe a month, I caught up with an old friend and got a surprise critique.
The first thing he told me was, “I had some time without checking LinkedIn. I found one of your posts, but it was too long and I stopped reading midway.” We both laughed. Ouch!
When my friend said that, I realized I do the same thing. I skip big blocks of text on LinkedIn and blog posts.
Truth is, people scroll social media for dopamine, not for depth. And we should write for them, too. We should use attention-grabbing opening lines and short, well-formatted posts.
Graffiti, social media posts, essays, book chapters…They’re all different. Readers come with different goals. The platform sets its own rules and expectations. Our job is to write in a way that fits.
27 Sep 2025 #writing
I binge-watched another TV show again. And to not feel guilty, I’m writing about it.
This time, I watched Black Doves on Netflix, an espionage and action story that takes place in present-day London. The Black Doves, a private intelligence firm, placed an agent close to a top government official to steal secrets and sell them.
After binge-watching the 6 episodes, here are the writing devices I noticed:
#1. It starts with action, blood, and mystery. The first scene shows a triple killing. Enough action to hook anyone.
#2. Every episode complicates the plot more. It felt like watching The Mandalorian, where each alliance pulls Mando away from his goal. The same thing happens in this show.
A simple revenge turns into an entangled plot that involves Britain’s political stability and possibly sparks the next World War.
#3. Almost every episode starts with a time jump to show us the background story of our characters. We see how Helen is recruited and how she turns from an amateur agent into a cold-blooded killer with a double life.
#4. It uses flashbacks to tell us when Helen is lying. The Black Doves have one rule they take seriously: nobody should know about the existence of the organization. But Helen broke this rule and she lies about it all the time. And through flashbacks, we see the truth.
#5. Instead of an omniscient narrator, we get to know about Helen’s past through an interview. She applies to an international company, where her past is questioned during the interview. We get to know her without boring dialog or narration. Clever trick!
#6. They use a line as a connecting element. “If one door closes, a window opens elsewhere,” or something like that. We hear it in almost every episode. It keeps the plot going in spite of every setback.
Other TV show breakdowns? Not Really on Purpose, House M.D., and Six Triple Eight.
26 Sep 2025 #mondaylinks
Hey there.
Here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week:
#1. Being a good tech leader isn’t about knowing all the answers. Here’s how a good leader leads a room full of expert (7min). I loved this piece so much that I wrote a reaction post.
#2. Ten years ago, the junior me wanted to optimize every line of code. Newbie mistake. I wish I had found this guide with 9 things every graduate should know about performance (5min).
#3. Hey this is kind-of a pitch, but the new coding gig is vibe-coding clean up (6min). It doesn’t sound that bad.
#4. Without getting into politics, here’s a breakdown of how it’s like using online services from a “banned” country (6min). Well, from that posts I learned about a HTTP response code.
And in case you missed it, I wrote on my blog about the first step for reinvention when we feel lost (2min) and I reacted to how to lead in a room full of experts (3min).
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See you next time,
Cesar
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25 Sep 2025 #writing
I have a new writing obsession: Noticing and dissecting the opening lines of books.
I should blame James Altucher, one of my favorite writers, for this obsession. His advice taught me to master opening lines by dissecting the best fiction writers.
And this time, to apply that lesson, I studied Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Colombian writer who won a Nobel prize. He’s a master of opening lines. And this one is no exception.
An ash-gray dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst onto the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday in December, knocked down tables of fried food, overturned Indians’ stalls and lottery kiosks, and bit four people who happened to cross its path. Three of them were black slaves. The fourth, Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles, the only child of the Marquis de Casalduero, had come there with a mulatta servant to buy a string of bells for the celebration of her twelfth birthday.
OK, that wasn’t just an opening line, but a paragraph. Let’s break it down:
#1. This intro starts with huge drama. A dog is creating an unbelievable mess in the market. It has a white blaze on its forehead. This detail becomes relevant later. But no spoilers.
#2. It uses the rule of three to present the disaster the dog created:
- “knocked down tables…”
- “overturned Indian’s stalls…”
- “bit four people…”
#3. It presents the main character in the middle of the action. That is Sierva Maria. The dog also bit her. This is the starting incident of the entire story.
We also learn more about Sierva. She’s the daughter of a Marquis and she’s about to turn 12. And she’s placed among slaves and servants. Another detail that becomes relevant later.
The formula? Drama followed by a character trapped in the middle of it.
24 Sep 2025 #career
Being the smartest in the room doesn’t mean you’re ready to lead it.
Doing a job well isn’t the same as leading others who do it. Being a soccer player isn’t the same as being the team coach. They need different skill sets.
Ibrahim Diallo makes a good point about leading a room full of experts. Here are three of his points and my reactions:
Technical credibility gives you a seat. But your social skills make you shine
In a room full of experts, your technical credibility gets you a seat at the table, but your social skills determine whether anything productive happens once you’re there.
I learned this lesson in meetings with the CEO and other executives at a past job.
It was at a small tech shop in my city. I was a Software Engineer I, first of five “ranks” in the company’s career ladder. My hard work gave me a seat on the table. I don’t recommend hard work anymore.
The CEO was a coder turned businessman. Sure, he understood a lot of jargon and technical details. But most of the time, he replied with “I don’t care” or “You’re insane” when we dropped technical terms.
By trial and error, I learned to translate technical language into business language.
Your goal is to find the right person for each task
Your value [as a leader] isn’t in having all the expertise. It’s in recognizing which expertise is needed when, and creating space for the right people to contribute their best work.
I’ve seen it all around me. A newly promoted coder who still acts like a rock star, doing all the work. Focusing on lines of code and pull requests instead of projects, milestones, and team dynamics. That’s a recipe for burnout for the leader and failure for the team.
The perfect example of good leadership and delegation comes from the movie Ocean’s 11 and its sequels.
In every movie, there’s an impossible item to steal. Of course, that’s never a solo job. It takes a team. The leader presents the challenge and a solution plan.
But each team member brings their expertise: the locksmith to open a vault, the social guy to extract valuable intel from a person of interest, the gymnastics guy to break into impenetrable rooms, and the explosives guy to create a distraction.
Follow the same idea from Ocean’s 11, but replace the robbery with a project and all specialties with the right ones.
Be comfortable not having all the answers
The more comfortable you become with not being the expert, the more effective you become as a leader.
A business book taught me: a good entrepreneur should manage and lead a team of people way smarter than themself. The same is true for teams in charge of knowledge work.
As a tech leader, learn to lead people smarter than you. Otherwise, you will always lead a team of junior people. A good leader finds the right person for the right job and makes them thrive.