Oi, galera! You don’t need to overwork to stand out in your team.
Paulo Cardoso reacted to my post with 10 tips to stand out at work, sharing his thoughts on his YouTube channel. Well, actually, he reacted to the Medium version.
He translated and expanded on all 10 points. He added more context to each point. All in Portuguese.
Check out his full breakdown below.
Hey there.
Here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week:
#1. I had ~5 meetings to decide what to do on each sprint. And I wasn’t doing any rocket science, just boring enterprise software. Meetings are the #1 distraction and a necessary evil. Here’s how to create the ultimate meeting culture (8min).
#2. If you’re a new manager or you want to become one, here’s a down-to-earth guide for new managers (7min). I really liked the coach analogy.
#3. Here’s another way how AI is “killing” junior coders (4min) in the open source world.
#4. If you’ve ever wondered if you’re a good programmer, read this post/reflection. It helps with the impostor syndrome.
And in case you missed it, I wrote on my blog about the business lesson I learned buying a new mattress (2min) and 10 career actions you will never regret (2min).
(Bzzz…Radio voice) This email was brought to you by… Check my Gumroad store to access free and premium books and courses to level up your coding skills and grow your software engineering career.
See you next time,
Cesar
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My corporate journey didn’t come with an instruction manual.
I landed my first job because that’s what everyone does and what I was supposed to do. I joined the corporate world without any goal, other than “gain experience.” Which I did it.
But I was fired from my first job, got bored from my second, and got laid off from my last one. No survival kit or instruction manual. Only trial and error.
If I could start all over again, here are 10 actions I will never regret doing:
And more importantly, figure out my own career and plan life instead of accepting the default path. That’s a lesson that took me 10 years to learn.
“Sorry, it’s too late. There’s nothing to do,” a salesgirl told me.
Earlier that day, the mattress I had ordered was delivered. I was told I should get it assembled and ready to use. But the delivery man told me, “I was hired only to deliver this to you.”
I tried to contact the company by dialing the phone number on the invoice. It didn’t work. It was either wrong or constantly busy. I checked their website for a phone number. No luck!
Then I rushed back to the mall where I bought it. The salesgirl called her supervisor. I wasn’t the only one receiving a mattress in pieces that day.
“If you had called me right away, maybe I could have done something,” she told me. After telling me it was too late, she explained that my mattress was delivered from another city via another delivery company. “Hey, but it isn’t that hard for you to assemble the mattress. It has some instructions inside.” Arrggg!
If you promise something on your sales pages, deliver that promise. And make sure everyone involved understands what they need to do to make it a reality.
Imagine KFC handing you raw chicken and telling you, “You can fry it on your own. It comes with a step-by-step. It’s not that difficult.” You would never visit that restaurant again. Just like I’ll never trust that mattress company again.
There’s no secret to business, just promise, then deliver.
We all know doom-scrolling is the worst.
But recently, I found myself doing precisely that on Instagram. Not every day has to be productive, right?
Out of hundreds of posts, one made me stop scrolling.
It was the video of a girl cleaning a house while saying she wanted to keep cleaning houses for a living, even with two graduate degrees. It was probably a sketch promoting a book.
But she said a line that resonated deeply with me:
“I don’t want to pretend I care about things I don’t care about.”
Wow! That made my head explode. That was me a couple of years ago, stuck in a 9-5 with decent pay and flexible hours, pretending to care. Spoiler alert: I got sick and burned out. I didn’t burn out by doing too much, but from boredom and indifference. By doing things I didn’t care about.
And that line made the scrolling session worth it. Yes, even doom-scrolling can teach valuable lessons life lessons.