May

Since the last letter a lot has happened and a lot of time has been spent on reading about Multi-Agent Systems and the history of AI. Also managed to reuse existing Python code to play with passive agent training. The academic year is ending soon and I still have one rather big homework to complete. Being a student at this age is a bit weird but definitely interesting - when the professor is twice your age, you're still a kid in his eyes.

This morning my old friend Mark Smalley sent me a complimentary copy of his book 'Are you digitally “done”?' and I found a simple but well-resonating phrase in it - "if you stand up, you'll see more". It's something that I face daily with my potential customers and coachees. The problem is standing up. It's easy to sit and enjoy the ride. Often, we're so overwhelmed with daily struggles that we don't even think to look beyond. I remember myself 27-something taking care of a rather big team and not having the energy to spend additional effort on gaining some new knowledge. Work work work. Luckily, my performance was still amazing and I almost got a burnout because of my always-growing team. Somehow naturally I understand that I must stop, start reading books and change the way I do things. As I see in my practice, this behaviour is unconventional. However, spending 55% of my business hours as an entrepreneur in 4 walls still feels a very much conventional way of life for an IT guy ?? A lot of people instead keep flowing through the downward spiral, some get the famous burnout, others become clerks and bureaucrats to save their mental wellbeing.

But how can you help to stand up to those who need it the most? This reminds me a bit of the video about Atomic Habits that I watched a few days ago. I don't know if that's in the book, but the guy who gave a 30-minute summary basically said "You need to start with having a routine to get up at the same time every day and then stack your good habits on top of this habit" - oh my, try to tell that to a person who is having a war with that snooze button ? ??

But what do you say to an IT director who is always busy, engineers are stagnating, systems are rotting, methodologies and frameworks are not being followed, processes are slow, and at some point it becomes a norm? How do you help such a profile to stand up its eyes (obviously saying "he/she" is not okay these days anymore. The world is weird. However, I said that Nemo is a genius when I saw "it" in the semi-finals after the first 15 seconds) and see that not Docker has been released 10 years ago, or that Kubernetes is not a solution to everything. How do you help a dictator of 25 engineers to grow and stop controlling them like muppets to scale the team? How do you help an engineer discover that writing tests before the feature code will improve overall productivity multiple times?

Honestly? I don't think I have an answer. I keep being myself, and keep organizing diverse events for those who want to stand up. I try to visit events by others and sometimes manage to overcome myself and ask a stranger "Hey, and what do you do? ... nice, and how do you measure your success?" - back at the Agile Saturday in Tallinn someone responded with a 10 min response that daily improvements are stupid, that teams don't need that, how he hates companies who ask for that etc. etc. (I remind that it was a conference about Agile) I somewhat regret that I'm still learning to leave conversations that I don't enjoy, however, a different point of view is also valuable. I don't believe there is a way how to help such people to stand up and see more, not without putting them down first. My only strategy then can be "let them fail and then come back to us." - it frustrates me, it means I'm not being helpful, but I suppose this is where the quote fits well - "You're not a one hundred dollar bill. Not everyone is going to like you.". Don't fight your daemons. Talk to them, learn them, leverage them.

Must-visit events:

• See you at the ICF conference (Kou?ings- bieds vai iespēja uz?ēmējdarbībai?) later today. Thank you for such a touching invite Vladimirs Ivanovs ?? obviously, Vineta Berzina and Martins Melkis "sold" it to me a week earlier.
• We're looking for speakers for the big DevOps & Agile Summer Retreat event on the 22nd of August!!! https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/uldiskarlovskarlovskis_devops-agile-event-activity-7195670005017935872-t8pS
• May 21st evening - come and learn how to boost your engineering performance ?? at the Riga Tech Dojo https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/techies-of-baltics_xp-is-more-than-25-years-old-but-so-many-ugcPost-7194195570880610304-DJsa
• On the 28th of May, we'll have the regular DevOps & Agile Talk meetup. The poster was created like a week ago. I don't know why we haven't published the event yet ?? Save the date ??????
• The next Riga Tech Dinner ?? is on the 11th of June. It took me some major effort to get these two unicorns Marta Rautenschild and Armands Liseks in one evening. The seats at the dinner table are limited, you better hurry - https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7195748685094281216

See you around and don't forget to like the post in case you... well... liked it! ??????