How To Refactor Your Brain - Interview With Dagna Bieda

Hi, I'm Nick Causantino and I'm a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft. In this video interview, I was joined by Dagnet Ba who is an engineer turned coach. We got to go indepth on her book called Brain Refactor. And I thought this was a super cool concept because all of the topics in her book are things that software engineers go through, but the way that she explains the concepts are in ways that software engineers think. So, it's an entirely different perspective on a lot of different topics that we often hear about, like things like burnout and imposttor syndrome because they're framed in a way that software engineers like to think. So, I thought this conversation was super cool. I'm going to be picking up her book and making sure that I spend some time on it and I think that you're really going to enjoy this. So, sit back, enjoy, and I'll see you next time. Okay. So, if you if you don't mind, if you want to kick us off by giving us a little bit of background for who you are and how you got to to where you are today. >> Yes. Okay. So my name is Dagna Beda and I'm a career coach or engineer turned career coach for engineers and ambitious professionals in tech. I am the tough love style of coach because I've been there and you know I have faced a lot of the struggles that my clients currently face and that's what makes me a really good person to help you see what's sitting in your blind spot, what you're missing. Why are you facing the struggle that you're currently facing? And I'm super pumped to be here today with you, Nick, because my book, Brain Refactor, has just launched and is available on Kindle on Amazon for just 99 cents or free if you have Kindle Unlimited. So, um, you know, I hope we dive a little bit deeper into the contents of the book and so that everybody can have a little bit of a preview, everyone who's listening, and then maybe jump in and get the book for themselves. >> Yeah. No, that's great. For sure. We'll absolutely go into into sort of more deep dive on the content. I'd love to hear from you, you know, the sort of the I'm sure you have lots of favorites, but like kind of hearing about the parts that really stick out for you and and and why that was so meaningful to create. So maybe to to kind of kick things off like I think it's pretty interesting uh you know going from say software engineering into career coaching like for you what did what did that look like and and why the transition and like how did that come about? Like I'm assuming that one day you were coding things up and then like something clicked or maybe it was over time like what did that look like? >> Yeah. So long story super short is I burned myself out and ended up in therapy sessions and in those therapy sessions I felt like I was debugging my own internal mental legacy code. Okay. And I was like, "Wow, this doesn't feel much different from what I already do at work, but it's so much more fascinating because now the code is not, you know, just displayed on the screen of a computer. It's actually hidden in my thoughts and the beliefs that I have and carry in my head around about the world around me and the people around me." So that was that started to like really spark the fire back on after a period of burnout, right? Um because I mean I loved my engineering job when it was challenging and you know intellectually stimulating and I was solving the bugs, creating features, creating new products from scratch and that was fun, >> right? >> Until it wasn't until I started feeling like I was just a cog in a machine. >> Okay. and people didn't really see me for my contributions and I had trouble really standing out and marketing myself and I felt like I was this ignored subject matter expert you know which is a very common experience from what I know now having been a coach and having coached people from different backgrounds in different domains >> so um that's kind of like in a nutshell but really you know once I started the talk therapy and I realized realized that it felt like debugging my own mental code. >> I felt so on fire and inspired and I was like this is what I want to do now. Like just talking to someone can like help them tremendously change their perspective >> and life outcomes like you know mind blown. So that's the reason I ended up committing to doing coaching and ended up figuring out a plan to exit my 9-to-f5 a cushy six figure salary to end up starting my own coaching business. Before we continue on, this is just a quick reminder that I do have courses available on domera. If you're just getting started in your programming journey and you want to learn C, you can head over to do train. I have a getting started in C course. It's approximately 5 hours of content taking you from absolutely no experience to being able to program in C. And after that, I have my deep dive course which will take you to the next level with another 6 hours of content so that you can start building basic applications. Head over to dorain and check it out. Let's head back to the video. That's awesome. And I can imagine too going from a if you're in a position of feeling like you're burnt out for the reasons you said where it's kind of like you don't feel like you're the you know not being recognized for the work you're doing feeling like a cog to all of a sudden when you're able to coach people almost having like this immediate I don't want to say immediate that's too too strong of a word but like this direct connection to someone where you can say I'm working with them and I know that I'm able to help like it's instead of being like hey look no one's seeing the impact it's like this person is directly feeling the impact of our work together which I can imagine is very rewarding >> very very much so and you know when I think about how I approached my career in general throughout my life it feels like I've been always chasing impact like that's something that was always important for me and when I was like 15 years old I thought I am going to create the future whatever that means >> sure yeah >> in the mind of a teenager right so I ended up when I started started applying for college applications. I ended up finding like the most futuristic thing I could find and it was control automation and robotics. >> Awesome. Okay. >> So, I studied robotics. I did my bachelor's and master's degree in robotics back in Poland. And um you know, it felt like building robots was like so cool and so fun and >> you know, wow. except that I was just starting out my engineering career and it turns out that building a robot takes a long freaking time and for the projects that I've worked on, >> you know, they were kind of like a DARPA equivalent um what is happening in United States just based in European Union. So European Union would sponsor these projects to um you know further the research and I was working at a company in Poland that build robots alongside with multiple universities across European Union and we were building these different kinds of robots and I realized that after I've helped build them they would end up sitting in a lab somewhere and maybe like a handful of PhD students would ever touch them. And that felt so disillusioning and I was like this is not the kind of impact I want, right? >> Like no, it's time to like move on to something more fast-paced to something really much more >> much more fun, you know, and much more impactful. So I ended up transitioning into software engineering because as a robotics engineer, I already had the basics. I already had a lot of programming classes, which I hated in college, by the way. I'm not going to lie. Um, a lot of the time writing code made me feel dumb like I had no idea what was happening or what I was what I was doing until I got that first software engineering job. And the team that I was placed on helped me understand what does it mean to create great software that's easily maintainable, that's debugable, that's easy for newcomers to come in and take over and understand what's in the codebase. Right. >> Right. So that wasn't part of my curriculum when I was studying in the academia. So having that first programming job literally changed my perspective on what it means to create really good code and I started loving it, right? >> And it started being fun because I finally knew what it is that I was doing. I understood what really matters and it's not what you think it is if you just graduated college. Yeah, it's a it's a little bit different. And I can even recall in university for me the like I had internships which really helped me understand like okay this is what the real world will look like when I'm when I'm finally there because um I found at least I'm going to over like generalize this I guess but I felt like in my in my classes it was people either really gravitated towards math and they were awesome at math and they hated programming for some reason or they were like awesome at programming and they were like I hate math. I was definitely um the second category but um I think what what didn't help me in school was like uh even for programming concepts like I had I was into programming before getting into into university but >> same >> but what happened that sucked in university was they were telling us these programming concepts and from the computer science perspective it was like here's programming but like through the lens of mathematics and I'm like I don't I don't want that like I just I want to build things not I don't want to go through all the mathematics behind why this is the way that it is. Um, and now in hindsight, I mean, that's part of what university was. So, um, it is what it is, but, uh, it made it it made it challenging for me to go through school and, uh, and really like love the programming I was seeing from the academic side. So, >> you can definitely So, I I hear that you did not like it as much either. So, we're kind of on the same page here, right? I I I knew I wanted to do it because of internships, not because of what was being taught in school. So definitely can relate to that. >> Makes perfect sense. And I mean, whenever you're creating code that you know at a push of a button gets deployed to like millions of people, like that's really rewarding. I thought that what impact was back then. Um so in my career I ended up moving from programming the microcontrollers for the robots and then transitioning to creating LTE networks in C++. I also did some rub on rails um and mobile app development in both um Swift and Java for maintaining um mobile apps >> and um their deployment pipelines. So, it was a really cool scope of like seeing how the industry looks like because I had a chance to work at a um corporate um uh corporate job. I had a chance to work in a consulting agency that just you know did work for other um companies and then I also had an opportunity to um to work on a in a successful startup that when I joined there were 50 of us and I was the first and only female on the engineering team but the company grew to like 300 something people. very successful right now and at the time that I was moving on from programming computers to reprogramming human minds there were like 12 women engineers which was amazing. >> Yeah. No, I mean the number the numbers got to go up but it's really cool to see growth like that. But I had a a very similar experience where I was at a startup and uh I think I was like employee number eight or something and by the time I left it was like 250ish to 300 and uh yeah like it's a incredible sort of uh transition and journey as as a company scaling and growing like that. It's just like it's really exciting time. So I hope that you got to have uh you know an exciting kind of journey throughout that entire process. >> Yes, absolutely. >> Awesome. Um, I was curious, uh, and I don't know if you want to go into detail about it, but I was curious about the burnout part. And I, if you, if you were willing to, I think it's helpful for people to hear about burnout because I think that it's like unfortunately a lot more common than people expect. And >> yeah, >> um, and I think that it actually looks very different for different people. And um while that might sound kind of funny, I think when we hear burnout a lot of the time, it's I don't know like kind of some people might think like oh you're depressed or you're tired or you're bored and it's like those are some types of words that get associated with it. Uh I always share a story about burnout for me looked like uh I was actually enjoying work. It wasn't work that uh like directly made it feel like I was burnt out. Um it was the fact that I ignored like everything else in my life like my relationships uh spending less time with family, friends, social interactions became very difficult for me and then I started to realize like oh no like uh I didn't burn out the the same way where it's like oh I hate my job. I don't want to go in. I'm tired. It was like I don't like doing social things anymore. So I burnt out >> kind of that way. Makes >> sense. But I was curious, do would you mind sharing a little bit about what your burnout experience looked like and how you kind of realized like oh crap like I'm like I've kind of reached my limit or >> Yeah. So before I get into that and I would love to read a chapter a piece of a chapter from the book cuz um it kind of highlights two things. on one hand is what leads to burnout specifically in the tech industry and on the second hand it kind of highlights the symptoms like how you might be feeling >> and if you listening not to any of those symptoms that might mean that hey maybe you're on the path to burnout maybe you're already burned out and not even aware because I was not aware that I was burned out let me tell you Nick I realized that because my therapist called it out and the reason I even enrolled in talk therapy because uh just to um you know kind of like paint the picture here. I grew up in Poland. Um my parents are uh the first in their family who had a university degree and their parents, my grandparents were farmers. So work was really hard. Life was really hard. They had to go to school, my parents, and then come back after school, help in the field, help with the farm animals, get back home, uh take care of their younger siblings on top of the school work, right? So, I remember when I told my parents that I ended up in talk therapy, they're like, "What? You were born with like a silver spoon in your mouth? Like, what are you doing there?" because my grandparents as farmers they were either born or lived through in their early childhood during the second world war back in Poland. So it was really hard time to just you know ensure the basic needs were met and then my parents did so much better but you know how they were raised impacted their line of thinking and their internal mental legacy code which then kind of like got passed to me right and even though I had roof over my head I didn't had to work hard as a child we didn't had a field to go into our farm animals to take care of. I only had to, you know, just go to school, get good grades, and focus on my education. That was really my my only um job as a kid, right? >> So, just to set things into perspective and going into talk therapy, I was thinking like the same, you know, I don't need this. My life was fine. I had everything I needed. Like, talk therapy is just not for me. >> Yeah. >> Right. And what happened was September 2019, I go into work. At this point in time, I um moved from Poland to United States a few years back. I had gotten married, had a baby, came to work, worked a couple of months, and felt like it was a mix of things like the burnout, the postpartum depression, the complicated grief from immigrating. >> Sure. Right? Nobody died, but I felt like a very important life chapter closed behind me. And I never really stopped to think about that. And all of that accumulated on a September day in my 101 with my manager when I got to work and we were talking about career progression, plans, goals, whatever. And in the middle of a sentence, I just started crying. And it was so embarrassing because I think of myself as a professional >> and someone who can keep their cool >> and I just wasn't able to hold all that emotions in. It just was started bursting at scenes literally. >> Yeah. >> And spilling out through my eyes, you know. I'm sitting there crying and my manager who was um in my eyes a very successful female leader in the tech space just gave me information to her therapist right and in my mind's like oh this person being so successful is telling me they did therapy okay I guess I mean >> you know if it worked for them right This was the first time that someone modeled for me that you don't have to be, you know, suicidal in total depression to reach out. >> Yeah. You don't have to be at the very end of of what you're feeling like your life is to say like, "Okay, now I need help." Like there there are things you can do before that for sure. >> And you know, I feel like as engineers, we're typically smart. We're typically pretty good at solving problems. So it feels like why don't we just solve our own problems on our own, right? >> We're a little stubborn. Yeah, that's right. >> So it was a hard time, but I had to admit it and I had to get back seek out professional help and it was phenomenal. And literally just talking helped me get out of that rut. >> That's awesome. >> It was phenomenal. >> No, and and thank you for sharing that. I know it's a it's definitely like a vulnerable thing to be able to talk about something like that especially because you know for for that scenario like if you didn't tell anyone the only people that would know are you your manager and if you talk to your therapist about it. So you know you don't you didn't have to share that and I I do appreciate that. I think that uh I think that's helpful like tremendously helpful for other people to hear like I I can appreciate that you were saying you know I think of myself as a professional like this is how I would want to carry myself and then in a moment like you know it's just like they can't can't control it and um >> the I think the thing that we often forget is like we are human like it's uh it's not like if if this were to happen that um you know like that's the end of your career or like you can't, you know, can't go out in public. Again, it's like no, like this is, it's a very human thing to have happen. And if we have been kind of holding in emotions or other things that we're struggling with, even if we're not aware, right, it might be a subconscious thing, then it can kind of well up like that. So, I I just Yeah, I wanted to say thank you for being able to share that because I think that it is very helpful for others. >> Absolutely. And the reason I'm sharing is because I feel like I hope someone listening to this gets inspired and reaches out for help before they reach that edge. Right. >> Yep. The I think exactly right before you read the book, exactly as you said though, like as your as your manager um illustrated to you for therapy, right? Like you can do this before it's like you know maybe you might think like where you need it like way down the line or something. It's the exact same idea. And I just want to say again, thank you for being able to kind of demonstrate this part because if other people are like hearing this and they go, wait, like actually I am kind of going through some of this like they can maybe address some of this earlier. They can start to realize like other people that are successful going through this like they did this and it was okay. So thank you. And yeah, let's let's hear the book. >> Okay. All right. Jumping in chapter five, overcoming burnout. Work is likely to be a significant part of your life for a number of decades. Whether you're a seasoned engineer or a fresh graduate navigating the ever evolving landscape of the tech industry, the journey is filled with interesting challenges and problems to solve. Tech projects often involve high stakes with significant financial investments and the potential for a widespread impact. Those projects with tied deadlines, ambitious goals, and the expectation of constant innovation make it extremely, and I want to highlight this word, extremely easy for engineers at all levels and across various domains to choose to stay just a little bit longer at work, to postpone your vacation, or sacrifice just a few hours of sleep in order to deliver results and satisfy the engineering curiosity. ity. Those small decisions over time add up and many of us find ourselves caught in the suffocating grip of burnout before we even realize what's happening. And I feel like that's what happened to me because I loved solving problems and figuring out the puzzles and why things didn't work and how I could refactor things and >> you know making things better, more optimized, faster, better for end users. It was just fun. Right. So, in hindsight, I am not surprised at all that I burnt myself out. >> Yeah. And that No, that's an awesome passage from from the book, right? The the part that I really like in that is that like you call out that it's easy for it to kind of sneak up on you. And it sounds like that was your experience where you're kind of like it almost felt like it was out of nowhere even though in hindsight you're like obviously that wasn't out of nowhere. But, uh, for me it was very similar, right? And I remember I had an amazing HR leader at the startup that I was at and I remember early on she was kind of watching how I'm working and stuff and she's like, "You're going to burn out." And I remember for years I was, you know, she was my HR leader for years and we would have conversations and I'm like, "No, like I still love work. Like like I I thank you. I appreciate the concern, but like I'm good. Like this is all awesome. I love it. Like things are successful. I feel valued. Like this is great." But what I didn't realize like she was 100% right. and like I I'm stubborn. So, she's 100% right. But it took years for me to go, wait a second, if I reflect on different parts of my life, I'm like, why do I have social anxiety if I just want to go hang out with my friends? Like, just because there's another person there that I don't know or like they want to invite me out somewhere and I'm like, uh, like maybe not like that's not that's not who I am. And all of a sudden, I mean, all of a sudden, right, like I I'm realizing like this doesn't feel right. And it's not, it was never all of a sudden. It was years of >> little bit later, little working a little bit harder and then all of a sudden >> all of a sudden it's like there's a tipping point where you realize. So yeah, I I I love that passage. I think that's awesome. Uh later on I talk about thinking about your well-being as really an investment in your career because I mean if you think about it the brain is at the center of everything you do and you need your brain to be in a good state to be efficient about solving problems because that's what engineering ultimately is about right >> solving problems. And if your best tool that's sitting in between the ears is neglected because you eat crap, you don't sleep and you're annoyed and frustrated because of whatever reason, then you're not going to be good at your job. You're not going to be efficient. So really, taking care of your well-being is a way um is an investment. That's kind of the way of thinking that I would like to promote that I I currently the way that I currently think about. But before we get there, I would love to to um read a little bit more. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. >> So, you know, so people who might be experiencing those things could we could help them identify whether or not they are kind of on that route to heading towards burnout. >> Yeah, I would love that. Let's go. Okay, so here are some things you might be feeling or experiencing in the midst of a burnout. Feeling totally drained. It's like you're running on empty both physically and emotionally. The usual energy and enthusiasm for things disappear, which was very much my case. You feel completely ineffective. You don't seem to feel like you're making a difference, and you're likely questioning the point of it all. You get easily annoyed. Little things get on your nerves more than they used to, which might put a strain on your relationships with others. Um, you're cynical. You might find yourself becoming more negative about work, people, and life in general. So, you're right. It's not just about work, right? >> Yeah. >> Um, you might want to isolate yourself. It feels like a cloud of pessimism is following you everywhere you go. So, you just want to let it soak you while you binge whole seasons of TV series in your living room sofa crunching on your favorite junk food. >> Yeah, >> right. That sounds like your case, like what you described a moment ago, Nick. >> Yeah. >> Then the next two things, three things. Performance falls off the cliff. >> Tasks that used to be a breeze now feel like climbing a mountain. Productivity takes a hit and motivation is hard to come by. procrastination becomes a regular thing. And it sounds like you procrastinated a lot meeting out and hanging out with your friends. >> Yep. Yeah. And it's but that's a I think a really good point is like um as people are hearing this that I would say the the sort of stereotypical thing that we end up seeing is like a lot of these things apply directly at work, right? Like you're like, "Okay, my performance at work is dropping. I'm procrastinating at work." And for me, it was almost inverse where it was like work, everything was good, but everything outside of work, that's where all of these things were stacking up like crazy, and I wasn't paying attention to them cuz I was so focused on work. I'm like, I can't be burnt out. Like, I love going to work. I will stay up till 2 in the morning coding stuff. Great. I wasn't paying attention. So, >> it sounds to me too like maybe you were not in a place where you were ready to hear the feedback. >> Yeah. And that's why I was kind of saying like I was stubborn because I'm like it's it feels kind of like obviously hindsight is is is helpful. Um but um when I'm hearing it I'm like I like I don't what what I'm being told is not what I'm feeling. So I'm kind of thinking like well like I I know myself, right? So if you don't if you're not in my head then I don't think it's really fair for you to be able to say that. Not that I like don't like the person. uh my HR leader was incredible and I and I thought that at the time, but I was like, "Oh, no. Like, I appreciate it, but like >> I think you're seeing things differently." >> But no, she's just she's just way more wise than I am. So, that's all. >> You know, sometimes it takes years for that kind of feedback to sink in because when I moved from Poland to United States, um I was a very direct communicator and it was leaning to the negative. So, I'm pretty sure it cost me a promotion um for quite a long time. And people would tell me, "Dagna, you are too direct. You're rude. You're aggressive. You're just too much. You're too rough around the edges." And I was like, "Ah, people here are just too sensitive." Right? So, that was kind of like how I ignored that feedback. And it also took years for for it to finally sink in. And I finally listened when my therapist told me that I need to work on my communication skills. And I was like, "Okay, I heard that a few times from a few different sources and I think I'm going to agree with you finally." >> Yeah. Starting starting to click, but yeah, that's that's good. And I think there was there was still one more the one more symptom. >> Yes. Two. So, um things that used to be fun or pleasurable or intellectually stimulating are no longer bringing you joy, >> right? So, in your case, the hanging out kind of lost it joy. This another thing that I'll add into that was for myself. I noticed like one of my hobbies was like just video games. Like as a kid love to play video games. It never really went away. And um I would find uh like and this is actually I don't think I've really thought about this one directly related to burnout until you've just mentioned this, but I I can remember being like okay I'm going to take a break and play video games or something. And I would start to play games like stuff that I would have loved to just binge for forever and being like starting to play and being like like why am I doing this? Like it's not it's actually not fun anymore. Um, I could like I would think I could be working like my time could be better used if I was just working and then being like okay and like turning off a game and then feeling guilty >> which is interesting because I was like if I'm playing a game like like I could be working so like I'm not being as productive as I could be and having guilt for it >> but I was never giving my brain like a chance to just like go do something else, go disconnect like so that one really resonates for me. Yeah. >> Awesome. And the last one is masking your misery with temporary thrills. And it sound really it sounds like your misery was masked by work because the work was bringing you that dopamine hit that like, oh, >> this is fun. This is entertaining. Like, let me just do more of that so I can ignore the rest of my life. >> Yeah, that's uh that's 100% it. And I I've talked in one one podcast. I kind of touched on this before, but I would say and like I'm not going to get like super deep and stuff here, but I would say like in my my younger 20s and stuff, uh, and kind of like even through my later 20s and stuff, I was pretty lonely. And I don't think I really realized that. >> Um, >> like in college and stuff, I had, you know, a lot of friends, uh, like I I felt social, like I didn't think that I was antisocial or anything like that. So, uh, like to be around my friends. And then as they moved away and I was working a lot, uh not only was I kind of isolating myself, uh not realizing it, >> but I was definitely becoming lonely because it was harder to meet people like to get into relationships. It felt kind of awkward and like it's never really going anywhere. like this isn't going to lead to anything. Like why am I bothering and like I'm getting older and I'm like so I I definitely felt like um yeah like felt like lonely and I don't really think that I I don't think it like kicked in to like to realize like how much of an effect that was having on me and yeah like just that coupled with like burnout from work. I think that I was like, "Hey, work is the thing that's giving me all of this enjoyment." Like, >> focus on that. Like, it's going to help you in your career. Like, there's uh they're rewarding you well for like everything's good about this. Just focus on it. All this other crap just Yeah. keep putting that off. Like, it's not good anyway. Just ignore it. So part of what I can see as you're speaking and describing how you were thinking about things is very something very common that I see a lot especially with engineers who have the more traditional backgrounds and a college or university degree because if you think about how we're being educated, how we're being schooled, how we're being taught to do engineering and we have our brainwashed for the four or five years that we're in the college, right? What happens is the the value that is being put on the hard and technical skills is just so high. We put it on a pedestal and everything else is like not important at all or like even missing from the educational agenda. So as an engineer, you are never handed the soft skills playbook that's necessary for the social interactions and developing of social skills. So a lot of the time when I as a coach work with uh boot camp grads and career changers or self-taught developers who have had that former career that did involve the social aspects working with other people more closely or developing their communication or collaboration skills. I can see that their view is so much more leveled where they are dangerous enough to know what it is that they're doing with their technical skills but they don't overvalue them. Right? they have this balance of seeing okay I need my hard technical skills but I also need my soft people skills because at the end of the day engineering is working with people creating products for other people so like that people aspect is inescapable yeah >> and I see a lot of the time that the boot camp grads they progress in their career very quickly >> right because they're able to >> Exactly they're able to get that technical foundation that's necessary to know what it is that you're doing >> or how to delegate tasks or just be dangerous enough to to know what's happening. >> And even in my own career, I have someone who has been a self-taught dev has been promoted over my head to a leadership position. And I was like, what the f you know like possible, you know, like I have more years of experience. I'm the subject matter expert. I know better. And at that point in time, I was right here, you know, the technical skills, the people skills, the communication skills, being rude, being arrogant, being just a total you know. So yeah, it's it's really that kind of mindset change that needs to happen and that's what I do working with people help to realize the value of a soft skills, >> people skills, the skills that we typically undervalue because typically that are the obstacles that are holding us back in our career. >> Um and in your case affecting your life too, right? and um isolating yourself and not really communicating about your needs and focusing on what you thought was important because you've been trained to to value the hard technical stuff solving problems and not value anything else including your own well-being. >> Yeah. And and thank you for for all of that because I thought it was awesome. I wanted to call out we didn't rehearse any of this because one thing that you were talking about with soft skills. I I feel like sometimes I I feel like I'm getting on to like a soap box and I'm like making videos and posts about soft skills being important and I'm like I don't know if people are listening to me when I say this because I like regularly see online um you know people are as they're trying to get into the industry everyone is so very focused on like okay well what what are the tech stacks I have to learn? What's the best language? Like everything is tech tech. And as you're saying, like technical skills are important. Like no one's no one's denying like that you don't need any technical skills. But um the overemphasis on it and absolute neglect of like soft skills, people skills, I think is is a big problem. And you're I I don't know if this is changing in college and university and stuff. I I doubt it. But like I certainly didn't have a single thing in college or like for university for me that that touched on like how do you build software as teams? >> Like what does that look like? >> I think they put us into teams for projects and stuff but they don't like >> there was no like here's here's how to do it effectively. And a lot of the time it was just like hey like someone go do the stuff that you're good at because we all hate it and like we'll just kind of pick the parts that we can do and hope hope it works. But no one no one talked about these things. >> And then >> to your point, you're kind of for forced into this mindset of like tech tech skills are the most important. We don't even acknowledge these other skills. Now go be successful as a software engineer. And it just it's it doesn't work like that. >> That's also why many senior software engineers whenever they get promoted to a leadership position, you know, hate it. They want to go back because they're not equipped for that particular role. And whenever they get that promotion, all of a sudden they not only have their job, they also have to like massively upskill on a very, you know, in a very fast-paced um environment, still delivering on their job, right? So, it's um it's definitely something that's missing um with my book. I'm hoping to rebalance things. >> Nice. Yeah. Part of part of the reason why people are probably not resonating when you tell them soft skills are important is because they are exactly where you were where you were ignoring that feedback about burning yourself out, right? So, they're just not willing to listen. >> And the one thing that I did magically in my book is because I didn't reinvent any sort of wheel. I just applied concepts from psychology that I know work because I tested them out on myself as I was going out through burnout and I put it in a language that resonates with software engineers. A language that doesn't talk about feelings or emotions or >> Yeah. >> Cuz what are those? That doesn't make any sense. >> You cuz people are typically like >> Yeah. Like we completely Yeah. We want to reject it. It's like that like that's not me. I am I am a smart intellectual. I'm almost a robot. Um feelings aren't a thing that I do. >> Talk about facts, right? >> Give me the data. Yeah. >> Give me the data. Exactly. So the way that I was able to put the concepts one initially into my work with my clients and then kind of like reverse engineer what I did that helped them be successful and put it into the book. Um it it's all kind of like in this programming speak if you will you know where what we do with your legacy mental code is we dive in we debug we do a root cause analysis and understand how your programming came to be and what are some hidden bugs and inefficiencies that are causing things like imposter syndrome burnout trouble dealing with other people and self-marketing struggles and then on top of all that I walk people through using the brain refactor algorithm which is step-by-step method of really debugging your internal mental code and then shipping those updates those necessary updates with case studies. So there's a case study for every single chapter on imposter syndrome, burnout, self marketing struggles and trouble dealing with other people. >> We need data. We need it. It's not it won't stick unless we have the data. That's >> that's awesome. And I love the framing too, like everything you just said there is and purposefully in a way that's like very relevant to people that work in software, right? Like you literally said debugging your your mental code, shipping updates, right? Like these are all things where it's like I know I know exactly what that means, >> right? And just the idea here is to use what you already know how to do, but apply it in a different domain in the domain of what's sitting in between your ears, you know, your brain. Yeah, that's that's awesome. And so you we talked a little bit about um burnout, but uh imposter syndrome you just mentioned as well. Um I don't want to put you on the spot to go find a spot in the book that's like an awesome passage, but do you can we shift gears to to imposter syndrome because I think that imposter syndrome is like something again, everyone goes through it. Some people don't realize they're going through it. Some people claim they say imposter syndrome is not even real, which I think is BS. I think it's absolutely real. Um, and I I'm kind of curious to hear your take and if there's uh sort of like your favorite parts in your book that um that would be good call outs. >> Yes. So on one hand I do agree that imposter syndrome is being overused. Y >> um it is a real thing definitely. Um but it is being overused. Sometimes we feel just the regular doubt and worry. That's natural whenever you're stepping into a new role or, you know, doing something the very first time. It's normal to feel doubt, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's right away an imposter syndrome. So, >> I do have my favorite passage right here so we can dive in. Um, it's this example where I compare imposter syndrome versus growing pains and how it feels. >> Okay. So basically it's this common scenario that I dive into the book um it's you know imagined scenario but very um typical very common and it's the story of a senior software engineer who is growing in her career and her name's Linda she is now six years into her career she's pretty confident in her skills very comfortable with the tech stacks she's been working with she's been in her position at the same company for the past two years and she can tackle pretty much any task thrown her way very efficiently and she gets a promotion. >> Okay. >> So, what happens in her promotion as we talked about you know in her company the promotion um that she gets is to a tech lead position and it's kind of like a fusion of a staff engineer and an engineering manager. So, she's still required to code half of the time and the other half is spent in meetings either to manage the projects or one-on- ones or um you know um getting things done to deliver projects, >> right? Y >> So, Linda in this position needs to rapidly master many new skills just like we talked a moment ago, she's completely unprepared with her degree, right? >> All these other things. Yes. >> Yes. things such as delegating, setting expectations, managing projects, managing people up, down, and sideways on top of improving her communication and time management skills. And then on top of all that, she has to figure out what her boundaries are in her new role. So, the things that she's willing to do and the things she would not do. The growth in this space is rapid. There's so much to learn. At times she feels out of depth, but she's determined to take advantage of the growth that comes with the promotion and this new position. But then t a major failure in her future in a future her team delivers causes an outage and loss of revenue for the company and it makes her confidence crumble. She blames herself and starts questioning whether she was rightfully promoted and whether she deserved it. So, it's a pretty bad situation to be in right >> now. What's going to happen if she has imposter syndrome? Linda's internal programming will determine if the challenge of her new role is overwhelming or if it's beneficial. The outcome has nothing to do with the situation itself, the major failure causing an outage, and everything to do with how her mental programming interprets the event. Either imposter syndrome will take over, allowing for the overwhelm to kick in, or she can lean into the growing pains and experience a transformative growth spurt. What happens next all depends on the internal mental code that assigns meaning to what's going on. If Linda's legacy mental code is running the imposter syndrome routines, she might think the following. I knew I wasn't cut out for this role. I've just been fooling everyone and then now it's blown up right in my face. Everyone probably thinks I'm incompetent now. I can't believe I let this happen. I should not have been promoted. I'm just not capable of handling this level of responsibility. >> My luck has run out. >> I'm just not skilled enough for the job. It's clear I don't belong here. >> Like it was luck or an accident or a mistake that they got promoted like uh some someone was doing them a favor maybe and it's like that's not like I'm not I'm clearly not good enough for this. Like it's so that's the imposter syndrome right there. But what if her mental code allows her to lean into the growing pains? Well, she probably thinks something like this. This was a major setback, but it's all part of the learning process. I just need to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent it in the future. And even though this failure is tough to swallow, I know it doesn't define me, my abilities, or my worth. I mean, I got to be real. I am new to this role and I haven't found my footing yet. I'm facing new challenges, the kind I haven't faced before and failures are inevitable. But I've overcome challenges before. I am capable of learning from those mistakes and improving. So I'm going to stay focused, stay positive, seek feedback, and keep moving forward. And now notice the event didn't change, right? >> Her team still has delivered the feature that caused an outage. Sucks, right? But it's really all about the thoughts that she's thinking. Like if you could take a snapshot and pull a log message, right? And just read through what is it that she's thinking and just come through those messages, that's how you know whether or not she has the imposter syndrome or if she's capable of leaning through growing pains. Because I mean, growth is uncomfortable, >> right? >> Let's face it. Like if you're sitting there being comfortable in your job and have never felt discomfort or can't remember the last time that you challenged yourself, you just plateaued your skills, which is a very dangerous place to be with tech moving so fast. >> Oh yeah. I did a live stream on that like about a I think around a month ago where I said my I think the title of it was literally like my biggest fear in my career and it's about being complacent and this idea that like complacency like kind of like uh like burnout can sneak up on you where like at one point you're not complacent at all. you're going through challenges, hopefully kind of leaning into like a growth mindset and kind of overcoming imposter syndrome hopefully, right? And then you do this and then if um you if you're not if you're not getting other challenges and things kind of putting you into this situation again, things just get more and more comfortable because your skill keeps going up and then it starts to level off with your skill uh acquisition and the new challenges kind of level off and and you're like, "Hey, like this is pretty good. Like I'm doing my job. Like things are going well. I'm getting paid. Like, but then but then what? And it's like for me the the fear is I don't want to to just be comfortable. I want to keep making sure I have challenges. And then balancing that with the fact that like I get scared when I have challenges. Like if someone puts me into a new position, I'm like, "This is scary. I don't know what I'm doing or like this is just new territory." But I remind myself every single time in my career that it's happened, it's always been transformative. it's always been like a really good opportunity. So, um I definitely I thought that was a really good way to frame up the you kept the the scenario the exact same, right? That didn't change and then what you're thinking about is whether or not you're having going through imposter syndrome or if you can lean into like this growth mindset of like, you know, I just got to figure out what's going on, expect that there are going to be failures. I thought that was a really good part. It's not like uh you're you know into something new and you should expect there are zero failures like we need to be making mistakes to learn from them. So it's important. >> Awesome. I'm glad that it resonated because I see it over and over when I work with my clients and you know when I was an engineer uh just talking with my peers about their career progression right and how it looked like. But Nick, one thing that I really want to recommend, I think you're gonna like it because you did mention, you know, having that fear come up, right? Yeah. >> And for many of us that, you know, we were not given given the vocabulary to talk about our feelings or understand them and we just like, >> you know, feelings, no, stop, block, take it away. >> Right? There is the tool that I use in my book um that's a simple matrix that kind of like helps you do a root cause analysis of the things that are coming up whenever you're facing a challenge. And there's a whole workbook that I designed for people to go through alongside with the book. Nice. So feel free to download it and you know check it out for yourself because while you might be past the burnout and not really experienced the imposter syndrome, the tool can be really applied for any sort of obstacle >> nice >> that you're facing in your life or your career. And it's uh it's pretty cool because it takes emotions out of it in the sense that you don't have to dwell on them. You just observe them, write them down, and figure out, okay, how is that impacting my mental legacy code? >> Right? you know, what are the log messages that are currently being printed, you know, and it has this feel of an engineering process to it. So, it it's just so much more familiar and comfortable for us to do as engineers and analytical uh minds. >> No, that sounds good. It's it's funny the uh you you briefly mentioned this idea of like acknowledging the feelings, right? Um, my my wife works in therapy, which is very convenient because I get >> Oh, wow. Oh my goodness. >> No, she she works she does therapy for for kids. And maybe actually that is more relevant now that I'm thinking about it. Um, but yeah, so uh when I when I talk with my wife about things that are probably outside of my comfort zone for like they're not super analytical. They are more about like thoughts and feelings and things like that. She has a lot of and not just for this but she has a lot of awesome perspective in general but especially when it comes to things like uh like therapy and how we think and and that sort of stuff. Um and she has talked about like hey like feelings it's not like a feeling is something you just ignore right like you don't just say like hey put the feelings away or uh even if you're mad or sad like it's not like it's wrong to to have a feeling of being angry right that's not that's not the right framing. >> It's about acknowledging that it's there. So if you are constantly trying to like say, "Oh, I'm sad about something or I'm mad." And going, "Oh, that's wrong." Like it's not wrong. It's it's important that you like don't let that, you know, overtake, but you want to acknowledge the feeling, understand where it's coming from. And as you were kind of briefly chatting through that, that's something that stuck out to me was like that's like a tool that she's tried to be, you know, teaching me uh when I'm talking about these types of things, like don't don't shut down the feelings. Don't try to suppress them. acknowledge them and then understand them and then try to understand the root of where that feeling is coming from. >> Nick, I have a feeling your wife would love my book because I recently like literally two days ago saw this Amazon review of my book that talk about that was from a therapist. Okay. >> That said, I looked up this book because I work a lot with people in tech and this gave me the language to communicate better with my clients. So, I feel like you guys might really enjoy just like ripping it apart and, you know, seeing it from both of your perspective, which can, you know, help uh the two of you just understand each other better, seeing, you know, your backgrounds. >> I'll say, "Hey, there's uh no more reason to get frustrated communicating things to me. Just got to read this and then you you'll know how to speak my language." And then that way the next time we're talking about something, she'll say, "Nick, you need to download your logs." Um, >> there you go. >> And I'll say, "Okay, I get it now." No, but I No, I think that's a great point, right? like having like in general like the meta point around that is like the communication like being able to a this happens so much in software engineering where we think that we're communicating effectively because I'm like I understand what I'm saying like like here you go here's the information and the person on the other side if you're not realizing like they don't speak I'm not going to say they don't speak the same language but they don't they don't speak um you know they don't appreciate the same values or they have a different level of uh technical depth like so many factors factors can affect how how effective your communication is. And uh you know as you were just saying that it makes a lot of sense that like if someone is trying to help communicate thoughts to someone else, different experiences, how you go navigate things. If you don't have the right tools to communicate that effectively, then like it's almost like the amount of effort you have to put into communicating is so much greater because you keep trying to find like what's going to work and stick here. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And going back to feelings for just like a second is you know there's a whole chapter in my book chapter number two that talks about the coding feedback from a programmer's perspective and the way I see it that is that a lot of the time we think about feedback as like words directed to us from other people right but feedback is so much more than that like for example what we experience internally or externally is feedback right you can extract valuable information >> from feeling your feelings, right? Because this is your body trying to tell you something. You're just not paying attention >> and or like receiving or not receiving a promotion. That's feedback, too. Clearly, there's something some information hidden in that event, in that situation. The question is whether you're able to like extract that information from that particular feedback, >> right? And that that example too, like the not getting a promotion thing for a lot of people, it's understandable that would feel like, hey, like I'm going to have an emotional response that, right? Like I'm upset, I'm sad, whatever, frustrated. Um, and if you leave that at that point, right? Like this this scenario makes me feel these bad things. And then you dwell on it and like the only thing you're seeing are these bad feelings. It's kind of like you yes, acknowledge them, but like you're why are you frustrated, right? Well, you're frustrated because you had different expectations than your manager. Okay. So, how did that come about? Was your manager the entire time you were having one-on- ones telling you you're going to get promoted, you're going to get promoted? Um, and if they weren't, then okay, what were they telling you? If they were like, were you even having career conversations? Did you kind of invent that you had the same uh expectations? Right? And it's important to go through that analysis. And not to say like to to start blaming them or anything, but what are you going to do next time? Because if the next time you're going to wait a full year for your promotion cycle and not change anything, like you shouldn't do that. You should maybe I wasn't getting the feedback I needed. Maybe I didn't understand the expectations the same way. So what like what actions are you going to take to drive that progress so that in one year from now you're not like why am I having the same frustrating conversation about not getting promoted? >> Yeah, exactly. And you know my book also comes comes in handy in scenarios like that when you're trying to reflect but you're feeling a little bit like attacked I guess by your own thoughts, right? Because the way that I explain how things work, right, the brain working kind of like a code base, it's this um concept of psychological distancing. If you're able to see your brain as a product, as a result of your lived experience rather than something that defines who you are, right? I like to see it as separate from like your essence, from your soul, from your potential of what you could be. Um, so if you can see it as something separate as a product, it's just super easy to jump in and improve that product, right? Just refactor some code and that's it and deploy the updates. Boom. You know, because >> such a good way to frame that. Yeah. When you start thinking differently, when you start believing different things, you start showing up differently, you start acting differently, and that changes the kind of feedback you get. And it changes the kind of outcomes you get. >> Right. >> Right. So, it all comes down to diving into that codebase, that legacy mental code that's sitting here, and refactoring whatever is not working. >> No, that's awesome. And probably great timing we can uh we can start to close out here because I think this is I think we've covered some really good topics. I'm glad we got to talk about burnout and imposter syndrome. Those are for me two huge things we got to touch on communication. Thank you. Like I said for anyone listening and watching, we did not rehearse this. This was not a plant to say. Make sure you go talk about that. So I'm very glad that you did because I think that that's a a critical thing that's missing. But uh Dagna, I will get um I'll make sure I get links and stuff from you after and I can put them in the description and comments. But if you want to let uh viewers and listeners know uh where can they where can they find your book? Where can they find you if they want to reach out to you or see things that you're talking about? >> To find Brain Refactor, all you have to do is jump in Amazon and no matter where you listen to this in the world. If there's Amazon in your country, Brain Refactor is there in English, but still >> and there's Kindle version also available. Um the book, the Kindle version launched on October 1st and for quite some time it will be uh part of the Kindle Unlimited. So, you know, you're able to read for free. And I would love to hear what you thought of the book, like what resonated, what didn't, how did it make you look at your world and your career from a different perspective. So, you could DM me on LinkedIn. I would love to hear back from you. And also, if uh anyone reading here loved the book, I would love a review because those reviews help my book stand out on Amazon in the ocean of books that are out there. So, that massively helps with the impact that I'm chasing, helping people improve their lives. >> That's awesome. Okay. Well, I'll I'll make sure that I get a link, like I said, in the description and stuff so people can more easily check that out. But, uh, I wanted to say thank you for making the time to talk with me. I thought this was super insightful. Uh, I'm going to have to pick up a copy of the book. I think that there's uh there's enough examples of you talking through it where I'm like I think like that's going to I'm I can appreciate the language being used where it's not like someone trying to to speak at me, but more like here's terminology that you're going to get and uh you can you can apply more easily. So, uh I'll make sure to check it out as well. So, thanks again and I do appreciate the time. >> Thanks for having me, Nick. I had a blast. >> Awesome stuff. Okay, take care.