Things are tough in these different environments with different things happening. Maybe because of the layoffs, your workload hasn't, has raised and increased because of everything around you teams being let go. So how do you deal with that? You might have someone who can help you manage that. Hello, and welcome to the Pibytes podcast, where we talk about Python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Valdebos. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. Welcome back to another Pie Bytes podcast episode. This is Julie, and I'm here with Bob. How's it going, man? Hi, everybody. Bob here. Cool. Good. How are you doing? I'm good, I'm good. It's late in the evening, but I'm pumped. Still pumped. I've got my pie bites shirt for all the youtubers watching this. Thank you, thank you. And I have my pie bites. This giant flask of a pie bites mug, it's the biggest coffee cup we have in the house. I've got a nice tea for all our protein shake. Not affiliated. We just laughing that this should actually should have a pie bites logo on those things. That'd be good. Comfortable drinking? No, this is for our, um, our british friends out there. I'm drinking a nice english breakfast tea. Hmm. It's too hot to sip. I can't do it. Anyway, so into the episode, how. Um, let's. Let's start with some wins, man. What's going on in your cool? Uh, you go first. Oh, you want me to go first? Okay. All right, fine. Put me on the spot. Okay, one quick personal win. I just got to give a shout out to my friend Jake, or Jacob just got married on the weekend, and it's slightly part of my wins is that it was our first night off without the kids in a year, since our anniversary last year at some point, and it was amazing. It was such a good night out. Great friends, made some new friends, all that sort of thing. And it's just wonderful to see them get married. It's really, really cool. So, yeah, Jake, if you're listening, I'm going to send him this episode anyway. But congrats again to you and Tash. And the other thing for me is, so as you. As some of you might know, I'm learning Korean because I've fallen in love with the language and just trying to do my best to learn it. And this week, I took a big step I enabled the korean keyboard on my phone and was actually able to type someone's name into the chat. One of my friends over there. So that was a. That was very cool. It's a big win for me. Nice. Say something in Korean then. No, not on the podcast. All right, cool. Cool. Thanks. Thanks, man. Thanks for moving on. Didn't see that one. I love those pictures of the wedding surprise and the dress and stuff. Nice save, buddy. Nice save. It was a good shirt, too. It's a good shirt I was wearing. Anyway, you, your turn. What's. What's your win then? Oh, you're Korean. Does inspire me to go back on Italki and maybe practice some French, but that's not a win yet because I haven't done it. But, yeah, it's definitely on my mind now. The win for this week for me is picking YouTube back up on the Pyramid YouTube channel and doing kind of a video a day on Python related topics. So we did a bit of pyg, typing all kinds of stuff, just random as things come up. And we. We keep the video short. So typically two to six minutes, go to ten minutes, but not longer, and keep them bite sized because that's what we're all about. And always. Yeah, some code related sharing screen, live coding stuff. And so far people love it. So I'm happy to hear that. And you keep up the momentum because we think it's important to keep sharing that content out and not only for the community, but it's actually also very helpful for our clients and coaches as part of code reviewing and stuff. Yeah, pretty happy. Nice, man. Those are good. Those are fantastic. I really enjoy reviewing them when you send them. They're such fun little quick bite sized nuggets of python goodness. So I really like that. Just actually question for you before we dive into the episode. Do you ever get stuck while you're recording them? Oh, yeah. And do people see that? No, I don't, quite a bit. But if the mistakes are useful, I do leave some of that in. But for the sake of time, as I want them to be shorter, I have to edit. But if we would allow ourselves to do a longer format as code clinic, then. Yeah, completely raw and default. Like this week on the code clinic, I got stuck on Django migration. Something really weird was happening. It turned out it was pointing to a wrong database and that was a whole mess up for 510 minutes. But that was actually useful. But that's then a different format, a longer format, you know? Yeah. Okay. No, cool. Because, you know, the feedback is always from people we love. Seeing Bob get stuck because that's where, you know, we get a lot of learning. So for those of you watching and listening, if you want to see more of Bob getting stuck, let us know so we can figure out a way for you to see that, because that's. It's actually really interesting seeing how this champion over here troubleshoots and debugs things when they go wrong. It's actually, that's a good reminder. I appreciate it, because now you got me thinking, like, next time I cut something out, maybe I'll leave it in and then I'll leave it up to the reviewer or you to give it a go. Or not, you know, cut it out. Yeah. Too long. Too long. I don't have time for that. When you say, like, oh, this is cool, leave it in, then. You just leave it in. No, that's cool. I'm joking, man. Joking. I love it. Okay, so we'll dive into the episode. Now, this one is a. A touchy subject in a way, but we're going to try it. We're going to try it. So a couple of weeks ago, for you regular listeners, we talked about the layoffs that have been happening in the tech industry and more so, not commentary on it, but more like, what can you do? What's in your power? What's in your control? And given that in the past week or two, there have been thousands of more layoffs announced across, you know, Amazon and meta and I assume the rest of them, we thought we'd touch on something that we didn't mention last time. So if you're interested, I would say first, listen to that last episode. We'll put it in the notes. I can't remember the numbers. Maybe. Yeah, all they could that was too old. Maybe it was 105 or something. I don't know, whatever it was. But, yeah, we'll put that in the notes for you. For this episode, we wanted to talk around, talk about going it alone and the fact that you shouldn't be. So it's not easy seeing people around you being made redundant. It's not easy finding out that your job has been made redundant and no longer exists, especially the way that these companies have handled it, which has been pretty crappy and pretty disgusting, as I said last time. But there's no need to go it alone. It's just like that legend of Zelda thing. Here, take this. No need to go alone. Go it alone, whatever it is. But the point is, people don't lean on the people around them as often as they should. It's very easy to compartmentalize and just say, no, everything's okay, and just try and swallow all of that stress and that pain and that frustration and the anger and the disappointment and the embarrassment and whatever feelings and emotions that you might have towards what's happening around you. It's really important to talk about it. It's really important to share it with those around you and to, again, lean on those people around you. So, Bob, what's that rule? I always say this wrong. It's that rule about you are the people you spend the most time with. Jim Rohn. Yeah. The average of the five people you hang out with the most. Yeah, that's the one. So, actually, because I've just been yapping and I want a sip of this lovely tea, could you just explain what that means? Sure. So, basically. Yeah, that I think the quote recognizer Jim Rohner Reverber said, I think it was Jim Rohn. That a big part of your life you spend with a relatively few number of people, right. And these people have a big influence on you, and that influence builds you. Right. Defines partly who you are. Of course, you have your own core values and all that, but, yeah, just a few people you hang out with the most could be your wife, spouse, kids, parents, best friends. They have a large influence on who you are and on your thinking perceptions. And I think you're saying that you can use that leverage that in this tough situation, right? Yep. Exactly. That's exactly where I'm going. And so what I encourage everyone listening to do is not just go and complain to the person next to you, right. Is think about who those people are for you. Who are those five people that have the most influence on you as a person and who you are? It may be, I don't know, someone that you talk to every day during your commute to work. It could be at work, someone who's your work best friend, who is your longest childhood friend. It could be anyone, right. That you spend that most time with. And to identify this, think about the people who, when big life things happen to you, who do you go to first? So, for me, obviously, other than my wife, it's Bob. The second anything happens, I mean, if I get a haircut, he hears about it, right? So, I got a haircut last Thursday, Bob. It's pretty good. Um. And I just only now notice it. Yeah, yeah. He only noticed it just before this podcast recording. It's been a week. That's how terrible. I gotta find another person. So that's that's the point, though, right? So whoever those five people are for, you really, really engage them when things are tough, and hopefully you already are doing that. Um, but to add to that, there may be people that you spend time with that say, aren't in those top five. They aren't the closest people, but they, at the very least, understand what you're going through. And to that point, it's likely going to be people in your workplace, and hopefully you have people that you can talk to. Hopefully you're networking and building that environment around you there that you can, I guess, speak with people about these sorts of emotions and these things. Because if they're going through it with you, or at least in the same environment as you, maybe their jobs haven't been let go, maybe you have, maybe vice versa. Maybe you're in different departments. Whatever it happens to be, they're in the same trenches with you and they can understand what you're going through. So leverage them, speak with them, and share. Be open and honest and raw how you're feeling, because that's the only way that we're all going to get through it. And I know that sounds a bit cheesy, but it's the reality. If we just sit here and don't share how we're feeling, then everyone's just going to suffer in silence. So this is, again, going back to that whole. This environment of the layoffs and return to office and all these things happening in these companies that are upsetting people. You need to talk about it, or it's just going to drive you up the wall. So, Bob, I'm going to move on to a concept here, but before I do that, is there anything you want to add? No, that's perfect. Yeah. Please move on. Well, then let me have this tea in silence. It's going to be cold by the time this podcast is over. I want to have it while it's hot. So. All right. So two drink or just logo? No, just kidding. It's for the mug. I want everyone to. I'm going to change hands so you can see the logo, the. The message on the back of the mug. So there's a concept here that I want you to think about, and it's. So two people brought this to me in a week, which is why I've added it to this podcast. So, one, thank you to Reese for sharing this concept with me. He shared the concept of the personal board and also to another friend of mine, Jane Perry, for sharing the circle of advisors. Essentially very similar concepts. And what this is talking about is, who are those people that you would strategically go to for different things professionally and personally. Right. So it's like having your as. I like that. This visualization from the term circle of advisors or personal board of directors, in a way, who are the people that you go to when you need advice on, say, I don't know, handle a promotion, or if you're handling a difficult situation at work, who would you talk to? If you're going through a tough time, who's going to be that person? And one of the techniques you can do is think about the people around you and almost rate them. There is a resource from the Harvard Business Review which we'll put in the show notes. I've got that link, Bob, again, thank you to Jane for sending me that. And there's a scorecard that they've given you that you can literally rate people and tick the boxes. This person is great for this support style, and they only want to be emailed. They don't like instant messenger. So you can figure this out. You don't have to get that granular. But the point is that you can build this sort of circle of advisors around you, and that way you have that comfort zone of knowing if things are tough in these different environments with different things happening. Maybe because of the layoffs, your workload hasn't. Has raised and increased because of everything around you, teams being let go. So how do you deal with that? You might have someone who can help you manage that. So the idea is build up this circle of advisors, this personal board, so that you can have, you know, who to talk to in any given situation, and that might provide some level of comfort and guidance when things are pretty crappy like they can be right now. Right. So that's almost like having a board of specialists and just recognizing that you don't discuss everything with anybody, but there's just some people that are better at guiding you on certain things. Yep. So, for example, I might come to you for only python because you were so freaking good at Python. Right. But I may not trust you enough to talk to you about, say, the stresses I'm going through with my kids. Now, that's obviously not true, because we talk about example, because we talk about everything, bro. We talked about both of those things today. But that's what I write. Yeah. So that's how it would work. And that way you don't have to think about, because it can be quite daunting. Back to that. Who are those five people around you trying to find five people who are the perfect person to talk to about anything and everything. That's really difficult to find. So by making it kind of separate like this into their strengths areas, it can actually be pretty empowering. And also the article that we'll share sort of flips it on its head. Like this way you kind of don't need a dedicated mentor because you have multiple mentors in these different skills areas. So it's an interesting one. Now, before we again, we're keeping this pretty succinct this episode. Before we move into the wrap up, if you dont have people like this that you can think of, I just wanted to give you a couple of actionable steps. Do you mind if I go into those? Bob, I waited till you took a sip of water. By all means. Okay, so how do you find those people? Well, the simplistic thing is just go and talk to people at work, right? Join them in the lunchroom. But most of us are virtual, hopefully still whatever if we can manage it. So if thats happening, right, and you cant just walk up to someone and meet them. Join some communities. This is a bit of a plug for us, but join our slack community. There's a couple of thousand people in there going through very similar things as you. And conversations are organic, they're respectful and they're amazing. We people have built lifelong connections through the community, so it doesn't even have to be ours. Right? Obviously I'm just going to mention ours, but join any community and find people to talk to through that. Another one for me is don't be afraid to connect with friends and past colleagues and even current colleagues on LinkedIn. Use that as a networking resource and then ask people for a coffee chat. Most people won't be adverse to you asking for 15 minutes of their time just to get something off your chest, right? Or just to say hello and introduce yourself. It could even be kicking off that relationship, right? So if you know this person would be great for helping you manage how to write something, whatever, like a proposal or something like that. Then try and get them for a 15 minutes coffee on a coffee chain. Yeah, 15 minutes is great. Like it's short time. We even do this ourselves, right? We made a new calendar pivot chat. And if people need career advice and help with their python, we happily spend those 15 minutes. It's a short segment of time and that's all you need to get the ball rolling, right? And get some momentum. So yeah, yeah. And again, it goes to shows like we're all remote mostly, but hopping on calls and doing some stuff face to face might not be in person, but at least seeing each other as a whole new dimension. I think that's also kind of relevant to highlight with the increased. Increased use of AI tools. That's the human factor, right? Oh, yeah, that's important. Yep, exactly. So if you can get them on a video call, even better. That'd be amazing. Especially. It can help you connect with people a bit easier if you happen to have a kid running or something like that. And they're like, oh, yeah, my kids do that all the time. There's instant rapport. I was reminded this morning I met somebody on Zoom for 20 minutes about an upcoming podcast. It's going to be exciting. Not giving away the guest name yet, but. And we connected and we had a wonderful chat and. Yeah, shared experiences and it was awesome. I'm like, wow, just for 20 minutes. And I had a very insightful chat and a lot of energy that I showed up for work today after that call, you know, it's cool. It wasn't me, was it? It was not you this time your message is very for that already, so. Yeah. Ok. Yeah. Nice. Well, thanks for letting me ramble this week, Bob. I appreciate it. Well, I could chime in a few times and last week you let me do the packaging one, so there you go. I'll let you. Let you. It's not that, you know, things didn't go well on my end and I couldn't make it. No, I just, I just took it. No, thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate you covering, so. And there you go. That's why you're like number two on my five person list. Yeah. Number one, because, you know, of course my partner is always going to be number one, but default, she actually, she's. She's number zero. Your number one. There you go. That's from the p zero days when. Some Microsoft server now. Exactly. All right. To wrap it up. Books. What are you into books? Yeah, follow your advice. Reading some more novels. It's relaxing and they're still influential. Python, just bit by bit, you know. And. Yeah, the essays from Montagne, I do enjoy that. It's a bit of philosophy, an early passion for that, and it can be dense, but just little bits, you know, and random advice. I like it. I don't read, I don't do books for the completion anymore. I dropped that goal. Yeah. Just to learn, you know, same. It does mean you have to invest in a lot of bookmarks. Yeah, I'm out of bookmarks. Can you send me maybe you should make Pywyte's bookmarks pie whites bookmark. That'd be cool. Or you can just rip a piece of paper up. Yeah. I'm at this point, and I'm using the tickets from the pizzas as bookmarks. That's good. I like it. So just elaborate, because you went. You mentioned fluent Python. You mentioned the essays from. Who was the name Montagne? Okay. But you very quickly glossed over fiction. Are you actually reading fiction? Yes. What are you reading? So I'm still on that dutch novel, which I'm basically repeating books I read 20 years ago. That's cool. Yeah. I've read certain fiction books. There's certain energy with some of these books that I can still bring back. And that's all thanks to the journaling, by the way, where I got that idea from. Yeah. So. Yeah, but mostly dutch novels. Yeah. Are they romance novels? You've seen that, like, that kind of a sappy guy. Elaborate on that. Are they. Or are you. Are they, like, Sci-Fi books or. Oh, no, Sci-Fi no, that's still something to be explored. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's more like historic novels. A bit of philosophy in there. Yeah, I'm gonna. Okay, so, everyone, this is accountability. I'm gonna send through your book recommendations for Bob for fiction, please. We need to educate this man on some quality stuff. All right? So please send them through. I got the enders game on my kindle, and. Oh, that's okay. I need to get through this as well. Yeah, I just retired, I think. Okay. That's okay. We're gonna send you some. Some classics and get you into. Oh, yeah, that will be amazing. There's that other one. Was that snow crash? Oh, that. I don't know. Maybe I'm the heathen. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, that will be fun. Yeah. Not have enough books to read already, but, yeah. Excellent. That took way longer than I thought to ask you that question. Sorry. Oh, now it's your turn. All right. So, actually. And here I am criticizing you about fiction. Well, because you all know I'm making my way through the wizard of Earthsea quartet. I'm still on book three. Um, I'll share that. I actually kicked off on audible. That's why I'm looking at my phone. Just bringing it up quickly. A brief history of time. So I was just happened to be going through my audible library randomly and thought, what's something different I can read that's. Or listen to. That's not self help or something like that. Mindset book and. Yeah, I was like, oh, yeah, I forgot about Stephen Hawking book. So started playing it, man. It is. It is good. I'm enjoying it. It's very technical, even from an audiobook perspective. So I can only listen to it when I'm in the shower because I need that full focus. Otherwise, I'll just be sitting on the couch listening to it with my eyes closed. Right. Because I need to be able to really picture what it is that they're saying and understand it. Very technical, but I love it. It's really good. Yeah. Yeah. But I think he does make it accessible, right? Oh, yeah, definitely. The way he draws the picture or paints the picture, the analogies and synergies to things is really, really intelligently done and well done. So I appreciate a simpleton in the art of physics and quantum. I'm just throwing out words from the Marvel universe now. Quantum dynamics. I don't know. I think on a previous episode, I recommended the. His other book, more recent, big answers to big questions or something. Okay. Yeah. And I flew through it. Not that it was easy, but it was really engaging. It was fascinating. Yeah. I love this sort of stuff. All right, let's see. Books. We should stop rambling, but we value your time. Yes. Thank you, everyone, for listening to this very haphazard ending to the episode. But, yeah, back to the point of the episode. Get your circle of advisors together, your personal board, and we really wish everyone the best. We know it's not an easy time, and we certainly feel it. We see it a lot, and we're right there with you, and we hope the best for everyone. Whatever your situation is, try and adopt that growth mindset. Think about what it is you're gaining rather than what you're losing. That's the advice from a good friend of mine, Chantelle, uh, Thomas. So thank you, Chantel, for that wisdom as well. Um, but, yeah, that's it from us. Thank you for listening. We'll be back, and if you have any comments or, uh, requests for future topics, then check out this episode on YouTube and comment there. And while on YouTube, go to our channel and give it a subscribe, because we have a lot of cool content coming. Beautiful. Thanks, Abraham. Bye. Cheers. Bye. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte friends. That is Pybit es friends, and receive a free gift just for being a friend of the show and to join our thriving slack community of python programmers, go to Pibytes community. That's pibit es forward slash community. We hope to see you there. And catch you in the next episode.