I'M BALD! Here's What Internet Trolls Taught Me About B2B Sales

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all right what is up just leaving CrossFit it's Tuesday morning bright and early um I got it back out of this spot I don't think anyone's coming hard to see though my phone uh holder came off this morning I feel like the temperature is a little bit too low today so it's doing stupid things um the adhesive just kind of decided it was uh was kind of done doing what it's got to do it's got to blow some air on this window so I can see where I'm going but yeah the workout today was pretty uh pretty simple not easy using the word simple cuz it wasn't complicated we had to do uh ideally ring dips so I had to do 10 Ring dips and then 20 box jump overs which that's the whole workout but we have to do 12 minutes of it as

many rounds as possible so like I said it's simple there only two movements um fortunately for me from a lot of bodybuilding over the years uh like dips I can do very easily ring dips were a little um humbling um the first round through I did 10 Ring dips unbroken like no problem but because it's not a thing I do ever the next round through I got like four and I was like I can't do another ring dip so they have these attachments that go onto the squat rack that turn into or it's not really a squat rack at CrossFit it's like a power rack um or the rig I guess and uh it's like a a dip attachment so once that was out I could I could easily do 10 unbroken again but the the the hard part for me is going over the

Box um and it's not again it's like it's not complicated but I get out of breath so fast so that's something for me like I just have to work on in general is like my cardiovascular capacity is pretty crap um okay so I'm going to be going to the office tomorrow so this is just going to be a quick update then uh tomorrow yeah ideally I'm going to Crossroad I might have three Vlogs out tomorrow so I'll do that drive like this drive home but tomorrow and then I'll do the drive to the office and back so I'll focus more on uh some hopefully some meteor software engineering topics today I'm just going to talk a little bit about uh a couple things that were going on the past few days I've been sick I forgot you probably know probably noticed um I'm bald so

it's my new haircut for the rest of my life uh yeah I'm losing my hair so it's time to uh to shave it I was waiting to finish up that first course with Ryan so that I'm not shaving my head halfway through the course and then people are like who the hell hell is this third guy and it's just my ugly face with the bald head um so now that we're done that and we're going to start recording the next one I figured okay like get the head shaved right away um but this is kind of a long time coming just cuz my my head is uh it's balding especially in the back like just getting really thin and like uh I basically would have to get my hair cut like every week or else you would just notice like how thin it is and

I wasn't a fan of that so um was time but it was funny I was live streaming last night and like first person to join the live stream right into the chat and they're like new haircut like yeah um and someone had a really good joke uh they they were comparing my hair they were like what kind of Architecture is that is that called like clean clean cut architecture um yeah it was it was a good time last night on the stream um sorry I'm finishing up my cold definitely was uh starting to recover yesterday this morning feeling better but because I just finished finished CrossFit like my kind of push my limits so um it's a little hard to breathe now just cuz I'm a little congested and a little tickle in my throat still so should be I'm hoping right back to normal

as of tomorrow that's the plan that's what I I told my body I said look give you one more day pal and then you got to figure this out I hate being sick um I don't think anyone likes it but yeah just the the not being able to sleep part is like it's awful um so past two nights I have been able to sleep which is good because before that like over the weekend I was I was telling my wife I don't I don't remember falling asleep either like Friday or or Saturday because I was just coughing I know that I slept but like man just could not could not do it cuz I just kept coughing um like that's all I remember through the night was just being awake coughing so yeah pretty rundown um not a good way to start the week but

that's how it is um so last night on the live stream my it's super cool my skip level manager joined the live stream uh he knows he knows I post on social media and stuff I actually think that uh between my boss uh my boss and him I think they originally saw that I was posting a lot of stuff on social media for like helping software engineers and stuff like that so um I I suspect that kind of helped with when I was switching teams that they like they kind of knew what I was about because I was posting stuff like obviously like I still applied they still interviewed me but like I think they had a they had a decent idea of like the things that I I stand for because I talk about them a lot online so uh it was just really

cool because I was watching the chat and then I saw that I was like you know Brad sent a message and I was like holy crap like that's that's my skip level manager so was funny like people were like Brad give give Nick a raise like stuff like that but it was uh it was a good time uh it was a pretty pretty chatty live stream last night which I love to see personally like I I try to remind people on live streams that's why I do them right like I would much rather people are engaged in the chat and uh otherwise I just record a YouTube video so really cool uh we were talking about like situations where like where it doesn't make sense to test and I mean like to write automated testing right so uh pretty cool to share some different perspectives

and stuff like that so I enjoyed that it's a pretty quick like topic to go over but because there was so much like chat in the chat going on like honestly it just it made it so that there was like a lot more to to kind of build on so um I definitely enjoyed last night's stream hope people uh also enjoyed it I want to get back into the the coating ones I have to put my window down for a second cuz it's fogging up sorry I can't like literally just can't see anything in here um so yeah the coding live streams are usually almost double the attendance so I want to try doing more of those but I have to have to get time hasn't really worked out the past few weeks so maybe maybe next week maybe I just have to find a

different time but try to get back into that uh the thing that I wanted to spend a little bit of time on just in this morning's kind of talk here is like I don't even know like how to frame it up but just like it's a pretty common thing on the internet I'm certainly not going to fix it by just like talking about it here but um I like in my content when I'm sharing stuff I like trying to to offer like my opinion but I like to try leaving the door wide open for other people to express their opinions because I don't like um I don't like approaching things like I'm telling you that there's only like one right way to do it or something's always wrong or something's always right like that like philosophically does not work with me um and even when

I tell people like hey I like doing X here's why um here's why I like doing it my goal is not to say therefore you must always also use X or I will only ever consider X and there's no other option like my goal is just to say here's a preference of mine and here's why it's a preference and and ideally I'm also sharing like the shortcomings of it because I do acknowledge that nothing no Solutions perfect there's no one way to do everything that's perfect all the time and uh anyway that's like a message I just try to make sure that I I represented my content um I don't know if that comes through as clearly as I'd like maybe not and that's you know I have to do better on that that's totally totally uh good feedback if that's the case but um

I would I would like that if people you know if someone was describing my content to someone else if they if they acknowledged that like I try to offer my perspective my experience but also try to to be unbiased and welcome other perspectives like that's what that's what would make me feel good about people describing my content but one of the challenges is that like and it's the internet so I'm not I'm not shocked by this I'm not surprised but um I'm still trying to find like better ways to navigate it but like uh if I post things and I offer a perspective I will get people Mo okay most people are able to kind of either agree and they don't have to but they'll agree and they'll kind of offer in their experience as well so that's super cool or they'll disagree and then

they'll also say and but here's why and it's very constructive right ultimately like and selfishly that's my goal is like I want to hear from the people that disagree so that they share their perspective and I can learn selfishly right that's what I want but then there's this crowd that's kind of in the middle and they basically it's almost like they're just like looking for problems or something I don't know like they they're like uh personally bothered by the questions or the post or something so I had an example over the past couple days I was talking about recursion and I like this example because from from hearing from more Junior developers with like I don't get recursion like I'm never going to be a good programmer because I just don't get it it's so complicated can't wrap my head around it I'm like look

like I've been programming for 20 plus years and I understand how recursion works I don't use it like I don't like it I don't think it's uh I don't think it's helpful for debugging things or making things readable in my experience um so I don't use it and I will use it iterative approaches for algorithms um and that's just kind of how it is like if I can opt for iterative I will do iterative over recursion like every single time now when I say that I hope you didn't hear me say recursion is wrong I hope you didn't hear me say say recursion is bad never use it I don't like using it I think it's more difficult to understand things and I think it's more difficult to debug that's me that's why I don't so my goal with sharing a post like that is

to let other people know like I've been doing this for a long time and it's not it's not something I rely on so like don't worry about it it's the same idea that when people are like oh I'm not good at math I'll never be a programmer I'm like look man like I'm not good at math anymore I used to be like in high school but like I'm not good at it now I program every day like it's okay so I'm just trying to share perspectives with people so that they don't feel like they're trapped or that they can't progress because that's kind of a crappy spot to be in and I don't I think it's like unfair to themselves that they're like they're kind of gatekeeping themselves without even realizing it so with this recursion example I had I had this person that was

like well you only know what recursion looks like but clearly you don't understand it because something along the lines of like or else you would understand how powerful it is and I'm like first of all first of all I don't know you and I don't know what makes you think that I don't understand what recursion is I simply do understand it and like what's what's the point of your post like either I'm doing a very bad job writing my post or which I don't think is the case because the majority of people had no problem responding to this in a constructive way even if they disagreed but like either I'm doing a really bad job or this person's just got to stick up their butt like what what's the point of your post so they basically came around to just say like you clearly don't

understand it and I said no I do I just said I don't like using it and I find it more difficult to reason with and debug and then they went on to say well no like it's just the programming language you're using and that you don't have recursive scenarios and I'm like okay like I don't know what the point is here like I need I'm now in a position where I feel like I need to prove to someone on the internet that their Claim about me not knowing something is false and then I'm going why am I doing this it's such it's such a waste of time so um my point with all of this is like I don't yet understand how to how to properly work with people that are like they're not able to debate properly if that makes sense so again the

point of the post is to encourage people to debate their perspective but then I have this class of people that will come through and instead of debating one side or the other they just attack the topic or they attack me and it's like hold on like back off pal um so yeah I have this person telling me like based on one post they go well you obviously don't know what you're talking about and it's like uh um so ultimately I had to block this person because they're like I'm trying to I'm just trying to explain what the post is and they keep coming back to like well no like I'm not I'm not going to see the point of your post like you are wrong for stating it so that was a little frustrating um I had a similar thing the other day when I

was uh regarding my newsletter topic I had a post that I put out that was about um it's kind of like what I based the newsletter off of and it was this idea like talk to me about these scenarios where you have code that's testable by definition it's testable and for whatever reason you decide to not test it like you make a conscious decision that's like it's not for some reason not worth me putting the test in place for this and that could be anything right it could be pressur to release software could be like I'm going to throw this code away anyway any reason I'm just curious what those reasons are and the reason that I'm asking this is so that people can share different perspectives right it's not for me to say if it's right or wrong that you're doing that I'm trying

to show other people that as much as I love software testing it doesn't mean that like every single piece of code can and should be tested doesn't mean that right so it's like a that's an ideal way of thinking about it so I had a bunch of people like I had a a lot of really good responses from almost every single person that commented I would say the responses were good even if they you know picked a polarizing side that was like um you know I don't think software is complete until there are tests like no matter what I had people that were saying you know they never write tests for anything and they would add in like hey I'm a solo Dev like kind of I think the point they were making was like I can keep the context of the code kind of

in my head it doesn't really matter so cool like people are again different perspectives people have different ways of approaching software development I'm not saying it's right or wrong I think testing is a good practice but the thing that I was sharing is that like when I prototype code and I had a large part of my career has been prototyping I almost will never test prototype code like write coded test for it I will obviously do do like manual validation of it but I'm not going to write like a test infrastructure for uh prototype code if I'm going to throw it away the next day or something so most of the time right that's what I was sharing and then I had people that were like I had one guy that was saying something along the lines of like this is like the wrong question

to ask because something along the lines of like you're you're assuming too much about like you're telling people that this is the default Behavior you're assuming that's the default Behavior so like you should ask this question and I'm like no like I Just Disagree like my I asked the question for a reason like if you don't if you don't understand why I'm asking the question then trying to correct my question is like kind of weird because like again it's it's my post like I'm literally asking it for a certain reason so I had to again go debate someone on the internet about why I asked a question the way I asked it and again I'm doing this thing where I'm like why am I wasting time trying to like like argue with people on the internet and it's not even about the topic like it

would be awesome to have a constructive debate with someone and I've had this many times and it it actually it's like one of the best feelings on the internet when you can go debate something something with a person that has a different perspective than you so they don't agree with you right and you're having a conversation back and forth and no one's attacking each other it's just like this positive experience where it's like look like here's here's my experience or scenario so I've lived through here's here's why I rationalize things this way and then you kind of do the same thing and you explain why and then at the end of it you don't have to agree with each other but at least you go okay I could see that if you you know weigh things a certain uh you know if you weigh something

heavily more heavily than something else you would make that kind of decision like basically I can see your perspective that's a cool spot to be in versus like I don't know like this other kind of just like internet bull crap where you're like people are just arguing and it's like what's the goal of this so so I don't know I didn't really have a point in like trying to talk about this topic I just think I just wanted to get it off my chest that like at the end of the day when I'm posting content online all that I'm trying to do is encourage other people to share perspectives as well and trying to make a spot for people to be able to do that and if um if you read the post and it like it triggers you and you feel like personally bothered

by it I just want to remind you that like that's not my goal my goal is not to like to get you fired up and like want to attack me for a question I just want you to share your perspectives on it so other people can learn from you like this is an opportunity for you to share your perspective with other people and um yeah I think that's all though like I just I would like to encourage more of that versus the the attacking kind of mentality it's just really bizarre so um what else though so I found out that's all for my rant this morning but I found out I have to do an an overnight on call shift on the weekend coming up which will be the first one I've ever done in my four years plus at Microsoft um so we have

teams in China and they they cover for some of our holidays in the US big holidays and they have a big holiday this week so I will have the Friday Saturday shift overnight which I'm not excited about because I was just on call then I was sick and now I'm going to be on call kind of like feeling like I'm losing another weekend because I won't sleep much but is what it is I guess it's okay my uh the person that I going to be backup in primary kind of partnered with is one of my direct reports she's really awesome so um I feel like I feel very supported which honestly when it comes to on call that's all that matters I like feeling supported um and I know everyone on the team is like they're they're awesome so it'll be okay but I'm just

thinking like oh like I'm already dreading like if I get paged right at the start of my shift and then I have to which is going to be at 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. if I get page at the start I could be in a situation where like I'm solving problem the entire 12 hours I don't like I'm not ready for that mentally but we'll see I think that's it for today folks sorry for the rant um tomorrow we have a few more and I'll talk about some software engineering topics we'll have some brand ghost updates so I will see you then take care