Foojay Podcast #61: Keep Your Body And Mind Healthy

Transcript

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[0:00] As a developer how do we keep our mind and body healthy let’s find outome to the FJ podcast your news about OpenJDK at devox and jall I talked with gorio dios L Tom calls Jessica seart and riio Sam about how to keep physically and mentally healthy as software developers many topics to handle here like the impact of AI on how valuable we feel how careers got impact Ed by covid how we work in and with remote teams how to get to know new colleagues and much more yes even a side step to compare the Java with net Community let’s get started with georgeos he attended devox as a speaker with a talk about keeping your body healthy it’s something that we don’t talk about very much and I’d like to change that and that’s the impact that our work has to our bodies and basically that we’re not taking Tak care of ourselves as as well as we take care of the systems that we build and some suggestions on what to do about it mhm okay I’m your perfect subject because I work at home I have my home office I never leave it except to take a walk with a dog what am I doing wrong I mean I haven’t seen you

[1:22] But I think we have to forget the idea that we’re doing something wrong in the sense that nobody can do it right if you to sit on a chair for 8 hours there’s no way to keep the perfect posture the body is just can’t stand still for 30 minutes and I mean I’ve learned from myself that I over the years I forced myself to stay still and forget that I am uncomfortable and I’m trying to change that so I’m trying to realize when my body is starting to get you know like wanting to move and get up M it’s a start and then I think it’s also good to allocate specific time at the end probably at the end of your workday to recover from all the sitting so do a little bit of movement and a little bit of stretching I think that’s very important yeah if I reflect on myself the thing which changed the most by working at home is that I don’t have the time anymore in the car where you can reflect before you arrive home so I think that’s indeed an important thing to do after the work still drive home yes absolutely and you know we have all these these things that we

[2:38] Introduce into our Liv to get some benefit like working from home because we can do other things but then I find that most of us actually don’t get that benefit because we let the work of whatever kind of swallow that time so I think we also need to become more conscious like if I’m if I’m working from home then let’s make sure that you I am actually spending more time with loved ones I am taking time to exercise or whatever it is that I thought I was going to do when I stopped going to the office M is a threadmill something we should have the Walking band or how do you call it in English yes personally I’m not a believer of that I think when I do a task I want to be completely focused on it and movement especially I think is jaring to whatever else you might be doing especially if you’re doing creative work so I would say forget the treadmill just get up and walk outside I bought a dog especially for that reason absolutely I mean pets are amazing I have two cats and I don’t take them for walks but they give me time to focus on them and kind of be

[3:53] Conscious of my surroundings is there one specific topic from your presentation that you can highlight now I think something that like when people when I people ask me what I’m going to talk about and I say I’m going to talk about you know our health and so on they and they go oh standing desks right and I’m like not exactly that’s you know that’s part of it I think one little known fact that’s very important is that actually stress can shape our bodies if we don’t recover from it so the motion patterns that we that the body produces as we experience stress make Muscle Contra contractions repeatedly and if you do that repeatedly then that stays permanently so people kind of become like this with the you know their neck in the front and chest closed which of course is also a position that is made worse by sitting because we do that by sitting too so the combination of sitting and stress is something we should either avoid or get out of from time to time yes we need to recover from stress which comes basically by moving our body not not necessarily by

[5:11] Walking or something like this but moving our joints and I will share some resources in my talk very nice that this kind of topic also appears at a conference like this you have a software development company that’s right yes Java software no I learned Java when was at University but then I went to the dark side so I I’m we’re using net and react and we’re called Zer to MVP so we have an intruder that’s right can you compare c.net with Java is there a specific reason you’re choosing C for me at the time that I adopted it was because Java was a little bit more let’s say had very specific ideas and kind of would force you on them and I found CP a little bit more practical in that sense but I think we also need to realize that they’re they’re different tools yes but they’re so close to each other that we need to speak to each other more and realize we work in the same field we serve the same people and at the end of the day if we don’t make something that’s useful we failed indeed there is no right or wrong language as a developer you need to know the principles and then you can

[6:31] Switch even between languages so you’re here to learn about Java I guess also absolutely I take the opportunity to see what you guys are doing and you know I think it always comes in waves where you know one Community will make an advancement and then the other communities will catch up so it’s always good to see what other people are doing and say Hey you know maybe that’s useful in my world Lut was a guest in an earlier podcast about Ai and llms I asked her if we should be afraid of our job and how big the impact of AI will be on how we feel as a developer I think it’s very big because AI you can get around it nowadays and you don’t have to be scared about it because people think oh no AI is going to take over my job but it isn’t it only makes more errors and more and we still have to fix that so there’s one person that has to fix that on as as developers will we lose value if we don’t use these tools yes I think we lose value because it’s a very useful yeah extension of you so you can ask one what’s happening here in the coat if you see some spaghetti coat or something or

[7:43] If you want to just brainstorm a rub a duck but want something to talk back then you can use it and I think in the future we use more more Ai and it’s going to generate more and more stuff and but then you have to know really what’s going on because it doesn’t know what it’s what it was generated and sometimes it hallucinates and stuff and then the real profession what is it what’s happening everything under the hood is needed so I think our value increases over time so you could already be a full stack copy paste developer when you took Cod from stack Overflow for instance now the same problem arises with these chat systems it just spits out codes but you really have to understand what you do yes exactly and you can ask for example CH to explain it but it’s still can be hallucinating so it’s yes the next generation of stack Overflow don’t copypaste everything because it’s probably wrong so see and learn what’s doing but it’s very helpful to just pick your brain and say oh something they suggested but probably you have to do that but then you can grow to that and learn from it so it’s

[8:57] Very good to do it and learn from it but not just copy paste and be done some use it as a per programming colleague almost is that a good approach yeah that’s a good approach let do yeah like I said before the rubber duck that talks back yeah during covid did the disease have any influence on how you work did you work more from home did it have an impact on how you feel yourself in your role as developer yeah it’s changed on how we’re working and I’m more remote and I think now when you go to the office it’s more valuable because all the coffee talks and then you get new ideas and stuff and you have to be more empathic because when you see it on camera you don’t see the full body so then you’re missing that part and it can be really dangerous to do assumptions and stuff so yeah it’s really different than before co yeah what tips do you have for people who are sitting at the desk the whole time go out and walk that’s Al always good for your health and minimum of 20 minutes just to get it out of your head take some new ideas and if you’re tired just give into that do something else and not try to okay but

[10:10] It’s in my time frame so I have to do it now now please go take coffee or do something else and go back and especially if you’re always at home just call randomly a colleague hey how are you doing because sometimes if you don’t have a family at home and you’re living on your own it gets very lonely and people forget that if you have a lot of family at home and stuff so just call that colleague even if you think it’s going great you just talks a bit bits and beats and everything but yeah that’s that’s nice to do a coffee machine moment we are missing at home yeah I’ve miss a lot of when I’m working at home so yeah you said asking a colleague so I think that’s I think that’s one of important topic in the Java Community it’s a very open Community you can just ask any technical question question to anyone but should people should we dare to ask really mental questions yeah because it’s really still a little bit of let’s don’t talk about mental because then you think you’re crazy but I’m very happy that’s now more and more accepted that’s okay if you’re not okay some say no I’m

[11:22] Not feeling well today no it’s not going good and then everybody around you can say okay can we help maybe it’s SC but then you know and you can adapt to it so it’s very important to be aware of it and be accepted about it and when you have more safe space with your colleagues you’re doing more because you’re thinking okay I can bring in nowadays I can have a bad day and then you get more and more productive and if it’s good it’s all more happy so yeah I’m all on more mental health and talk about it and we have to admit we all have bad days yes of course yeah p and that means without the bad days we don’t have good days so yeah we need those sadly Enough Tom Co attended devox during the first week in a new job he just started as a devil for time fold and I asked him how he felt in this new role frankly a bit scary it’s a role that I’ve been looking into doing for quite a while I’ve been speaking a lot of conferences anyway for years and I like sharing content I likeed edating people and really helping people solving problems they have I had talks in the past about learning how to learn also

[12:36] A bit about dealing with change and such so this everyone who speaks to me says Tom this is the most natural transition you could have made but it’s still scary because I was at my previous company for 11 and a half years so it was quite a jump and then immediately being here and being among friends and being able to share the good news with everyone and everyone being genuinely happy with the transition it’s it’s cool to see it’s cool to see I invited you for this specific podcast because you had a talk about the danger of a burnout which is a very difficult topic for most developers how do you deal with stress in our jobs yeah that was part of my learning through thinkering talks about learning to learn and I tell the story about how I ended up in a burnout and I ended up in a burnard because I wanted to do too many things at the same time for example I was a I’m a Java developer by Nature that’s also why we’re here because we love Java and I suddenly had to do net on a project and I’m not dising theet programming language it’s fine but I

[13:40] Kind of underestimated what that change meant CU I was a lead developer I was supposed to lead the team and I Al all of a sudden I was a junior net developer I went from very senior Java developer to oh how do I do logging how do I do the simplest things and what I learned there is and that’s the danger is that there’s so many different things coming at us and in this case it waset that came to me but sometimes we do this to ourselves when we focus we have no Focus basically we see oh this cool thing and that cool thing and I see a lot of people when they leave a conference like devox they go home and they want to try everything they want to try the latest quarkus thing and Gradle what what’s this and this grow pie stuff that I saw and that’s one of the risks that we have we’re sometimes too enthusiastic about things and we want to know everything but then we don’t always have time to do that and that messes with our brain a little bit a real challenge I know the same feeling do you have some tips you can share how should we focus on one thing or should we just try

[14:44] To follow everything I think there’s a certain degree of depth you can follow something so the way I do it is I I’m on Twitter a lot I follow a lot of I read a lot of Articles also on Foojay and other blogs and I have this you know the t-shaped profile that’s often spoken about I do that for knowledge as well I try to be t-shaped meaning I want to at least be aware that certain things exist but to know in depth how something works I am very specific and very intentional about that so one example I have is I only code Java and maybe a bit of JavaScript if I really have to but I decided to stay away from a bunch of other programm Lang even cotl I haven’t touched yet maybe I will in the future but Focus on a limited set and knowing that there’s enough of a job market there’s enough interesting stuff to do there I think that’s quite key because because I see a lot of Junior developers that are like oh yeah and I know a bit of python and a bit of Ruby and a bit of this and a bit of that but you don’t really know anything in depth so I would say focus is the most important part and really check and

[15:50] Maybe the biggest tip I can give is try to figure out what the valuable next step is Cu one of the reasons I also came close to a burnout was I wanted to learn machine learning but I didn’t know any math and this was pre llm so it was really math heavy so I had to recognize in myself that if I wanted to learn machine learning I first had to take the smaller step of learning a few math algorithms and if you don’t step back and think about this then the risk is that you’ll be annoyed at yourself and think oh I’m stupid because I can’t do this machine learning thing maybe even a simpler example that I have if you want to learn CSS animations then you first need to learn CSS and if you because if you don’t know CSS yet then CSS animations you may want to learn it but you need to do these intermediate steps and I get of so often developers that say oh but I’m too stupid to learn this it’s like no you’re not too stupid you just need to figure out what the intermediate steps are and I think we see that a lot in our industry especially when you see cool speakers at

[16:57] An event like this that go really in depth and they were like I want to know that as well but know that they have had an entire Journey already so that would be focus and don’t be too hard on yourself you talked about imposter syndrome Without Really mentioning it even people think I’m not good enough is that something how do you deal with that feeling if I knew the definitive answer I would not be feeling imposter syndrome as often as I do to a personal story maybe when I became a Java Champion a while ago I couldn’t believe it like because you become a Java champion because other Java Champions vote you to be one and I was like no they made a mistake this can’t be I don’t belong in this group and I think getting an outside perspective is always useful so my wife was very useful she’s always useful I’m sorry she was very helpful in getting me out of this she basically tricked My Mind by saying oh so you have imposter syndrome and you don’t believe you’re a Java Champion yeah of course so these are all people you admire right yes there are people I

[18:08] Admire I admire all of them and I don’t believe I’m part of them so this is a problem because you admire them you think they’re smart they voted you in and now you’re saying they made a mistake ah good point see and I think having some imposter syndrome is normal I have now with the new role I’ve just became devoll but I try to just embrace it a little bit and use this feeling of I’m not good enough twist it around and go okay but how what can I do about it so I’ve been talking to a lot of other defal people here to learn as much as I can about the new role I’m doing and using that as a driver to drive you forward instead of something that holds you back too much the feeling will often be there for many cases if it is being a junior developer that joins on a project for the first time or yeah someone starting a podcast for the first time it always feels like oh but there’s so many people that can do it so much better than I can but try to flip it around as a trigger and a motivator for your journey to become better don’t let it try to not let it overwhelm you but use

[19:14] It as a oh so there’s more I can learn so yeah let’s let’s try to do that let’s talk to some people and maybe the most important message is everyone has imposter syndrome even the ones that become a Java Champion yeah yeah yeah sometimes I think these Champion titles and these all these how do you call them all these acolytes all the these Awards or terms you get in the end I think it’s all we’re all normal people so sometimes we feel like oh I can’t do this but try to use that as a trigger to find help because if there’s one thing that I’ve learned in my career it’s you can’t do any almost anything alone it always gets better when you can ask some help so and to find help networking and socializing with people really helps and what I noticed now especially in the last couple of days when I was talking about this new role when you talk to people and say hey I just transition to this role you are doing this role for years can you give me some tips most of them are like oh yeah I was totally like you when I started let me help you and that’s just the best feeling so reach out for help take it

[20:27] Easy and have some fun use it as a trigger to progress Jessica seart had to talk at jall help I hate my teammate and I wondered how she personally handled such a situation the past decade I’ve been across several situations where working together was difficult yeah definitely from that I draw inspiration if you are hating your teammate what should I do well it of course it depends on the exact situation if if you really really hate your teammate I would say maybe it’s the best thing to get out of there actually at my talk I suggest a few different things you could do is it the most important thing just telling it or being open I think yeah well as research also shows being being open about it if if you are going to pick this battle that’s definitely a first step you could do that with people who are not in the conflict at home or on the job if if you trust people but be make sure you’re you’re staying respectful for the other the others that may get into into the conflict and not to turn it

[22:04] Into gossiping but to stay in a constructive mind space I would say yeah how important is the manager in such a case I think a manager could could play a key role maybe it’s not always necessary to involve the manager sometimes the manager gets involved regard regardless of whether he has to yeah but I think it’s a it could be a very important role for the manager to help facilitate to find a resolution yes definitely you have this whole group of java people here how is the mingling how what do you learn from all the people here well honestly it’s easiest to talk to people you already know that’s yeah that’s that’s that’s for sure but even then people that I know from a couple years ago it’s it’s nice to learn what they’re doing by now and where they’re ATS and if they also well I did Scala for a long time now I’m doing cotlin and if others are also doing that or went back to Java or whatever yeah that’s right it’s a good remark I heard that at a conference or at a j or whatever you should not talk to the

[23:35] People you ready know you should really but as an introvert person I make the same mistake it’s very difficult to get to speak to new people is that a bit the same problem like I hate my teammates I is it just be open and start talking oh that’s definitely part of being in a good relationship with your teammates it’s when you have a new person on your team especially then and you’re with teammates that you know a bit already it’s it’s easier in to remain with them I think it’s a it’s a natural first thing to do but if you’re open to this new person and his or her characteristics and what this person could bring to your team maybe or she can help you with something that you’ve been annoyed about in the code or in the program or in the project in a way you didn’t think of yet so yeah I really Tred to be open to this new new teammate but I have to say that it’s yeah it it’s it’s something I have to be mindful of yeah yeah that’s true many people in the software industry work with remote colleagues rosam is originally from India and now lives and

[25:05] Works in the Netherlands so he is the perfect person to give us tips on how to work with or be part of such a remote team he has a talk that he presented on different events about this topic it’s mainly about the culture like working in a multicultural team is not that easy part I I’ve been doing it for the last 8 years so I I’ve been in different parts of that like working from India started working from India then moved to Netherlands with a service based company then I moved to a client like Bank itself so it’s not that easy everybody thinks yeah you have some money you can buy somebody you can get some developer somewhere and the work is not no it’s not done that it’s more about understanding each other on the both ways it works on both ways like you understand as a company of how this works and as a developer you need to understand okay how the company works and how I can contribute so sometimes even if you are a really good developer you won’t be able to make progress so that’s where my talk comes with some CH challenges how you face when you’re working not especially

[26:16] Remotely but in a multicultural team how to communicate how to give feedback yeah how to make decision making work with decision making like that that’s my talk about giving some tips on the impacts of culture in different topics in your day-to-day life MH I think that’s the thing I miss most I work from home the whole time I only see my colleagues at conferences and some other events what I miss the most is the coffee Mo moment the machine coffee machine yes that you can just have an every chat you have when you work remotely is an official meeting yes isn’t that yeah should we look for a solution yes it’s not I will give an example I was like few months back I pinned one of my colleague just Hi how are you Hi the person name and how are you and he immediately reped me hey just tell me what you want I don’t want anything I just want to know how you feeling that’s that’s how we are in now because now we think like every chat is about about the work no it’s not also about the work it’s it’s about the person you are how you are feeling so that’s where

[27:36] We are missing now a lot yeah so we need to improve like we need to intentionally plan some coffee meetings that we need to put it in our agenda okay let me call him have a chat with him and make sure that you say this is not about work I had many coffee meetings with many people schedule and at the end they were asking me double double checking with me that okay do you need to know something else do you need something work no I don’t need anything work related just need to know how you’re feeling as a person so that helps a lot when you next time when you need something with work or when you want help from him or you it will go very smoothly if you intentionally plan those meetings is it something that managers and team leads should do should they scheduled this or you also think this should happen between colleagues in within a team both ways it’s it’s also a responsibility of your manager to do it as a team lead also like psychological safety is something missing in teams now it is so it’s the response I’m also a manager so myself I need to plan some moments with my team members some coffee

[28:51] Moments some games at the same time developers can also plan that like yeah it’s good that also there with their colleagues have a coffee meeting or something with the teams just give them a call not every day but at least once in a month plan something a short call 10 minutes catch up so it’s I would say it’s the responsibility of both managers and the developer if a developer thinking okay I need to wait for my manager to plan something yeah it’s it’s not going to work yeah we just need to dare to ask it yes yes you need to like yeah like the example I said it’s not not everybody is now like people are adjusted to the work environment itself we need to change that culture a little bit so we need to have a push okay let’s have a game let’s have a team maybe online also there are multiple games which can be fun we played something recently with our team we were like so hesitated to do half an hour game but once we did like everybody started okay let’s fight let’s let’s do it let’s figure it out and in the end it we only scheduled for half an hour it went I think 45 minutes plus because

[30:04] Everybody interested to do it so yeah somebody has to plan it and I think once it’s there you can see the results are the website with games like this or you can record some books or where can we find those it’s website like if you just search in Google there can be like we can find online games you can find like I we played the battleship in dutes that one I played we played online and then at clue detective something I forgot the name of it like we kind of a virtual investigation thing a lot of website free websites are there and also on yeah so it’s not the game itself which is important but that you are online together and comp you are from India and I think you still work with people in India how big issue is time differences in current day teams yeah it’s it’s always a challeng to plan meetings so like now we are in our time difference is 4 and a half hours with India so it’s even challenging like you we will only get like if you start really early in Netherlands you will get around 6 hours or maybe 5 hours of kind current of currently working

[31:26] Together then you need to plan all your meeting during those times so that you can give your Indian colleag some evening we will take some of their evenings but then yeah make sure that sometimes I feel like people are not realizing they put meetings at 4:00 in the evening in that time that is already like how yeah it’s so late in India so that’s kind of you are taking advantage I would say it’s not good for the team in the long run so if you care a little bit about your colleague they will also give it to you and your company back a lot yeah yeah inde taking the time zone of your colleague into account I live in Belgium so I have colleagues in us and in India so I have the difference in both directions yes so setting up a meeting can be very challenging indeed it was my very first struggle when I started working in such a and even when you’re making plans like it’s also in my talk recently after Corona I heard people saying let’s connect after lunch okay and my yeah colleague expect me to be back in 15 minutes that’s not going to happen with an Indian lens yeah Indian lens

[32:43] Take at least one hour to prepare and eating a de sandwich will take maybe one minute or 2 minutes and try eating doing it with an Indian lens it’s not possible so those are the some small things we don’t realize when working together which can impact a lot could it also be a problem that people misunderstand each other because of cultural differences yes a lot because it depends each each culture communicate like in technical terms we call it law contest communication and high contest communication like for example in Netherlands or bgm I would say it’s a high cont communic sorry L contest communication where you only need to listen to the sentence to understand the meaning I would say an example like in Dutch homes if you go inside the home they will ask do you need a cookie they literally mean do you need a single cookie or not but at the same time if you are in India it’s a high contest or China it’s a very high contest culture where you need to assess the entire situation to know the meaning of what the person is saying so those things will cause a lot

[34:01] Of misunderstanding when you’re working with a M Multicultural team I can give you another example one of my product owner he was working with an Indian colleague he asked the Indian colleague hey will you complete this on this time okay and my Indian colleague said yes I will try what he said exactly is it’s difficult he will try and there is no guarantee that it will work on those date but what the product own understood yes just yes he was expecting it to be delivered those are the starting point of misunderstandings in teams it affects a lot these things yeah and isn’t all the chatting we do with Team Zoom slack whatever also causing this because whatever you type Yes sounds completely different for three if three people are reading the same message they can completely understand it differently so shouldn’t we take the phone more often or chat through through through video call instead of chatting and certainly if we have some kind of discussion or there is a problem to be fixed isn’t typing something always causing problems we cannot say that like we I also promote as synchronous

[35:27] Communication a lot because if you really want to have a meeting like you said with every colleague with your Indian colleague and your us colleague it’s not that easy to find a time slot so we cannot completely avoid typing but whenever you type something double check it like are you using the when English is not your mother tongue and my mother tongue we are both are our second language then try to look at the wordings we are using try to be polite a little bit that T feedback de communication is so direct we use a lot of direct words or strong words maybe try to reduce those readings that change can to could or something like that which can help a lot so I don’t think we can avoid chatting completely but if possible I would say go for a call or if you are sitting together go for the walk walk to that person first talk if if not then make a call if not try to chat yeah and if a chat turns out to become evil then stop chatting and have a correct correct the moment you realize this the tone of chat is not going well that’s the best time to stop it and tell okay

[36:43] Hey can we go for a call and let’s explain it it’s important I had the moments many time like I thought okay I said something and I realized that okay the meaning I think I didn’t convey the meaning properly I said immediately hey let’s have a goal so it’s important you to realize that and act upon it is there anything more you want to share about this topic no like only thing is like psych I believe in psychological safety part where we don’t consider that much in our teams it’s important to avoid like you said earlier burnouts burnouts can easily happen with your teams so not only sometimes we think that overworking will cause burnout no no it is not at all the ca there are many causes to the to burn out so try to avoid it try to take account of cultural impact on your teams that can help a lot that’s it for this episode now step away from your computer and go take a walk thanks for listening or watching and thanks to my guests of course keep an eye on Foojay for future articles and podcasts about development and everything related to the Java world see you give me a f give me a j give me

[38:01] The friends of OpenJDK