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Comment · 24 days ago
Comment · 1 month ago
Location: Spain / Anywhere overlapping with Central European Timezone

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Humanistic psychotherapy and counseling

Résumé/CV: https://dariashubina.com

Email: [email protected]

I offer online psychological counseling to people in STEM.

I've recently finished BSc in Psychology and I am an officially registered psychologist in Spain, I also work internationally. As my main occupation I work in web dev since 2015, mostly worked as a backend developer, and also as an engineering manager and director. Before that I did a PhD in physics and briefly worked in automotive industry.

See more information on my page https://dariashubina.com

Comment · 2 years ago
Good post, thanks for sharing it and the author for writing it!

I liked very much the observations in the first half of the post, however I don't agree with the conclusions. For me the reason for the state of software engineering (and well, many other industries really) is the problem with leadership. We as society often choose wrong leaders[1] and these leaders have very detrimental effects on processes and quality. However, it doesn't mean that what we do in software engineering is intrinsically meaningless, it's just very inefficient. The majority of web and mobile applications do solve a problem people have, because people do need to eat, shop, dress, play, organise their documentation, learn, do sports, connect to other people, share things with each other, etc. More often than not these applications are developed not because of great leadership but despite of terrible one, because the people who write code still manage to do their job despite of it. And the same thing happens in hospitals, you don't think that hospitals' management is much better, do you?

So, basically, the problem with the first approach (Gratitude) is that it ignores the problem. Often ignoring the problem is contributing to it. And the problem with the second approach (Cynicism) is that it exacerbates it, because it essentially promotes the lack of integrity and the same problematic egocentric attitude that's responsible for this problem in the first place.

Being angry is a very natural reaction to this problem, and I do agree it's necessary to a degree. However I don't think it's the solution. I guess the solution is to accept the current situation for what it is, and do your part to change it. You don't need to be angry to do that, but you do need to ditch the wrong expectations about our society and how it works.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_Oab42VZRE

Comment · 2 years ago
Wow, great piece, thanks for sharing it! While reading it I was absolutely sure I've already heard it. For the first part I thought it's the transcript of the text they read in Vipassana retreat, and for the second I thought it must be from Alan Watts. But from the rest of the blog and from the comments here I understand that it's neither, and that it's just your thoughts. It reads really nicely, like a river.

I also noticed that your previous blog's name (stormrider) is somehow similar to mine (cyclinginthewind) haha.

Comment · 6 years ago
Thank you very much for writing this! It's very well formulated and expressed. I especially liked

> Unfortunately, it's very difficult to convince suffering patients that they have some control over their situation without also implying personal blame for their problems

I also see it as a big part of the problem, that it's difficult to convince people that they do have control over their lives. In many psychotherapy books, when therapists describe various cases, this is a corner stone of a therapy success: a patient understanding that they do have control over their situation. That it's not the outer world that is so demanding that it leaves them no choice, but them choosing to cope in a particular way, and that there are other ways to react and cope.

Comment · 6 years ago
Comment · 7 years ago
Comment · 7 years ago
Hey, great answer, totally on the same page with you. But at times the boredom voice is just so loud, that even understanding that this voice is also just a part of grand happening does not help.
Comment · 8 years ago
Although I do agree that the percentage of people on the spectrum is higher in tech industry than in other industries, I think it's not higher than some 5-15%. When you ascribe to every introverted person being on the spectrum, you neglect the significance of it in people who really have it. It's like you're saying "yeah, we're all like this, so don't pretend you can't do this or that".
Comment · 8 years ago
On one hand it's true and people will apply their preconceived interpretations, on the other hand if nobody talks about it these interpretations and biases will never change. People have these biases because they don't know anybody with autism/schizophrenia/depression personally, but once they know and realize that it's a human just like them, they could understand it better.
Comment · 8 years ago
Your work sounds interesting. I also live in Spain, what is the company name?
Comment · 8 years ago
what's your timezone?
Comment · 8 years ago
I have a specific question: do you hire remotely? :)
Comment · 8 years ago
I think it's hard to explain why the things it does are cool, because it's related to the aesthetic sense of beauty and it's very difficult to explain that one. It's like you take a person who is doing number theory, and you ask them to explain why they are so fascinated that you can approximate prime numbers distribution with a particular function.

I think it's related to aesthetics of seeing how things are connected into a "bigger picture". It gives you an immense sense of beauty, once you are able to see that things, that you thought are not related, are connected into a bigger picture, and are actually very much related.

In Haskell a lot of things are about this "bigger picture", while in many popular languages the things are just a bunch of practical tools, that have nothing to do with each other.

Comment · 8 years ago
I totally agree here, that 'culture fit' in team work is a real thing. Usually a thing that you discover some month later, after the person feels they can be "themselves" and don't need to pretend being nice. If the whole team finds a person toxic, this is very real case of 'culture unfit' and it should be dealt with.

However, I also once faced with a case, when manager didn't want to hire an engineer, because she thought he wasn't 'culture fit', although he was a great engineer. Technical members of hiring committee managed to convince her otherwise and then this person became in a sense the heart of the team, everybody liking him more than anybody else.

So, in my opinion 'culture fit' should always come from within the team a person works in and it should be a collective opinion, not an opinion of a single manager.

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