Perform a screening of the company you want to work with

Hiring is a two-way street. Your employers have a detailed screening process, but you need to have one as well. These are my main steps:

• Look for a diversity page

• Look at their about page - are there any women? POC? LGBTQ members?

• What are their values?

• Read reviews on Glassdoor/LinkedIn

These are all simple steps that can speak volumes. I’ve been falsely informed during interviews, and I blame myself for not fact-checking some things beforehand. You need to make sure that the people you will work with have the same values as you do, otherwise, you won’t be as excited about working there.

Check the vibe of the company

Make sure to prepare a list of questions to ask before any interview. Don’t be afraid of asking questions and making sure that the people you will work with are the right match for you. Evaluate your potential manager. Sure, we all need money to survive, but making money is difficult when you don’t work with people you actually want to work with.

• Ask them about their management style. Top to bottom, or flat? How do they organize work? Make sure that the “fast-paced environment” you’re joining isn’t a synonym for “we make people burn out and quit”.

• Make sure you understand why they are hiring for that role. Is it a new position or did someone leave? If someone left, why?

• Discover whether and how they support career growth.

• Mentorship vs Management – what style do they practice? Are you going to have someone who will own your career growth?

• Ask them about their anti-discriminatory practices. How do they handle difficult situations at work?

Can your future manager actually manage you?

This is more of a problem in a smaller company or a startup, but it was one of the biggest problems I’ve experienced. Sometimes, your manager doesn’t really understand your job. Sometimes, hiring is a task they’ve been given by someone else. Sometimes founders themselves want to hire someone to own part of the work they don’t know how to handle. The question is, can you handle them?

• Check whether you’d be comfortable having your interviewer as your manager. Are they really more senior than you? Or did they just land in that position?

• Ask them about the projects and try to figure out what makes your manager happy at that company.

• Try to understand how the collaboration process goes in the team and between multiple teams.

• Check how they’d support your career growth. Do they need a screw or a toolbox? Will they actually encourage your growth or will they try to keep you in the same spot for as long as they can because of their business needs?

If you don’t have a good manager, you’re not going to have a great time at that place.

How to make your existing workplace more inclusive?

I was the first openly queer employee in quite a few companies. Definitely the first Serbian one in 99% of them 🤣. Sometimes the people who hired me didn’t know how to make the job ad or the company stand out more to the LGBTQ+ community. They didn't know how to communicate that they are accepting of people with different backgrounds or cultures. After all, you have to start from somewhere. Sometimes, HR people really need our help and guidance, and I was always eager to help when people approached me. I was involved in making a diversity page for my existing company. They didn’t know what I was looking at during the interview process, but once me and other colleagues spoke up, the management team listened. They also made gender-neutral job ads and improved the tone of voice in future job listings. Here are some ideas on how you can help:

• Start a group that can discuss these issues and raise them with the People team. Offer them your help. Sometimes people aren’t sure what to do when they aren’t a minority member.

• Offer help with making the diversity page.

• Make sure to share women-only job boards and LGBTQ+ boards with the recruitment team.

Let’s make the workplace a better place for all

Finding a safe and inclusive environment at these times may seem like an unlikely chance, but you need to be aware that you bring your full self to the table, so it is crucial to screen the company that is screening you.

If you are already in a good spot, teach the rest of the team how to attract more people who might tick off any diversity boxes. Sometimes we need to be the ones who can signal to others that there are good spots out there.

P.S. This post was originally written for Elpha, a platform for women in tech that is about to shut down. I decided to save the post by republishing it over here.

In my case, some of the routines I have are great, some of them I know I need to change, most of them are neutral. My morning routine hasn't changed a lot over the years. Getting up, walking the dog (that's relatively new), making some food & coffee, reading the news, and then getting to work.

Twitter was a huge part of my life

I have recently realized that one of my biggest habits was scrolling and posting on Twitter. I have officially been a Twitter fan since August 2010. I never gave it much thought, but Twitter was my online journal where I was allowed to register incognito and express myself without the fear of being "discovered" or stigmatized by the people from my hometown. I was just another queer kid living in a tiny town.

Twitter was a platform that allowed me to have my voice and connect with others without any fear. They were much less pushy than Facebook who really wanted us to register with our full names. At the age of 18, I wasn't comfortable with sharing my thoughts with just about everyone who knew me.

Then, when I was at uni, Twitter became my diary and random thought collector. I was able to have short and witty conversations with other people who were looking for a fun way to use their breaks from everyday life. I have to admit, I even met a few dates on it. Everything revolved around discussions, and connecting with like-minded people.

Understanding Twitter as a platform

Until I started working, I never asked myself how Twitter worked. I didn't understand what their business model was, among other things. I never really cared, until I heard that saying - "If you're not paying for it, you're the goods." Ads were pushing revenue on Twitter. Honestly, I was completely ok with that, as long as they kept running.

I got to know more about their mission as a platform, and I honestly admired how they as a company influenced the WebDev space. They were doing amazing stuff, and their solutions were helpful to other developers across the globe.

Change of plans

When the rich kid took over.... I was appalled by his behaviour and the way he treated his workers. I was sure that someone would take him down since his actions are obviously hurting and damaging the company he paid 44B for.

As a Serbian citizen who has seen a decent pile of political 💩, I have to say that this has politics stench all over it. I'm pretty sure he's not doing this on a whim, but rather pushing someone else's agenda. Over the years, Twitter has been the place for many political activists to speak up. They were protected, and they were valued. Today, they are not.

Breaking the habit and moving to Mastodon

Today, I am grateful that Twitter allowed me to have a voice, but after all these new changes, I know that my voice needs to move to another place. I no longer want to be one of the people who would enable the entitled white guy to continue behaving the way he behaves and getting richer by exploiting and mistreating others.

Yes, freedom of speech is important, but so are human lives, and decent human values. I don't see those being present on the platform anymore.

Starting this week you can read my thoughts on stuff around tech and my dog on Mastodon. Let's connect there and let's make the future better by breaking bad habits. That's the only way for us as a society to grow and improve.

Here's a bit of my background and reasons why I've decided to pursue fully remote jobs only and refuse to relocate for any job-related reasons. I'm writing this post as I have been declining job offers that required me to relocate, and some people couldn't believe that I don't want to move away from Serbia and move to a more advanced European country.

List of Reasons Why I'm Not Relocating Again

I'll start off with a basic list of reasons, and then I'll share my full relocation story. I've talked to some people who believe that they can just offer a lot of money and relocation perks to their job candidates, as that is the best way to build a strong on-premise team.

Hopefully, this list will show them why they're wrong and why they may lose global talent potential.

1. Every time you move some personal relationships break. I really need the support of my family and friends and don't want to compromise those again.
2. Why would I move to a place where I'd have to spend a bigger chunk of my salary on the basic costs of living?
3. Work takes 40 hours of my time per week. Why is the job you're offering more important than 40+ hours I have for myself and my life priorities?
4. I'm more productive while working from home than when I'm in an office.
5. I don't want to waste my time commuting.
6. I have no intentions to struggle with the bureaucracy of any other country, Serbia is hell in that sense, I don't need a new one.
7. I'm perfectly fine with earning as much as I do online, I don't need your amazing relocation perks.
8. Please don't assume that everything in Serbia is a pile of 💩 on fire.

This sums it up. Here's the rest of my story 👇

Moving To Study

In 2011, I was 19 at the time when I moved away from my hometown, really excited and extremely happy. I had finally left a place that was extremely small, where everyone knew each other, and which was limiting my personal growth.

In order for me to study English, which was my biggest passion at the time, I had to leave behind my family, dogs, and replace my house with a small room in an apartment that was good enough for its purpose. I had one task, to improve my English as much as I can and graduate.

My social life was amazing as I was meeting my peers and connecting with new people all the time. I didn't have to worry much about my family, things were a bit rough financially, but it was a standard Serbian story.

Fast forward to 2016. I'm still trying to get a degree, but I'm not very successful at it. I was struggling with balancing between my job and my studies. I had been working as a full-time English language teacher in one of the online schools that operated in Asia. I had to support myself financially, but that was hindering me to dedicate more time to finish all the courses.

I was also getting increasingly annoyed by that profession, and part of the reason why I didn't try harder to get a degree was the fact that I didn't want to pursue teaching anymore. I also wanted to work as a translator, but after some time I realized that translating isn't as exciting and as challenging, nor did it pay off as much.

Relocating Because of a Job

After some mental health struggles, I've finally accepted that the English language is not my biggest passion anymore and that I wanted to explore something that was always interesting as well - tech.

I wanted to learn how to maintain Linux servers and started reading a lot of books and attending free courses about it. Then, my best friend forwarded me a job ad that changed my life. It was a Technical Editor position. My love for the written word met my love for learning more about tech! It was a perfect match. I was successfully moving from one stage to another, and then in the final stage, I realized that although they were open for remote work, it was a position that required me to move to Novi Sad.

I have to admit that I wasn't putting down a list of pros and cons. I had to make a big change in my life and open myself to new possibilities. My friends were extremely supportive, my family was concerned, and my partner at the time was angry and broke up with me before I even got the job.

Briefly Leaving Novi Sad

After almost 2 years in Novi Sad, I got a really attractive job offer. This time I did make a list of pros and cons. The reality was that my social life in Novi Sad wasn't that amazing and that my job wasn't making me as happy as it did anymore. I needed a change, again.

At this point in time, I was also getting increasingly conscious of how "far" I was from my family, and it was easier for me to go to my hometown from Belgrade than from Novi Sad. I was relocating because of better professional growth opportunities, social life, and the hope that my family would come over more often.

I moved to Belgrade and 2 weeks later started dating someone from Novi Sad. Yes, my life is a telenovela sometimes.

Then, I started realizing the cons of living in Belgrade. The town is way busier than Novi Sad, I spent more than an hour in traffic every day which is even amazing for Belgrade standards. I was again spending a lot of time in Novi Sad during weekends to recharge as I hated the open offices in Belgrade and the overall Belgrade vibe. One thing lead to another and I decided to get back to Novi Sad.

Getting Back to Novi Sad

This was the first time I worked remotely full-time. I had to figure out some paperwork stuff and make sure I have a proper office corner. There's more to being able to work remotely, but that's not the topic of this post.

At this time I decided to rearrange my life priorities and question a lot of decisions I've made. After some difficult family events, I accepted that as much as I hate some parts of Serbian culture, that's also who I am. Family and friends come first, work comes second.

I don't want to be in a position where I can't just hop into my car and drive home when an emergency occurs. My family does not include only me, my partner, and our dog, but it also extends to my family and her family.

Overall, Novi Sad makes a lot of sense as well. It's more affordable than Belgrade, has a much more laid-back vibe, and it's easier for me to plan out my day and do multiple things in a single day.

What really pisses me off is when people assume that everything and everyone in Serbia is bad. The truth is that a lot of things that revolve around the government need to be improved, but as long as I'm able to support myself through remote work, I'm not lagging behind anything in my life. I'm happy, I'm independent, I'm surrounded by the people I love. Relocating may bring more $, but that won't bring me more happiness.

Relocating is Hard

I'm not saying that people shouldn't move around and hunt for better life opportunities, but I'm trying to say that $ isn't the only factor to think about when making such life decisions. Employers these days seem to forget that different people have different needs and that not everyone agrees with the hustle culture. Some of us just want to have a regular life.

What I want to talk about in this post are multiple levels of the first part of the funnel and how to organize your blog content in such a way that you lead more people to the middle of it. If you're a SaaS content marketer, read on 😀

Starting with the basics

Here's our basic model:

The first stage or the awareness stage talks about searching for information.

If you're into B2B SaaS, you may want to look at it from the perspective of Pirate Metrics. In that AAARRR case, you'll need to have the Acquisition phase in mind.

Regardless of the metric model you're used to, the principles I'll write about remain the same. The purpose of the top of the funnel content is to reach enough people and get them to explore other pages deeper in the funnel, e.g. Features/Case studies/Docs/Pricing.

Getting started with content? Just start your blog!

After reading so much about the theory of the customer journey and the marketing funnel, you may think that you need more than just a few things to start your content marketing journey. The truth is that the earlier you start, the better.

In reality, you can accomplish a lot of things with blog content only, without organizing webinars, preparing case studies, or doing podcasts. You can drive your customers through all the stages effectively if you understand your audience well enough.

The core of an effective content marketing strategy is an efficient blog that pushes content on a weekly basis, and everything else is nice to have. You don't need to grow your newsletter in the first week of your content marketing journey. Make sure you have a performant blog, and add things around it over time.

Multiple stages of the Top of the Funnel

One of the most common mistakes people in content make is that they produce general content for their target audience and consider that to be enough to cover the top of the funnel. From there, they go heavily into mid-funnel stuff and expect potential buyers to follow them.

How I see the top of the funnel is a bit different. I'd split it into 3 parts:

1. Absolute top of the funnel
2. Top of the funnel
3. Almost middle of the funnel

Absolute top of the funnel

I've noticed that people tend to push a lot of the content in this area. Anything that would be of interest to their audience, they want to have it covered on their blog. However, this is a really big net to cast, and you may reach a lot of potential customers with it, but guiding them down the funnel may be more difficult.

These topics are often very generic and covered by thousands before.

To speak in examples, if you are working on a SaaS that's being used by developers, you'd want to write about "New ways of using Git".

This may be a topic of interest for any developer out there since Git is a tool used by all types of developers worldwide. Since it's so far-fetched from your product, it's highly likely that the reader will just be interested in what you have to say there and that they will just drop off from your website without any desire to learn more about you and your service.

Another reason why so many marketers start here is because it's very easy to find people who can write about these topics. They don't need to be experts in this field, only good researchers.

I tend not to publish any blog posts in this area unless I spot some potential in the topic or if they come from our team members.

Top of the funnel

This is a sweet spot where you'd want to write about things that your customers are thinking about while using your product, or before looking for services you're providing. For this stage, think about various clusters of topics that in one way or another touch your product.

For example, if you are working for a SaaS that offers performance and error monitoring (like I do), write about performance issues in such a way that your potential user would be delighted. Here's an example post.

Find people who are experienced in their fields and let them share their knowledge with your readers and existing customers. Don't try to get generic content writers to produce content, find a consultant, or any other expert, and invest in them. These people don't need to know how your product works, they just need to be a type of person who could use your product and has extensive background working in that specific field.

If you look at how these topics perform, you'll notice that you'll get more people to explore your website after reading them.

Mind you, in this stage, you should not drop any mentions of your product, that is for the next stage.

Almost middle of the funnel

In this stage you want to have a topic that is:

• Very close to the service you're providing
• Beneficial to people who don't use your product as well as to those who do
• Showcasing your product in action

For example, in case your product provides developers with some important metrics (like AppSignal), you can write about those metrics in general and manual ways of getting them as well as what they mean. In the last part of the post, show what those metrics look like in the product itself. Here's an example post.

The best way to get people interested in your product is to get to them in a stage where they have the issues your product is solving and also showcase your product in a non-pushy way.

For these posts, you need someone from the team to either write the post themselves or help the external author with it. In some cases, you can even give sponsored accounts to the external authors, and as they explore your product, they can propose article ideas on their own.

Rounding off

Here's a rough summary of the points above:

From my experience, balancing between the second and the third stage brings the most benefits for your top-of-the-funnel strategy. To measure this, go to:

Google Analytics -> Behavior -> All pages -> Blog post you want to inspect -> Navigation summary

and look at the next steps from those pages. Where are your readers going to? Your homepage? Nice work 😁

Pro tip: To make these clicks visible for all the posts you've published, find yourself a data analyst who can generate those reports for you.

Thanks for reading!

I'm obviously inspired by the whole Basecamp thing. The one thing we’re not seeing is the tone of the internal communication about difficult things. We just see how they decided to handle it.

Just to be clear, I'm all up for diversity and against most of the steps Jason and David decided to take.

You need to be open for discussion

Drawing from my past experiences, there have been times when I was taking part in sensitive discussions. The most difficult thing when discussing things you’re sensitive about or feel strongly about is not to dismiss the other side. Having a meaningful discussion is very different from having a heated argument.

Polarisation, and looking at things as being either black or white isn’t helpful. It’s really easy to call out people for their behavior, and if the tone is accusative or aggressive, they start playing defense…. and then there’s no conversation.

How to approach people

I honestly believe that once you approach people in a calm manner, without being accusative, and try to understand why they do some things the way they do, and get them to see another perspective is the way to grow. For both parties. But both parties have to be open to challenging their own views.

It’s easy to approach someone and say “That’s wrong”. Instead, “Hey, can you help me understand why you [think this, did that, you name it]?”

Postponing the discussion is also ok

There are days when the topic we care deeply about makes us too emotional and we instinctively “defend” our position. It’s crucial to recognize those moments and retreat, because hot-headed people can’t have a meaningful discussion. It also takes away a lot of energy.

In some instances, the other party may be too emotional as well. It's important to take that into consideration, and voice that you have nothing against them, and that you're just interested in learning about their perspective and understanding them better. If that doesn't help, postpone the conversation or just back away.

Opinions can change

To end it with some personal examples:

• It took me years to figure out that the person I had so many heated arguments about LGBT rights and to whom I stopped talking to was struggling to come out. A couple of years ago that one approached me and actually apologized and thanked me for talking openly about some stuff on my FB account.

• It also took me years to fully accept myself. This is why I also get why there are others who struggle to understand me or understand the struggles I face in my daily life.

Understand that people can grow and change their opinions, and that some people just view the world differently. It's all ok as long as we're all being respectful and not harming others in any way.

Things are never rarely black and white.

I'm writing this post a note to my future forgetful self.

Today, I ran into a really stupid issue. I worked on updating a remote git repo, and I've already merged and deleted a branch on GitHub with this name, let's call it Pikachu for the sake of having an example.

So, after merging Pikachu to master, I realized that I needed to make another change to the file I've just pushed. "No biggie" I thought...

git checkout -b Pikachu

And then ....

fatal: A branch named 'Pikachu' already exists.

At first I was like ....

Until I realized that the branch I had locally was the one preventing me from generating one. I already merged and removed the same branch on GitHub. In my mind, every git pull on master should have removed the local branch, but for obvious reasons that would be a totally stupid thing to happen.

So, how do I clean up my local working repository so that I remove a gazillion stale branches I have locally? You need to get this into your terminal:

git branch | grep -v "master" | xargs git branch -D

In case you have a branch that contains the word "master" this won't work. Instead, you need to:

git branch | grep -ve " master$" | xargs git branch -D

That's it. Hope this note to my forgetful future self helps some of you as well 😉

Pre nego što je Korona stupila na naše tlo, naš narod i nije obraćao previše pažnje na pisanja novinara i izveštaje iz inostranstva. "Ma neće to kod nas!" govorili su... E sad, od kako je ova pošast "iznenadno i neočekivano" došla, izazvala je raznorazne reakcije kod ljudi. U ostatku ovog teksta ću se baviti kategorijama ljudi u zavisnosti od toga kako reaguju na vanrednu situaciju i Koronu generalno.

Kontraš iz inostranstva

Od kako je pogodila državu u kojoj privremeno boravi i radi, ova ličnost se brže bolje spakovala i vratila u rodni kraj jer "Nema tamo Korona nikad da dodje!". I ne bi možda ni došla, ali se uvukla pod prste, ušunjala u kofer istog ovog putnika, i došla zajedno sa njim.

Da je kontraš ostao u samoizolaciji, Korona ne bi ni videla svetlost dana, medjutim, kontraš "zna" da mu nije ništa, pa neometano posećuje kafane i kafiće, pozdravlja se sa svima koje voli, i širi bolest okolo.

Ova osoba dodatno opterećuje već preopterećene policajce, koji moraju da ih jure po gradu, i prevoze u prinudne karantine, da bi oni kojima je zdravlje ugroženo mogli da nastave da žive koliko toliko normalno.

Odgovorni iz inostranstva

Slično kao i kontraš, ova osoba je došla kući ali ipak rešila da poštuje pravila, jer je videla kakva je situacija u drugim državama.

Ova osoba trpi osudu onih "pametnih" iz bliskog okruženja, jer "Bože budala ne izlazi iz sobe, umišlja se nešto, pomisliće komšije da je stvarno bolestan/na."

Ugroženi penzioner

Ne samo što ih ugrožava Korona, ugrožava ih to što više ne mogu da se okupljaju i pričaju sa ostalim ugroženim penzionerima. Brinu se oko toga kako će se snabdeti, preživeti, kako će pred Boga jer u crkvu otišli nisu, i toga što sad nemaju uvid u život ostalih iz komšiluka. Ako ih ne pokosi Korona, umreće od nervoze.

Pojedini primerci i pored zabrane izlaze "u narod" da "vide šta se to radi", "samo da bace smeće", "na brzinzu do komšinice na kafu, tu tri kuće dalje".

Uhapšeni penzioner

Ugroženi postaje uhapšeni onda kada već preoprerećena policija krene da ih juri po komšiluku ko zečeve i to za njihovo dobro.

Pola čovek pola blejač

Ova osoba živi po kafićima i za to da bude viđena. Kafa nije kafa ako je u zatvorenom prostoru i bez jutarnjih novina.

Pošto su "došla zajebana vremena" sad uz kafu naruči i rakiju da ubije Koronu. Što je sigurno, sigurno je.

Žurka ne sme da stane

Ovaj tip ličnosti je ... pa jedva punoletan. Pošto nema razvijenu svest o društvenoj odgovornosti niti mogućnost da vidi dalje od svog nosa, okuplja se u velikim čoporima sa pripadnicima iste klase i "na crno" pravi žurke po stanovima, lokalnim šumama, jezerima, generalno što dalje od policije.

Pošto njima nije ništa, ne vide razlog da budu zatvoreni, roditelji su im dovoljno preko glave, sad još i na babe i dede treba da misle.

Paničar

Ova osoba je shvatila ozbiljnost situacije ali usled nemogućnosti da adekvatno obradi sve informacije, širi paniku i medju ostalim ukućanima. Od straha ne može da funkcioniše, već vidi kako je sahranjuju, priziva Boga svaki čas i prati sve vesti na domaćim i stranim portalima.

Paničar kupoholičar

Pošto se sprema za "smak sveta" ova osoba kupuje sve neophodne stvari za normalan zivot u NENORMALNIM količinama. Ništa bez 10 kg brašna, 2 kg kvasca, 10 l ulja, 20 litra asepsola i toalet papira za 6 meseci unapred. "Samo nek dodje Korona, mi ćemo pod barikade, pa ko živ ko mrtav."

Ovakvo govedo zapravo ugrožava sve oko sebe jer ne ostavlja mogućnost ostalima da se opreme za nedelju dana unapred. Dzaba ti 20 litra asepsola kad ovi oko tebe ne mogu da se dezinfikuju.

Slavica sa Tvitera

Ovaj tip osobe "zna" šta se zapravo dešava, ima sve informacije iz prve ruke, i prenosi te informacije svima u bliskom okruženju. Znači nemaš Koronu ako možeš da držiš dah 10 sekundi bez da kašlješ, lek imaju Rusi od prošle godine, a masku možeš da napraviš tako što ceć da natakneš bokserice na glavu.

Ova osoba isto tako zna da je "onaj" sad srećan, i nalazi mane svima u svakoj situaciji. Da su drugi na vlasti, oni bi to bolje. Ma šta drugi, ma Slavica bi to sve bolje sama uradila, samo da ima vlast.

#nebudislavica

Fejsbuk Doktor

Ova osoba nije zapravo doktor, ali je toliko stvari o ovome pročitala da je veći ekspert nego naši eksperti. Prepoznaje se tako što deli slike i objave vezane za Koronu koje sadrze gomilu brojeva, uglavnom neproverenih.

Pa sad, neka od tih informacija mora biti tačna, a njihovi prijatelji neka procenjuju šta im je činiti.

Ova osoba isto tako ostavlja komentare ispod raznoraznih članaka i oslanja se na svoju stručnost da "bistri politiku" makar online.

Odgovorna osoba

Ovakvi primerci se nalaze u svoja 4 zida i utiču na svoje bližnje da promene standardne obrasce ponašanja. Komentarišu stvari na fejsbuku, tviteru, pa malo polude i nestanu na par dana, pa se onda opet osnaže i vrate na društvene mreže.

Prate aktuelne vesti, ukljucuju se u akcije koliko god to mogu, i svesni su da ova situacija ne odgovara nikome i da vrlo teško pada ugroženim kategorijama (bolesni, stari, slabo pokretni). Trude se da motivišu sebe i svoje da budu društveno odgovorni i urade šta god je u njihovoj moći da virus ne dodje do njih, i da ga ne prošire na druge.

Nešto za kraj

Bez obzira na to da li verujete ili ne verujete u Koronu, da li vas briga za bližnje ili sebe, nemojte da ostanete slepi na to da možete svojim neodgovornim ponašanjem da dovedete ljude slabijeg zdravstvenog stanja u opasnost.

U slučaju da ne znate nekog ko ima nekog ko je oboleo, možemo da kažemo da sad znate. Na moju žalost poznajem više njih, iz različitih priča koji su ili bili ili su i sada na infektivnoj klinici. Niko od njih nije "stariji", nemojte da padate na te priče. Jednom astmatičaru ovo stanje može da skrati život.

Što bi rekao moj dragi deka "Uzmi se bre upamet, pazi šta radiš!"

Do sledećeg čitanja 👋

A hamster is just another kind of rat, no way we're getting that into our house.

So, I had to wait for some time before I got my first one.

This year, I decided to get another one and let me tell you this, I have never ever seen a hamster like this one. I've never thought I'll say this, but I actually learned a few things from the little guy.

Don't give up easily

He may not be as bright as a dog, but let me tell you this, once this guy has his mind on something, he'll do everything in his power to accomplish what he wanted to do. He keeps trying, over and over again, to get out of his aquarium. Guess what, he even made it, twice.

So, lesson number one: try hard to do the things you want, and if you fail, try again, and no matter how many times you fail, you need to get up and try doing the same thing from a different angle.

Get enough sleep

He's either sleeping, eating, or in his turbo mode spinning the wheel ... for hours.

Lesson learned - make sure you get enough rest before switching to turbo mode. Don't just overwork yourself. Working smart beats working hard.

You won't have enough energy if your diet sucks

This little guy does stuff himself with food, but with the healthy kind... so he can spin his wheel or run around the apartment in his hamster ball.

Last year I had a lot of things on my mind, and eating healthy food wasn't on the top of my list. I was feeling tired and I knew that my vitamin intake is low. So, make sure you have the right fuel before you go off to do whatever you want/need to do. Can confirm, it does wonders.

Exercise

A healthy mind needs a healthy body. Get offline and start walking, biking, do yoga, or whatever you like. Just get away from your chair.

I have to admit, this one I've been avoiding, but not for long.

Don't be afraid to show your character

The little guy is as goofy as it goes. And he stole the hearts of all of my friends.

So, you be you, don't be afraid to look goofy or funny, and don't pretend to be something you're not. By staying true to yourself you'll get the attention of the people who will like you for who you are, not who you say you are. Sounds a bit bullshity, but it's true.

I've made some awesome friends in my life, and the only reason I got them in the first place was the fact that I wasn't pretending or wanting to be someone I'm not. There's a Serbian proverb that, translated, means - You attract the ones that shine the way you do.

That would be all from this post 🐹

What have you learned from your pets?

First step - think of your target audience

Who is going to benefit from your project, and how? Write the benefits of using your project in your Readme.md, don't just explain what it does and how it works.

How are you going to collaborate with others and manage all the incoming PRs and issues? Set up some clear contribution guidelines and think of using style guides. Here's an example of a well-explained project - render_async 🚀

Second step - Reach out to your dev friends

Reach out to your friends or ask for feedback from other community members. Do others like your project? Do they find it useful? Ask for feedback as early as possible.

Third step - Write about it

I've already written about how to write your posts. What you need to do is write a post about your project that you can share or republish on various websites, forums, or discussion channels.

Help people to understand your motives for building the project, make the post engaging and invite them to help you out. Here are 2 examples of such posts that I really liked.

• Speeding Up Rendering Rails Pages with render_async
• Introducing Codier - Front-end Coding Challenges and Creations

Fourth step - Share it all over the web

Find where your target audience is and then share the news with them. Unless you talk about your project, you can't expect others to hear about it. Most people avoid sharing things in non-friendly communities but keep in mind that a few negative comments are a small percentage of the real audience you're reaching out to. I'm looking at you Reddit 🧐

So, without further ado, here's a list of places where you can promote your projects:

• Personal Twitter account (mention relevant accounts in your tweet)
• Personal LinkedIn profile
• Personal Facebook profile
• Hacker News
• Hashnode
• Dev.to
• Medium
• Reddit
• Relevant Facebook groups
• Relevant LinkedIn groups
• Relevant Slack channels
• Relevant Discord channels

Specific groups

Depending on the language and the community, there might be some specific websites you'll want to check out. Here are a few that came to my mind. Please let me know if there are more websites I can mention in this section. 😁

Ruby

• Ruby Flow

Elixir

• Elixir Status
• Erlang Central

Clojure

• Planet Clojure

Scala

• Scala Times

Bonus project promotion ideas

• Participate in projects such as Hacktoberfest,
• Apply to speak at conferences,
• Appear as a guest on a relevant podcast, and
• Guest post on relevant blogs with original content (e.g. FreeCodeCamp).

That's it!

I hope you found this project promotion checklist helpful and that you'll now reach as many fellow developers as possible! Which techniques have you been using so far? Did I miss any? Please let me know in the comments below. 😎

In this post, I'll share my email outreach workflow I've developed over the years that helps me speed things up. It's nothing too complex but helps me save up to 50% of my time. Within an hour I can email even 20+ people given I have all the details needed.

It's important to note that all of these tools can be used on a free plan, I'm not giving you any sales pitches here. I truly miss articles from the rest of the marketing community whose only aim is to help each other out.

Gmail

Hands down Gmail is the best email application I've had the chance to test out. It supports loads of integrations that make my life easier. I've tested about ~5 of other apps, but the lack of customization and automation put me off.

HubSpot CRM

Hubspot CRM is easy to set up & use. It can help you keep a track of people you've emailed, track email opens, schedule emails, and set up templates and snippets.. Integrate it with your Gmail and set up Templates. Instead of copy-pasting things all the time, you can just click on templates or snippets from the dashboard and HubSpot will paste the text accordingly.

Clickup

Clickup is another tool you can use. It enables you and your team to have a clear overview of all the tasks in progress which reduces unnecessary conversations within your team. Same as with Trello, you can set up boards, customize them, but you can also have a better overview of all the tasks assigned to you or your team members, and define and discover blocking tasks easier.

E.g. My colleague Lazar has to prepare something before I can reach out to a person X. Once Lazar finishes his task and marks it as done, I get a green light for completing my task.

In case several of you are doing outreach, with Clickup you'll know who emailed whom, when, why, etc...

What I also like about Clickup is that it enables me to zoom out at any time and see the big picture of all the tasks my colleagues and I have on our hands and helps us manage that team interconnectedness with ease. Imagine having Jira features on Trello, but with a much cleaner and intuitive interface. (Strong personal opinion here - I hold so much distaste for Jira's interface 🤮)

I have a different board for different groups of people. Here's my general workflow:

Of course, depending on the type of your process, you can add or remove columns.

Ditto

This is a really nifty tool for Windows that helps you copy and paste things easier.

E.g. In a regular flow, you need to open 2 windows. The first one is email, the second one contains all the details you need for emailing a target person. You have to juggle between 2 or even more windows in order to find all the details you need and paste them in the email.

With Ditto, you just mass copy all the details one by one, and then go to your email tool, press Ctrl + ` and a small window containing all the details you've copied in the past will pop up. You just have to click on the one you need, and Ditto will paste it in your email.

Conclusion

That's it 😃 Hope this post helped you discover some interesting tools that can help you and your marketing team save a lot of time. Please leave your comments if you've developed a better system for managing the outreach process!

First of all, remote work isn't a silver bullet! Don't assume that all companies will become 100% remote in the future.

Are you experienced enough?

For people who are just starting out, working remotely from day 1 might not be the best choice. Some juniors tend to get into rabbit holes, are afraid to ask questions, and need face-to-face guidance and reassurance from their peers/managers. In order to be a good remote worker, you need to be a 100% good communicator and used to this style of work first.

Do you need face-to-face communication?

Some people prefer talking to writing. Not every meeting is useless, and don't assume that everything is best sorted out in writing. A lot of things can be discussed asynchronously, but nothing beats live team brainstormings, postmortems, or reviews.

Also, some people feel at a loss if they don't get to see their colleagues face-to-face every day. Moreover, some people prefer having structured environments and dedicated offices over working from home. They might get distracted by the rest of the Internet, family, pets, you name it ... so they end up being not so productive.

Is your home better than an office?

My first full-time job was 100% remote. At that time I was a student and I shared a small flat with my cousin. My room was a living room, kitchen, study room, work room, and bedroom at the same time. Basically, I spent most of those 2 years between those 4 walls.

I can't even put into words how depressed I was during that time. I couldn't get my mind to relax and just chill. I was tense 99% of the time and even woke up randomly during night. For those of you who don't know me, I usually sleep longer than a bear during winter. The fact that I was going straight from bed to work was just too much for me. It felt as if I were working all the time.

If you're living in a studio apartment, same rules apply. After some time, you get the feeling that you're trapped inside your own apartment. Unless you're very strict with your working out regime (I'm not unless my gf starts a 🔥 under my ass), you might consider working from other co-working places just to break that routine. Make sure you have other places you can work from other than your room and that you get out of your apartment on a daily basis.

Can you adjust to working in other time-zones?

I get up at 6 AM and start working from 7 AM. This works out great for me since I turned into a morning person during the past few years.

You'll definitely need to overlap with your team, so ask yourself where is the company located before applying for a remote position. In the past, I had the opportunity to collaborate with an Australian company. That was super difficult since I had to stay awake super late just to jump on a call with that client.

I do wanna go to Australia and see kangaroos and koalas, but if I get another chance to work with companies operating in the same time-zone, I'd most likely decline such an offer.

Are you a good writer?

If you can't express yourself in writing, and just don't have a knack for it, erm, you need to work on that skill. In order to be an effective remote worker you need to be organized, concise, and clear while communicating with the rest of your team.

Here's what the CEO of Basecamp, Jason Fried, has to say about writing skills.

Our top hiring criteria — in addition to having the skills to do the job — is, are you a great writer? You have to be a great writer to work here, in every single position, because the majority of our communication is written, primarily because a lot of us work remotely but also because writing is quieter. And we like long-form writing where people really think through an idea and present it.

Also, some things sound harsher in written. "Hey, you made a mistake..." sounds way worse in writing. Not grasping these nuances between speech and writing is a huge issue when you're a manager in a remote team. As a manager, you need to make sure that you pass positive feedback in public channels so that everyone can celebrate team victories, and discuss issues in private.

Do you have all the things you need in your home office?

Do you have a good chair, a table that's not your dining table, and a strong internet connection? Yes? Good, carry on! No? Erm, reconsider getting a good chair first!

I have double scoliosis and kyphosis just because I worked on a shitty chair for 2 years and didn't know how to keep my posture. Oh, and I'm almost 27, so yeah, I'm pretty young to face these problems, but it is what it is. Take care of yourself first!

Can you work remotely and legally at the same time?

In order to work remotely, you need to make sure you understand the legal terms of such work. In the United States, people can work remotely from anywhere in the country. In my case, I had to register an agency in order to be able to collaborate with companies outside of Serbia.

I used the term "collaborate" on purpose. I'm not an employee, and I can't be one according to the law of my country. This is why I have to do my own accounting, taxes and a shitload of other paperwork. Working with Hashnode is one of the best things that ever happened to me, but there are times I wish I can just forget about paperwork completely.

Summary

Hope you now understand the challenges of remote work a bit better. I'm 100% into working remotely, but don't want to make it sound like that's the best and the easiest thing in the world. Every style of work has its challenges, and remote brings some unique ones.

So far I've blogged on Wordpress, Medium, a static site built with Gatsby and Github Pages, and now I'm finally happy to run my blog with Devblog.

In this post, I'll cover the bare minimum of working with Google Analytics, and show you how it helps me understand how people react to my posts. I hope that people who are just getting started with blogging will benefit from the rest of my post.

Most important blog metrics

• Unique pageviews
• Total number of visitors
• Source/Medium and Referers
• Time spent on page
• Bounce rate

Depending on the sort of analytics you use, you'll find different names for this. To cut to the chase, if you're not using Google Analytics for your personal blog, you definitely should. Since you can add Google Analytics plugin to your Wordpress website, Medium remains as the sole platform which doesn't allow this.

Unique pageviews

Depending on the sort of analytics you use, you'll find different names for this. With Wordpress and Medium analytics, all you can see is "Views", which correlate to Google Analytic's "Pageviews".

Mind you, unique pageviews are more important than just pageviews.

Here's an example.

10 people read your post. Each person visited your page two times.

Analytics says:

• Unique pageviews - 10
• Pageviews - 20

Sure, the second number is larger and makes us feel like we've helped a lot of people, while the reality is that only 10 people actually read it. This gives you the idea of how many people you actually reached with a specific post.

Total number of visitors

This number gives you the total number of people who visited your site, regardless of the pages they visited. In Google Analytics this metric is called "Users", Wordpress calls it "Visitors" and Medium gives you ... nothing.

You should use this metric to estimate the general look and feel of your blog performance. You should aim at raising this number every month and with every post. After looking at this number I usually ask myself "What can I do to share my posts with more people?". Afterward, I dive into other metrics, but as this is an intro post, I'll skip the specifics for now.

Source/Medium and Referers

These metrics show how people came to your blog.

Did you share something on Hacker News and it was featured on the first page, did Hashnode's network work for you, or are you simply nailing the SEO part of your posts? Thankfully, Devblog takes care of all the tech aspects of SEO, so all you have to think about is how you're structuring your posts.

I prefer looking at Source/Medium on Google Analytics. It gives me the website address from which people came to my blog, and also tells me if they discovered me through a newsletter, social media, or whether people found me organically.

See this "Direct" traffic? Don't get confused, this is what happens when people right-click and open your post in a new tab. Some of them might have it bookmarked and are re-reading it.

Both Wordpress and Medium give you these metrics, however, Wordpress is doing a much better job. You know exactly where the people discovered or mentioned you. Medium, heh... Take a look...

Medium gives you a sum of some things, and you can't deduce why the post performed the way it did from these metrics. Basically, you end up being a John Snow.

Time spent on page

This Google Analytics metric gives me insights about the people who saw the post. Have they read it, just skimmed it, or did they go through the first line and decided not to read the rest?

Wordpress doesn't provide this info, while Medium gives you "Reads", so you can understand whether the people actually read your post. It's not clear how they calculate these numbers, whether they track that people reached the end of the post, or look at the time spent on page, or if they combine these things.

If you see that people aren't reading your posts, spend 5 seconds or so and then drop off, then you need to review whether your intro was catchy enough and if you shared the content with the right audience.

Bounce rate

This metric shows whether people who saw your post decided to visit other pages as well or just read that one and closed the page.

Neither Wordpress nor Medium give you this data.

Ideally, you'd like to see people checking out the rest of your blog, looking for similar posts.

Medium and vanity metrics

In today's world, people give more value to vanity metrics than they should. These metrics give us large numbers and boost our ego. We're talking about reach as if that's the number of people who actually benefited from our post. Likes and shares on social media don't mean a thing if the sad reality is that people didn't finish reading your post.

Medium thrives on these vanity metrics. They give me "Views", "Reads", "Read ratio" and "Fans".

In other words, I get a bunch of vanity metrics that are designed to make me feel better. "Views" - pageviews, "Reads" - the number of times the post was read, "Read ratio" - the percentage of times the post was seen VS the times it was read and "Fans" are the number of people who clapped to a post.

Let's say you wrote about your open-source project. Imagine getting a lot of claps, but no contributors or people who starred your project on GitHub. Did your post do the job? No.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be happy about the fact that a bunch of people liked your post, but ask yourself what can you do to reach more people? In order to improve your writing and understand your audience, you need more than these simplified metrics designed to make you feel good.

Another issue with Medium is that it keeps pushing gated content to people and non-gated is pushed aside, but heh, that's a story that deserves a whole post.

Conclusion

If you're just getting started with blogging, make sure to set up Google Analytics and set specific goals for each post. With each one, your writing skills will improve, and with the right metrics by your side, you'll understand your audience better. And oh, if you're still blogging on Medium, check out Devblog. You can blog under your domain and import your old Medium stories. What's not to like there? 🍻

Unfortunately, not everyone believes that mentoring should be a part of their work. Most people say that they don’t have the time to do it, or that there’s nothing they can give to another person besides a few practical tricks. Here are 5 reasons why I think everyone should find some time and be a mentor.

1. You will learn something new too

Mentoring is a two way street. While actively mentoring, you’ll find yourself explaining things a lot and remind yourself that your notion of basic knowledge has changed a lot over the years. Also, you’ll understand someone else’s point of view and maybe even find a better approach to solving a problem you’ve already solved. Sometimes, you’ll come across a problem you can’t solve straight away, and you’ll have to teach your mentee how to develop and apply problem-solving logic. Your mentee will be a constant reminder that everything can be learned if you keep a positive mental attitude.

2. You will gain confidence

By navigating people through waters you’ve sailed so many times before, you’ll remind yourself that we all feel insecure when doing something for the first time. As soon as you help someone solve a problem you’ve encountered so many times before, you’ll feel confident that you too can solve almost anything that crosses your path. A problem that was as huge as kraken a couple of years ago is now as small as a squid. So, what’s stopping you from attacking the present-day kraken?

3. You will become a better communicator

By constantly giving feedback you’ll learn how and how often to praise someone, but also how to bring bad news without hurting your mentee’s feelings. Being assertive is key to being a great mentor and a coworker. I strongly recommend reading — Radical Candor .

4. You’ll feel closer to your coworkers

Being a mentor is usually seen as one-on-one relationship. That doesn’t have to be true and you can have multiple mentees from all over the workplace. You can teach your coworkers how to handle stress better, how to remain calm in unpleasant situations, how to accept negative feedback and keep an open mind. By understanding how your coworkers feel and why they react in certain way will help you form a stronger relationship. Also, being open towards their feedback and finding areas where you can improve can’t hurt, right?

5. You will learn how to trust others

By watching your mentee/mentees grow, you’ll find it easier to hand over more serious tasks you’ve been tackling to them, and shift your focus on more pressing matters. After all, we’re all on a journey of constant growth, and how can you grow unless you let someone take things over, so you can go further. You don’t want to micromanage everyone, do you? Maybe you’ll start seeking a mentor for yourself and put your “I know it all” guard down, since that’s the best way to learn something new, right?

Conclusion

To sum it up, I see mentoring as a great activity that brings people together, empowers them and helps them grow. What do you think about it? (You can just clap and share if you agree but are too shy to comment.)

Yes, you have games on Ubuntu, and I still gamed, but way less, and discovered a whole new world of gaming from a different, less addictive perspective.

I even had a 9 month-long relationship with Mac, and that didn't end well because of the hardware issues I faced. You end up losing a bunch of 💸💰💵 if anything breaks and those cables are built to snap in half during the night for no reason if you ask me. That's a whole other story on its own.

Then, I started working from home again...

Some apps are built with only Windows in mind

My printer, for example, doesn't have the same functionality on Windows and Ubuntu. I have more flexibility with its native Windows app. Let's not talk about the bank software or some legal work-related websites that required me to install some more things. So, I had to stick to Windows.

I just love League of Legends

After quite a long break, I started playing it again, just wayy less than before. I guess I'm at a much better place in life right now.

No funny bugs on Windows, but some bugs on Ubuntu

I have a laptop with 4 speakers. On Ubuntu, only 2 of them, the weaker ones, work. It's been like that for a year now, so I guess that won't change any time soon.

Private vs Professional space

Ubuntu is my playground. I can do whatever, even break stuff, and not worry about breaking anything work-related.

Windows is for League of Legends and work. That's it.

I always have a fallback option

If Windows breaks, I can work from Ubuntu. If I break Ubuntu, I'll just use Windows until I sort things out.

I got Windows for free

I didn't buy it, it already came preinstalled. That kind of made things easier for me.

Conclusion

As I've said in my previous article, just use the tool that fits your needs. If Windows works, then great, if it doesn't then find the right flavour of Linux and fix the problem you have.

For the past 3 years Linux has been my OS of choice. Once I left my previous job that required me to use Windows, I deleted it from my computer and never looked back. This was a huge step for me because I was gaming a lot at that time, but I realized that you can play games on Linux too :)

Here are the 5 reasons why I prefer Linux over Windows:

1. Linux is free

Beat that you nasty, greedy, opinionated, full-of-commercials Windows.

2. Updates

I choose when and how to update Linux. I can do it through GUI or the command line, and it won’t complain even if I don’t update it at all.

While I was working as an online teacher, my laptop crashed more than a few times because Windows decided that it needed to update. This was both an uncomfortable and a painful experience. There was nothing I could do to stop it from updating, and at the same time, somewhere in Japan, my student was probably angry and waiting for me. If you’ve ever worked with Japanese ppl, you know how much they value punctuality.

3. You don’t need an antivirus

There are hardly any viruses on Linux. All of the actions that perform system changes require a user to enter their root password. Take that you nasty Trojans.

Also, this is awesome in terms of performance of the computer itself, since antiviruses tend to use a lot of RAM. Not to mention that antiviruses aren’t so cheap.

4. Linux is customizable

Everything you see on Linux can be customized to suit your needs. You can customize your bootloader (the place where you can switch between different operating systems), GUI, I mean, you name it, you can customize it. I customized my desktop, icons, colors and window decorations.

5. File system

The file system used on Linux is ext4. It is way more efficient than NTFS system used on Windows. In plain words, you don’t need to defragment your hard drive from time to time, Linux arranges files automatically in the way that is the best for the hard drive. Also, ext4 has a better journaling process which marks unallocated blocks of data, and they are skipped during disk check operations. Your hard drive performance will definitely improve, and you’ll feel a huge difference if you decide to make a switch from Windows.

Conclusion

So, those are my 2 cents regarding Windows vs. Linux duel. Just so you know, I’m not saying that Linux is the best OS in the world for everyone. Try it out and figure if it’s a right fit for you and your needs.