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A new podcast just dropped with Dr. Don Wood is a visionary in the field of trauma-informed performance enhancement. With a Ph.D. in Clinical Counseling, he has dedicated his career to understanding the impact of trauma on the human mind and performance. https://youtu.be/I8EI1tHisQE?embedable=true As the founder and CEO of the Inspired Performance Institute, Dr. Wood has developed the groundbreaking TIPP method, a patented approach designed to help individuals overcome trauma and reach their full potential. If you want to listen to the full podcast, listen on successstorypodcast.com or on YouTube. We all know physical concussions can mess you up. You hit your head, you see stars, you stumble around. Everyone gets it—you need to rest. But what about those invisible hits we take every day? The kind that leaves emotional concussions? Think about it: The boss who rips into you in front of the team.
The teacher who tells you that you'll never amount to anything.
The partner who constantly criticizes your choices. Those words and experiences don't just fade away. They stick with you, chipping away at your confidence, leaving behind deep-seated beliefs that undermine your potential. This is the world of emotional concussions – a realm of trauma that's often dismissed as "weakness" or "overreacting." Traditional approaches might tell you to just get over it or throw some pills at the problem. But what if there's more to the story? Dr. Done Wood, creator of The Inspired Performance Program (TIPP), is flipping the script. He's saying those emotional concussions are just as real, just as impactful, as getting knocked on the head. They mess with your wiring on a deep level. The Trauma Loop: Your Mind's Worst Enemy These unresolved emotional experiences don't disappear quietly. According to Wood, they create a "trauma loop" running in your subconscious, like a broken record. This constant background stress wreaks havoc: Your Body Takes a Hit: Chronic inflammation, weakened immunity – ever feel like you're always getting sick? That could be your trauma loop at work.
Your Brain Gets Rewired: Neurotransmitters get messed up, so instead of calm and focus, you get anxiety and brain fog. Here's the craziest part—that trauma loop can sabotage your best efforts. You work hard, try to make good choices, yet something always seems to pull you down. Therapy, self-help…sometimes they help a little, but never seem to fix the core of the problem. That's the trauma loop fighting back. Escaping the Trauma Loop – Can It Be Done? So, your body's on fire, your mind's a mess, and your efforts feel futile because of that relentless trauma loop. Is a life beyond survival mode even possible? Dr. Don Wood says YES. And the answer may not be what you expect. Traditional therapy often focuses on the conscious mind—unpacking memories, analyzing feelings. That's good, but it's like trying to defuse a bomb while only focusing on the timer. Dr. Wood's TIPP approach dives deeper… way deeper. Target the Root: Talk might identify triggers, but TIPP aims to pinpoint the original event that sparked the trauma loop. Maybe it was a childhood humiliation that shaped your fear of failure today.
Reset the Wiring: Wood's program uses techniques to rewire your brain's association with that past trauma. The goal? Break the negative loop and replace it with a neutral or even positive association.
Fast Results? Here's where TIPP gets wild. They say this reset can happen in as little as FOUR HOURS. Not four weeks, not four months. Does that mean all your problems vanish? Nope. But it means potentially dismantling that deep-rooted sabotage in record time. And there's even more mind-bending stuff from Wood… Wait, My Ancestors Traumatized Me? Turns out, the effects of trauma can be passed down through generations – we're talking changes within your DNA. That's called epigenetics, and it's both scary and empowering. The good news is, breaking your own trauma loop might positively impact your kids and even future generations! Addiction Redefined: Not a Disease, But a Desperate Escape Dr. Wood flips the script on addiction. He says it's not about weakness or a brain disease, but rather your mind's well-intentioned (but tragically misguided) attempt to numb the pain of unresolved trauma. Fix the underlying issues, and guess what? Addiction and those brutal withdrawal symptoms might melt away. Those "Mental Illnesses" Might Not Be What We Think This one might rattle cages…Dr. Wood argues that conditions like depression, ADHD, even schizophrenia, could be your body and mind reacting to overwhelming, unresolved trauma. Not saying meds don't have their place, but what if addressing the root cause could lead to life-changing results? Fight Back: Small Steps, Big Changes Understanding trauma loops is huge, but knowing what to do about them is the real game-changer. Here's where it gets exciting and practical: 1. Move Your Body (Even When You Don't Want To) You've heard it before, but this time it's deeper. Exercise isn't just about biceps; it's about disrupting the trauma loop. When you're depressed, the last thing you want to do is move. But force yourself. Why? Because movement signals to your brain: "Hey, I'm not stuck anymore. I'm breaking the pattern." Even a short walk changes the game. 2. Mindfulness with a Twist Meditation's great, but if you're deeply wired for stress, sitting still can make anxiety worse. Try this: When you notice the trauma loop revving up—the worry, the anger—don't fight the feeling. Acknowledge it: "Okay, there's the loop…" Now, focus on your body. Notice the tightness in your chest, the heat in your face. This interrupts the mental tailspin and brings you back to the present. 3. The Power of "Reframing" Your brain is a storytelling machine. Bad events get turned into "I suck" or "The world is against me." Time to rewrite the script. Catch those negative storylines and flip them: "That was a tough experience, but it taught me…" or "I'm a survivor, and I'm getting stronger." Might feel cheesy, but those tiny reframes chip away at the power of the trauma loop. 4. Seek Support (But the Right Kind) There's power in talking. But not everyone "gets it" when it comes to trauma. Find trusted people or a therapist specializing in trauma-informed care. They'll validate your experience, not just tell you to "get over it." Feeling understood matters. 5. Don't Wait for Perfection Healing is messy. Some days you'll nail it, others you'll crash. Don't give up. The goal isn't to be a Zen master overnight; it's about consistently chipping away at that trauma loop's power. Small wins add up. A Note on TIPP Therapy… Dr. Wood's work is fascinating, but is it right for you? Do your research! Therapy is personal. If those rapid results resonate, seek out a certified TIPP practitioner. If a more gradual process feels better, that's valid too. There's no one-size-fits-all. The Big Idea Trauma loops are real, and they can hold you back far more than you realize. Traditional solutions often just scratch the surface. But you're not broken, and you don't have to live under that invisible weight forever. Knowledge is power. Now it's up to you to use it. You got this. If you want to listen to the full podcast, listen on successstorypodcast.com or on YouTube. A new podcast just dropped with Dr. Don Wood is a visionary in the field of trauma-informed performance enhancement. With a Ph.D. in Clinical Counseling, he has dedicated his career to understanding the impact of trauma on the human mind and performance. https://youtu.be/I8EI1tHisQE?embedable=true https://youtu.be/I8EI1tHisQE?embedable=true As the founder and CEO of the Inspired Performance Institute, Dr. Wood has developed the groundbreaking TIPP method, a patented approach designed to help individuals overcome trauma and reach their full potential. If you want to listen to the full podcast, listen on successstorypodcast.com or on YouTube. If you want to listen to the full podcast, listen on successstorypodcast.com or on YouTube . successstorypodcast.com successstorypodcast.com YouTube YouTube We all know physical concussions can mess you up. You hit your head, you see stars, you stumble around. Everyone gets it—you need to rest. But what about those invisible hits we take every day? The kind that leaves emotional concussions? Think about it: The boss who rips into you in front of the team. The teacher who tells you that you'll never amount to anything. The partner who constantly criticizes your choices. The boss who rips into you in front of the team. The teacher who tells you that you'll never amount to anything. The partner who constantly criticizes your choices. Those words and experiences don't just fade away. They stick with you, chipping away at your confidence, leaving behind deep-seated beliefs that undermine your potential. This is the world of emotional concussions – a realm of trauma that's often dismissed as "weakness" or "overreacting." Traditional approaches might tell you to just get over it or throw some pills at the problem. But what if there's more to the story? Dr. Done Wood, creator of The Inspired Performance Program (TIPP), is flipping the script. He's saying those emotional concussions are just as real, just as impactful, as getting knocked on the head. They mess with your wiring on a deep level. The Trauma Loop: Your Mind's Worst Enemy The Trauma Loop: Your Mind's Worst Enemy These unresolved emotional experiences don't disappear quietly. According to Wood, they create a "trauma loop" running in your subconscious, like a broken record. This constant background stress wreaks havoc: Your Body Takes a Hit: Chronic inflammation, weakened immunity – ever feel like you're always getting sick? That could be your trauma loop at work. Your Brain Gets Rewired: Neurotransmitters get messed up, so instead of calm and focus, you get anxiety and brain fog. Your Body Takes a Hit: Chronic inflammation, weakened immunity – ever feel like you're always getting sick? That could be your trauma loop at work. Your Body Takes a Hit: Your Brain Gets Rewired: Neurotransmitters get messed up, so instead of calm and focus, you get anxiety and brain fog. Your Brain Gets Rewired: Here's the craziest part—that trauma loop can sabotage your best efforts. You work hard, try to make good choices, yet something always seems to pull you down. Therapy, self-help…sometimes they help a little, but never seem to fix the core of the problem. That's the trauma loop fighting back. Escaping the Trauma Loop – Can It Be Done? Escaping the Trauma Loop – Can It Be Done? So, your body's on fire, your mind's a mess, and your efforts feel futile because of that relentless trauma loop. Is a life beyond survival mode even possible? Dr. Don Wood says YES. And the answer may not be what you expect. Traditional therapy often focuses on the conscious mind—unpacking memories, analyzing feelings. That's good, but it's like trying to defuse a bomb while only focusing on the timer. Dr. Wood's TIPP approach dives deeper… way deeper. Target the Root: Talk might identify triggers, but TIPP aims to pinpoint the original event that sparked the trauma loop. Maybe it was a childhood humiliation that shaped your fear of failure today. Reset the Wiring: Wood's program uses techniques to rewire your brain's association with that past trauma. The goal? Break the negative loop and replace it with a neutral or even positive association. Fast Results? Here's where TIPP gets wild. They say this reset can happen in as little as FOUR HOURS. Not four weeks, not four months. Does that mean all your problems vanish? Nope. But it means potentially dismantling that deep-rooted sabotage in record time. Target the Root: Talk might identify triggers, but TIPP aims to pinpoint the original event that sparked the trauma loop. Maybe it was a childhood humiliation that shaped your fear of failure today. Target the Root: original Reset the Wiring: Wood's program uses techniques to rewire your brain's association with that past trauma. The goal? Break the negative loop and replace it with a neutral or even positive association. Reset the Wiring: Fast Results? Here's where TIPP gets wild. They say this reset can happen in as little as FOUR HOURS. Not four weeks, not four months. Does that mean all your problems vanish? Nope. But it means potentially dismantling that deep-rooted sabotage in record time. Fast Results? And there's even more mind-bending stuff from Wood… Wait, My Ancestors Traumatized Me? Wait, My Ancestors Traumatized Me? Turns out, the effects of trauma can be passed down through generations – we're talking changes within your DNA. That's called epigenetics, and it's both scary and empowering. The good news is, breaking your own trauma loop might positively impact your kids and even future generations! Addiction Redefined: Not a Disease, But a Desperate Escape Addiction Redefined: Not a Disease, But a Desperate Escape Dr. Wood flips the script on addiction. He says it's not about weakness or a brain disease, but rather your mind's well-intentioned (but tragically misguided) attempt to numb the pain of unresolved trauma. Fix the underlying issues, and guess what? Addiction and those brutal withdrawal symptoms might melt away. Those "Mental Illnesses" Might Not Be What We Think Those "Mental Illnesses" Might Not Be What We Think This one might rattle cages…Dr. Wood argues that conditions like depression, ADHD, even schizophrenia, could be your body and mind reacting to overwhelming, unresolved trauma. Not saying meds don't have their place, but what if addressing the root cause could lead to life-changing results? Fight Back: Small Steps, Big Changes Fight Back: Small Steps, Big Changes Understanding trauma loops is huge, but knowing what to do about them is the real game-changer. Here's where it gets exciting and practical: do 1. Move Your Body (Even When You Don't Want To) 1. Move Your Body (Even When You Don't Want To) You've heard it before, but this time it's deeper. Exercise isn't just about biceps; it's about disrupting the trauma loop. When you're depressed, the last thing you want to do is move. But force yourself. Why? Because movement signals to your brain: "Hey, I'm not stuck anymore. I'm breaking the pattern." Even a short walk changes the game. 2. Mindfulness with a Twist 2. Mindfulness with a Twist Meditation's great, but if you're deeply wired for stress, sitting still can make anxiety worse. Try this: When you notice the trauma loop revving up—the worry, the anger—don't fight the feeling. Acknowledge it: "Okay, there's the loop…" Now, focus on your body. Notice the tightness in your chest, the heat in your face. This interrupts the mental tailspin and brings you back to the present. 3. The Power of "Reframing" 3. The Power of "Reframing" Your brain is a storytelling machine. Bad events get turned into "I suck" or "The world is against me." Time to rewrite the script. Catch those negative storylines and flip them: "That was a tough experience, but it taught me…" or "I'm a survivor, and I'm getting stronger." Might feel cheesy, but those tiny reframes chip away at the power of the trauma loop. 4. Seek Support (But the Right Kind) 4. Seek Support (But the Right Kind) There's power in talking. But not everyone "gets it" when it comes to trauma. Find trusted people or a therapist specializing in trauma-informed care. They'll validate your experience, not just tell you to "get over it." Feeling understood matters. 5. Don't Wait for Perfection 5. Don't Wait for Perfection Healing is messy. Some days you'll nail it, others you'll crash. Don't give up. The goal isn't to be a Zen master overnight; it's about consistently chipping away at that trauma loop's power. Small wins add up. A Note on TIPP Therapy… A Note on TIPP Therapy… Dr. Wood's work is fascinating, but is it right for you? Do your research! Therapy is personal. If those rapid results resonate, seek out a certified TIPP practitioner. If a more gradual process feels better, that's valid too. There's no one-size-fits-all. The Big Idea The Big Idea Trauma loops are real, and they can hold you back far more than you realize. Traditional solutions often just scratch the surface. But you're not broken, and you don't have to live under that invisible weight forever. Knowledge is power. Now it's up to you to use it. You got this. If you want to listen to the full podcast, listen on successstorypodcast.com or on YouTube. If you want to listen to the full podcast, listen on successstorypodcast.com or on YouTube . successstorypodcast.com YouTube

Escaping the Trauma Loop With the TIPP Method

টিআইপিপি পদ্ধতির মাধ্যমে ট্রমা লুপ থেকে বেরিয়ে আসা

Mit der TIPP-Methode aus der Traumaschleife entkommen

Escapar del circuito del trauma con el método TIPP

Échapper à la boucle du traumatisme avec la méthode TIPP

TIPP विधि से आघात चक्र से बचना

TIPPメソッドでトラウマループから脱出する

TIPP 방법으로 트라우마 루프에서 벗어나기

Escapando do ciclo do trauma com o método TIPP

Выход из петли травмы с помощью метода TIPP

TIPP Yöntemi ile Travma Döngüsünden Kurtulmak

Thoát khỏi vòng lặp chấn thương bằng phương pháp TIPP

利用 TIPP 方法摆脱创伤循环

Crypto bros have a collection of digital art, Bitcoins as their main currency, and a belief that the future is the Web3. In this article, I want to break down the terminology, explore memes, and search for the line between fascination and absurdity. Intro Beginning crypto investors are increasingly being called "crypto bros" - they become the heroes of absurd news and objects of ridicule on social networks. Over the past year, an image has emerged of a person who invests in Bitcoins, buys NFTs, and organizes decentralized projects but does it all with the mentality of a "bro" - reckless, self-assured, and with no tolerance of any criticism. are appearing online. Their satirical images have already started to be used in pop culture, and that they "can always be cyberbullied." Let's find out who crypto bros (or cryptobros) are, where they came from, and why they are subjected to ridicule online. Accounts dedicated to the failures of crypto bros users joke Tech Bro Is the Big Brother of Crypto Bro In , the term "techbro" (tech bro) first appeared in 2013. As , the word originated from the culture of the "bro", an American college student who is a member of a "fraternity" (a student organization living in the same house). Urban Dictionary Wired notes Often in pop culture, "bros" are portrayed as white, masculine, not-so-academically successful guys who love partying, beer, and sports and are pretty dismissive of women. An entire has emerged based on this idea. subgenre of movies A tech bro is a person who graduated from university and went to work for one of the wealthy tech companies, usually in Silicon Valley. In pop culture, tech bros are described as engineers or other IT companies employees interested in Bitcoin, founding weird startups, and bicycling. They are usually not in romantic relationships because of their condescending attitudes toward women or low social skills. At the same time, tech bros are also accused of starting the process of gentrification (redevelopment of "poor" neighborhoods through beautification to attract wealthy residents) in the San Francisco Bay Area (Silicon Valley is nearby), which caused housing costs to skyrocket. In the media, the term became widespread in 2017 when for a manifesto in which he argued that gender inequality in the workplace was due to biological differences. Damore anonymously distributed a document in which he argued that women are "more interested in feelings than ideas", "more likely to agree on everything", and "suffer from neuroticism." Google engineer James Damore was fired So, they are slower to advance in their careers than men. It was hard to find an article in the media . that didn't call him a tech bro As a result, the term acquired a mocking connotation - it began to be applied to employees of the IT industry who behave unusually or get into ridiculous scandals. Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel was labeled as such , which he wrote to friends at university with content like "I hope at least six girls sucked your dick yesterday." after his emails leaked online Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was also branded a tech bro after he revealed he was " " - eating once a day and taking ice baths. biohacking Ironic articles appeared in the media with advice on how to date the tech bro: don't accuse him of gentrification, be sure to criticize Facebook, and ask him what startup he wants to found. Others drew attention to the , set by Steve Jobs and different from typical businessmen: no suits, just jeans, sweatshirts, sneakers, monochrome colors, and zippered vests with their company badges. style of dress of tech bro As a result, "tech bro" has become a term used in relation to anyone in the IT industry when they want to criticize them. In 2019, wrote an "obituary for the tech bro", stating that the term has "lost all relevance" because it "alienates the very people we're trying to get more inclusion from.” However, the term is occasionally used to this day. Seattle-based publication SeattleMet The Birth of Crypto Bro With the popularity of Bitcoin, it wasn't enough to just be "tech bros" - there were more and more young investors who became interested in cryptocurrencies in pursuit of easy money. In 2017, they were called , and then the broader spread. Bitcoin bro term “crypto bro" At that time, it was believed that a typical representative of crypto bros demonstratively calls himself an entrepreneur, brags on social networks about how much he earned from cryptocurrency, idealizes Elon Musk, dreams of colonizing Mars, and is interested in virtual reality. The Lamborgini car became a status symbol among cultural representatives. Investors ironically calculated how many Bitcoins were needed to buy it, and the phrase " " was used in memes. When Lambo? The first Bitcoin millionaires bought expensive sports cars to prove to the whole world that cryptocurrencies are not scams and that it is really possible to get rich with them. As in the tech bro culture, most crypto bros are men. that parties after Bitcoin conferences were held in strip clubs, and startups were advertised with bikini-clad girls. Female investors have spoken out , pointing out that it, too, has few women, just like IT companies. The New York Times reported against bro-culture in the blockchain community Crypto bros do not agree with tech bros, perhaps only in political views: if the latter do not adhere to a certain ideology, the former are . Crypto enthusiasts also believe that the monetary system should be free from centralized oversight and that the people, not the authorities, should make decisions. equated with libertarians The term "crypto bro" became more mainstream amid the of Bitcoin in 2018. Back then, many analysts warned of a "financial bubble" while crypto bros scoffed at them and urged them to buy Bitcoins on the fall. When the rate did collapse, social networks ironized over crypto investors who tried in every possible way to justify the unexpected market crash. spikes and drops What Does a Modern Crypto Bro Look Like? Interest in Bitcoin waned after a sharp drop in the exchange rate, but 2021 brought cryptocurrencies back into the spotlight. The entire year was accompanied by the , the massive proliferation of NFTs, interest in meme cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin, tech companies' belief in developing meta-universes, and attempts to create decentralized communities in pursuit of Web3. During this period, the term gained widespread popularity. rise of Bitcoin Due to new trends, the image of cryptocurrency brokers has also changed - they are now seeking decentralization and anonymity, exploring meta-universes, and investing in altcoins, such as Ether. They no longer seek to get rich quickly by trading but more often "hold" cryptocurrency regardless of the market situation, waiting for the rate to “ .” fly to the moon Cryptobro differs from a simple crypto investor in that he does not just buy Bitcoins, invest in NFT, and dream of a new Internet in virtual reality, but is sincerely convinced that he is on the cutting edge of progress and will drive global changes in the whole society with his actions. Cryptobro also tries to convince everyone who is willing to listen to him of this. Cryptocurrency idols also gradually changed. Elon Musk began to lose popularity. Although the entrepreneur was praised for "raising Dogecoin to the moon" with a single tweet, when he similarly "collapsed" the Bitcoin rate. Crypto bros accused the head of Tesla of market manipulation. many people did not like this tactic The place of the idol of crypto bros was taken by the president of El Salvador Nayib Bukele, who achieved the recognition of Bitcoin as the official currency in the country and then purchased 1,801 bitcoins for $85 million with budget money. wrote him open letters, called him a hero, , and supported him due to the Bitcoin crash. Crypto-subreddit users praised him for "giving money away to citizens" even after the country's budget lost 20% of its investments While for Musk, cryptocurrencies were limited to Twitter entertainment, Bukele has shown that he takes them seriously. Due to overconfidence in the future success of cryptocurrencies and, at the same time, ignorance of the rules of investing, the behavior of crypto bros began to be ridiculed more often in social networks: novice investors do not understand that you , they delete posts on social networks about their "successful transactions" , or they ask random people . have to pay taxes for buying Bitcoin to hide evidence from regulators what coins to buy The social media's lenient attitude toward crypto bros is also because more and more scammers have appeared in the wave of "meme" cryptocurrencies. They release cheap coins with small capitalization, lure investors, and hide with eight-digit amounts of dollars at the rate's peak. After this, the coin's value falls sharply. Such a scheme is called "pump and dump." This scheme was used to sell , the , and even the . Fraudulent cryptocurrencies have reached such proportions that for advertising such things. fake cryptocurrency on "The Squid Game" "antique" version of Dogecoin coin Jizz Monkey Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather were sued In addition to outright scamming, crypto bros raise money for some pretty questionable things, often without knowing the purpose for which they are trying to buy something. For example, crypto bros: Sold plots on the "paradise island" of Cryptoland using other people's assets and blocking all critics but . lost an auction to buy the real island Tied to buy a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution at auction (for no particular purpose - they decided to give voting rights to participants after the purchase), raised over $40 million, lost the auction, but couldn't withdraw the money due to blockchain commissions. Spent $3 million on a book with storyboards of Alejandro Chodorowsky's unfilmed "Dune" and decided to make a TV series based on it for Netflix, thinking they had acquired the rights to adapt the work. Tried to buy a record-sized cube of tungsten to look at and touch once a year. Also, because of the image of cryptocurrencies, many people began to doubt cryptocurrencies as an idea. On Reddit, they note that Bitcoin, conceived as an alternative currency for everyday payments, has become a . In addition, critics of cryptocurrencies are also outraged that crypto miners are wasting electricity just to "crunch the numbers" and maintain the level of trust in the cryptocurrency. "speculative asset with fluctuating rates" NFT Bro - Crypto Bro's Little Brother It was originally envisioned that NFTs would help artists make money from their art, who would directly sell their work through blockchain. Buyers would become kind collectors of digital art and could earn on the resale of "artifacts.” NFT (non-fungible token) is a virtual digital unit in the blockchain network, a unique certificate that guarantees the originality of the object and gives exclusive rights to it. To be an NFT collector is to philosophically accept the idea that you "own" all similar JPEGs distributed on the network. However, it wasn't artists who took over the market. Initially, heroes of forgotten memes, stars, and brands started to profit from selling NFTs, and then fraudsters penetrated the market. Marketplaces were flooded with art stolen from little-known artists, as well as copies of popular NFT collections. It got to the point where , and then started arguing about which of them was the "real" one. two projects completely copied the mirror collection of Bored Apes In addition to stealing content, NFT enthusiasts are . Suppose a purchase is made by transferring Ethereum from one anonymous wallet to another. In that case, nothing stops them from transferring money to themselves, passing it off as a digital art transaction to the tax authorities. occasionally accused of money laundering In some cases, who hide with the money and do not even release art. Social networks wonder how one can trust the promises of creators of anonymous projects. Sometimes, that end up being scams. crypto investors pay millions of dollars to "NFT artists" celebrities appear to ignorantly promote NFTs Critics who see the virtual items market as meaningless or even fraudulent have named enthusiasts as NFT bros. Usually, representatives of such culture put their digital artifacts (most often looking like colorful animals) on their avatars in social networks, see their purchase as the future, and that they cannot realize the real value of owning digital content. try to convince critics After all, a postcard with a copy of the Mona Lisa cannot be equated with the original painting. In response, NFT bros have named their critics "right clickers" for taking screenshots of purchases from marketplaces or just right-clicking saves. Crypto-enthusiasts consider the term "right clicker" offensive, though . their critics only laugh it off Periodically, NFT bros demand that screenshots be deleted and , which has allowed digital artifacts to be put on avatars. advocate banning the saving of pictures on marketplaces or even on Twitter In social networks, the image of NFT bro has developed around people who invest all their money in digital artifacts, blindly believing that they will someday pay off. An illustration of this behavior was a , spending his entire life savings on it. Reddit user who gave his girlfriend an NFT instead of an engagement ring Because of cases like this, NFT bros are portrayed as obsessed fanatics who are willing to buy up any digital artifacts in hopes of speculating on the market in the future. And even crypto bros criticize them for hoping too much for the success of NFT. Conclusion Pejorative terms for cryptocurrencies and their other "brethren" have arisen as a reaction to distrust of digitalization. , NFTs are considered meaningless and speculative, and meta-universes are not developed enough for continuous use. Cryptocurrencies are called pyramid schemes But who knows, perhaps while Twitter is mocking the crypto bros' next failures, they are actually paving the way for the future, teaching others from their own mistakes.

Tech Bro, Crypto Bro, and NFT Bro - The Evolution of Identity in the Digital World

টেক ব্রো, ক্রিপ্টো ব্রো এবং এনএফটি ব্রো - ডিজিটাল ওয়ার্ল্ডে পরিচয়ের বিবর্তন

Tech Bro, Crypto Bro und NFT Bro – Evolution der Identität in der digitalen Welt

Tech Bro, Crypto Bro y NFT Bro: evolución de la identidad en el mundo digital

Tech Bro, Crypto Bro et NFT Bro - Évolution de l'identité dans le monde numérique

टेक ब्रो, क्रिप्टो ब्रो, और एनएफटी ब्रो - डिजिटल दुनिया में पहचान का विकास

Tech Bro、Crypto Bro、および NFT Bro - デジタル世界におけるアイデンティティの進化

Tech Bro, Crypto Bro 및 NFT Bro - 디지털 세계에서 정체성의 진화

Tech Bro, Crypto Bro e NFT Bro - Evolução da Identidade no Mundo Digital

Tech Bro, Crypto Bro и NFT Bro — эволюция идентичности в цифровом мире

Tech Bro, Crypto Bro ve NFT Bro - Dijital Dünyada Kimliğin Evrimi

Tech Bro, Crypto Bro và NFT Bro - Sự phát triển của bản sắc trong thế giới kỹ thuật số

技术兄弟、加密货币兄弟和 NFT 兄弟 - 数字世界中身份的演变

In the real world, we often have very poor inputs to automate a process. For example, we want to automate a process that is now completely manual and people make a lot of mistakes in it. Moreover, there is a long delay in correcting errors and because of this, the current data contains a lot of misleading answers. However, if we have a lot of data, quantity inevitably turns into quality (hello, emergentism!). In this article, I will share a real case study of how we automated the transaction categorization process in bookkeeping. As a result, we managed to save the company $20,000+ in direct operational costs, while also reducing the average turnaround time from 24 to 2 hours and  increasing the average quality of categorization from ~80% to 95%+. In this article, I'll touch on a lot of practical aspects of how you can automate almost any repetitive manual process. You don't need to build your rocket science models for that - you just need to choose the right architecture from the directly making the final decision, a set of additional algorithms to process the data, and autonomous agents to collect the information (yes, we'll be using ChatGPT!). ML model The article will contain a certain amount of technical details to make it interesting for senior-level ML specialists, but I will also try to immerse the reader in the context of the business problem and explain the logic of making certain decisions in simple language. So even if you don't create ML models manually, the gained knowledge probably will give you many useful ideas for your project. Let's go! Content Overview Choosing an ML model architecture for a business problem The infrastructural and technical stages of the project Challenges in the model training The benefits of deep knowledge of a business process and most effective features Using LLM for data enrichment Anomaly search out of the box and global optimization Lyrical digression: why our model, on average, performs better than humans Instead of the bottom line Choosing an ML model architecture for a business problem Accounting categorization is a simple enough process to explain even to a 5-year-old child. You have some business transactions and you need to categorize them from an accounting perspective. For small companies, there's not a lot of nuance. You spend money, you record it as an expense. You get the money - put it in revenue. But the bigger the business, the more difficult it is to categorize its operations. Besides, many non-standard forms of documents appear, the description of transactions becomes more and more exotic, and some are not described in almost any way. The question appears: how do bookkeepers do their job under these conditions? We interviewed many of the agents doing categorization in our Bookkeeping Factory and watched dozens of hours of recordings of their work to understand exactly how they make decisions. It turned out that they were often making a single keyword choice, while also looking at secondary factors like counterparty or transaction amount. It quickly became clear that we don't need neural networks (at the beginning of the project we were considering specifically FCNN as it is often used for similar tasks), and we can solve the problem with a simpler model because we will very rarely categorize full-fledged sentences, and the keywords themselves can be conveniently turned into separate near-categorical features. Important: try to use as simple solutions as possible. Don't overengineer the solution architecture at the start and avoid more complex solutions in the distance. Very often you don't get the coverage / quality due to misunderstanding of the business context and, as a consequence, missing important features. With this in mind, Gradient Boosting proved to be the most optimal algorithm to train on our data. Here are several reasons why gradient-boosting algorithms excel in our scenario: Gradient Boosting algorithms can naturally handle mixed data types, including both scalar and categorical features, without requiring extensive preprocessing. Many other algorithms might struggle with categorical features, which often need encoding or transformation. Handling Mixed Data Types: Imbalanced class distributions are common in multi-class classification. Gradient Boosting algorithms allow you to assign different weights to different classes, which can help address class imbalance issues. Effective Handling of Imbalanced Data: Gradient Boosting algorithms can automatically detect and utilize feature interactions, which is essential for complex datasets with a mix of scalar and categorical features. Automatic Feature Interaction Detection: Gradient Boosting algorithms are known for their high predictive accuracy, making them well-suited for multi-class classification tasks where you want to maximize classification performance. (Most frequent winner algorithm in kaggle for multi classifications) High Predictive Accuracy: Gradient Boosting models are generally robust to noisy or incomplete data, which is often encountered when dealing with mixed feature types. Robust to Noisy Data: We were also using 2 different libraries for gradient boosting in parallel - XGBoost and CatBoost. XGBoost is the gold standard in the industry and needs no introduction. As for CatBoost, it is the only implementation of the Gradient Boosting algorithm that works with text features without any additional preprocessing. Also, CatBoost is specifically designed to handle categorical features seamlessly without the need for one-hot encoding or label encoding. In our case, CatBoost has shown better results. The infrastructural and technical stages of the project The first thing we did was to build a playground to quickly test all the new features. We couldn't predict ahead of time all the features and approaches we would eventually come up with and which of them would show the best results. However, we realized that we wanted to make experiments as fast and easy as possible when testing new hypotheses. We called this playground: 1-command run dataset preparation (download the actual dataset from an analytical database, split it into train/validation/test, and prepare it for use) Convenient configuration of experiments: when you work on a project for a long time, you accumulate a lot of new features and hyperparameters and their best combination with each other may change over time. You want to tune many parameters really fast and better to create the config file for that. Splitting the code into layers of data aggregation, preprocessing (e.g., text correction), enrichment (to add important features), model training, calculation and visualization of the experiment result. The layers themselves are also divided into separate domain-specific services. For example, in our case additional categorization of transaction counterparties is important. We use autonomous agents on LLM models (specifically ChatGPT) for that and, thus, we build a separate service with counterparty information retrieval. Without the existence of such a playground, the speed of new experiments will be many times slower. So I advise you to build such an environment from the beginning. When it comes to training, the implementation was done based on Azure cloud solution, since at that moment we had a grant from Microsoft, but a similar approach could be utilized with any cloud platform. The training process consists of the following steps: Run the needed instance*. First of all, check the number of kernels/threads available for instance, since the Gradient Boosting algorithm can be parallelized quite well; Copy the project to a remote server; Install the dependencies; Launch the experiment. Also pay attention to the instance type, because some of them might have limited work time with a full load, which can increase the training time. A good approach would be to create a docker and copy it instead. We could also have an overview of the instances, but it’s a bit of a different topic. Challenges in the model training By the time we started working on the model our dataset consisted of 3,000,000 manually categorized line items (this is a single line from a document, e.g. invoices often consist of multiple line items). Of these, only about half were reviewed by accountation: this is due to a peculiarity of the way our bookkeeping factory works. To build real-time bookkeeping, we immediately send all documents to our Kuala Lumpur-based bookkeeper department for categorization. They can escalate complex cases to accountants, but do most of the categorization themselves. That said, the accountants make sure to review all categorizations on their own before submitting the accounting period as they are responsible to the government for this. On average, a bookkeeper-level categorization contains about 20% errors of different severity. It’s important to note, most of the errors are not as critical from a financial cost analysis perspective. For example, bookkeepers often confuse revenue from core and non-core sales. From a tax perspective, this doesn't affect the bottom line, but from a potential audit perspective, it shouldn't be confused. These nuances created additional challenges in training, but we were able to solve them safely. Apart from feature engineering, the following actions significantly contribute to the model performance: 2 test datasets: Considering that the final accuracy can be only calculated on the submitted data (which can take up to several months), but coverage of the model should be estimated on the most recent data, we used two different datasets to get the model accuracy/coverage. For accuracy, we used the last 10% of the records that were submitted. And for the coverage we used 10% of the most recent data. Balancing class weights: since the classes are not balanced, we should adjust the weights of the rare account codes for training calculated as following: n_samples / (n_classes * np.bincount(y)). Catboost provides a specific “class_weights” parameter for passing an array with weights. Adjusting classes weights based on error likelihood: We also added additional weights for each record based on the frequency of human error while creating an account code (this is relevant for the model training on the not fully validated data) Feature with thresholds: it’s also possible to let the model decide on the thresholds of the features, where it’s applicable The benefits of deep knowledge of a business process and most effective features The most contributing features are often born at the intersection of domain and technical knowledge. In our case, the “strongest” feature that added the top 30% of coverage turned out to be the probability of keyword categorization in different dimensions. How it works. Based on the results of shadowing, it became clear that very often bookkeepers look at how similar cases have been categorized in the past to make decisions. At the same time, they determine similarity by matching keywords. We decided to formalize this process by engineering. For that, we record the keywords in all categorization cases. Then for each keyword, based on our dataset, we calculate the probability that a particular ledger account will be selected. Since there is often more than one keyword in a one-line item, we need to assign weights to them somehow. This can be done either as a simple weighted average - i.e., give the same weight to each keyword encountered in a line item - or it can be done in a similar way to tf-idf - i.e., give more weight to rarer keywords. Important: From our practice, the second approach (tf-idf like) works better, but we ended up adding both approaches as 2 separate features - one counts by the first approach and the other by the second. In doing so, both features essentially pick values from the same set (I'll talk about this a bit below). This approach, as a rule, does not lead to a drop in accuracy, but allows you to add an extra percentage of coverage, which is always nice. Let me point out why this works: with proper training, the algorithm will realize that one of the features has a higher correlation with the correct answer and therefore it will have a higher feature importance. In the case of a conflict between two features, the one with the higher feature importance will be prioritized. So the next time you have several hypotheses for how to calculate a particular feature, ask yourself whether to add all of them as separate features. Next, measure the error contribution of all the features. If it is negative, then feel free to leave all the features. Next, we extract keywords from the new line item that we want to categorize and calculate the products of the probabilities of selecting the bookkeeping accounts for these keywords. You'll end up with something like this: Account A - 80% Account B - 15% The rest - 5%. In the feature itself, we will write only the class that will pass the threshold specified in the config parameters. At the same time, you can add several such features with different threshold levels, for example, 75%, 95%, 99%. If some account has 99% probability, then all such features will have the same value - this account. If an account has a probability of 76%, then the first feature will have the value of the account, and the remaining two will have the value of null. Why does this work? Read the previous "important" section above. Using LLM for data enrichment LLM is a great technology for a lot of textual tasks. But categorizing small word combinations, often with no unambiguous meaning, is not the most appropriate task for it. Nevertheless, we can use it to search and summarize additional information and add the result of its work as separate features. In our case, we want to understand whether the counterparty of some transaction is the same counterparty that was encountered in a previous transaction. If yes, it very much increases the probability of categorization by the same account. If it is a new counterparty, we want to get additional useful information on it. To do this, we first want to make sure that the difference in names is not a typo/error at the OCR stage, and count the distance between counterparty names The Damerau–Levenshtein distance algorithm. If it does not exceed a threshold, then we run our autonomous agent on ChatGPT to crawl local company registers (e.g. for Singapore it is Acra Register) with the name of that counterparty. Thanks to this we can make sure that the company name is spelled correctly and also find out the main field of activity of the counterparty. We do a similar operation when we encounter obscure words - we Google the word and ask Chatgpt to make some conclusion about what the word is. For example, "M1133" may turn out to be the name of a specific phone model, or it may remain an incomprehensible set of letters and then we have to ask our client what it means. Important: use any technologies for those tasks for which they are created/show the best results. In our case, we are learning to predict the probability of categorization based on a statistical distribution of many factors whose weight of significance we do not know, and there is no formalized list of rules for that. In such circumstances, we are better served by simpler models that construct some statistical distribution of values depending on the input data. This is something that gradient boosting can do very well. And something that the Transformer architecture, on which all current LLM models are built, can easily dumb down. Anomaly search out of the box and global optimization One of the nice bonuses of ML model building turned out to be the following observation. Since the gradient boosting returns class probabilities, we can treat them as the confidence of the response. An obvious application of the confidence level is to define a threshold at which we use the model response. If the threshold is not reached (the model is not confident enough), then we send it out for human classification. The less obvious thing is that very low confidence can correlate with really complex cases that require additional human verification. That was exactly our situation! Most cases where the most likely class had a very low probability tend to have a higher error rate in human process. If such cases are sent through a standard process where they are categorized by bookkeepers, they are much more likely to exhibit an incorrect answer. From a product perspective, it’s more beneficial to send these cases straight to accountants or clients. That's why we put up a second threshold at the bottom: when it is breached, the document is sent to a separate flow. Although this approach leads to local costs, it generally contributes to global optimization of the process: less data errors -> more trust in real-time accounting (higher NPS) => less time for accountants to check (optimization of operating costs). Lyrical digression: why our model, on average, performs better than humans In addition to the ML model itself, which makes the final categorization decision, we built 2 important supporting components for it: A much more informative "interface": as a feature, we give as input the statistical distribution of past categorizations in different slices: at the level of company, counterparty, company activity type, company region, etc. (see Section “The benefits of deep knowledge of a business process and most effective features”) Autocollection of additional information (see section “Using LLM for data enrichment”). Without these two components, the result of the model would be many times worse. So we can't say that our ML model magically started to be smarter than humans. It's just that we added additional features that allow the model to make a more informed decision, and we did quality training. Important: in real life, the existing business process we are working on is often far from ideal. To avoid being blocked by product development, consider gathering important information on the backend side. By cutting off the visual interface that people need but ML models don't, you'll save a significant amount of resources. And with LLM technologies, you can implement many routine information gathering and summarization processes much faster, especially if they don't require high accuracy. Instead of the bottom line The problem we solved is both unique and standard at the same time. On the one hand, it is unique because every domain and business process has its nuances that need to be analyzed, comprehended, and taken into account when building an ML model. In this article, I have detailed a few such nuances in the context of building a bookkeeping classifier. But, of course, there are many more. On the other hand, the approaches outlined in this article can be widely reused to automate many other business processes, and not necessarily those where you need to classify something explicitly. After all, in essence, any business process is an ensemble of classifiers: you choose one of the possible solutions at stage 1, then make one of the possible solutions at stage 2, and so on. Combining LLM technologies with simpler ML models and depth of understanding of the business process one can achieve amazing results. In our case, we were able to automate 90%+ of the operations and achieve a much better quality (98%+) of responses than the people whose work we automated. In addition, we prevented a lot of errors and saved labor in the manual process by sending anomalies to a separate stage. Good luck with your ML experiments!) by , Peter Potapov special thanks to Andrey Mescheryakov

How We Built an Efficient ML Model With Dirty Data and Insufficient Information

ROGER HAMLEY'S CONFESSION.

I’ve had the pleasure of talking to Matvei Lisitsa, a promising concept artist and talented graphic designer, with hands-on experience in the film industry, creative agencies and entrepreneurship. Through our engaging conversation, Matvei unveiled his unique journey to becoming a concept artist and shared his perspectives on creativity, the wellsprings of his inspiration, and how modern technologies like artificial intelligence are shaping—and sometimes shaking—the realms of art and design. Matvei, share with us your path towards embarking on a career as a concept artist. Starting from early childhood, I have been keen on drawing and painting and have shown certain artistic abilities. Later on, I graduated from a prestigious college majoring in design. However, due to initially engaging in business with my brother and later developing my own retail business, I didn’t work in any specialized design fields for a long time. Still, attending to the design needs in the projects I was involved with allowed me to significantly hone my design skills. A few years ago I joined a large creative design agency and created storyboards for advertisements, various visuals, billboards, interfaces for promotional websites, icons, and did a lot of routine work. Although being a designer in a creative agency has never been my dream, I accepted the offer as they reached out to me via LinkedIn, and that was an intriguing new experience. Then, my story with concept art began to unfold. A friend of mine went to study in Florida and met a guy who was studying film directing there and was engaged in a film project. Their team was looking for a concept artist at the time, and so my friend recommended me. They reached out, saying they needed someone to draw a location and characters for an upcoming movie, provided a formal description and script, and I took on the task. I drew the concepts, and everyone liked it. At that moment, it felt like a new aspect of myself had been unlocked, as dreams of venturing into filmmaking had always been harbored since childhood. Somehow, the realm of concept art had passed me by, and when I discovered it, it was a bit upsetting that it took me so long to get there. And so, a voracious search for information began. When a field is entirely new, you can either learn it from scratch by yourself or go to a professional to learn. As a concept artist, you need to know a lot about films, different camera angles, frame composition, types of camera lenses, color, and light. Basically, all the film-related stuff, in addition to artistic skills, because you have to draw or create 3D models. In my case, it seemed more appropriate to turn to a professional, as it's an extremely vast topic. I enrolled in courses by Jama Jurabaev, who had collaborated with Disney, Lucasfilm, Steven Spielberg, and Guy Ritchie. Essentially, all the necessary fundamentals were covered in these courses and I also completed my first pilot project there. Later on, I was offered a job as a concept artist at the Hemlock project by DNA Studio, a mystical thriller in a Japanese setting. Meanwhile, I began creating some designs for my portfolio. For instance, there was this concept art contest called Mission to Minerva. Although my works didn’t win, they made it to the final featuring the best artworks chosen from nearly 32,000 participants from 174 countries (my works are shown starting from 1:49). showreel For another contest, I developed concept art called Swan Lake. When I was 14-15 years old, my mom and I went to a theater to see the ballet Swan Lake, and somehow imagined how cool it would be to make a movie to this music. Now, this thought found its embodiment in the concept art, for which I received a special mention from the jury. The American project I'm currently involved in thanks to my friend's recommendation, “Rain and Max Saga” by Synergetic Media Development, is in the pre-production stage and, if things go well, is meant to be a franchise. I've already done quite a lot for this project, regardless of its future fate: created full-fledged concepts of key locations, character sketches, and some simple stylistic concepts, as the idea is to have a “90s-like” style. Actually, it all started as a collaboration with Stan Lee in his later years. When they told me this, I couldn’t believe it at first. But quick googling has shown that this was true. It's very inspiring! Why did you choose concept art as your main direction? Well, because it's a blend of a creative approach and the cinematic, entertaining aspect. As a concept artist, I need to be an independent unit artistically, and a well-versed individual. If you bluntly recreate things already done in other projects, it might be received oddly. To avoid crafting clichéd narratives, you need broad exposure, extending beyond just movies. Even in many films, you'll find numerous references to classical paintings embedded in frame compositions, or outright reproductions of famous paintings, albeit in different attire or locations. Fashion, in terms of key photoshoots for magazines, along with celebrities and mass media, closely interlinks with painting, fashion, and movies since music videos often take cues from cinematography. So, you need to understand all these facets. All these elements inspire me, hence I probably chose this direction, intertwining various art forms. Whereas before I'd watch a movie and merely feel inspired, now I watch and notice—this technique, that camera angle, this special effect, that lighting. This adds an extra advantage, as you're not merely procrastinating while watching a movie, but extracting something useful for your work. In addition to your creative pursuits, you also ventured into entrepreneurship. Can you share a couple of insights you gained from this experience? The company I founded with my brother is called StickArt. We specialize in creating custom interactive portraits. The process goes like this: a client contacts us, sends a photo they want to be turned into a portrait, and our artists redesign it into an interactive format. Once approved, the portrait goes into production. What the client receives is not a finished portrait, but a canvas with a sketch, which they can then paint themselves using the set of paint included. When all this began, I was still in college, around 18 years old. My brother was exploring business ideas at the time and proposed this venture. I was responsible for the creative aspect of the project; for instance, I devised how we would draw the sketches, what tools to use, and how to technically implement all of it. My brother handled general management and marketing. Our business picked up fairly quickly, and I was deeply involved for about two to three years. Once the processes were streamlined, my involvement lessened. From a business standpoint, we were quite successful. People really enjoyed this format, and we had a good number of clients. The portraits were popular as gifts for weddings, birthdays, and so forth. However, to be honest, I didn't perceive it as a creative endeavor. It was more of a mass product. So, after a few years, I started to feel bogged down in routine, lacking a sense of tangible fulfillment, and began seeking something new. That’s when I realized the importance of avoiding a stagnant state. Whenever you feel you’ve outgrown something or it no longer brings you joy, it’s crucial not to fear letting go and seeking what intrigues you, where you can continue to grow. In my case, it took quite a bit of time. I started developing my own business, unrelated to creative work, and acquired many new skills—negotiating with clients, suppliers, marketing, and so on. This helped me grow both personally and professionally. I concluded that it’s beneficial to try new things, even if they seem daunting, as that’s how you can accelerate your development. You begin to realize that everything that seemed unattainable is actually achievable and realizable. What are your primary sources of inspiration? Many things inspire me, but ever since childhood, I've had a fondness for movies and music, along with drawing. Among these, cinematography has been the most inspiring as it transports me to a different world. Movies can spark visual ideas or concepts within me. For instance, I was very taken with Damien Chazelle's La La Land. It's essentially a classic musical adapted to modern realities, with a message to ponder. I love the visuals in this movie. I've been fascinated by Los Angeles since childhood, and in La La Land, it's depicted precisely as I feel it myself. This resonated with me, and I have good memories of watching it at a premiere in New York. Early contemporary art like Impressionism or Pop Art, especially Andy Warhol's works, also inspire me. Sometimes, I appreciate what our contemporaries create, but selectively. Unlike earlier times when Pop Art or Malevich's Black Square captured attention and gained value due to their unique approach, nowadays, there's so much created that it's hard to surprise anyone. I also draw inspiration from the fashion industry and mass media stories. I like keeping up with celebrities, though I do it less now due to time constraints. Previously, I keenly followed music videos, the ideas therein, and contemporary agendas. Because what's showcased in videos and movies often results from focus group analyses determining current trends. By following this, you stay in the loop. In one of your interviews, you mentioned, "A designer is not someone who creates beautiful visuals, but rather, someone who solves a client's business task." How do you strike a balance between commercial interests and self-realization? I believe the most useful skill every designer and commercial artist should master is switching off their ego. Creative individuals often wish to infuse their own vision into their work. It happens quite often that a person receives a task, conceives something unique, falls in love with the idea, but at the moment you present it to the client, they might not share your enthusiasm. Even if you are guided by your knowledge of good design principles, it doesn't always resonate—clients often have their own vision. Or, if we talk about design agencies, it’s common for creative director to fall in love with their own ideas and, consequently, they might not appreciate yours. Initially, this caused me a lot of emotional turmoil—I mean, when I created and proposed something, and it wasn’t appreciated. But with experience, I've come to a point where I strive to do well, pay close attention to the client's request, and just add my touch. However, if the client expresses disapproval, I react calmly because if it's a commercial task, I set aside my ego. I understand that I'm not the creator of this product, nor will I live with it; I merely strive to do my part well. And if there are any criticisms, I don’t take them personally, but understand it as a work-related expense. Certainly, there are designers and artists who are highly recognized, and clients may approach them saying, "We need your vision." But that’s more the exception. Every creative individual, while working on commercial projects, invariably faces these constraints. A good example is the animated film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. When the project was still in pre-production, concept artist Alberto Mielgo was invited as the art director and given quite a lot of freedom. He came up with his own stylistic approach, somewhat dark, to make it a more mature story. However, as I understood, Sony's producers weren’t thrilled with this concept since they wanted a balance of this explosive new style while targeting a teenage audience. In the end, they didn’t agree, and Mielgo left the project. He about this on his Instagram. wrote This is to say, designers of any status encounter this issue. Therefore, it seems to me it's essential to realize the nature of the project you are working on. Because if you are creating something for yourself or your portfolio, you have the freedom to do as you wish, and the only person to reprimand you is yourself. But when working for a client, it’s better to set aside your ego at the moment and think about the opportunity to create something cool. Yes, it won’t be a hundred percent your creation, as most of the time it’s a collaborative effort, and you are just part of the team. Perhaps, that’s where the balance lies. What do you think about current trends in art and design, such as the active adoption of AI? Regarding artificial intelligence, there's a utopian and a dystopian way to view it. Given how people often have a knack for messing things up, I'm not entirely sold on the positive aspects of AI. This notion has been around for a while. We've had bots and various software integrations for a long time; it's just become a hot topic recently. AI has indeed rocked the creative industry, sparking debates and discussions among artists and designers. Of course, there are certain fears. I try not to succumb to these fears. However, it's not the potential job loss due to AI that scares me most since humans generally adapt to changes quite well. For instance, there was a time when everything was drawn by hand, then photography and videography came along. Now, most things have transitioned to digital, yet there's still a demand for many artists, and technology hasn't fully replaced humans in the industry. With AI, honestly, I fear that the artist's job could become very mundane and uninteresting. The essence of being an artist lies in the creative process itself. Yes, the final result is pleasing to the eye, but usually, that joy is fleeting. When it comes to artificial intelligence, the scary part is that it might rob people of this process. You write a prompt, hit a button, and it gives you the final result. It's cool, but you didn't do it; you didn’t go through the process, and didn't experience the joy of creating. Life is not just about the final result; it's about the process. On the positive side, I'd be happy to use AI if everyone used it as an additional source of inspiration. It's foolish to argue that every artist gets inspired either by other artists or external materials. When they get an idea, the first thing they do is gather references. You go to Pinterest or Google and see what's out there on the topic. If artificial intelligence were perceived as a reference generator for a given topic, that would be a good use. For example, you ask it to show versions of future cities. It generates images, you add them to a folder, and you take something from there for inspiration. I think it would be better not to rush with the active implementation of AI, or at least, I'd like the charms of the creative process to remain with humans. In the creative sphere, it's precisely what gives people the stimulus to work and somehow express themselves. Hence, I'm more skeptical than positive about AI for now.

Exploring Creativity, Entrepreneurship, and AI Debates with a Concept Artist

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How Machine Learning is Transforming the Talent Management Industry Machine learning in talent management has transformed in a manner that such algorithms can learn the behavior and based on that pick up the best suitable person 13. So You Got Data... What Now? Data, data everywhere…but not enough to decide! 14. Human Identity Art: Tattoos, Aging and Removal An exploration into tattoos and their signficiance as a form of human identity art. 15. Going Non-Profit: What You Need to Know How do you decide whether to establish a nonprofit organization or not? Follow the AlmaLinux journey to learn about the questions asked that led to the decision 16. How to Overcome Scaling Challenges in Technical Architecture Find out how to set up processes, effective development practices & communication strategies to make design decisions and handle tech debt as the team scales. 17. The Dunning-Kruger Effect in Simple Terms The Dunning-Kruger effect is a phenomenon in which unskilled individuals overestimate their abilities while skilled individuals may underestimate their abilitie 18. Where To Find Data To Make Smart Business Decisions You can make more informed decisions. The decisions can make your business increase its bottom line, evolve, and grow commercially. This decision making is possible when you tap into business intelligence and leveraging on the available digital insights. 19. Algorithms and Society: A Not-So-Simple Discussion, In Three Parts Image Source: Unified Infotech 20. Alignment Model Leaders Need to Make Better Decisions Instead of being caught up in mole whacking, leaders need to do grub hunting - focus on the roots instead of leaf-level problems and decisions. 21. FourWeekMBA Founder Gennaro Cuofano On Heuristic Decision Making Gennaro Cuofano (Italy) writes about digital business models, platforms, blockchain business models, and new ways of doing business, all the while managing the growth of a high-tech startup and a small sales team. In this interview: Decentralization, Scaling, and Building Your Own Platform. 22. How to Choose the Right Web Tech Stack When you first dig your teeth into programming, it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed with the vast amount of resources and information you have available to you. 23. A Dream is Only a Starting Point At the end of the day, achieving your dreams takes all three of these things. It requires big dreams, preparation, and actually doing it. 24. How to Identify and Stick it to Decision Fatigue A series of these small decisions scattered throughout our day may seem harmless in the moment, but are they really harmless? 25. How to Cultivate Confident Humility for Better Leadership How do I balance myself on the confidence humility see-saw? What if my confidence is seen as arrogance or my humility as a sign of my lack of assertiveness. How do I come across right? 26. Why Do I Want To Become A Manager Every person at some point in their career may need to ask themselves “Do I really want to be a manager?” The question may seem straightforward, but the answer is not. It requires digging deeper and finding answers for ourselves without relying on what others believe is the right thing for us to do. 27. Getting from Zero to One: Must-Read Books for Building New Product Ventures I’ve put together a list of books that contain the ideas that I’ve found most useful for a new product venture at this stage. 28. Principles of Effective Goal Setting In most organisations, big picture thinking comes off as a seasonal flavour often appearing every few months. Mental gymnastics that goes with determining the “why” - meaning or purpose of goals, promise of a better future, and the excitement of doing something new definitely gets the creative juices flowing. Though not for all, most people in the organisation find this phase highly energising and exhilarating. But does this motivation last long? 29. The 5 Cognitive Distortions Preventing You From Making Better Decisions From an evolutionary standpoint, human beings developed cognitive distortions as a survival method. 30. Keep Sharing Context: How to Enable Better and Faster Product Decisions “So, what do you think?” — says the Product Manager after a product strategy presentation to his team 31. A True Story About How Stoicism Saved a Prisoner of War: 7 Tips for Your Own Life Stockdale had no reason to think that the day’s mission was to be anything unique. 32. 10 Reasons Why you Should Learn Artificial Intelligence Introduction 33. Conflict Management: How to Engage in Rethinking Cycle An argument with a coworker - conflict of opinion. Working on a project that doesn’t energize you - conflict of interest. Didn’t get the promotion - conflict of growth. Working super hard with no time for personal life - internal conflict. Saying yes to work that doesn’t align with your goals - conflict of priorities. Committed a mistake, but can’t come to terms with accepting responsibility - conflict of values. We don’t realize it, but most interactions at work lead to a major or minor conflict. 34. Neotechnocracy vs Democracy: Our Future Resource-Oriented Economy “Philosophers only explained the world in different ways; but the thing is to change it.” — Karl Marx 35. Employee Training: How to Make Data-Driven Business Decisions According to PwC research, highly data-driven organizations are three times more likely to witness considerable improvement in decision-making. Unfortunately, a whopping 62% of executives still rely more on experience and gut feelings than data to make business decisions. 36. First Principles Thinking: Identify Assumptions, Breakdown Problems and Create New Solutions First principles thinking drives complex problem solving and workplace innovation through reverse engineering. Companies that employ first principles thinking are one step ahead as they plan and build for the future. 37. Correlation vs. Causation: Why Correlation Does Not Imply Causation The terms correlation and causation are quite often confused, however, they are not synonyms and this article specifies the main reasons why. 38. Not Sure if a Company is Right for You? Ask Yourself These 6 Questions We spend a large part of our life at work, and yet when it comes to making a decision “Is this the right company for me,” most of us rely only on our expert intuition without any solid data to back it up. 39. "Once you know the rules, you are free to break them" Rules were not meant to be broken, but there's always a reason to walk on the wild side. Make sure you know how to decide when it is appropriate to do so. 40. Be Dangerous! For The Dreamers of the Day are Dangerous Men In Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction novel Dune, we follow the story of the fall and rise of the aristocratic Atreides family circa 22,000 CE. The principal character, the marquee of the family, Paul Atreides, goes on a unique hero’s journey of guerilla warfare and political maneuvering, with both cosmological and philosophical repercussions. Without giving too much away, a central plot in the novel is Paul discovering his own telos, “the full potential or inherent purpose” of himself, within his mind and his broader destiny. This mystery surrounding Paul’s purpose creates an underground current through most of the novel. And when the current bursts to the surface, the reader is only left to pondering a hypothetical divine mystery. Is the reader witnessing a transfiguration (see Mark 9:1–10) or a revelation (See Revelation 21:1), as this archetypical desert warlord develops into an enlightened desert mystic? Is Paul a mix tape of Moses meets T. E. Lawrence? Or is he experiencing the slow mental descent of an asylum-bound messiah? 41. ‘Kill Your Darlings’ - Know When You Need to Pull the Proverbial Plug Basing our decision on what’s going to happen in the future and not what investments have been made in the past by treating every decision as a new one is indeed very difficult. It’s not a clear, straightforward choice. 42. 5 Steps to Build a Data-Driven Product Development Culture Early stages of product development are one of the most exciting times to be a part of the company as a product manager. One of the most important factors that drive the growth and success of the product is how quickly it acquires a large and loyal base of customers. You want these customers to use your product as frequently as possible with minimum friction. 43. The Blind Game: A Decision-Making Framework A step by step decision making process to help you choose the best option 44. “When you judge others, you do not define them, you define yourself”. ― Earl Nightingale Think of the countless times you labeled someone at work as “lazy, boring, incompetent, stupid, irritating, biased, reckless, rude…” 45. 5 Strategies to Overcome Confirmation Bias in Your Personal Narratives We gravitate towards people who are like us and will most likely believe what we believe. Doesn’t it feel good when others conform to our ideas? Who likes being told that they are not right or what they believe is far from reality? 46. Stop Being a People Pleaser: Must-Read Guide on How to Set Clear and Healthy Boundaries Do you feel exhausted, even frustrated working hard, putting in extra hours, sometimes even on weekends and late nights trying to catch up on work, but not being able to make progress on your own goals? 47. 7 Basic Rules for Better Decision-Making in Business Every manager has to undertake a tricky task of teaching employees to make the right decisions, the ones that will be profitable for the business. As my team was growing, I also came to realize I had to delegate responsibility. I don’t like to be micromanaged — so I don’t micromanage my team. My job is to lead people, not to be a bottleneck. I was lucky that Skyeng is all about principle-based decision-making; this is what makes an annual growth of 200% possible. I only had to take those corporate principles, or rules, and apply them to my field of commercial products. I’ll talk about my rules in this article. 48. Open Ended Questions to Ask to Go From Giving Advice To Gaining Insight Have you noticed what happens when someone asks you a really good open ended question? Your mood shifts and body language changes as your mind sets on a quest to look within, think deeply, and churn out ideas. The endorphin rush that comes from exploring uncharted territories triggers a positive feeling in the body. 49. Why We Make Bad Choices and How to Fight Back We do irrational things all the time, make stupid choices that we regret later. It’s not like we consciously decide to act like a fool. Rather, in those moments when we are making a decision, we seem to be quite pleased and reasonable with our choice. It’s only later we realize how distorted our sense of reality was. 50. 6 Guardrails Against GroupThink for Smarter Startup Decision Making When you are part of a group, do you speak up and voice your opinion or avoid criticism and choose a path of less conflicts. When popularity takes priority over individual responsibility, people develop a tendency to conform to ideas and beliefs that lead to conservative thinking, ignore potential signs of failure, and make decisions with incomplete and biased information leading to groupthink. 51. Practice This Second Order Thinking  Hack to Start Making Better Decisions While making decisions, how often do we optimise for long term gain at the cost of short term pain? A good process for making decisions requires second order thinking which unravels the implications of our decisions by thinking about its consequences in the future. It requires solving problems in a manner that avoids unintentional and unforeseen outcomes. Thank you for checking out the 51 most read stories about Decision Making on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

51 Stories To Learn About Decision Making

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . URSULA’S STORY CHAPTER XXII. URSULA’S STORY For a moment or two the girl looked mutely at Poirot. Then, her reserve breaking down completely, she nodded her head once, and burst into an outburst of sobs. Caroline pushed past me, and putting her arm round the girl, patted her on the shoulder. “There, there, my dear,” she said soothingly, “it will be all right. You’ll see—everything will be all right.” Buried under curiosity and scandal-mongering there is a lot of kindness in Caroline. For the moment, even the interest of Poirot’s revelation was lost in the sight of the girl’s distress. Presently Ursula sat up and wiped her eyes. “This is very weak and silly of me,” she said. “No, no, my child,” said Poirot kindly. “We can all realize the strain of this last week.” “It must have been a terrible ordeal,” I said. “And then to find that you knew,” continued Ursula. “How did you know? Was it Ralph who told you?” Poirot shook his head. “You know what brought me to you to-night,” went on the girl. “ ——” This She held out a crumpled piece of newspaper, and I recognized the paragraph that Poirot had had inserted. “It says that Ralph has been arrested. So everything is useless. I need not pretend any longer.” “Newspaper paragraphs are not always true, mademoiselle,” murmured Poirot, having the grace to look ashamed of himself. “All the same, I think you will do well to make a clean breast of things. The truth is what we need now.” The girl hesitated, looking at him doubtfully. “You do not trust me,” said Poirot gently. “Yet all the same you came here to find me, did you not? Why was that?” “Because I don’t believe that Ralph did it,” said the girl in a very low voice. “And I think that you are clever, and will find out the truth. And also——” “Yes?” “I think you are kind.” Poirot nodded his head several times. “It is very good that—yes, it is very good. Listen, I do in verity believe that this husband of yours is innocent—but the affair marches badly. If I am to save him, I must know all there is to know—even if it should seem to make the case against him blacker than before.” “How well you understand,” said Ursula. “So you will tell me the whole story, will you not? From the beginning.” “You’re not going to send away, I hope,” said Caroline, settling herself comfortably in an arm-chair. “What I want to know,” she continued, “is why this child was masquerading as a parlormaid?” me “Masquerading?” I queried. “That’s what I said. Why did you do it, child? For a wager?” “For a living,” said Ursula dryly. And encouraged, she began the story which I reproduce here in my own words. Ursula Bourne, it seemed, was one of a family of seven—impoverished Irish gentlefolk. On the death of her father, most of the girls were cast out into the world to earn their own living. Ursula’s eldest sister was married to Captain Folliott. It was she whom I had seen that Sunday, and the cause of her embarrassment was clear enough now. Determined to earn her living and not attracted to the idea of being a nursery governess—the one profession open to an untrained girl, Ursula preferred the job of parlormaid. She scorned to label herself a “lady parlormaid.” She would be the real thing, her reference being supplied by her sister. At Fernly, despite an aloofness which, as has been seen, caused some comment, she was a success at her job—quick, competent, and thorough. “I enjoyed the work,” she explained. “And I had plenty of time to myself.” And then came her meeting with Ralph Paton, and the love affair which culminated in a secret marriage. Ralph had persuaded her into that, somewhat against her will. He had declared that his stepfather would not hear of his marrying a penniless girl. Better to be married secretly, and break the news to him at some later and more favorable minute. And so the deed was done, and Ursula Bourne became Ursula Paton. Ralph had declared that he meant to pay off his debts, find a job, and then, when he was in a position to support her, and independent of his adopted father, they would break the news to him. But to people like Ralph Paton, turning over a new leaf is easier in theory than in practice. He hoped that his stepfather, whilst still in ignorance of the marriage, might be persuaded to pay his debts and put him on his feet again. But the revelation of the amount of Ralph’s liabilities merely enraged Roger Ackroyd, and he refused to do anything at all. Some months passed, and then Ralph was bidden once more to Fernly. Roger Ackroyd did not beat about the bush. It was the desire of his heart that Ralph should marry Flora, and he put the matter plainly before the young man. And here it was that the innate weakness of Ralph Paton showed itself. As always, he grasped at the easy, the immediate solution. As far as I could make out, neither Flora nor Ralph made any pretence of love. It was, on both sides, a business arrangement. Roger Ackroyd dictated his wishes—they agreed to them. Flora accepted a chance of liberty, money, and an enlarged horizon, Ralph, of course, was playing a different game. But he was in a very awkward hole financially. He seized at the chance. His debts would be paid. He could start again with a clean sheet. His was not a nature to envisage the future, but I gather that he saw vaguely the engagement with Flora being broken off after a decent interval had elapsed. Both Flora and he stipulated that it should be kept a secret for the present. He was anxious to conceal it from Ursula. He felt instinctively that her nature, strong and resolute, with an inherent distaste for duplicity, was not one to welcome such a course. Then came the crucial moment when Roger Ackroyd, always high-handed, decided to announce the engagement. He said no word of his intention to Ralph—only to Flora, and Flora, apathetic, raised no objection. On Ursula, the news fell like a bombshell. Summoned by her, Ralph came hurriedly down from town. They met in the wood, where part of their conversation was overheard by my sister. Ralph implored her to keep silent for a little while longer, Ursula was equally determined to have done with concealments. She would tell Mr. Ackroyd the truth without any further delay. Husband and wife parted acrimoniously. Ursula, steadfast in her purpose, sought an interview with Roger Ackroyd that very afternoon, and revealed the truth to him. Their interview was a stormy one—it might have been even more stormy had not Roger Ackroyd been already obsessed with his own troubles. It was bad enough, however. Ackroyd was not the kind of man to forgive the deceit that had been practiced upon him. His rancor was mainly directed to Ralph, but Ursula came in for her share, since he regarded her as a girl who had deliberately tried to “entrap” the adopted son of a very wealthy man. Unforgivable things were said on both sides. That same evening Ursula met Ralph by appointment in the small summer-house, stealing out from the house by the side door in order to do so. Their interview was made up of reproaches on both sides. Ralph charged Ursula with having irretrievably ruined his prospects by her ill-timed revelation. Ursula reproached Ralph with his duplicity. They parted at last. A little over half an hour later came the discovery of Roger Ackroyd’s body. Since that night Ursula had neither seen nor heard from Ralph. As the story unfolded itself, I realized more and more what a damning series of facts it was. Alive, Ackroyd could hardly have failed to alter his will—I knew him well enough to realize that to do so would be his first thought. His death came in the nick of time for Ralph and Ursula Paton. Small wonder the girl had held her tongue, and played her part so consistently. My meditations were interrupted. It was Poirot’s voice speaking, and I knew from the gravity of his tone that he, too, was fully alive to the implications of the position. “Mademoiselle, I must ask you one question, and you must answer it truthfully, for on it everything may hang: What time was it when you parted from Captain Ralph Paton in the summer-house? Now, take a little minute so that your answer may be very exact.” The girl gave a half laugh, bitter enough in all conscience. “Do you think I haven’t gone over that again and again in my own mind? It was just half-past nine when I went out to meet him. Major Blunt was walking up and down the terrace, so I had to go round through the bushes to avoid him. It must have been about twenty-seven minutes to ten when I reached the summer-house. Ralph was waiting for me. I was with him ten minutes—not longer, for it was just a quarter to ten when I got back to the house.” I saw now the insistence of her question the other day. If only Ackroyd could have been proved to have been killed before a quarter to ten, and not after. I saw the reflection of that thought in Poirot’s next question. “Who left the summer-house first?” “I did.” “Leaving Ralph Paton in the summer-house?” “Yes—but you don’t think——” “Mademoiselle, it is of no importance what I think. What did you do when you got back to the house?” “I went up to my room.” “And stayed there until when?” “Until about ten o’clock.” “Is there any one who can prove that?” “Prove? That I was in my room, you mean? Oh! no. But surely—oh! I see, they might think—they might think——” I saw the dawning horror in her eyes. Poirot finished the sentence for her. “That it was who entered by the window and stabbed Mr. Ackroyd as he sat in his chair? Yes, they might think just that.” you “Nobody but a fool would think any such thing,” said Caroline indignantly. She patted Ursula on the shoulder. The girl had her face hidden in her hands. “Horrible,” she was murmuring. “Horrible.” Caroline gave her a friendly shake. “Don’t worry, my dear,” she said. “M. Poirot doesn’t think that really. As for that husband of yours, I don’t think much of him, and I tell you so candidly. Running away and leaving you to face the music.” But Ursula shook her head energetically. “Oh, no,” she cried. “It wasn’t like that at all. Ralph would not run away on his own account. I see now. If he heard of his stepfather’s murder, he might think himself that I had done it.” “He wouldn’t think any such thing,” said Caroline. “I was so cruel to him that night—so hard and bitter. I wouldn’t listen to what he was trying to say—wouldn’t believe that he really cared. I just stood there telling him what I thought of him, and saying the coldest, cruelest things that came into my mind—trying my best to hurt him.” “Do him no harm,” said Caroline. “Never worry about what you say to a man. They’re so conceited that they never believe you mean it if it’s unflattering.” Ursula went on, nervously twisting and untwisting her hands. “When the murder was discovered and he didn’t come forward, I was terribly upset. Just for a moment I wondered—but then I knew he couldn’t—he couldn’t.... But I wished he would come forward and say openly that he’d had nothing to do with it. I knew that he was very fond of Dr. Sheppard, and I fancied that perhaps Dr. Sheppard might know where he was hiding.” She turned to me. “That’s why I said what I did to you that day. I thought, if you knew where he was, you might pass on the message to him.” “I?” I exclaimed. “Why should James know where he was?” demanded Caroline sharply. “It was very unlikely, I know,” admitted Ursula, “but Ralph had often spoken of Dr. Sheppard, and I knew that he would be likely to consider him as his best friend in King’s Abbot.” “My dear child,” I said, “I have not the least idea where Ralph Paton is at the present moment.” “That is true enough,” said Poirot. “But——” Ursula held out the newspaper cutting in a puzzled fashion. “Ah! that,” said Poirot, slightly embarrassed; “a bagatelle, mademoiselle. A rien du tout. Not for a moment do I believe that Ralph Paton has been arrested.” “But then——” began the girl slowly. Poirot went on quickly:— “There is one thing I should like to know—did Captain Paton wear shoes or boots that night?” Ursula shook her head. “I can’t remember.” “A pity! But how should you? Now, madame,” he smiled at her, his head on one side, his forefinger wagging eloquently, “no questions. And do not torment yourself. Be of good courage, and place your faith in Hercule Poirot.” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Agatha Christie (2006). The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/69087/pg69087-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

URSULA’S STORY

THE CONSCIENCE CASE OF DAVID BELL

Indonesia’s strategic location and abundant natural resources make it an increasingly important player in the energy and sustainability space with tremendous growth potential, specifically in Asia and throughout the rest of the world. The archipelago nation’s critical equatorial geography means that it has a high potential for solar energy, with Indonesia’s government reporting a potential for 200,000 MW of solar power in . September 2021 Additionally, Indonesia has one of the largest geothermal potentials globally, ranking as the world’s second-largest geothermal power-producing country in . 2022 However, it is Indonesia’s rising importance in the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain ecosystem that is truly something to take note of. President Joko Widodo’s focus on promoting growth in Indonesia’s EV and battery production economies has resulted in significant development of Indonesia’s homegrown manufacturing capabilities. With this in mind, Indonesia’s increasing importance in the EV supply chain highlights Indonesia’s status as a potential disruptor to China’s current significant stranglehold on the global EV market. China’s Current Authority Over the World’s EV Industry China has played a significant role in both generating and fueling demand for EVs around the globe. For one, China is the world’s largest EV market, with 6.8 million EVs sold in , compared to 800,000 in the US. 2022 This demand, coupled with China’s long history of manufacturing expertise and relatively low labor costs in comparison to its Western counterparts, has resulted in China becoming a global leader in the production of EVs, with Chinese-based companies occupying seven out of the top ten best-selling plug-in EVs worldwide in . 2022 Additionally, Chinese governmental support and access to raw materials have further enabled China to take the lead in global EV production. The Chinese government has provided many and other incentives to EV automakers and battery manufacturers, resulting in robust EV supply chain growth and development within China. subsidies China is also home to some of the of key raw materials necessary for EV production, including lithium, cobalt, and nickel, thus providing Chinese-based companies with a competitive advantage in the production of batteries for EVs. world’s largest reserves Why Indonesia, and Why Not America or the European Union? Major demand for EVs in developed markets such as the United States and the European Union place these two regions top-of-mind for most when it comes to challenging China’s preeminence in the EV supply chain. However, the complex bureaucratic nature of these developed markets has resulted in relatively slow progress when it comes to creating homegrown EV production efforts. In the United States, governmental support for EV manufacturing through efforts like President Biden’s , which invests “$7.5B in EV charging, $10B in clean transportation, and over $7B in EV battery components, critical minerals, and materials” passed in , with more EV-specific actions being passed only recently in . Bipartisan Infrastructure Law November 2021 February 2023 Additionally, while the EU has taken efforts to prioritize EV production through legislation like the Critical Raw Minerals Act and the Net-Zero Industry Act announced in , significant challenges like continue to plague the development of homegrown EV supply chain efforts in both regions. March 2023 differences in American and EU subsidies In contrast, long-standing Indonesian government support for EV and EV battery production, significant infrastructure investment, and abundant natural resources support Indonesia’s potential as a primary disrupting force to China’s current EV monopoly. Indonesia’s announcement of its goal for having EVs make up 20% of all domestic vehicles manufactured by 2025 was backed by the issuance of Presidential Decree No. 55 in , with this legislation aimed at further enabling EVs to be produced and deployed throughout the country. August 2019 This news followed the announcement of a Mitsubishi effort to research the effectiveness of EVs in Indonesia in , which itself was followed by the announcement of a $4B Indonesia EV battery project in . February 2018 November 2018 It is through early mover actions such as these that highlight Indonesia's potential to be a significant disrupting force to China’s current monopoly on the EV supply chain market. Indonesia’s Growth Potential in the EV Space Indonesia’s critical status as the home of the , a key component in EV battery production, makes it an attractive part of the global EV supply chain. world’s largest nickel reserves The growth potential of this fast-paced industry is reinforced by the fact that Indonesian nickel company Harita Nickel (Trimegah Bagun Persada) is currently Indonesia’s biggest IPO in . 2023 Additionally, Indonesia’s PT HKML Battery Indonesia, Indonesia’s first EV battery plant built as a joint effort between an Indonesian and South Korean consortium, is slated to begin production in , with construction efforts already breaking ground in . 2024 April 2022 Furthermore, major EV manufacturers are already flocking to Indonesia in recognition of Indonesia’s critical importance in the EV supply chain. Indonesia announced Mitsubishi Motors’ plan to invest over $650M in Indonesia over a three-year period in , Tesla and BYD finalized EV investment deals in Indonesia in , and Ford followed suit through a announcement of a $4.5B investment in Indonesia. July 2022 January 2023 March 2023 Additionally, in , the Asian Development Bank granted Indonesia a $500M loan to expand private sector investments in clean and renewable energy, among other initiatives, following the announcement of Indonesia’s pursuit of a net-zero target by 2060, further supporting the push for Indonesia’s growth in the EV space. November 2022 July 2021 Additionally, the Indonesian government has also taken strategic steps to reduce the country’s heavy reliance on coal and other fossil fuels. Indonesia’s leadership at the G20 summit in 2022 resulted in the signing of the landmark , a $20B agreement to help Indonesia move away from fossil fuels. Just Energy Transition Partnership Additionally, in , a new governmental regulation was announced to retire some coal plants early, with the government helping to absorb any potential losses to reduce Indonesia’s reliance on fossil fuels, further contributing to Indonesia’s EV ambitions. September 2022 Conclusion All told, Indonesia holds significant promise to be a disruptor of China’s current dominance of the EV supply chain. While there are still many challenges that must be addressed for Indonesia to realize this potential, including the high costs of EVs in a country with , a possible shortage of raw materials like for EV battery production on the horizon, and reliance on Chinese firms for foreign capital and technical know-how like in the of the Indonesia Investment Authority’s establishment of a special fund with Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology, continued strong governmental support has resulted in an optimistic future for the growth of Indonesia’s presence in the world’s EV supply chain. relatively low car ownership lithium use-case Additionally, private economic investment has further accelerated Indonesia’s importance in the global EV production industry, reinforcing the notion that Indonesia could play a significant role in disrupting China’s current dominance of the EV supply chain ecosystem.

Indonesia’s Growing Potential as a Disruptive Force Against China’s EV Supply Chain Monopoly

THE SENSE OF SMELL

A memorable period in the history of Europe which we call the Renaissance

CAPTURE

The Eternal Savage by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . BOUND TO THE STAKE BOUND TO THE STAKE Nu, the son of Nu, half stunned by the paddle of Tur, still managed to keep afloat until he partially regained his senses. Then, seeing the futility of further attempt to overtake the boat in which Nat-ul was being borne toward the mainland, he struck out for the shore of the island. For a while he lay upon the hot sand, resting. Then he arose looking out across the water. Far in the distance he could see a tiny speck approaching the opposite shore. It must be the boat in which Nat-ul had been carried off. Nu marked the spot—in the distance a lofty mountain peak reared its head far inland. Nu bethought himself of the boat that had brought him to the island. He looked out to sea for it, but it was not in sight there. He walked along the beach. Beyond a heap of wave washed boulders he came upon the thing he sought. He could have shouted aloud, so elated was he. There before him lay the boat and in it was the paddle. He ran forward and pulled it up upon the beach, then he hurried back to the spot at which he had discarded his robe and ax, and after regaining them returned to the dug-out. A moment more saw him floundering out through the surf. He leaped into the craft, seized the paddle and struck out for the far-off shore line. With paddle and ax and stone knife he fought off the marauders of the sea. The journey was marked by a series of duels and battles that greatly impeded the man's progress. But he was not discouraged. He was accustomed to nothing else. It was his life, as it was the life of every creature that roamed the land or haunted the deeps in those stupendously savage days. It was quite dark when the heavy booming of the surf before him warned Nu that he was close in-shore. For some time he had seen the fires of the Boat Builders ahead of him and toward these he had directed his way. Now his boat ran its blunt nose out upon the sand a hundred yards north of the camp. Nu leaped out, leaving the boat where it lay. He doubted that he should ever have further use for it, but should he live to return to his people he would lose no time in building a similar craft with which he should fill his father's people with awe and admiration. About the camp of the Boat Builders, as Nu approached, he discovered the usual cordon of night prowlers that he had naturally expected. Circling until he was down wind from the shelters he was enabled to reach the jungle without being discovered by any of the more ferocious beasts. Once he had just eluded a ponderous cave-bear that was lumbering toward the encampment in search of prey, and again he almost stumbled against a huge rhinoceros as it lay in the long grasses upon the jungle's outer fringe. But once within the jungle he took to the trees, since among their branches there were few that he had reason to fear. The panther sometimes climbed to the lower branches, but, though he was a mighty beast by comparison with the panther of the twentieth century, Nu looked upon him with contempt, since he seldom deliberately hunted man and could be put to flight, if not killed, by a well hurled ax. Reptiles constituted the greatest menace to the jungle traveler who chose the branches of the trees, for here often lurked enormous snakes in whose giant coils the mightiest hunters were helpless as babes. To the rear of the village Nu traveled through the trees, leaping in the dark from one huge frond to another. When the distance was too great to span in a single leap he came to the ground, springing across the intervening space with the speed and agility of a deer. At last he came to the edge of the jungle opposite the camp. The fires came close beneath the tree in which he hid. He could see the girls tending them, and further in, the balance of the tribe squatting about their smaller cooking fires, gnawing upon bones, or splitting them to extract the marrow. He saw the rush of the lion upon the opposite side of the camp. He saw him seize the old man. He saw the warriors leap to their feet and run toward the beast. He saw the eyes and attention of every member of the tribe directed toward the spot which was farthest from Nu. Even the girls who were tending the fires below him ran quickly across the village to witness the killing of the marauder. Taking advantage of this fortuitous good fortune Nu dropped quickly to the ground and ran for the shadows of the shelters which were placed in a rude circle facing outward toward the outer circle of fires with the result that the circular space they enclosed was in partial shadow. Here Nu threw himself upon his belly in the darkest spot he could find. For some time he lay motionless, listening and sniffing the air. As nothing rewarded his observations at this point he rose cautiously upon all fours and crept a few feet further on in the shadows of the shelters. Again he lay down to listen and sniff. For half an hour he pursued his slow way about the inner circle behind the dwellings. The inhabitants had retired—all except the girls who tended the fires. At last Nu heard low voices coming from the interior of a shelter behind which he had but just crawled. He lay very quiet with his nose a few inches from the bottom of the skin and thatch hut. Presently there came to his sensitive nostrils the evidence he had been seeking—within was Nat-ul; but there was someone with her! Cautiously Nu crept around to the front of the shelter. Even there it was very dark, for the girls had permitted the fires to die down to a few fitful flames. Opposite the entrance Nu heard Nat-ul's voice distinctly. He saw the form of a man leaning over her. He went hot with hate and rage. Like a beast of prey he slunk noiselessly upon all fours into the shelter directly behind the unsuspecting Tur. Then without a sound he rose to his feet and threw himself full upon the back of the stranger. His knife was out and his fighting fangs were bared as the two rolled about the floor of the shelter striking, clawing and biting at one another. At last the man raised his voice in a call for help, for Nu was getting the better of him. The long knife had not found a vital spot as yet, for Tur was an experienced fighter and so far had been able to ward off the more dangerous blows; but nevertheless he was bleeding from several wounds and his throat and breast were lacerated by the other's teeth. In reply to his shouts the village awoke with answering cries. Warriors, bearing their short spears, ran from every shelter. Women and children scampered at their heels. Gron, Tur's mate, was among the first to come. She had recognized the voice of her man and had guessed where he might be in trouble. Like an angry tigress she sprang for the shelter in which the beautiful stranger had been confined. Behind her came the warriors. One carried a burning brand from a nearby fire. He flung it into the interior, careless of where it might land. Fortunately for the inmates it fell beyond them, rolling against the further side of the hut. Instantly the dry fronds of the thatch that had been leaned against the bottom of the skins to fill in the gaps caught fire and the inside of the shelter was illumined by the sudden glare of flames. When the rescuers saw that but a single man opposed their fellow they threw themselves upon the two, and though Nu battled bravely he was presently overcome. The entire hut was now aflame, so that his captors were forced to drag him outside. Here they bound his arms and legs, and then turned their attention to saving the balance of the village from destruction. This they accomplished by pulling down the blazing shelter with their spears and beating out the flames with fresh hides. Even in the excitement of the fight Nu had not for a moment forgotten Nat-ul, and when the brand lighted up the interior he had sought for her with his eyes, unsuccessfully—Nat-ul had disappeared. He wondered what could have become of her. From her position upon the floor of the hut he had been sure that she was securely bound—otherwise she would have been fighting tooth and nail against her captor. He looked about him from where he lay before the ruins of the burned shelter. He could see nothing of her; but he saw another woman—a young woman with good features but with the expression of a wild beast. Hate, jealousy and rage were mirrored in every line of the passion distorted countenance. It was Gron. She came toward him. "Who are you?" she cried. "I am Nu, the son of Nu," replied the man. "Are you of the same people as the woman in whose shelter you found my man?" she continued. Nu nodded affirmatively. "She was to have been my mate," he said. "Where is she?" For the first time the woman seemed to realize the absence of the fair prisoner. She turned toward Tur. "Where is the woman?" she shrieked. "Where have you hidden the woman? No longer shall you keep me from her. This time I shall tear out her heart and drink her blood." Tur looked about in consternation. "Where is the woman?" he called to the warriors; but none seemed to know. Immediately a search of the village commenced. The warriors ran hither and thither through the huts, and into the enclosure behind them. Nu lay awaiting the outcome of the search. As it became evident that Nat-ul had escaped his heart leaped with joy. At last there was no other place to look and all the searchers had returned—Nat-ul was not in the village. Gron turned toward Nu. "Your woman has escaped me," she shouted; "but you shall suffer for her," and she leaped upon him as he lay there bound and defenseless. In her mad rage she would have torn his eyes out had not a tall warrior interfered. He seized the woman by her hair, jerking her roughly from her victim. Then he swung her, still by the hair, brutally to the ground. "Take your woman away," he called to Tur. "Does a woman rule my people? Take her away and beat her, that she may learn that it is not a woman's place to interfere with the doings of men. Then take you another mate, that this woman may be taught her place." Tur seized upon the unfortunate Gron and dragged her toward his own shelter, from which, later, could be heard the sound of a spear haft falling upon flesh, and the shrieks and moans of a woman. Nu was disgusted. Among his people women were not treated thus. He looked up at the burly form of the chief who was standing over him. Well, why didn't they kill him? That was the proper thing to do with male prisoners. Among his own tribe a spear thrust through the heart would long since have settled the fate of one in Nu's position. He wondered where Nat-ul was. Could she find her way back to the tribe, safely? He wished that he might live but long enough to find her, and see her safe in her father's cave. The chief was gazing intently upon him; but he had as yet made no move to finish him. "Who are you?" he at length asked. "I am Nu, the son of Nu," replied the prisoner. "From where do you come?" Nu nodded toward the north. "From near the Barren Cliffs," he replied. "And should you go thither, beater of women, my father's tribe would fall upon you and kill you all." "You talk big," said the chief. "I talk truth," retorted Nu. "My father's people would laugh at such as you—at men clothed in the skins of cows. It shows what manner of people you be. Now, my father's warriors wear the skins of Ur, and Zor and Oo, and upon their feet are sandals of the hides of Ta and Gluh. They are men. They would laugh as they sent their women and children out with sticks to drive you away." This was a terrible insult. The chief of the Boat Builders trembled with rage. "You shall see," he cried, "that we are men. And the manner of your death will prove if you be such a brave man as you say. Tomorrow you shall die—after the day is done and the fires are lighted you shall begin to die; but it will be long before you are dead, and all the time you will be crying out against the woman who bore you, and begging us to put you out of your misery." Nu laughed at him. He had heard of distant peoples who tortured their prisoners, and so he guessed what the chief meant to suggest. Well, he would show them how the son of Nu could die. Presently at the chief's command a couple of warriors dragged Nu into a nearby shelter. A guard was placed before the door, for the escape of Nat-ul had warned them to greater watchfulness. The long night dragged itself to a slow end. The sun rose out of the Restless Sea. The villagers bestirred themselves. Nu could smell the cooking food. He was very hungry, but they offered him not a single morsel. He was thirsty but none brought him water, and he was too proud to ask favors of his captors. If the night had been long the day seemed an eternity, and though he knew that darkness was to be the signal for the commencement of the tortures that were to mark his passing he welcomed the first shadows of the declining sun. Whatever cruelties they might perpetrate upon him could not last forever. Sooner or later he would die, and with this slim comfort Nu, the son of Nu, waited for the end. The fishers had all returned. The outer ring of fires had been kindled, as well as the smaller cooking fires within. The people squatted about on their haunches gnawing upon their food like beasts. At last they had completed their evening meal. A couple of men brought a small post and after scooping a hole in the ground with their spears set it up half way between the shelters and the outer fires. Then two warriors came to the hut where Nu lay. They seized him by the feet and dragged him, upon his back and shoulders, through the village. The women and children poked him with sharp sticks, threw stones at him and spat upon him. Nu, the son of Nu, made no remonstrances. Not by so much as a line did the expression of utter indifference that sat his features like a mask alter in response to painful blows or foul indignities. At last his guard stopped before the post which was now set firmly upright in the ground. They jerked Nu to his feet, and bound him securely to the stake. In a circle about him was a ring of brush wood. He knew that he was to be slowly roasted, for the brush was nowhere quite close enough for the flames to reach him. It would be a slow death, very pleasant to the eyes of the audience—especially if the victim gave evidence of his agonies. But it was far from the intention of Nu, the son of Nu, to afford the Boat Builders this satisfaction. He looked around upon the ring of eager, savage faces with bored contempt. Nu despised them, not because they would kill him, for that he might expect from any strangers, but because they wore the skins of "cows" and the men labored instead of devoting all their time and energies to the chase and to warfare. Their boats were fine to have—Nu had even thought of fashioning one upon his return to his people; but to make a business of such labor—ugh! it was disgusting. Had he escaped he should have returned to the Boat Builders with his father's warriors and taken what boats he wished. His meditations were cut short by the ceremonies which were going on about him. There had been dancing, and a certain primitive chanting, and now one of the warriors lighted the brush that surrounded the victim at the stake. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Edgar Rice Burroughs (2023). The Eternal Savage. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/70002/pg70002-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

BOUND TO THE STAKE

Our company faced enormous challenges when the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine started. But instead of cutting costs, we decided to continue actively expanding. India became one of our top-priority markets, so after research and planning, we went for it. The team is still under a lot of stress: most employees stay in Ukraine and sometimes have to work from bomb shelters, and others are spread across the globe. But expansion is going well, and I’m ready to share some insights and lessons learned. Choosing the market: the paradise for Java developers We help people learn Java because we know this profession can be fulfilling and well-paid simultaneously. Over the last ten years, we've gained tremendous experience in working with international students (over 30,000 people from 40 countries have already become our graduates) and entered many markets (the USA, China, and European countries). So, we weren't new to this business. Nevertheless, India seemed like a big challenge. To name a few reasons, the huge cultural gap between Ukraine and India, and the circumstances in which our employees have to work. After the war started, some people fled the country, and some moved to other regions of Ukraine. It got harder to communicate daily and hold meetings. But we knew the potential of this market and were ready to put extra effort into this idea. What made India so attractive to us? This country's economy is growing fast, and the share of the young population is pretty high ( ). There are over 658 million Internet users in India, which explains the high demand for online education and the booming growth of IT companies. people between 15 and 29 years old constituted 27,2% in 2021 India's the world's leader in IT outsourcing, and the demand for programmers here continues to increase. For example, in 2021, India witnessed the launch of 14,000 new startups. With every year, we can expect this number to get bigger, so the competition for skilled employees will get tougher. One of the top hiring websites in India, , offers over 100,000 job openings for IT specialists. And the salaries are appealing: Java developers here can earn up to 2 million rupees per year (the average annual salary in India is 240,000 rupees, according to ). Naukri.com AmbitionBox.com It's only logical that young people want to acquire a profession of a Java developer. But unfortunately, universities can't meet this demand. They aren't flexible enough to change the curriculum as fast as the market requires, and it takes too much time (several years!) to get a degree. On the other hand, online courses can offer up-to-date programs, a lot of practice, and sometimes even help with a job search. That's why EdTech has been flourishing in India in the last few years. This market is expected to reach , with 37 million paid users. Seven among 36 in the world are Indian. Moreover, the biggest EdTech unicorn is also Indian – it’s ByJu’s with a market value of $22 billion. $10.4 billion by 2025 EdTech unicorns Some segments of the EdTech market in India are more competitive than others. For example, K-12 is quite filled compared to additional professional education. It's not a blue ocean for us, but also not a red ocean. In our segment, we see big and small companies, but the "market pie" isn't sliced yet, and the leaderboard isn't final. And what's more important, no Java learning platforms offer such a high-quality product as we do. With these considerations in mind, we decided to start our journey. Research and preparation: better thorough than sorry Having an idea is one thing, and transforming it into a business plan is the other. That’s why we decided to enter the Indian market only after detailed research. How did we conduct it? First, we examined every study we could find on the Indian EdTech market, its potential, and our soon-to-be competitors. We analyzed the information, shared our conclusions with team members, and discussed our findings. Second, we had multiple meetings with market experts. We reached out to some representatives of Indian EdTech companies and asked them questions to get a better perspective on the local market. Third, we couldn’t proceed without talking to potential customers. So, we interviewed Indian clients of our main product – a self-paced online Java course. Also, we surveyed them. We already had several hundred users, and it was beneficial to ask for their feedback. Moreover, we talked to Indian employers and browsed local job search websites. We wanted to understand if the requirements for Java developers differ in India compared to other countries. Our team made everything possible – and impossible – to gather as much information as we needed. And we did it under air raid sirens which are pretty common in Ukraine, and from bomb shelters. Our employees adjusted even to these circumstances. Some of them had to catch the Internet connection to work. But their motivation remained strong despite the high level of stress and discomfort. Eventually, this stage gave us tons of valuable insights. For example, we discovered that the main thing our potential Indian students desired was employment. It’s not enough for them to gain Java knowledge or improve their coding skills. They want to get a job offer after they complete the course. And it’s the main reason Indian customers aren’t satisfied with existing courses. Most of them last just a few months, and finding a job is impossible after such a brief study. Also, we came to another conclusion: we really can deliver what the target audience needs. As our surveys say, 95% of our graduates find their first job within three months after completing the course. We were sure that in 12 months, we could train Java developers who were able to get job offers immediately. The first hypothesis, first results… Our research helped us create the first hypothesis, i.e., if we offer potential students a job guarantee, they will gladly choose us and be willing to pay for the first month or the entire course at once. To test it, we did several steps: Talked to employers to identify their needs and reach preliminary agreements to hire our graduates. Surprisingly, some companies wanted to start hiring our graduates immediately! It proved our point that the demand for Java developers in India is huge, and our reputation is substantial and works for us. Tailored the existing product (self-paced course) for the Indian market. CodeGym Java University is a 12-month course with mentors and a job offer guarantee at the end. It combines all the benefits of our online course (gamification, lots of practice, automatic verification of tasks completed, etc.) with a guided approach (live lectures and mentors’ help). Created a landing page for CodeGym Java University and started holding free online events about IT in general, Java, and our offer. We invited local speakers to gain more trust from the audience. Over 1,500 people visited our online events, and about 100 filled out applications for our course. As a result, we had our first group of students in a month. They are studying now, and so far, they are satisfied with what they get. So, our first hypothesis worked, and we moved to the next challenge – growing and scaling. … and first complications Not everything was going as smoothly as we had hoped. The first problem became evident when the sales started. We had a sales team, but it wasn't local. Our employees live in different countries and mostly use Western approaches to communicate with potential clients. For example, go straight to business, discuss the offer, and close the deal quickly. In India, on the other hand, people prefer an entirely different approach. To close the deal here, you must establish personal communication first and talk about family, relatives, life, etc. Only then can you start discussing your offer. Also, we discovered that the trust issue was crucial. If a potential client hears an unfamiliar accent, they immediately understand that there's a foreigner on the other end and start asking questions. The USA or European experience isn't relevant here. Therefore, potential customers may doubt your expertise. And, of course, we didn't know much about the cultural differences between Indian states. For instance, there are many local holidays, different for different states. And selling something on these dates is pointless. All these things created barriers to communication. As soon as we understood that, we decided to hire a local team. Now, we already have four sales managers in India, several career consultants, and Java mentors. They help us understand the cultural features, comprehend the needs of our target audience, and process applications more efficiently. Our mentors are professional Java developers who work for companies like SalesForce, Walmart Tech, and Microsoft. We also trained them to use our teaching methods, and now they combine understanding the local culture with CodeGym's DNA. Typically, we realize the need for a particular employee first and then start looking for them. But sometimes, we find an interesting person for a position we don't have yet. If this person can make us stronger, and we can afford them, we go for it. For example, that's how Shubham Dumbre joined our team. He's an IT entrepreneur, an author, and a speaker with immense expertise in EdTech companies. He helps us to hold our open events and communicate with potential students. Another complication was out of our control. Russians started bombing the civil infrastructure with missiles and drones, and electricity became a luxury. Blackouts can last for several hours, even days (and we can’t complain because, in some regions, people live without electricity for months). Again, we had to adjust. We’ve bought equipment (power generators, power banks, WiFi routers that can work without electricity, etc.) and learned to keep all the devices charged. And we continue working. Getting closer to success, iteration by iteration As I've said before, scaling is our next big challenge. To keep the process going and fix all the problems as soon as they appear, we conduct special meetings. Every week (usually on Friday), we get together with the "Indian" team and discuss the previous week's results. We've divided the entire project into funnel stages to discuss each part's success separately. For example: Awareness and advertising. What experiments did we conduct last week? What else did we do? What results did we get? Our free webinars. How did the chatbots, emails, and SMS messages work? What was the attendance of the webinar? What questions did people ask there? What do the statistics about each webinar say? During these meetings, we analyze how the audience's interest changes and what data show. The sales process. What insights did we get from our leads and sales managers? What are the sales metrics? Who among the sales managers was the most efficient? The learning process. How are students of current groups learning? What's their performance? How many tasks per week did they solve on our platform? What feedback did students give to mentors? And what feedback did mentors give to students? In wartime, not every employee can attend a meeting, and it's not their fault. To keep everyone on the same page, we take notes and share them with people who couldn't participate in a discussion. Our internal communications have become somewhat asynchronous, but it doesn't affect our results. The last months were challenging for us, but also, they taught us many valuable lessons. For example, we should always be prepared for anything, both on personal and company levels. We are much stronger than we thought. People really are our main asset (that's why we've kept the whole team and are proud of this decision). Sure, there will inevitably be other challenges as we continue to pursue our "Indian dream.” But we stay together and stay true to our mission – teach people Java and give them an in-demand profession. In this uncertain world, all we can count on is ourselves. By Alex Yelenevych, Co-Founder & Chief Marketing Officer at , a platform for learning Java CodeGym.cc Also Published Here

How a Ukrainian Startup  CodeGym Managed to Enter a New Market During the War

The Spirit of the New World

ON FEAR AND ARISTOCRACY

Product development is (almost always) a team sport. To build a successful product, multiple stakeholders must work together during the development cycle to get things done. This includes engineers (obviously), product and project managers, designers, QA, and even the folks in marketing and sales. But getting “developers” and “non-developers” (non-engineering stakeholders) to work well together isn’t trivial. Because not only does each role fill a different technical function, but they are also fundamentally different in terms of how they work, the tools they use, and the way they communicate with others on the team. And when asking people with different roles, personas, and styles to collaborate on a complex task - there's bound to be some tension. This workflow tension between stakeholders is widespread and well-known across the industry. Just look at the number of memes and jokes that are out there poking fun at how developers and non-developers interact. But what's interesting is that sometimes, the most commonly recognized issues are the least defined and most misunderstood. Sure, everyone knows that cross-functional collaboration issues exist, but most of us don’t give it much thought. We just roll with it, mutter some stuff under our breath and continue on to the next all-hands meeting. It seems a lot easier to accept it and suffer than to analyze, understand, and correct it. So I decided to go against the grain and take a closer look at this. For the past year, I (together with my team) have studied how developers and non-developers collaborate and communicate throughout the product development workflow. I looked at what works and what doesn’t work, and what exactly each persona is thinking about the other at every step of the way. If you're wondering why anyone would spend so much time on this, it's a fair question. The truth is, I've experienced this tension first hand having worked in product and marketing roles for several companies, But my main motivation was joining Livecycle. Because by doing so, I was tasked with helping to build a product designed to solve this very issue. Since the primary aim of our product is to speed up feedback loops and reduce workflow tensions, I felt like I needed to deeply understand what those tension points were all about in the first place. And what better way to do that than to speak to hundreds of people who are affected by this every day? So I got to work and ended up hearing from representatives of 200 software development teams from around the world (how I got them to talk to me is another story entirely). I asked them about their routines and workflows. I inquired about their interactions and their frustrations. I gathered responses from people filling all of the key engineering and non-engineering roles working in companies ranging from pre-seed startups to publicly traded corporations. Some of the data reinforced what was perhaps to be expected, but much of it was revealing. And the whole process was really fascinating. I've put together a summary of some key data points and takeaways, with the hope that my efforts can be valuable to some of the other teams out there. Developers and non-developers communicate differently The first thing that jumped out at me is the extent to which developers and non-developers (and operate) on different wavelengths. Each persona on the team has their own unique cadence and style of communication. communicate Some of the key numbers: Developers get interrupted way too often admitted to being “annoyed on a regular basis” because non-developers interrupt them with random questions. 41% of developers Developers don’t understand the feedback they get said they often don’t understand review feedback from non-developers, and they need to invest more time to review it with them in order to proceed. 53% of developers Developers are asked to use too many tools said that they are forced to use too many tools for the sole purpose of communicating with the other stakeholders on the team during the development workflow. 54% of developers Developers are more frustrated about this than the rest of the team realizes The fact that developers are frustrated about these kinds of things is notable, but not entirely surprising. What was really interesting though, was discovering the extent to which the rest of the team has no clue that their engineering colleagues feel this way. When we asked non-developers how their developer colleagues felt about these issues, a significantly lower percentage of non-developers answered affirmatively compared to the direct responses from the developers themselves. Here’s a side-by-side comparison: “Developers are annoyed by frequent interruptions by non-developer colleagues” agreed with this statement 41% of developers But only felt this was true 15% of non-developers “Developers often don’t understand product review feedback from non-developer colleagues” agreed with this statement 53% of developers But only felt this was true 29% of non-developers “Developers are forced to use multiple tools to retrieve feedback and context from non-developer colleagues” agreed with this statement 54% of developers But only felt this was true 23% of non-developers This shows that on average, “non-developers” don’t realize how frustrated their engineering colleagues are about these workflow and communication pain points. Context switching negatively impacts developer productivity As a general rule, developers like to stay focused and . A typical collaborative workflow involving multiple stakeholders makes this challenging. they hate context-switching Two types of context switching Through our discussions with developers, it became clear that this aversion to switching contexts manifests itself in at least two ways: and . switching tasks switching environments Switching tasks is when developers are asked to stop (current) task 1 and focus instead on (new) task 2. Developers can’t stand this. Switching environments, however, is more subtle and is possible even within the context of the same task. This is when developers are forced to leave the context of a preferred tool (say, GitHub for example) and move to a more foreign tool or platform to complete the task at hand (this might include reading an email or reviewing a Jira ticket). The impact of context switching The bottom line is that any type of context-switching negatively affects a developer’s ability to be productive. In our research, admitted that “interruptions and context switches regularly and negatively impact my productivity” in a significant way. 44% of developers This is even more significant when combined with our previous findings about developer interruptions. Remember that above, we highlighted that non-developers are 50% less likely to realize that developers are annoyed by their questions and interruptions. That means that and causing context switches during the development workflow. non-developers are twice as likely to keep asking these “innocent” questions Poor collaboration has a direct impact on developer experience As an industry, we’ve coined a new phrase in “developer experience”. If “user experience” is the level of comfort, accessibility, and joy that an end user feels when using a product for its intended purpose, “developer experience” is the level of comfort, accessibility, and joy that an engineer feels when actually writing code and developing software. Technical employees are expecting work environments and tools that will enable them to do their best work. Companies are realizing this and taking deliberate steps to make the actual workflow more enjoyable. Some companies have gone as far as introducing a new Developer Experience function on the team whose sole responsibility is literally to enhance the work experience of the development team. And so, as part of our research, it was important for us to try and assess the impact of poor collaboration and communication on a team's overall developer experience. To do this, we asked developers and non-developers if they agree with the following statement: “Poor communication and collaboration with other stakeholders make my time at work less enjoyable in a direct and significant way.” agreed with this statement 52% of developers By contrast, only agreed 26% of non-developers This discrepancy is in line with our findings above, that non-developers are ~50% less aware of the workflow frustrations of their developer colleagues. And it is significant that more than half of the developers we surveyed felt that their developer experience was negatively impacted by the team's communication and collaboration issues. Developers see the cause & effect of poor collaboration more than non-developers It’s difficult to measure the impact of poor workflow collaboration and communication in real business terms, so instead, we tried to at least understand how the impact is by the people involved. We asked the product development teams to indicate the extent to which poor workflow collaboration and communication directly affected their product quality, delivery schedule, and tensions with outside parties. perceived Here’s what we learned: Poor workflow communication leads to lower-quality products said that these issues have directly and negatively impacted the quality of their product Interestingly, felt this way when asked the same question 45% of developers only 18% of non-developers Poor workflow communication leads to delayed deliveries said that these issues have directly caused delays in product delivery. 47% of developers felt this way when asked the same question 32% of non-developers Poor workflow communication leads to tension with customers and management said that these issues have directly created tension between the team and company management, or between the company and the customer 46% of developers felt this way when asked the same question 38% of non-developers Cross-functional collaboration affects how people accept & leave jobs The impacts of poor workflow collaboration and communication aren’t limited to product quality and delivery delays. Our research found that these issues are having a real effect on the HR department as well. Nearly and indicated that the ability (or inability) to collaborate effectively with other stakeholders during the product development workflow is a key consideration when deciding whether to take or leave a specific job. 60% of developers 65% of non-developers In a time when to find, hire and retain quality talent, these are startling numbers. It’s clear that the productive interaction between developers and non-developers as they build products together is a lot more serious than just another funny joke or clever meme. tech companies are scrambling Which workflow tasks need the most improvement? The data points presented thus far give us broad indications about the state of cross-functional collaboration during the “development workflow”, but they don’t help us understand specifically what actions need to be improved. Every workflow contains a series of specific activities that have the potential to be trouble spots for the multidisciplinary team tasked with executing them. So we took a deeper dive on this point to better understand exactly which workflow tasks could use the most improvement with regards to cross-functional communication and collaboration. Here’s the data we came back with: = 57% of respondents said their team needed to improve this. UI Design Reviews = 37% Bug Reporting = 35% Acceptance Testing = 28% Copy Reviews = 26% Setting up staging environments = 20% Code Reviews = 4% Documentation = 2% Analytics = 2% "Our workflow is perfect!" Developers are slightly less optimistic than non-developers Finally, after hearing so much about the problems and frustrations, we were curious to know if these development teams held any hope for change and progress. To do this, we asked our respondents if they agreed with the following statement: “Developers and non-developers will never fully collaborate or communicate. It’s like cats & dogs or oil & water. They just don’t go well together.” agreed with this statement. As opposed to only . 45% of developers 3% of the non-developers Go figure. In conclusion It’s clear that developers are frustrated with the state of communication and collaboration during their pre-release development workflows. Non-developers are relatively oblivious to their feelings on the matter and they don’t correlate the effects of poor communication and collaboration the way that developers do. Everyone agrees that these issues are fundamentally important and that they have the potential to affect many areas of a team’s day-to-day operations. And while many developers believe that there is nothing that can be done to improve this, the vast majority of non-developers remain optimistic. Putting aside the developers' gloomy outlook, we have to ask ourselves - what can a team to do about this? If development workflow communication and collaboration are so critically important to the success of any product or company, what can we do to make improvements? Just being aware of these friction points, understanding their prevalence, and appreciating their impact are important first steps. It’s that awareness together with the adoption of developer tools that is proving to be a combination powerful enough to dramatically improve - if not completely reverse - these negative trends. So all things considered, we’re pretty optimistic about where things are headed. Despite what half the developers out there might tell you :-) Also Published Here

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