SupportPay is the 1st automated child support payment platform that enables parents to share child expenses \u0026 exchange child support/alimony directly with each other

SupportPay

Right now, the start-up community is facing upheaval. Although shelter-in-place rules tend to affect some companies more than others and hopefully will be limited to the short-term, all of us will be in uncharted territory for the rest of the year, as we navigate chaotic capital markets and a possible recession. That is why every startup CEO is building a contingency plan right now, creatively considering how to extend runway as we wait to see how the next few weeks and months will unfold. For many, this will mean short-term layoffs. This post explains why you should embrace layoffs as a difficult but necessary step, how you should implement a layoff, and what you can do to rebuild morale down the road. Yes, Layoffs Hurt and No, Don’t Delay The first time I had to plan a layoff was for my first job out of business school at a speech recognition company. We were building a voice assistant product like Siri or Alexa, but in hindsight, we were too early. Our product was cool but not truly useful. When the product failed to sell, we were in trouble. We only had cash for another few months. Every night I would wake up at 3am, agonizing that the people who had trusted me enough to come join the company might lose their jobs. I tried everything and called anyone, looking for revenue. We dreamed up a major pivot, but it was too late. Finally the day came, and we laid off the team. To my surprise, many took it stoically, perhaps sadly or sympathetically, but very few were crying or mad. All had chosen to work at a startup. They understood that technology was risky and they had seen the writing on the wall from our poor sales numbers. Also to my surprise, after they left, many of the affected people flourished! A few programmers had a new job the same week, and even the last person had a new job within two months. The layoff also impacted me, and for me, being laid off let me start E Ink, a far more valuable company. I have since reflected that it was because of a layoff that the careers of these people advanced faster. If our speech company had somehow raised more capital to continue its old strategy, they still would have beavered away at a mediocre concept only that much longer. Ignore the Past and Don’t Waste Time on Blame It is easy to find yourself avoiding layoffs out of shame or guilt. Nobody likes to admit failure. You might fear that a layoff marks you as a poor CEO, when in fact a prompt layoff may be just the opposite: a sign of professional competence. The company’s current crisis may be caused by your past business decisions, or they may be caused by today’s unprecedented global health emergency. It really does not matter how you got here. You cannot waste time worrying about the past, because now your job is to make the best decisions for the future, and time is of the essence. As soon as the crisis becomes clear and you realize you do not have enough cash left to assure the next financing under your current plan, you must act swiftly to make a strategic change and revise the plan. The sooner you act, the more cash you have left. More cash means you have more options remaining. Accepting difficult truths and adapting to reality is a core skill for every CEO. Don’t delay the inevitable––be a decisive leader. Layoffs are the Last Step of a Strategic Change A layoff should be the logical result of adopting a new strategy (at a lower burn rate), and it’s important that you clearly communicate this change of plan to your team. Make sure they understand why it is achievable and will lead to success. How can you and your team change strategy and still win at a lower burn rate? First, keep the customer’s voice in your head. Narrow your goals to deliver a smaller product that still delivers high value, or find a way to grow slower with less cash burned and a lower cost of customer acquisition. Model how that would change the company’s budget. Then share your plan with your Board and your team, trusted advisors, perhaps a few key customers, and slowly expand the circle, gather feedback from many perspectives to make sure that the new plan is solid. At a bigger company, we sometimes see a CEO arbitrarily decree all departments need to cut the same percentage of heads. That CEO is not being thoughtful about the best changes needed to propel the business forward, and is clearly unsure what it takes to win. A CEO who has actually improved the strategy and reordered priorities will instead eliminate the majority of one group, perhaps even adding heads to another department, thus giving the new plan its best chance of success. Don’t take half measures. Every CEO I know who has been through a layoff offers this advice: “Cut deeper than you think you need.” As bad as one layoff may be, the second layoff is absolutely crushing to morale. You don’t want a second layoff. The best tactic is to cut so deep in the first round that you will have room to hire a few new people 3-4 months down the road. That gives you future freedom to adjust your organizational mix, and it will be a big boost to morale when the company starts hiring again. Preparing for Layoffs Two Weeks Before - Identifying Names and Preparing Documents With a specific recommendation to change the business plan, make sure you have Board approval on your layoff. Then bring an HR professional into the loop. If you are leading a bigger team, this person might already be on your team; if you are leading a smaller startup, look to an outside HR consultant for support. Work with each VP or group head to develop a list of people who will be included in the layoff. Prepare a formal severance letter for each. Prepare a last check for the final pay period and any vacation day balance ahead of time, so you can hand it to each person as they receive the news. How much severance? That’s a bit tricky. You want to treat people well, but must balance this with the need to save cash for the survival of the company. This is a company decision, but a typical severance policy I have used and have seen others use is a lump sum severance check for 2 weeks of pay, plus 1 week of additional pay for every year of service. If you can afford it, you can also offer a day of career counseling, or some period of outplacement support (many HR firms offer this service fairly inexpensively). While the employee may no longer be a fit for your company, there is certainly another role at another company in which they would thrive; if you are comfortable, offer to serve as a professional reference to help them find a soft landing. Determine which support you will offer to provide in advance, so you can spell this out clearly when you have the conversation. One Week Before  - Organizing for Conversations Prepare ahead for these difficult conversations. Work with your HR leader or employment attorney to understand the right language and approach for the discussion, and to make sure you understand language that could put you in a compromising situation legally. First and foremost, this is an honest conversation with a valued member of your team. Express that you are grateful for their work and that you know that this will be a challenging transition. Deliver the information in a respectful and empathetic way, so that your team member has their dignity intact at the end of the conversation. It is important to practice delivering the message, to ensure that you only include all the relevant information and exclude everything else that could be confusing or create a legal exposure. Focus on delivering the key facts during the conversation, and have the rest of the information available in writing for the team member to review later. Be concise –– this will be a challenging time for the person on the other end of the conversation to process what you are saying. If your company has more than 100 employees and the layoff is more than a third of your workforce, or in other circumstances depending on the state, you may be required to give 8 weeks prior notice to all affected workers. Check this well in advance so you can comply if necessary. If a substantial number of people are affected and you expect a big ripple of surprise to disrupt the company, then get ahead of this and face it squarely. Better that the employees hear from you and hear your message directly. So, announce an all-hands company-wide meeting the following Thursday morning at 9 am. If there is a bit of speculation about the purpose, that’s OK – that will make the announcement feel a bit less shocking. The Day Before (Wednesday night) - Keeping Key Players in the Loop The night before the meeting, each VP or team lead speaks with their Directors to explain what is happening and bring them into the loop. If there are 1 or 2 other key people – critical tech talent or peer leaders who are vital to the company – those people should also get the courtesy of a personal, confidential heads up. Then each VP should contact and set up a 15-minute 1:1 appointment in the morning with the affected people who will be laid off, without explaining the purpose of the meeting. If one department is being hit hard, then you as CEO can also step in and manage some of these conversations to share the work. The Day Of (Thursday) - Announcing the Big Change Time for the big announcement. Although we sometimes see CEOs address only the people who are staying, if you have a strong company culture then it is better to bring everyone together in the same room one last time, because it shows more respect to the affected individuals. Keep in mind that the people who are leaving also will need to explain what is happening at your company when they interview for new jobs and they will need to make sense of their own role in the company’s history and trajectory. So if you communicate the company’s new direction, they will benefit. You can also give them the round of applause they likely deserve. At the all-hands meeting, explain the new plan. Explain why this requires a layoff and state everyone who will be affected has already been asked to meet their department head. Be open about what severance and other benefits will be provided. Do take a few questions. Make sure to thank the affected people for their contribution. The VPs then go into their appointments, each accompanied by an HR professional or other experienced manager so that every conversation has a witness. They walk through the conversation and key information with each employee, sharing relevant papers. Employees are then asked to hand off their papers to coworkers, clear out and return their laptops, and return their keys and parking passes. Ideally everyone who is leaving is out of the building by lunch. Some VPs may wish to organize a goodbye department lunch, but keep in mind that may carry risk, especially if emotions are running high. Don’t take these types of decisions lightly, and evaluate them on a case by case basis. Because the layoff is an emotional time, you may want to let any employee who wishes to go home, go home. It is doubtful anyone will be too productive that afternoon. The Day After (Friday) - Small Group Discussion The next day, the VPs should hold department meetings to break down how the change in plans affects the department and to walk through the work ahead. Everyone then has the weekend to digest. The Next Week (Monday) - Rallying the Team Bright and early the next Monday, you should hold another all-hands meeting to walk through the company-wide strategic change. Take a few minutes to speak from the heart. The best story you can tell at this moment is your personal inspiration for “Why I Started This Company…” (or “Why I Took This CEO Job”) so you can remind everyone of the dream and reignite the vision. Then take a good long town-hall style Q&A so you let all the concerns come out into the open where you can deal with them. If necessary, promise a follow-up date to resolve open thorny issues. What next? Many CEOs ask, how can I rebuild morale after a layoff? The best cure for low morale is winning! If you do this right, then the company will be on a healthier track and the milestones you have set as short-term objectives will all be achievable. As the new, smaller company starts to successfully hit its goals, confidence will rise. We are operating in uncertain times right now, so keep in this mind as you calibrate achievable goals. Give yourself and your newly redirected team some extra weeks to figure out how to operate in this new normal. This is a time to over-communicate. Repeat the plan frequently like a megaphone to ensure that everyone is aligned and everyone understands the new vision. As the company gets smaller, you may actually pick up speed. If you’ve approached layoffs the right way, you have retained the best people and deployed them in a more effective way. With smaller meetings and fewer people who need help and oversight, your performers can do more work. Junior people who are asked to do more may actually skill up faster in this environment and enjoy their jobs more than before. You can more quickly teach this talent how to be seasoned professionals. Have faith that cutting more heads will not leave the company as anemic as you may fear. Another confidence builder for the team will occur when they see you hiring fresh employees again. Newly arrived people are sold into the new strategy and carry no baggage from past mistakes. They should be people who come in with new skills that were absent before and are better aligned to the forward needs of the business. And when you only have a few open headcounts, your team can afford to interview more widely and to be more selective. So the average quality goes up. The chance to hire exceptional new people and to rebuild morale is yet another reason why you want to cut extra deep. Keep in Mind Hundreds of CEOs may be grappling with the same tough scenario right now. Now more than ever, your employees need you to be a leader, whether or not they will be on your payroll tomorrow. Be decisive and act swiftly, so that everyone can find the best home for their talents going forward.

You Owe Your Team Prompt Layoffs and a New Plan

The approach of the new year is always a great time to revisit all the awesome things your SMB has achieved and pat yourself in the back about how great things are running. However, if you take too much time to congratulate yourself on a job well done, odds are good that you’ll fall behind on preparing for 2020. Do that, and you’ll have to watch your peers at rival SMBs laughing at you all the way to the bank. Setting yourself apart in a crowded market as an SMB is a game of inches, not miles. Especially when you’re using the same tech and apps as your competitors, the way to set yourself apart is not by having the shiniest setup but knowing how to use the right tools and policies to optimize your work. Even when it seems like you’re getting the most out of your teams, you can still hack your team’s productivity with these six excellent tools. 1. Reason Antivirus for Cybersecurity Efficiency There are few things in the tech world that will leave your company with a bigger black eye than having to admit to the world that your network has been breached, or even worse, that you’ve “misplaced” your users’ data. Considering are now aimed at SMBs, it would make sense to put a little more thought into your security plan than “hope for the best.” almost half of all cyber-attacks Fortunately, can help address most of your concerns and do so without requiring you to raise a new round of funding. The suite includes a painless installation – which saves you money on expensive consulting and setup fees – and can be managed directly by you or another team member, without needing a full IT staff. Reason Antivirus’s business solution Image source: https://www.reasonsecurity.com/ Reason’s tools allow you to implement automated and real-time protection, which can even secure your peripheral devices like microphones and webcams, helping your team maintain online privacy. Most importantly, with an easy to use interface and automated tools, you can gain enterprise-level security without having to invest too much time managing it. 2. Google My Business for Reputation Management and Local SEO Most SMBs today have mission statements that aim at becoming the most popular brands in the universe, but really, you should start with a slightly smaller scope to get more out of your marketing, branding and SEO efforts. You can waste hundreds and thousands of dollars adding followers everywhere from Bangladesh to Managua, but if you don’t follow up with a strong, positive online presence in your closest markets, you’re likely just throwing money away. Image source: https://www.vendasta.com/blog/top-10-customer-review-websites puts your SMB on the map – quite literally – and helps you gain exposure on Google search when people seek out merchants and service providers in your area. For one, having a completed and verified profile on GMB significantly boosts your SEO efforts and helps improve your web visibility. Google My Business that nearly twice as many people read business reviews on GMB as Facebook and Amazon, making it your highest-value platform as a reputation management hub. One study recently found Additionally, you can set up a booking service directly through GMB, which has been shown to significantly increase transactions for your business, helping you create a more engaging top-of-funnel presence to draw in consumers. With 95 million people participating in GMB’s local guides program, and over three billion connections between users and sellers monthly (per Google), you’d be silly not to take advantage of a quick and powerful tool to improve your local – and most immediate – branding. 3. ContractZen for Contract and Meeting Management Acquiring new customers is obviously a key aspect of any company’s success, but as you scale up, things tend to become harder. Going from three clients to 50 means that the three-ring binder you’ve been using to store all their paperwork should probably go the way of the dodo. Not having a digital contract and document management tool today is downright negligent, and it can significantly slow your company down, allowing important deadlines to lapse and even potentially squandering opportunities to close deals. is designed to be your digital contract babysitter, with a full set of features that make managing your documents, meetings and important agreements a breeze. As you start to deal with a higher volume of customers, vendors, partners and other stakeholders, you’ll need to be more meticulous about contracts signed, important upcoming dates (extensions, expirations, payments), and even keep a clearer score of meetings and what’s been discussed. ContractZen Image source: https://www.contractzen.com/en/ The ContractZen suite offers contract management tools that use a smart meta-tagging system to store and sort your important agreements and documentation, use electronic signatures, plan meetings and even send confidential meeting materials, and more. The app’s virtual data rooms let you securely share quickly curated collections of files without endangering your entire network. For a small business, easy management of your important documentation is key to not falling behind. 4. SendFox for Email-Based Content Promotion In an ecosystem where texting, WhatsApping, Facebook Messaging, Telegramming, and virtually countless additional communication and social media channels reign supreme, it would be easy to think that poor old email has been left by the wayside of time. You’d be justified in your belief, but you would also be surprisingly and astonishingly wrong. Some still use email to distribute their content, and even the vaunted millennial generation, with their general disdain for “old-school” tech, still prefer to receive communications from businesses via email. 93% of B2B marketers Image source: https://appsumo.com/sendfox/ All of this is to say, you should definitely look into improving your email marketing, even if you don’t think you have the resources to do so. Using , the new email tool from Noah “OKDork” Kagan’s Sumo Group, can significantly reduce the amount of time you have to spend delivering your content to consumers by automating much of the process. SendFox You can quickly create unlimited customized email forms to send, as well as build the ancillary tools – landing pages, web forms, segmented lists, triggered drips – that get you the most value from every audience member. You also reduce the time it takes for your content to reach a critical mass of users by shifting from passive to active view acquisitions. Additionally, schedule posts while integrating other tracking and content apps to get the most out of your web content and reach more consumers than you could have imagined. 5. accessiBe for Automated Web Accessibility Compliance It’s taken far too long for the conversation around web design to focus on how to make them more accessible to everyone. This is a wonderful concept, but in practice it creates some hurdles for small businesses which likely need to overhaul their content to comply with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) regulations and avoid potential lawsuits over websites that are deemed unusable by people with disabilities. This is doubly challenging because your content is hardly static – ideally, you’re always adding, modifying, tweaking, and replacing content and assets, which could impact accessibility settings. Even worse, it’s expensive (to the point of being prohibitive) to have someone constantly monitoring accessibility, especially if you’re relying on a small team that wears all the hats in the business. Image source: https://www.avon.com/#showacsb/ , then, is your website’s new accessibility best friend. The application uses AI to scan your site, page by page, to uncover areas that are non-compliant with regulations such as ADA, WCAG 21 and Section 508, ensuring that you’re able to meet any regulatory test within 48 hours of installation. Even better, since your website is always changing, accessiBe is always working, re-processing your compliance checks every 24 hours with an impressive 96% automatic success rate. Disabled users visiting your site can open the accessibility interface at the click of a button, which has everything needed to access and experience your site. accessiBe 6. Papaya Global for Easy Overseas Payroll Management One of the things you can easily forget about scaling your business is that more work usually requires more people to accomplish. In the endless quest to grow, it can be easy to agree to more than you can handle and find yourself struggling to either keep up with the work with the staff you have or find new employees to handle the work without impacting your bottom line. This dynamic has made outsourcing a popular alternative, and it can be a major game-changer – that is, provided you hire someone reliable who can deliver the quality you need at the proper price point. For SMBs, this last part is where it gets tricky, and it’s exactly where shines. The platform offers global payroll solutions for companies that have multiple locations, but you can also use it as a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), reducing the number of bureaucratic steps you need to take. This means that you don’t have to set up any local entities to handle payroll – both expensive and time-consuming – and have monthly payments handled automatically, as well as all the paperwork associated with it. Papaya Global Image source: https://support.papayaglobal.com/en/article/dashboard-tab-in-country-partners In addition to being your proxy “employer of record” (EoR), Papaya also offers onboarding services that quickly help your new staff integrate, and can even provide HR solutions and immigration solutions (obtaining work permits, residence permits, and more) to help you establish an international foothold even on an SMB budget. Get to Hacking Finding new advantages for your SMB goes far beyond hoping no one else will notice what you’re doing and wishing for a lucky break. You can actively take steps to help improve your team’s productivity, reduce obstacles in their way, and generally be the best version of your team they can be. Disclosure: The author does not have any vested interest in the projects mentioned.

6 Tools to Help SMBs Hack Productivity in 2020

So, let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests. My name is Daria Leshchenko; I am the CEO and Managing Partner at SupportYourApp — a Support-as-a-Service company that provides technical and customer support to global startups and businesses. I am also a co-founder of our two spinoff companies — Label Your Data — which deals with data labeling for AI and ML, and Outstaff Your Team, which takes care of the outstaffing services for global tech businesses. In whatever time I can spare, I love doing sports (squash, for example, is my latest activity of choice), studying (management, coaching, latest technologies — whatever it is, I’m in), and traveling. For example, I have just returned from Lisbon, where I attended this year’s Web Summit. Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about? The latest one that made it to the HackerNoon TOP list was “Founders, Do You Have a Plan for the End of the World?”. My team and I kept on working and developing through COVID-19, lockdowns, and every other crisis global businesses faced over the last decade. In the article, I wanted to share my thoughts and experiences on withstanding even the biggest shakes and turmoils. I think it is especially important now when the world around us is so unstable and uncertain. Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about? I usually write about the challenges that I have as a founder, mistakes I have made earlier in my career, advice I would love to share with others, and so on. Something that is near and dear to my heart. I believe this is the best approach for any writer. Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?) As soon as I narrow the topic down, I just start writing and perfecting the text to make sure it is as engaging as it can be. I also make it as short as I can because I like to be on point and precise. Why waste time writing 10 words, when a thought can be expressed in 5? This is my golden rule of writing. Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing? I would say time is my biggest constraint. Writing helps me structure my thoughts and experiences. Almost relive it. And I hope every piece I write helps someone make the correct decision or find the right solutions. As every top-tier and C-suite manager knows, our schedules can get quite hectic, so time is a crucial factor in our ability to share our knowledge with our peers and teams. What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career? The next step for SupportYourApp and me (because, in my mind, we are inseparable) is implementing more AI solutions into our support services. We also keep on adding more value to our core services and offering complex solutions. The progress we are seeing now is not going to slow down, so it is important for businesses and leaders to not follow it, but actually get ahead of it. I would love to concentrate my attention on creating an ecosystem that will unite people and technology. That is something we have already been doing, but as time and progress go by, I think we need to dive deeper and deeper into the process. The business world sees a slowdown, so I would like to keep the pace up even despite the economic crisis the world is facing right now. I want us to keep on growing despite it all. Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice? Interesting question. Now that I think about it, if something brings me pleasure, I do not feel guilty about it. It is as simple as that. So, I guess I can say I don’t have one. Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it? Sports and reading. These are something my team and I share — a lot of us love running, doing yoga, and generally taking care of ourselves. Only in 2023, we took part in two races in our hometown of Kyiv and our Colombian team took part in the Intercontinental Cali 10K De La Luz run. I run and play squash. It keeps my head clear and relaxes me. As for reading — my team and I are on our 11th book of the year right now. In 2023, we tackled books like The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (which is my favorite this year) and Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update by Donella H. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows. What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next? It will depend on the challenges we will be facing at that particular moment and the evolution of my interests. What’s your opinion on HackerNoon as a platform for writers? It gives us the possibility to open up about things that worry us, as well as find people who share our interests and can discuss these topics with us. It helps us create and grow a community of peers. HackerNoon is also a good resource for those who are seeking knowledge and want to learn more about complicated matters, but in simple words. Thanks for taking time to join our “ ” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words? Meet the writer Stay curious and follow the flow, everybody.

Meet the Writer: HackerNoon's Contributor Daria Leshchenko, the CEO of SupportYourApp

Howdy Hackers! I’m Daria and I’m the CEO of . SupportYourApp First off, I’d like to express my gratitude to the staff, and all other beautiful humans of HackerNoon, for nominating me for a 2022 Noonies award! I’ve been nominated for the following categories and if you think my writing offers good value, please take some time to check out these award pages and vote for me: CONTRIBUTOR OF THE YEAR — CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: https://www.noonies.tech/2022/internet-heroes/2022-hackernoon-contributor-of-the-year-customer-experience CONTRIBUTOR OF THE YEAR — CUSTOMER SUCCESS: https://www.noonies.tech/2022/internet-heroes/2022-hackernoon-contributor-of-the-year-customer-success Learn more about my journey in the tech industry via the interview below. 1. What do you currently do and what’s your favorite part about it? As a CEO, my main focus lies in mentoring my team and optimizing business processes. And I love every minute and aspect of it. 2. How did you get started with your Tech Career? When I was working as a customer support representative myself, I saw that small startups and tech businesses needed a reliable partner to outsource their support to. I took an opportunity and grew SupportYourApp out of the customer support department with a single client. 3. If Utopia were a color what color do you think it’d be and why? White. It is the calmest and purest color. And I think this is exactly the way being in utopia would feel — calm, pure, and pleasant. 4. If everything about HackerNoon changed drastically, what is one detail you’d like to keep exactly the same?  OR What’s your favorite thing to do with HackerNoon and why? I would keep the direction and the topic of the article presented at the website. They are always very informative and give me a lot of information about the industry and the direction it may take in the future. Keeps me prepared, so to speak. 5. Tell us more about the things you write/make/manage/build! The best way to describe them is probably all-things-tech. I am fascinated by state-of-the-art technology and want to learn as much about it as I can. And want is the best way to learn about things than to write about them or build them with the help of other professionals, of course. 6. What’s your favorite thing about the internet? As a life-long learner, it is the possibility to quickly access new knowledge and unlimited possibilities to discover new things and learn almost everything about them. 7. It’s an apocalypse of ‘walking dead’ proportions and you can only own a singular piece of technology, what would it be? Probably my phone. With it, I can stay connected with the world, read books, listen to podcasts and seminars, and take pictures of my adorable kitten. It will also give me the possibility to keep notes and describe everything that may happen to me. Like a digital diary. 8. What is your least favorite thing about the internet? The lack of information hygiene. And I would love to do something about it, too. 9. If you were given $10 million to invest in something today what would you invest in and why? Probably something to do with information, as I said in the previous question. I would love to give people an easy way to get to the truth without having to comb through fake and altered information. I would also invest into various eco-initiatives. I never forget about the importance of keeping our planet clean, and I would love to promote the importance of eco-approach for everyone. 10. What’s something you’re currently learning or excited to learn? Right now, I pay most of my attention to learning more about emotional intelligence, business strategy, and building business in VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) reality. 11. Would you rather travel 10 years into the past or 10 years into the future? Give reasons for your answer. Definitely the future. I am so excited about it in general and the technology it can give us in part. And I also would not want to alter them,  as all the experiences I have had along the way made me who I am today.

SupportYourApp CEO Daria on Startups, Tech Businesses, and #Noonies 2022 Nomination

For the last couple of years, instability has been the most stable thing in the world. This has been affecting almost every aspect of our well-being — mental health in particular. Talks about burnout, anxiety, panic, and the ways to deal with them have become more frequent in our professional and personal lives. Keeping our heads clear and our mental health minty fresh (as opposed to being on fire) is one of the keys to going through these times intact. Here are the steps that I take to remain focused and keep my mental health… well, healthy. Setting goals I am a firm believer that there should be a clear goal for every action. For a long time, I have been writing down and tracking almost every task I have. And I have passed this approach to the entire SupportYourApp team. For years, we have been using Kanban-style systems and boards like Asana and Jira. They allow us to track every little detail and progress on any major project and minute task. It is also a good tool to assess the productivity of every team member and adjust their schedule. This allows them to have enough time to be productive and successful at everything they do without burning or rusting out. I am also a big advocate of creating timelines and roadmaps. Our team uses them to assess the amount of steps and time required to complete complex tasks. We know exactly who we need to cooperate and collaborate with to achieve a desired result in a timely manner and what to do in case of roadblocks. Talking, talking, talking The culture of all-embracing communication came to SupportYourApp together with the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, we had meetings before that, but they were nowhere nearly as numerous as they are now. The fact that SupportYourApp started looking for new teammates all over the world only served as a catalyst. We needed to constantly be connected with new members of our team, especially during the first several months when they were only getting started. We utilized the same approach after Russia launched its unjustified attack against our country. When our teammates were scattered all over, we constantly remained in touch. We wanted to make informed decisions and make sure everyone stayed in the loop. In the most uncertain of times, open and frequent communication was the key to staying stable. Today, my team and I discuss every step SupportYourApp needs to take to keep on growing and remain successful. We talk about every idea and brainstorm whenever we have the opportunity. We do everything we can to support each other, which helps us remain calm even in the most uncertain situations. Making sport a part of life Sport and physical activities have been my companions for a long time. Playing squash, running, wakeboarding (whenever I can), going to the gym, and even walking are all part of my regular schedule. Sport grounds me and gives me time and opportunity to be with my thoughts, come up with new ideas, and relax after a long day. It is a long-proven fact that sport plays a crucial part in relieving stress. It helps with the release of endorphins and helps the mind switch from our daily routines to something completely different. Regular exercise is also a good way to improve the mood. And I am not even going to say anything about the feeling of accomplishment people have after a workout. It’s just fabulous. For me, physical activity is a near-perfect way to put my mind at ease when it is going a hundred miles an hour. As ironic as it may seem, a treadmill that is going fast seems to be the best way to feel as if the world stops spinning and gives you time to unwind. Maintaining work-life balance This may seem like a cliché that has been talked about one too many times. But this doesn’t take away from the fact that maintaining a work-life balance is one of the most important things to support one’s mental well-being. It took me some time to realize — staying connected and available 24/7 is not the recipe for success. It only promotes burnout and can make professionals irritated and annoyed with their jobs. This can happen even to those who love what they do. Right now, my favorite way to maintain my work-life balance is to put my phone somewhere away from me, unplug from all my devices, and relax with a book or in the gym (something I have already covered). This gives me time to come up with new ideas and dedicate my free time to myself, which helps me maintain my mental health. For the last couple of years, instability has been the most stable thing in the world. This has been affecting almost every aspect of our well-being — mental health in particular. Talks about burnout, anxiety, panic, and the ways to deal with them have become more frequent in our professional and personal lives. Keeping our heads clear and our mental health minty fresh (as opposed to being on fire) is one of the keys to going through these times intact. Here are the steps that I take to remain focused and keep my mental health… well, healthy. Setting goals I am a firm believer that there should be a clear goal for every action. For a long time, I have been writing down and tracking almost every task I have. And I have passed this approach to the entire SupportYourApp team. For years, we have been using Kanban-style systems and boards like Asana and Jira . They allow us to track every little detail and progress on any major project and minute task. It is also a good tool to assess the productivity of every team member and adjust their schedule. This allows them to have enough time to be productive and successful at everything they do without burning or rusting out . Asana Asana Jira Jira rusting out rusting out I am also a big advocate of creating timelines and roadmaps. Our team uses them to assess the amount of steps and time required to complete complex tasks. We know exactly who we need to cooperate and collaborate with to achieve a desired result in a timely manner and what to do in case of roadblocks. Talking, talking, talking The culture of all-embracing communication came to SupportYourApp together with the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, we had meetings before that, but they were nowhere nearly as numerous as they are now. The fact that SupportYourApp started looking for new teammates all over the world only served as a catalyst. We needed to constantly be connected with new members of our team, especially during the first several months when they were only getting started. We utilized the same approach after Russia launched its unjustified attack against our country. When our teammates were scattered all over, we constantly remained in touch. We wanted to make informed decisions and make sure everyone stayed in the loop. In the most uncertain of times, open and frequent communication was the key to staying stable. Today, my team and I discuss every step SupportYourApp needs to take to keep on growing and remain successful. We talk about every idea and brainstorm whenever we have the opportunity. We do everything we can to support each other, which helps us remain calm even in the most uncertain situations. Making sport a part of life Sport and physical activities have been my companions for a long time. Playing squash, running, wakeboarding (whenever I can), going to the gym, and even walking are all part of my regular schedule. Sport grounds me and gives me time and opportunity to be with my thoughts, come up with new ideas, and relax after a long day. It is a long-proven fact that sport plays a crucial part in relieving stress . It helps with the release of endorphins and helps the mind switch from our daily routines to something completely different. Regular exercise is also a good way to improve the mood. And I am not even going to say anything about the feeling of accomplishment people have after a workout. It’s just fabulous. relieving stress relieving stress For me, physical activity is a near-perfect way to put my mind at ease when it is going a hundred miles an hour. As ironic as it may seem, a treadmill that is going fast seems to be the best way to feel as if the world stops spinning and gives you time to unwind. Maintaining work-life balance This may seem like a cliché that has been talked about one too many times. But this doesn’t take away from the fact that maintaining a work-life balance is one of the most important things to support one’s mental well-being. It took me some time to realize — staying connected and available 24/7 is not the recipe for success. It only promotes burnout and can make professionals irritated and annoyed with their jobs. This can happen even to those who love what they do. Right now, my favorite way to maintain my work-life balance is to put my phone somewhere away from me, unplug from all my devices, and relax with a book or in the gym (something I have already covered). This gives me time to come up with new ideas and dedicate my free time to myself, which helps me maintain my mental health.

Mental Health (Just Like The World) Is On Fire: Here's How It Can Be Put Out

I remember back when mobile devices started to gain momentum and popularity. While I was excited for a way to stay in touch with friends and family, I was far less excited about being placed on call length minutes and the number of text messages I could utilize … before being forced to pay more. limits Believe it or not, the #646 (#MIN) and #674 (#MSG) contact entries were still lingering in my address book until a recent clean-up effort. At one time, those numbers provided a handy mechanism to determine how close I was to hitting the monthly limits enforced by my service provider. Along some very similar lines, I recently found myself in an interesting position as a software engineer – figuring out how to log less to avoid exceeding log ingestion limits set by our observability platform provider. I began to wonder how much longer this paradigm was going to last. The Toil of Evaluating Logs for Ingestion I remember the first time my project team was contacted because log ingestion thresholds were exceeding the expected limit with our observability partner. A collection of new RESTful services had recently been deployed in order to replace an aging monolith. From a supportability perspective, our team had made a conscious effort to provide the production support team with a great deal of logging – in the event the services did not perform as expected. There were more edge cases than there were regression test coverage, so we were expecting alternative flows to trigger results that would require additional debugging if they did not process as expected. Like most cases, the project had aggressive deadlines that could not be missed. When we were instructed to “log less” an unplanned effort became our priority. The problem was, we weren’t 100% certain how best to proceed. We didn’t know what components were in a better state of validation (to have their logs reduced), and we weren’t exactly sure how much logging we would need to remove to no longer exceed the threshold. To our team, this effort was a great example of what has become known as toil: “Toil is the kind of work that tends to be manual, repetitive, automatable, tactical, devoid of enduring value, and that scales linearly as a service grows.” – Eric Harvieux (Google Site Reliability Engineering) Every minute our team spent on reducing the amount of logs ingested into the observability platform came at the expense of delivering fewer features and functionality for our services. After all, this was our first of many planned releases. Seeking a “Log Whatever You Feel Necessary” Approach What our team really needed was a scenario where our observability partner was fully invested in the success of our project. In this case, it would translate to a “log whatever you feel necessary” approach. Those who have walked this path before will likely be thinking “this is where JV has finally lost his mind.” Stay with me here as I think I am on to something big. Unfortunately, the current expectation is that the observability platform place limits on the amount of logs that can be ingested. The sad part of this approach is that, in doing so, observability platforms put their needs of their customers – who are relying on and paying for their services. can ahead This is really no different from a time when I relied on the #MIN and #MSG contacts in my phone to make sure I lived within the limits placed on me by my mobile service provider. Eventually, my mobile carrier removed those limits, allowing me to use their services in a manner that made me successful. The bottom line here is that consumers leveraging observability platforms should be able to ingest whatever they feel is important to support their customers, products, and services. It’s up to the observability platforms to accommodate the associated challenges as customers desire to ingest more. This is just like how we engineer our services in a demand-driven world. I cannot imagine telling my customer, “Sorry, but you’ve given us too much to process this month.” Pay For Your Demand – Not Ingestion The better approach here is the concept of paying for insights and not limiting the actual log ingestion. After all, this is 2024 – a time when we all should be used to handling massive quantities of data. The “pay for your demand – not ingestion” concept has been considered a “miss” in the observability industry… until recently, when I read that Sumo Logic has disrupted the DevSecOps world by . This market-disruptor approach embraces the concept of “log whatever you feel necessary” with a north star focused on eliminating silos of log data that were either disabled or skipped due to ingestion thresholds. removing limits on log ingestion Once ingested, AI/ML algorithms help identify and diagnose issues – even before they surface as incidents and service interruptions. Sumo Logic is taking on the burden of supporting additional data because they realize that customers are willing to pay a fair price for the insights gained from their approach. So what does this new strategy to observability cost expectations look like? It can be difficult to pinpoint exactly, but as an example, if your small-to-medium organization is producing an average of 25 MB of log data for ingestion per hour, this could translate into an immediate 10-20% savings ( ) on your observability bill. using Sumo Logic’s price estimator In taking this approach, every single log is available in a custom-built platform that scales along with an entity’s observability growth. As a result, AI/ML features can draw upon this information instantly to help diagnose problems – even before they surface with consumers. When I think about the project I mentioned above, I truly believe both my team and the production support team would have been able to detect anomalies faster than what we were forced to implement. Instead, we had to react to unexpected incidents that impacted the customer’s experience. Conclusion I was able to delete the #MIN and #MSG entries from my address book because my mobile provider eliminated those limits, providing a better experience for me, their customer. My readers may recall that I have been focused on the following mission statement, which I feel can apply to any IT professional: “Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.” – J. Vester In 2023, I also started thinking hard about toil and making a conscious effort to look for ways to avoid or eliminate this annoying productivity-killer. The concept of “zero dollar ingest” has disrupted the observability market by taking a lead from the mobile service provider's playbook. By eliminating log ingestion thresholds, it puts customers in a better position to be successful with their own customers, products, and services (learn more about Sumo Logic’s project ). here From my perspective, not only does this adhere to my mission statement, it provides a toil-free solution to the problem of log ingestion, data volume, and scale. Have a really great day!

DevSecOps: It’s Time To Pay For Your Demand – Not Ingestion

One of the most popular phrases I have been hearing for the last couple of years is “I’ve been attending this course and I learned… ”, which means that almost everyone in my professional life is learning something almost constantly. I am a big advocate of non-stop learning and development. But I also admit it is not without its challenges and disadvantages. Which are… 1. Not knowing what knowledge to grab This is one of the pitfalls of having an eager mind and a variety of choices. I have encountered people who study new things without understanding what they are learning and why. I try to match my learning with the needs of my team. When I was a young leader, I studied the 101 rules of business. A bit later, when SupportYourApp started to grow, I started reading books and listening to courses on effective management and team training. Today, as my team grew to over 1400 professionals, I am learning to be a mentor and a coach. These are the steps I needed to take to keep on being efficient as my team’s needs and size changed. One of the best ways to determine what knowledge and skills to take in is to analyze the environment and the trends of the present and turn them into knowledge for the future. 2. Lack of the most crucial ingredient — time Time is one of our most important assets and, when it comes to learning, it is one of scarcest things. Here are the topics I am currently interested in and in the process of learning: AI and ML International business development Team Coaching Leadership and mentoring The future of tech trends and so on This list can go on and on for other leaders. Combined with the fact we also need to work, complete our tasks, and maintain the all-important work-life balance, it might seem a wonder that we have time to breathe. The key here is to learn to prioritize every lesson, book, and course. Which knowledge would be the most needed to be useful at the moment? Which topics are the hottest and most viral? Which book will make me better at my job right now? These questions can help professionals and managers prioritize their learning and gradually get the knowledge they need without the risk of burning out. 3. The loss of motivation and perspective When the process is never-ending, staying motivated is tough. It’s like a marathon that does not have a finish line and does not provide the participants with the option to rip through a ribbon at the end of the road. It’s a good thing marathons actually have an end, otherwise no one would ever participate in them. Staying motivated to keep on learning year after year is tough. Especially for those who have already reached the highest points of their careers (like C-suite managers). The logic behind this goes like this: “I am already at the top. Why would I learn something new if there is no reward in sight?” But this is actually not true. There might be no reward when it comes to professional growth, but there is an opportunity to be a better teammate, better manager, and a better leader, which will improve the overall performance and morale of any team. And isn’t that the goal? 4. Wrong mindset Learning for the sake of learning, not developing enough interest in a topic before diving deeper in it, grabbing knowledge that is not needed, and not dedicating enough time and effort to the process. These are wrong mindsets for effective learning that are sure to get in the way of any professional. While getting in the right mindset is not easy, it is an absolute must when learning something new and developing is the goal. Here’s how I get it right: I concentrate on the process and try to yield as much pleasure from it as possible I learn from my mistakes and look for answers to my questions in every piece of information I get I use the people around me as an indicator of the knowledge I need to get I do not deny myself the pleasure to learn something I am personally interested in, and I try to use every piece of knowledge I received in my professional life I approach every opportunity to learn with this mindset, which pushes me to receive new knowledge. Whatever challenges I come across when learning, I constantly arrive at the same conclusion — I cannot get enough of it. Every time I learn something new, I am anxious to get a chance to use it in my professional life. This is the feeling that makes me go on and on.

Navigating the Dark Corners of Non-Stop Learning

Many developers are surprised to learn that , known for its tech salary data, initially ran on spreadsheets without a backend database. This example shows the potential of spreadsheets in managing web data and how you can start with something that works to optimize it later. We can do the same thing with Google Drive and Google Sheets in ! levels.fyi C# In this article, I’ll guide you through accessing Google Sheets from Google Drive using C# and .NET. I’ll share the code I used in my projects to make some of this work more effective. Let’s get into it! Setting Up Your Environment Before we get too far into things, let’s make sure you have things set up properly. This will save you some time in the long run — I promise! Google Sheets & Google Drive Nuget Packages Before we start writing any code, ensure you have the necessary Google API packages installed. For this tutorial, we’re using: Google Sheets API (v4) Google Drive API (v3) These versions were current at the time of writing, so please adjust according to any future updates. Authentication with Google Cloud Console To interact with Google APIs in the same way that I’m illustrating in this tutorial, you’ll need a JSON credential file from the Google Cloud console. This involves creating a service account and sharing your Google Drive files with it, granting the necessary permissions. This step is critical for the API to access your spreadsheets. To do this, make sure you log in to your Google Cloud console and create a new service account (or leverage an existing one). The reason a service account is beneficial here is that you get an associated email address with it, and you can share your files/folders with the email so that the service account gets permission. Without the correct permissions to your files, the API calls might be structured and called properly but they’ll fail to find any results! If you’d like more visual guidance on some of these steps, you can follow along with this video tutorial on using Google Sheets in C#: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDl9DrAtWsU&ab_channel=DevLeader&embedable=true Implementing the Google Drive and Google Sheets in C# Configuring Google Drive and Google Sheets APIs The first step in our C# application involves referencing the Google Sheets and Google Drive APIs through NuGet packages. You did that part though, right? You should have similar entries to this in your csproj file (keeping in mind the versions will likely be different by the time you are reading this): <PackageReference Include="Google.Apis.Drive.v3" Version="1.66.0.3309" />
<PackageReference Include="Google.Apis.Sheets.v4" Version="1.66.0.3148" /> You’ll also need to ensure you get your credentials loaded up in code. This code illustrates setting up the authentication with our JSON credentials to establish a connection with Google’s services, using the correct scopes: var credential = GoogleCredential
    .FromJson(
    """
    {
      "type": "service_account",
      "project_id": "api-abc123abc123-456789",
      "private_key_id": "123456789123456789",
      "private_key": "-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----KEY HERE------END PRIVATE KEY-----n",
      "client_email": "[email protected]",
      "client_id": "your client ID here",
      "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth",
      "token_uri": "https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token",
      "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs",
      "client_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/robot/v1/metadata/x509/project-name%40api-aabbcc-123456.iam.gserviceaccount.com",
      "universe_domain": "googleapis.com"
    }
    """)
    .CreateScoped(
        DriveService.ScopeConstants.Drive,
        SheetsService.ScopeConstants.Drive,
        SheetsService.ScopeConstants.Spreadsheets); Of course, this is a dummy credential file but you get the idea. Also, consider that you don’t want to keep this in your source code but probably load it from some secure storage if you’re deploying this application (vs just running some code locally for fun)! Finding Our File Our main goal is to access and manipulate data within Google Sheets. However, finding the right spreadsheet can be challenging without knowing its unique ID. I don’t know about you, but when I use Google Drive and Google Sheets, I look up files and folders by their name and path… not by some hidden unique identifier. We can tackle this by implementing a method to search for the spreadsheet using a path-like structure, despite Google Drive not natively supporting this feature: public sealed class GoogleDriveClient(
    DriveService _driveService)
{
    public async Task<GoogleDriveFile> GetFileOrFolderForPathAsync(
        string fullyQualifiedPath,
        CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        Queue<string> pathPartQueue = new();
        foreach (string pathPart in fullyQualifiedPath.Split(['/', '\\']))
        {
            pathPartQueue.Enqueue(pathPart);
        }

        StringBuilder pathSoFar = new(fullyQualifiedPath.Length);
        string? parentId = null;
        while (pathPartQueue.Count > 0)
        {
            string pathPart = pathPartQueue.Dequeue();
            pathSoFar.Append(pathPart);

            FilesResource.ListRequest listRequest = CreateListRequest(
                _driveService,
                parentId,
                pathPart);

            FileList items = await listRequest
                .ExecuteAsync(cancellationToken)
                .ConfigureAwait(false);
            if (items.Files.Count == 0)
            {
                throw new InvalidOperationException(
                    $"Could not find a match for '{pathSoFar}'.");
            }
            else if (items.Files.Count > 1)
            {
                throw new InvalidOperationException(
                    $"Multiple matches for '{pathSoFar}'.");
            }

            if (pathPartQueue.Count == 0)
            {
                return items.Files[0];
            }

            parentId = items.Files[0].Id;
            pathSoFar.Append('/');
        }

        throw new InvalidOperationException(
            $"Could not find a match for '{fullyQualifiedPath}'.");
    }

    private static FilesResource.ListRequest CreateListRequest(
        DriveService driveService,
        string? parentId,
        string pathPart)
    {
        var listRequest = driveService.Files.List();
        listRequest.SupportsAllDrives = true;
        listRequest.IncludeItemsFromAllDrives = true;
        listRequest.PageSize = 2;
        listRequest.Q = $@"name = '{pathPart}'";

        if (parentId != null)
        {
            listRequest.Q += $@" and '{parentId}' in parents";
        }

        return listRequest;
    }
} The code above uses a path to a file or folder in Google Drive to be able to query each “path part” until the file or folder is found. If no such file or folder is found or there are multiple matches, an exception is thrown. Accessing Google Sheets Spreadsheets in C# Now that we have the file, we have the magical identifier that we need to access our Google Sheet spreadsheet in C#! Let’s look at the following code: public sealed class SpreadsheetProcessor(
    GoogleDriveClient _googleDriveClient,
    SheetsService _sheetsService)
{
    public async Task ProcessSpreadsheetAsync(
        string pathToFileOnGoogleDrive,
        CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        var file = await _googleDriveClient.GetFileOrFolderForPathAsync(
            pathToFileOnGoogleDrive,
            cancellationToken);

        var spreadsheet = await _sheetsService
            .Spreadsheets
            .GetByDataFilter(
                new()
                {
                    IncludeGridData = true,
                },
                file.Id)
            .ExecuteAsync(cancellationToken)
            .ConfigureAwait(false);

        foreach (var rowData in sheet.Data[0].RowData)
        {
            // TODO: do something with the row data!
        }

    }
} In the code above, we look for the spreadsheet at the particular path. From there, we open it up with the sheets service because we have the ID of the file that was returned. Once we have a spreadsheet object, we can use the Google Sheets API to interact with it accordingly. Future Considerations for Using Google Drive and Google Sheets in C# In the code that we saw above, it’s by no means optimized for performance. If you have to do multiple lookups, even for the same file path… you’ll be stuck doing multiple queries. If you want to minimize the number of API calls, you could consider caching the paths to ID mapping locally. This would allow you to shortcut if you had a partial path match and skip having to do multiple path-part lookups — or jump right to the file ID if you’ve seen the exact path already. You could expand this logic to work with other file types from Google as well! Instead of just spreadsheets, what about documents? When we consider other document types, something you might have noticed is that there aren’t extensions for spreadsheets (at least in my experience) on Google Drive. So what happens to our API calls if we have a document and a spreadsheet with the same name? Is it even possible in Google Drive? Try it out! Wrapping Up Google Sheets in C# This guide has walked you through the basics of using the Google Sheets API in C# to access and manipulate data stored in Google Drive. You can now build applications leveraging data stored in your Google Drive by coding them up in dotnet! The initial setup and authentication we used involved getting a credential from the Google Cloud console. Beyond that, we had to navigate down to the file in question by going each part of a path at a time — unless you want to work with the file IDs directly! JSON Whether you’re looking to build a data-driven website or manage content schedules (which is what I was doing!), these Google APIs can help you out! Feel free to experiment with these concepts in your projects and explore the full capabilities of the Google Sheets and Drive APIs in your .NET applications. If you found this useful and you’re looking for more learning opportunities, consider and check out my ! subscribing to my free weekly software engineering newsletter free videos on YouTube Also published . here

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