How love lessons can land you a great job (even in a down tech market)

Hello!

I'm Chazona
Engineering leader, founder, sewist, mom

Hi, I’m Chazona, and I’m an engineering leader who spent the early part of my tech career helping early-career engineers get their first jobs. I’m now a founder in the dating space.

As a technical person who spends much of my time obsessing over how we form and strengthen interpersonal relationships, I tend to be the kind of person who asks weird questions, like…

Image: A grid of network diagrams showing nodes connected by lines, illustrating combinatorial growth. The diagrams are labeled: “3 people, 3 lines”, “4 people, 6 lines”, “5 people, 10 lines”, “6 people, 15 lines”, “7 people, 21 lines”, “8 people, 28 lines”, “9 people, 36 lines”, “10 people, 45 lines”, “11 people, 55 lines”, “12 people, 66 lines”, “13 people, 78 lines”, “14 people, 91 lines”. The lines connecting nodes grow denser as the count increases, demonstrating how relationships dramatically increase with group size.

“At what point does a polycule require something like a program manager or well-thought-through design patterns to handle the complexity of the relationship?”

After all, one-on-one relationships are complicated enough, and the combinatorial explosion in communication overhead would suggest that the more people you add to the relationship, the more time and effort needs to go toward relationship “toil”.

The answer, it turns out from an interview in the New York Times Magazine, something less than twenty people. And scrum is the methodology of choice. If taking Jira home with you sounds like a nightmare, it may be best to stick to one romantic partner at a time.

Image: The Darkest Timeline meme from Community, in which Troy returns from getting pizza for a housewarming party to find the apartment on fire.

So let’s address the elephant in the room.

The current environment, whether for dating or jobseeking are awful in ways they haven’t been historically. If you’re recently “entering the market” after being in a stable relationship or role, I expect it’s jarring.

Image: A flat-lay photograph showing a printed resume laying atop a silver MacBook laptop on a rumpled white sheet. The resume is upside-down relative to the viewer, with visible sections labeled “John D[oe]”, “Experience”, “Company name”, “Position”, “Education”, “Skills”, “Technical”, “Other section”. A small potted succulent sits on top of the resume. A gray knit garment is visible in the upper right corner.

Applicant tracking systems are now the gatekeepers of new job placements and broad cultural changes have encouraged companies to treat employees as “friends” they can extract extra benefits from and discard when they’re done with them. You can send and receive applications and resumes from around the world, but you increasingly find you need to change how you present yourself to game the tool rather than the people who use it.

If you’re a candidate, you likely feel like you’re sending applications into a void, rarely ever getting a response.

And if you’re a recruiter or hiring manager, you are likely overwhelmed by a flood of low-effort applications, most of which from senders that don’t even meet the most basic requirements.

Ghosting and scams are rampant. It can seem nearly impossible to find a job you’ll be happy at for more than a year or two, and you may start to wonder if there’s something wrong with you.

Image: A hand holds a smartphone displaying a dating app's registration screen. The screen shows circular photo bubbles of several diverse people arranged at the top. Below them, the heading reads “Dating for grown-ups” with the subtext “Register today to meet amazing singles near you.” A pink “Continue” button sits below, with “Already a member? Log in” beneath. A blurred keyboard is visible in the background.

Meanwhile dating apps are now the gatekeepers of new romantic attachments and broad cultural changes have encouraged people to treat each other as “friends” they can extract extra benefits from and discard when they’re done with them. You can send and receive flirty messages from around the world, but you increasingly find you need to change how you present yourself to game the tool rather than the people who use it.

If you’re a straight or bi man, you likely feel like you’re swiping into a void, rarely ever getting a response.

And if you’re a straight or bi woman, you are likely overwhelmed by a flood of low-effort likes and messages, most of which from senders that don’t even meet the most basic requirements.

Ghosting and scams are rampant. It can seem nearly impossible to find a lasting relationship, and you may start to wonder if there’s something wrong with you.

This isn’t entirely coincidental—many recruitment platforms have been influenced by dating apps as the underlying problems they’re trying to solve are similar, just in different contexts.

And as a caveat, the women’s experience described above often does not reflect that of Black women. I highly recommend Apryl William’s Not My Type for more on the subject as that could take up a whole talk in itself.

Defining "good"

Chemistry + Connection + Compatibility

In both contexts, at the end of the day, you’re aiming to find people you like who like you back. You will have more success optimizing for the humans involved than overindexing on tools.

So if finding good jobs has parallels to finding a good romantic partner, it’d probably help for us to define what we mean by “good” here.

At a high level, the formula might look like: Chemistry + Connection + Compatibility

Chemistry (magnetism)

Dating

• Appearance
• Smell
• Mannerisms
• Behaviors/traits
• Status

Jobseeking

• Comp package
• Perks (remote, etc.)
• Mission
• Team/friends
• Status

Chemistry is the easiest for us to notice: does this person or job/company excite you?

The triggers for this chemistry can vary greatly from person to person: you can get excited by a person’s looks and smell, but it could instead be mannerisms, the way they carry themselves or how they treat others that turns you on. It could be their job.

Similarly, you can be attracted to a company or role by the compensation package, being fired up for their mission, or being pumped about the team you get to work with.

It’s not the most important part of the equation to optimize, but you do need something to be excited about at first. Think of it like kindling for what will become the blazing fire of your romance/career.

Oddly, it appears that having a better-looking blind date made women slightly less happy—my operating theory is that hotter guys were ******** more often.

— Christian Rudder (OkCupid), We experiment on human beings!

It’s also the easiest to over-index on because it’s so easy to spot, which can lead to some worrisome trends.

When OKCupid analyzed blind date results, they found that looks had nothing to do with how much people enjoyed themselves on their dates with one exception: women who went out with men rated as more attractive had a worse time.

The same tends to be noticeable with companies: the most famous companies with the largest compensation packages and most bombastic missions shouted from the rooftops tend to be ones we later find out treat their workers poorly, abandon their stated missions when it is inconvenient to hold on to them or do other things that produce disproportionately dissatisfied current and former employees. If they feel they’ll have prospects clambering to be with them, they can be disincentivized to invest in being stewards of their relationships.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean to throw your drink in a guy’s face just because he’s cute or to automatically decline a job offer because the company’s popular. But it does mean that it’s likely worth getting additional signal on the individual person or company before getting in too deep.

Compatibility

Values + Vision + Lifestyle

We’ll circle back to connection in a moment.

Compatibility can broadly be reduced to mean your ability to move in the same direction together.

With romantic relationships, we normally look at this as alignment between your values, vision and lifestyle. Someone allergic to dogs and cats may be excited by someone who runs an animal rescue, but they’re probably going to have a harder time maintaining a relationship with each other.

Someone who enjoys the frenetic pace of an early stage startup may find the structure of an enterprise stifling.

Keep in mind skill and capability alignment also rolls up here, usually under vision or lifestyle depending on how the person views them.

Image: A still from Disney's animated film “Beauty and the Beast” showing the Beast dancing with Belle. They gaze at each other against a starry night sky background, conveying a romantic moment between two visibly different beings.

Compatibility matters in both domains because unlike what our teenage selves may have wanted to believe, you can’t really change people—they have to initiate the change themselves and most won’t until life slaps them across the face.

Re-watch Beauty and the Beast attentively and you’ll notice that Belle doesn’t change him—she can’t. She may be a catalyst but the beast in the story makes largely consistent, intentional choices over time to put work into developing himself.

A company is a collection of people, so unless you are the figurehead or have outsized influence on the figurehead of a company, you can’t reasonably expect to change it.

Image: A photograph from a Google employee walkout protest. A person in the foreground holds up a handmade sign reading “NOT OK Google” with “Google” written in the company's signature multicolor letters. They stand on a sidewalk under a street lamp, surrounded by a crowd of protesters. City buildings and trees are visible in the background.

It’s sad to see folks assume otherwise, whether they think they can soften an abrasive partner or that they can convince their employer to end warmongering contracts or user-hostile practices.

Note that I’m not saying not to hold these people or companies accountable, but to keep your eyes open, manage your expectations, and maybe don’t insert yourself into that situation. As I would tell a friend, “you can’t change him, period”.

If fewer people whose values were fundamentally incompatible with these companies joined them out of misguided hope, the struggle to attract talent could put enough existential pressure on a company to potentially catalyze that change of heart.

Connection

Glue / "The work"

Connection is chronologically the last to arrive, and simultaneously the most important.

Image: A close-up photograph of a small campfire with sticks and twigs arranged in a teepee structure, burning with orange and yellow flames. Wisps of blue-gray smoke curl upward through the air. The fire sits on a bed of ash, charred bark, and scattered leaves. The background is softly blurred with warm late-afternoon sunlight filtering through.

In scouts as a kid, I learned that if you spark kindling but fail to tend it into a growing fire, it’ll go out.

Relationships are pretty similar, and connection describes all the things we do to nurture and grow that initial excitement over time. It’s why older couples can describe themselves as more in love with each other than they were when they were younger. And it’s why some couples in arranged marriages or who otherwise had no chemistry when they first met are able to build extremely loving, long-lasting partnerships.

It also shares a number of parallels with how we maintain lasting excitement for our teams at work.

So what makes relationships last?

Image: A photo of the book cover for The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John M. Gottman, Ph.D. and Nan Silver. Subtitle reads “A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert.”

Thankfully, we have a pretty good understanding of what makes relationships last, and it generally comes down to the following building blocks of connection.

If you only read one book as a result of this talk, it should be John Gottman’s The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Applied thoughtfully, this will have outsized impact on your personal and workplace relationships regardless of whether you want to be married.

Image: A still from “The Addams Family” film showing Morticia Addams and Gomez Addams in a darkly atmospheric setting. Morticia, on the left, has pale skin, dark eye makeup, and red lipstick, wearing a black veil and black gown. Gomez, on the right, has slicked-back dark hair and a thin mustache, smiling adoringly at her as though no one else existed while wearing a dark formal jacket. The background is dimly lit with a stone-walled crypt-like setting.

If you read no books, consider watching The Addams Family and The Addams Family Values.

(This is not an ironic recommendation—you can get some pretty solid examples of these principles in action within the context of a romantic relationship.)

7 principles

• Enhance your love maps
• Nurture your fondness and admiration
• Turn toward each other instead of away
• Let your partner influence you
• Solve your solvable problems
• Overcome gridlock
• Create shared meaning

We’ll briefly hit each principle so you have some context for what they look like in these two different contexts.

For any managers in the audience—these principles make an excellent playbook for building the trust your teams need to deliver their best work.

Enhance your love maps

Love maps describes making cognitive space for each other.

It’s your romantic partner remembering that you prefer a homemade treat over flowers or that you’re allergic to shellfish.

At work it can look like your manager remembering that you fiddle with kubernetes in your spare time and would love to get more hands-on infrastructure experience.

Love maps can include joys, likes, dislikes, fears and stresses. And you can tell when someone has love maps set aside for you, and roughly how large those maps might be, through their behaviors. The gifts that partner chooses to give you after you’ve shared these details are just as telling as the opportunities the manager tries to surface after learning them in a one-on-one.

Nurture your fondness and admiration

Humans and groups of humans are flawed. Every single one.

But being able to remember why you liked your partner is the most telling sign of whether a relationship can be salvaged when it starts to go off the rails. When that is gone, instead of being able to build excitement for one another, you build contempt instead.

At work, this can be seen in things like the appreciation and gratitude shown between employees and each other, and employees and management.

At my last company, nurturing fondness and admiration were core components of our culture for much of the time I was there. We had a system for giving virtual tacos to publicly shout out the awesomeness of our teammates, and sharing the credit in demos and feature announcements was the norm.

This is also where things like company offsites and teambuilding events can go a long way when done well. And having at least one friend at work can help nurture these positive feelings.

Turn toward each other instead of away

Long-term relationships are sprinkled with little moments when one person makes what Gottman calls a “bid” for connection, typically either affection, attention, humor, or support. In successful relationships, the other person responds by turning toward them in some way.

For example, when you know your partner is having a rough day at work, you might send them an encouraging text to lift their spirits. When they ask if you’re both out of butter at the grocery store, instead of shrugging, you might reply and go get some from a neighboring aisle just in case. You’ll likely eat together and look up from what you’re reading when they speak to you.

In the workplace, this can look different but usually just a bit. If a manager knows one of their engineers is nervous about demoing a new feature to the company, they might Slack them some encouragement. When an incident happens, does leadership handle postmortems blamelessly, responding to employees bids for support in lessening their occurrence?

Let your partner influence you

Pride and the need to hoard power are highly detrimental to relationships.

And as a heads up to guys and managers in the audience, this one shows up the data as fairly one-sided.

Men who believe they can learn things from their wives have healthier, longer-lasting relationships, and managers who believe they can learn things from their direct reports build more trust and retain their employees better. This can involve sharing power, but what matters most is really accepting influence so you’re not making decisions that disrespect the person or people impacted by your decisions.

While I’m not one to argue for patriarchy or inflexible hierarchies for…obvious…reasons, this principle is compatible with both.

In the workplace, this often looks like feeling like what you say at work really counts, your team learning from you even when you disagree, and your manager thinking you have good ideas.

Solve your solvable problems

Solvable problems are situational, and they don’t reverberate across other areas of life or work. But they can be painful and when they aren’t addressed, they can escalate into gridlocked, perpetual problems that are ultimately about deeper issues like trust or respect. Each side entrenches themselves in their positions and resentment festers.

For example, issues with things like documentation or testing often start small and centered around a project or codebase, but when they aren’t addressed they have a tendency to snowball into larger issues.

If you’ve ever had a romantic relationship where something small like failing to take out the trash seemed to be ignored until it became habit, leaving one side hurt and the other confused, this—not promptly communicating and solving problems while they’re still solvable—is the root of what played out.

Overcome Gridlock

All couples and all teams will likely have some irreconcilable differences—this is simply part of the diversity of life.

Gridlock is when they can’t find a way to accommodate or get around these differences in order to work together. Instead of being managed like an annoying allergy, these problems go unmanaged and sometimes even unacknowledged.

Everyone has hopes, wishes and aspirations that are connected to their identity and what they feel gives purpose to their lives. Gridlock is a sign that those aren’t being acknowledged or respected. So things that may ultimately be very small from a practical standpoint can become painful, heated issues that trash morale and retention.

To prevent this, it is important to be aware of what these dreams are and to understand that part of the purpose of a relationship or a team is to help each person achieve them.

Create shared meaning

If any of the principles are potentially optional or more like icing on the cake, it’s shared meaning. If your relationship or workplace adheres to the others, it’ll probably be pretty healthy and satisfying.

But you may find yourself wanting something more from it. This is where having an inner life with symbols and rituals can help. When done well, where everyone’s dreams are incorporated into it, it can even reduce the likelihood that problems escalate to gridlock.

When you build culture at work, you are creating shared meaning. The specific rituals will often be very different from those of a romantic relationship, but at their core, they serve the same purpose.

The story of Scooter Girl

Image: A circular-cropped photograph showing a flooded city street with several people standing in waist-deep water. A traffic signal with red lights is visible, and tall buildings line the background. The scene appears overcast and gray, evoking a flood or disaster scenario.

As an example, back in 2019 when I was leading MAXX Potential’s Norfolk office, the area experienced a particularly bad high tide event during a nor’easter. Our office was situated right in the heart of a flood zone, and drivers inexperienced with our tidal flooding were getting stuck after trying to cross waters that were too high. Apprentices ran out and pushed the trapped vehicles safely down the road until they were able to drive off again.

While they were out there, a determined young woman passed through on a Lime scooter, undeterred by the weather.

We have no idea who scooter girl was, but she became a symbol within our office for our determination and resilience. When we spoke of scooter girl, we remembered proudly our teammates who rushed to help instead of thinking of themselves.

How to tell?

Trust + Respect + Affection

So how do you tell if the person or team you’re with has alignment of chemistry, connection and compatibility? You will observe mutual trust, respect and affection. If these three things are abundant, you will be excited to be with them, and they will be excited to be with you, and that can grow over time instead of diminishing.

Affection should look different in a romantic relationship versus a workplace one, otherwise you’re likely to make a romantic partner feel unloved or create a bad reputation for yourself among whisper networks. But ultimately, all three of these things will be abundant in a healthy workplace.

Management is trusted to make decisions that make things better for customers and employees alike. Employees are trusted as capable without micromanagement and given challenges that allow them to grow. Everyone doesn’t agree all the time (it would be a bad sign if they did), but everyone generally feels listened to and respected even when they disagree. And people feel to some degree liked at work.

If you’re a manager or team lead, it can be tough because sometimes your job requires that you not be liked. In a healthy workplace, either you’ll have other managers on a similar level to relate to or senior leadership will find other ways for you to have access to platonic affection or camaraderie.

Why now?

The impact of perceived scarcity

So why does it matter so much right now to understand what a good job or relationship looks like?

While the reality is that there is no shortage of jobs or talent, the tools and broader culture make it hard for good talent and good jobs to find each other. And likewise, while there is no shortage of good men, women and enbies, the existing tools and culture make it hard for them to find each other.

There isn’t a true scarcity, but the impact on us is just like if there was.

In a highly critical, scarcity-based world, everyone's afraid to fail.

— Brené Brown

Perceived scarcity, like when we feel like there aren’t enough jobs to go around, wrecks our ability to think clearly about whether that person or role is really meeting our needs.

Think about when you haven’t eaten all day and you’re suddenly offered some food. Famished, and with your mind focusing on your unfulfilled hunger, it will universally taste better than it would’ve when you were satisfied.

This carries over to other needs: for connection, for financial security…

When you think suitable romantic partners are scarce, the person who shows interest in you will seem that much better, and you’ll be even more excited about your new role when you were scared you wouldn’t find one.

If we really like something, we're willing to accept flaws, problems, issues, even a higher price.

— Kathy Sierra, Badass: Making Users Awesome

But as Kathy Sierra describes in Badass: Making Users Awesome, “if we really like something, we’re willing to accept flaws, problems, issues, even a higher price.” This doesn’t just apply to products.

Worse, “Desirability changes our perception of ‘flaws.’ The more we love something, the more likely we are to not just tolerate problems but reinterpret them as not problems…We spin bugs as features.”

You’ve seen this play out if you’ve ever had a friend you could clearly see was in an adversarial or even abusive relationship, only to hear them continually minimize and downplay their negative experiences out of love. Their brain acts against their long-term interests, and it almost never ends well.

And unfortunately, the same thing plays out at work, causing us to ignore or reframe the very things that will cause us to burn out at work.

Worse is what happens to us when we’re actually in a bad relationship:

Symptoms of a bad relationship

• Questioning the value of your relationship
• Having to drag yourself to perform commitments
• Feeling removed from your relationship/partner
• Losing patience with partner, family or friends
• Lacking the energy to be a good partner
• Having a hard time focusing
• Feeling little satisfaction from your relationship
• Feeling let down by your relationship
• Doubting your attractiveness and abilities
• Using food, drugs or alcohol to feel better
• Changing sleep habits
• Headaches, digestive problems, aches & pains

Oh, I’m sorry, actually I think what I meant here was what happens to us when experiencing job burnout:

Symptoms of job burnout

• Questioning the value of your work
• Having to drag yourself to perform commitments
• Feeling removed from your work/team
• Losing patience with coworkers, or customers
• Lacking the energy to do your job well
• Having a hard time focusing
• Feeling little satisfaction from your work
• Feeling let down by your job
• Doubting your skills and abilities
• Using food, drugs or alcohol to feel better
• Changing sleep habits
• Headaches, digestive problems, aches & pains

Huh, a bad relationship and a bad job impact us in nearly identical ways.

These symptoms also tend to be linked with at least situational depression. And they make it incredibly difficult to find something new, present yourself at your best or succeed at that new thing, even if you’re able to extricate yourself from the harmful relationship or job. If the situation was harmful enough, it can take months or years to recover.

And leaving itself is incredibly difficult when you aren’t confident you can find another, are likely not delivering your best work and aren’t in the best position to showcase your best traits.

In the worst cases, a job or relationship that is bad for you can leave you feeling trapped and close you off to better opportunities. Avoiding getting stuck in this situation is one of the most important things you can do for yourself.

How to land better jobs

Don't copy what the herd is doing

From there, there are some things you can do to make your jobseeking efforts more effective while reducing the effort it takes.

Mindset: It's not charity

We have a tendency when we go on a date or a job interview to focus on what we’re going to get out of the arrangement if we’re successful, and that can lead us to an unbalanced perspective going in. We worry about what they’ll think about us, whether they’ll like us, and how we can impress them.

This is entirely the wrong way to approach both.

Dating you is not charity, and neither is hiring you to do a job. Remember that more important than finding out if they like you is to even understand if you like them.

If you approach these conversations from the standpoint that you are on equal footing with your interviewer, you will come across more confidently, ask better questions and have better results from each of the recommendations that follow.

Mindset: Gratitude goes a long way

While you’re not out to impress, it’s important to keep a positive attitude even when discussing things that might have been less than stellar experiences. It also helps keep you from ruminating over things that you think you did wrong by refocusing your attention.

One of the most effective things you can do to reinforce this positive outlook is to regularly reflect on what you appreciate. In religious circles, you may hear this as “count your blessings, not your problems”, but it really applies universally. This doesn’t mean to ignore your problems, but not to dwell on them.

A small step here is to keep a daily log at the end of the day with one thing or person you’re grateful for. Little by little you can build this into a habit and expand on it.

If you’re already tracking gratitude, a way to level this up is to express appreciation or a genuine compliment to someone every day. Not only do you reinforce your own positive outlook, but you help someone else reinforce theirs and people (especially men) don’t hear real complements enough.

Mindset: Boundaries don't mean no vulnerability

Your team isn’t your family, and the work won’t love you back.

Even in a romance that could become your family, if you don’t set boundaries for yourself, you run the risk of losing yourself or doing things you’re not comfortable with.

But some take this so far as to compartmentalize their life and keep others out entirely.

Is this the safest approach to take? Sure.

But you’re unlikely to get as much out of your relationships when you close yourself off to forming real bonds with others. And establishing trust requires a certain amount of vulnerability.

Remember the front door is broken

Interestingly, when I ask most experienced devs how they ended up in their most recent role, somewhere nestled in the story is usually a referral from a friend or acquaintance or a recruiter reaching out to them directly, something called sourcing.

But when many of those same developers experienced a layoff and were thrust back into the talent market, most I talked to were reluctant initially to pursue referrals (beyond a LinkedIn post about the layoff) and instead started mass-applying to jobs with disheartening results.

When you cold apply to a job, that’s referred to as inbound, and reality is that the experience for recruiters is awful. They’re as overwhelmed with noise as women on dating apps. If they’re receiving hundreds of applications each week, even stellar resumes are not going to have much opportunity to get noticed even if someone wants to read every one. Layoffs and a cold hiring market have only increased the noise. The reality is, cold applications (much like swipes or cold messages on an app) should be treated a bit like lottery tickets.

There are a couple of approaches you could take instead:

Staging your online presence to optimize for being sourced for your ideal types of roles, sort of like LinkedIn SEO. For this to work you need to have a really solid understanding of the role and industry you’re targeting, there needs to be enough demand for what you specifically can offer, and you’ll need to spend time creating and refining profiles on all the major platforms like LinkedIn and Wellfound. This is a bit like optimizing your dating app profile, which works well for some but can be something of a gamble for others.

The approach I’d recommend for most people is to always do a warm application to roles or a warm introduction to potential love interest. You won’t be able to reach as many at a time, because in each case you would be reaching out to someone either in your network (consider friends of friends) before sending. For roles, set up time to talk with them about their experiences at the company and see if they’ll introduce you over email to the recruiter or hiring manager for the role. If you have an established relationship with them, you could go a step further and ask for a referral, but keep in mind most folks won’t refer someone they don’t know. The most important things are to gather context for figuring out if you’re going to enjoy working there and creating good questions, and to ensure a human sees your name and/or resume before you hit the Applicant Tracking System.

If asking for referrals seems unfair, keep in mind that the most one can do is get you in the room so you have the chance to interview.

Something you can do to supplement either approach is to share what you know. This could be via YouTube or TikTok videos, posts on LinkedIn, a blog or even a podcast. Keep the commitment small and manageable, especially at the start, but regularly putting out these kinds of material allows you to put yourself in front of more people, build credibility in your space so they’re more likely to think of you, and provide value to others, which sometimes but not always leads to reciprocation down the line.

Meet someone new every week

Probably the biggest barrier to what I’ve suggested you do is going to be that you don’t know enough people, or specifically enough people who are either single (if a romantic search) or in companies and departments you’re pursuing (if a job search). The way to fix that is to find ways to meet someone new (and relevant to your search) each week.

Some of this can potentially be done via LinkedIn or text but you’re going to have the best results by getting away from screens for this. Introduce yourself or lead with genuine compliments when out and about. Engage your hobbies outside of your home if you can.

If you’re strengthening your network for jobseeking, consider participating in local developer events and reaching out to local leaders like Kevin; Paul Chin, Jr.; Guillermo Fisher and others to volunteer some of your time to help. These are phenomenal opportunities to meet other people in your space and potentially to build your reputation.

For network-building to be helpful, especially among other developers, you need to be forging genuine relationships with people, not just using them. And even if they can introduce you to an opportunity or a person, you’ll often need to explore a few to find a good fit. So you can’t really get around needing to talk to a lot of people over time.

So get started today—you got a black packet with your nametag today. Go find someone you don’t know yet and try them out, and stop by the Wafris booth to get a full deck.

Be yourself—but make sure yourself is compelling

Most people mask who they are on first dates and job interviews, which just sets them up for disappointment later on when expectations don’t match the reality of the person.

All those messages to be yourself you heard as a kid were right, they were just missing a pretty major component. If you are not currently compelling, you’re going to need to work on fixing that.

Are you interesting? Is there enough substance to you that you could talk about relevant aspects of yourself without boring people? If you’re jobseeking, have you effectively answered “so what?” about yourself?

When I go on a date, I often wear clothes I made myself. If I get complimented on them, I can thank them and say that I made them, which will often spark interest and additional questions from them. It gives them something to work with so they don’t have to fish so hard for questions to ask.

If you need an excellent example of being yourself while being compelling, go check out Paul Chin, Jr.’s booth before you leave and ask him about his journey. Praise Cage. 🙏🏼

Now, this shouldn’t require a transformation, but it may mean spending less time consuming content and more time on active hobbies. You may also need to reflect on what you’re great at that others find challenging.

A great way to uncover this is to tell a friend what you admire about them or why you’re friends with them, and to ask them to do the same for you.

What it looks like when you slap ~~crypto~~ AI on your resume to follow a trend

Image: A circular-cropped photo of a fisherman in a green jacket and cap, smiling broadly while holding up a very large fish with both hands. He stands outdoors with foliage in the background, presenting his catch proudly.

A related corollary: if everyone is flocking to one trend or tool, take a step back and evaluate what they may be missing.

Right now we’re seeing this with people hastily slapping AI buzzwords in their resumes and changing their titles to prompt engineers. The reality is this is about as prevalent right now as men holding a fish in dating app photos. Fish guy doesn’t stand out or differentiate from the crowd, and over time the ones jumping on the trend hurt guys who were genuinely fishing’s ability to showcase themselves on the app.

This doesn’t mean to ignore impacts of GenAI, but that step back can help you notice that investments in GenAI will mean more need for a wide variety of other types of roles that don’t get nearly as much attention or face the same intensity of competition as a result.

All this doesn’t take into account companies cannibalizing their original products to push GenAI features or signs that the space is likely to see some contraction soon as companies reassess how much money they want to pump into it without return.

Don't ask ChatGPT to write your communication

This doesn’t have a whole lot to do with whether GPT 4 can string some nice words together or arguments that using it well tends to take more time than writing yourself.

Think for a moment about the things we normally want to automate.

Boring stuff.

Toil work.

Repetitive tasks.

Now consider being a dating partner or hiring manager being on the receiving end of these messages and knowing they are the boring stuff to you.

Fundamentally, it’s starting off with pretty massive disrespect, which isn’t a great foundation for what we’ve described earlier.

Do your homework (for your own sake)

This is another recommendation that conflicts pretty heavily with mass-applying.

At the very least before interviewing with a new company, make sure to take the time to learn what they do or make, to try out their product if they have an affordable consumer offering, and to get up-to-speed with any news coverage or press releases about them. Talk to people in your network about what the company and teams are like.

When interviewing candidates for product and development roles, I was baffled at how few people spent even five minutes with our product before coming in to interview. If I had to guesstimate it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-20%.

When you’re able to walk into an interview and say something like “Hey, I see you have implemented feature A in this particular way. Can I ask why that was the better approach than this other industry standard?”, it stands out against a sea of apathy. Pair this with enthusiasm for their problem space and you will immediately be among a small fraction of top contenders from a culture fit standpoint.

One product leader candidate had timeboxed some time to explore our product and came prepared with impressions and recommendations—they effectively predicted roughly 80% of our six-month tentative roadmap.

They got the job and it wasn’t even close.

Don’t view this as unpaid work or purely to make yourself look good—do this for two main purposes that ultimately benefit you:

• So you can get more context to understand if you’re likely to enjoy and be successful at the company, and
• So you can ask better questions.

Bring interesting/tough questions

It’s common sense to avoid controversial or polarizing topics like religion and politics on dates, especially early on, and to stick to some pretty safe questions during interviews (and always saving your questions for the end of the interview).

But just because something’s common doesn’t mean it’s actually best practice.

What this tends to result in is people sticking to “safe” topics like the weather and local events, and asking predominately boring, self-centered questions.

I’m not saying you should berate or disrespect someone, but remember that you’re going on the date or interview to discover whether you like them. If a particular topic is likely to be polarizing and a dealbreaker if answered “incorrectly”, it’s much better to know that sooner rather than later after you’ve invested more time and effort and potentially grown attached.

And you can ease your way into more interesting questions. Instead of asking “what do you do for work?” consider asking “if you didn’t need money, how would you spend your time?” Ultimately, it’s a similar question but you will learn much more about them, and you will make a stronger, more positive impression. Try this with a neighbor today.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions that get at weaknesses or potential sources of future conflict. Ask about what you really want to know—if you’ve done your homework, you should have some.

And if you have a question during the course of an interview that is relevant to the current conversation, allow there to be some back and forth. As a hiring manager, more questions from an interviewee is normally a great sign, especially when they’re the kinds of questions that tell me that they’re informed about what we do and are setting themselves up to deliver the most value possible in their first few months if they came onboard.

If having respectfully delivered and on-topic questions is discouraged by the interviewer, that’s a signal about what to expect the company or team culture to be like if you joined.

Give the respect you hope to receive

Make sure you’re respecting the hiring team’s time when you prepare resumes and other materials. Go through line by line and ask yourself “does this add value?” and “why should anyone care?” If the answers aren’t clear, rewrite or strike it.

Another area where this often plays out is intentions. Let’s face it, we’re figuring out what we want as we go.

But when you figure out things aren’t working, have enough respect for the other side to communicate as soon as is practical.

If they would make radically different decisions if they knew what you knew, you’re likely leading them on only to pull the rug out from under them.

If they’re professional, they’ll keep their cool, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.

The tech world is a small world, and once trust is lost with someone, you may not have the opportunity to regain it. People want to work with those they trust and will often value a less capable but trustworthy person over a more capable but untrustworthy one.

What if I need something faster?

We've all got bills to pay

The reality is we all have to exist within a capitalist system, and while you can be single for years, you likely can’t go so long without an income.

The reality is not every job you take will be a great one, but if you can avoid environments that harm your mental health and learn new things from the role, it won’t be a waste.

You can choose other paths

Employee

• More work, less admin/meetings
• Less agency over the work

Executive

• More stable income/benefits than employee
• Picking right company, managing politics as important as impact

Founder

• High agency, high responsibility
• Build own team/culture
• Highly stressful

That said, it’s worth pointing out that the traditional employee path is not the only option out there.

You need money to get by but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need a job.

You aren’t a worker in a factory getting moved overseas—as a tech worker you are the means of production.

For those curious about dabbling in more of an entrepreneurial path, you might consider picking up part-time freelancing or consulting or producing content that delivers value to people with a problem you can help with. These can generally be done as a supplement to your day job and can allow you to ease into going solo down the road.

Check out the Multi-threaded Income Podcast—I’ve yet to find an episode I haven’t gotten value from. And Stacking the Bricks has training on the Sales Safari ethnographic approach that has helped many devs identify good problems they can address.

Thanks!

Any questions?

You can reach me at chazona@tingles.singles