Personal Development

Personal development is an ongoing process of self-improvement either in your career, in your education, in your personal life.

Personal Development Featured

When Your Manager Asks the Right Question: A Journey to Self-Awareness

Today, my daughter turns 5, so I think it is a good moment for me to take a new leap on my blog and start tackling an important topic: mental health. Over the past few years, I have interacted and spoken with thousands of people who were at a stage

Leadership Featured

What's Your Blind Spot as A Leader?

Today, I want to talk about something that we all face but don't always recognise: leadership blind spots. You know, those sneaky little things that can trip us up and hold us back, even when we're giving it our all. As someone who's been leading cross-functional teams in the IT

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Leadership Featured

Unleashing Quality Excellence: A QA Manager's 100-Day Plan 🚀🎯

Leadership Featured

Unlocking Your Team's Potential: A Proven Model for Performance Evaluation

Hey there, fellow tech leaders! Today, I want to share with you my go-to model for evaluating the performance of my software development team. It's a game-changer that has helped me identify areas for improvement, set clear goals, and celebrate the successes of my fabulous team members. The skills matrix

Leadership Featured

Shielding Your Team from Organizational Chaos

Have you ever worked on a software project that felt constantly pulled in different directions? Where priorities changed on a whim, deadlines seemed impossible, and no one seemed to be on the same page? That's what I call "organizational chaos." It's a common problem in software development, but you must

Personal Development Featured

Whenever you feel stuck, ask yourself these 17 questions

Coaching has become a widely used term in recent times. However, when effective coaching is utilized, it can significantly expand your perspectives. If you can't afford a coach to help you generate ideas and solutions to a problem or challenge, you can learn to ask yourself the right questions. This

Leadership Featured

Are you a junior manager? Here's my cheat sheet to help you navigate the role's challenges

Moving from being an individual contributor to a management role can feel like a giant leap. It's like realizing you need a whole new set of skills, and balancing your technical and managerial duties adds even more complexity. When I stepped from a software tester to a management position, I

Personal Development Featured

The Ingredients Of Rediscovering Joy

If you're looking to spice up your mood and find joy or rediscover joy, I think you got to the right place. Of course, there are times in our lives when every day feels like a struggle and we can't seem to escape the blues. But you know what? After

Personal Development Featured

What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming Manager to My Peers

Becoming a manager is not an overnight process. Although your role and job description may change suddenly, I view it as a transformational journey. It's similar to becoming a parent. You become a parent the day your baby is born, but it takes many years of experience to master parenting.

Personal Development

Best Memoirs I Have Read

If you love reading memoirs, here are some of my favorites for you to enjoy! When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi 🎖️Rating: 4/5⭐️ Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins 🎖️Rating: 3/5⭐️ Born a Crime by Trevor Noah 🎖️Rating: 4/5⭐️ Educated by Tara Westover 🎖️Rating: 4/5⭐

Lifestyle Featured

My 2023 in Pictures

It has become a tradition now to create the "My 202x in Pictures" blog post and it's a pleasure for me to go over my camera roll and revisit all the great memories I made this year. If you haven't seen my previous ones, here's a sneak peek of "My

Personal Development Featured

Stop Fighting the Impostor Syndrome And Accept It

It has been months, perhaps even years since I intended to write this article. However, something at work triggered me these days, and I felt compelled to put my thoughts on paper. What happened? During a 1:1 meeting with one of my direct reports, the conversation unexpectedly turned into

Personal Development

How Does a DEVELOPER See Testers

This is a series of blog post interviews, aiming to help testers understand how different IT departments see the role of a tester. Every tester wants to become a better version of himself, yet not everyone has all the missing pieces to do that. Hopefully, these interviews will give you

Personal Development

My Story on How I Improved My Presentation Skills

💡Did you know that public speaking is one of the biggest fears people have? For many of us, before giving a presentation to a group of people, our limbic system decides if we have to "fight or flight". I'm showing you in this article how I manage to keep my

Personal Development Featured

Fake It 'Til You Make It, No Thanks. Visualization, Yes Please.

If you have never heard about the phrase "fake it 'til you make it" then imagine the following scenario - you're having a 9 to 5 job, a family with a toddler and after you're finishing up your working hours you have to spend another three hours being a trainer

Personal Development

Personal Development Books I Recommend

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. 🎖️Rating: 4/5⭐️ Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones 🎖️Rating: 4/5⭐️ Contagious: Why Things Catch On 🎖️Rating: 5/5⭐️ Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability 🎖️Rating: 3/

Personal Development

15 Smart Questions to Ask Your Interviewer

📌 I am writing this article from the interviewer position for you, the one looking for a new job and being involved in several interviews. There's no surprise that the current IT market is fast-evolving, with lots of opportunities, and lots of big and small companies creating software products, and nowadays,

Personal Development

The One With The "Team Didn't Want You Anymore"

This post is based on a real story. There's no secret I'm reading a lot of literature on how to be a good manager, how to be a good leader, and how to be "a human" at work, like many of us are doing these days, right? And while reading

Personal Development Featured

The Easiest Way To Get Into a Leadership Role

Before revealing the secret recipe, please accept my apologies - the title of this post is a big buzzword placed there with the intent to draw your attention. Why? Because I know many of you are seeking to get into a leadership role and I truly believe that sharing my

Personal Development

7 Things I Have Learned In One Year After Returning To Work From Maternity Leave

I am celebrating one year since I am back to work after my maternity leave! That's a sign that my baby is now a toddler, a toddler with a great personality and the prettiest smile I have ever seen, but hey, that's a completely different story, a story that every

Personal Development

4 Tips For Staying Engaged With Your Professional Self During Maternity Leave

Oh well, my beloved moms and "moms to be" readers, this one is for you. I'm sorry, gentlemen. For many women, maternity leave is the best time of their lives as you're spending your whole time pampering, caring, loving, snuggling your little human. And the feelings that come with these

Personal Development

7 Things I Have Learned In The Past Year

In 2018 I've written a blog post illustrating all the good things the previous year (2017) had taught me. Yeah, I know, it's been a while, here we are in the first day of 2021 and meanwhile a whole pandemic thing hit us. But, looking back and reading again that

Personal Development

Things NOT To Do When An Employee Resigns

"How do you know when is the time to resign and leave a company?" someone asked in a tweet recently and I left a reply saying that "is similar to knowing when to leave from a relationship". In many aspects, I do believe that these two relations are pretty similar

Software Testing

More Than Interviewing For Testers

I took part in a bunch of interviews in the past years and during this time, I've worked on polishing my set of questions to be addressed to our candidates. For a long period, being a candidate to an interview was like a nightmare for me, and have tried to

Software Testing

I Wish I Knew More About...

Picking the right battles. Or picking the right areas to focus on. Why? Well, because in software testing you can easily get assaulted by a tone of technologies, methodologies, frameworks, and tools you are required to master and to learn this or that, and might become scary as you get