I will be at Code BEAM Berlin where I will do what I think is our first live episode of BEAM Radio. It will be a short and tight 30 minutes with .. oh you know .. Saša Jurić and José Valim.

The topic is about Fully Utilizing the BEAM and I hope to pick their respective brains for what they believe we in the community should be looking at to further take advantage of our rather unique runtime.

If you will be in Berlin, come up, say hi. I love to meet new people in the community.

Without peer

I have spent a lot of time in my career more peerless than peerful. That is, I've often not had anyone quite at my level of experience in the particular thing we are doing. Sometimes I've had supposed peers the were probably as experienced but that were so deferential to whatever I wanted that they couldn't quite function as peers.

Every time I've run into working with someone who is also used to the tech lead role, who also has a good chunk of experience in the same tech and who is also driven. It is magic. Someone who pushes back, discusses, asks questions and brings their own ideas for solutions.

I recently had a new tech lead arrive at a client where I've mostly been the ad-hoc interim tech lead. I've missed having someone have real opinions about my work and how I do things. I don't always enjoy "being questioned" which is what it can feel like when someone is trying to figure out the reason things are done in a certain way. But some humility gets you far and suddenly you have someone suggesting new good ideas for how to evolve what you've built.

In Elixir I've managed to get myself a good set of peers in the community. So when I'm doing public work and all that I can generally get input when I want it and I have people I learn from. In the professional space this is not always the case and it is refreshing when it happens.

If you can tamp down any fear of inferiority, manage your impostor syndrome and be humble to your own imperfections a new peer can be an incredibly asset. Assuming they are a reasonable person themselves. If you work well together it can be a whole brother in arms situation (sibling in weaponry?) and something both reassuring and motivating.

Being peerless, the one people look to for answers but who doesn't get answers from anyone, is kind of fun. It can be a bit of a boost to the ego (watch it..). But in the end it is kind of lonely and it will only exercise parts of your skillset. Parts of your skills in collaboration and hashing out a design risk stagnating without a proper foil.

Are you peerless in your craft? Have you been peerful? What have peers meant to you? You can reply to this email or poke me on the fedi @lawik@fosstodon.org.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate your attention.