Planning a rather unplanned livestream today at 13.30 CEST on the ol YouTube channel.

A slightly delayed Regular Programming episode just dropped. We are rebuilding our buffer and should be more .. regular .. going forward. Hopefully. I just realized, much like RealPlayer we are .. buffering. I'll see myself out. 

With 15 minutes left on the poll, apparently there's a lot of art in programming.

I also published a post on Contexts in Phoenix which people apparently found rather helpful. It has been doing the rounds in the Elixirverse. Give it a read if you find Contexts weird, hard or pointless.

I Often Move Things I Care About Close

I'm not the best at being open and vulnerable. I try to practice it but the way society shapes a young man does tend to put a tough facade on someone like me after a while. I can be jarringly transparent, open as a book, talk about all the emotions, the meta of life and feelings and absolutely fail to be emotionally available and vulnerable. But I try.

This line of thinking comes from some reflection I did about a company I really liked working at. I worked there on a preschool app. That later became a company I'm glad I got out from before it could really break my heart. The guy in charge of that company was a strong visionary and had a great hand with people and culture. He sweated that people should feel like they worked somewhere genuinely cool, interesting and made efforts to make the place ever more of a delight. While there was a ping-pong table there was also much more.

When we in the dev team complained enough about the open landscape he had parts of the office rebuilt so we could have an actual team room. That earned a lot of points with me. There's a lot more I could list. Point is, when he said yes he did so with enthusiasm and enabled significant follow-through.

The company really tried to make a positive difference while making a profit. In education. That's not an easy balance. I don't think it can be overstated how much of an influence this business was on what I view as a good company. I felt invested in the mission and I felt appreciated at the job. I didn't always trust the bosses to align with my values and ideas but the company consistently seemed to do right by people. It never felt petty either.

And right around the time I felt done with the work and some managerial changes made me feel like moving on the founder sold the company. I don't begrudge him that. I think he was done. Initially I was hopeful that it would turn out okay. It didn't, from my perspective. It was like the soul left the body and it started to slowly wilt. It sold to venture capital, has moved hands at least once more and then merged with other companies and whatnot. It really can't be the same company anymore.

I went on to start my own business and I don't think I recognized it as a defensive thing or a fear thing at the time. But I've built Underjord to very close to myself. I certainly play with others but until I set this team up everything absolutely came down to me. I focused on building close to my interest, my heart, my home. Building a business that supports spending time with my family.

I anchor my work and business on top of structures that would already break my heart if they for any reason were uprooted. As much foundation as one can have in an uncertain world. If I lose my ability to do my work, it would be crushing. If I lost my wife, it would be heart-wrenching. If we have to move house, it would always be a major upheaval. This is the gravity I gather my planet around.

I don't regret building on these foundations or putting extra care to keep important things close. But with more hindsight and looking across different things I do I can see that I have a lot of hesitation about investing myself deeply in other people's visions and ideas. I think I've always wanted to do my own thing to some extent but I've also invested myself in two companies I didn't run or control and seen them meet an end that was disappointing.

Investing oneself in another's vision takes vulnerability I think. Whether due to a certain naivete, a strong trust or by taking a chance. I don't particularly plan to follow anyone's mad plan to build TikTok for Turtles anytime soon. But I don't want to pretend that some of this self-suffiency isn't just a fear-response.

Running a team is cracking the armor on me here. I really do care for the people I work with. I can't stand working any other way. So it means I can't really build this unassailable position of what works for me and my family, only, without partially leaving other people on the outside. There is a difference between me, my family and my employees. Those are different relationships. But it immensely important to me to do right by employees if I am to have them at all. And that requires sharing a strand of destiny here and there. Either trusting them with some of my vision or investing in some of theirs.

There has to be an exchange, otherwise what are we even doing.

This is much like any collaboration means leaving some of your stuff out to make place for other people. And part of the magic is not knowing what that will produce. Writing this, thinking about this, I know that's true and it also makes me incredibly uncomfortable. So that's how I know it is worth exploring. Phew.

Do you invest yourself more in the visions of others? Are you an unassailable fortress? I'd be curious to hear. You can reach me at lars@underjord.io or on Twitter where I'm @lawik.

Thanks for your time, I appreciate you reading this.

- Lars Wikman