PhD application saga:

So, the recommenders showed up. And one by one, the letters are rolling in. I am a little hopeful.

And also anxious since there's a mere 4% acceptance rate.

But now, we shall wait...

🐀
*Goes into hiding to anxiously binge-eat*

Finally resigned.
I didn't hate my work but I need to grow. I was 4 years experienced and I was working on entry level positions. That's because for getting promoted I need to work like I'm on the next level for a year consistently, I don't know if I was working on next level but I felt confident that I can, so I switched companies finally. I don't know if work will be a lot what will I do but I have enough hard skills, my soft skills might not be that good but I'm finally doing something to achieve growth in that area. I'll be scared, anxious, helpless and all but let it be. I'll sprint, rest and repeat.

Story time on my job hunt: Currently interviewing with Google during my notice period.

I always had a love hate relationship with Google. Unlike my hate towards Meta or Amazon, where I had a reason to hate them for how ill intended they are, I never had a valid reason to dislike or hate Google apart from the fact that they steal my data.

That's it. That's my only reason why I hate Google. But I fell in love with their products during my trip to Istanbul and how throughout my journey, Google products were there for me to solve all my needs.

As y'all know, I was treated badly during my Meta interview, last October. With Google, the experience is on another level.

People are fucking smart and ingenious, but at the same time very polite, humble, and respectful.

During my 3 interviews so far (2 more remaining), each one of them made me so comfortable that I was more anxious before the interview than during or after.

They supported me during each question they asked. They made me felt heard and focused on my strength, instead of the weaknesses (or trying to break me down unnecessarily).

The interview syllabus is so fucking vast, and recruiters know so much that they helped me not only with preparation material, but also guided me personally. Haven't seen such knowledgeable recruiters.

The questions were dynamic in nature and thankfully because of my preparation, I was able to answer them most.

Overall, the culture at Google seems brilliant and an environment where one can flourish. No wonder companies are trying to copy every aspect of how Google operates and no surprise that Google is doing well at scale.

I feel so high on emotions (positively), after these interviews that I wonder how would it be to work at Google with such phenomenal people and exceptional environment.

I am Done! I am extremely burnt out and unhappy with my work. I have been doing this professionally for over 5 years now and much longer than that unprofessionally.
This new company I joined finally gave me the salary I always dreamt of but now I am extremely unhappy and depressed and anxious all the time. And I don't like the work I am doing. I don't like the team. I hate being isolated at home for over 2 years, working from home. I had a mental breakdown in the middle of the meeting the other day. And after that, I said. that's it. I am done. So, I gave the resignation letter. I don't know what I am gonna do. But I sure as hell can't do this shit any longer. But now, the fucking hr is making it even more difficult for me by not letting me leave without serving the notice period. I told her I am on fucking medication and I am having severe mental health issues. Now, she wants to see the medical certificate. Or I have to pay two months' salary. WTF? If I had that kind of money lying around, I wouldn't have slaved myself away at your shitty company, would I?
I went to my psychiatrist whom I have been seeing consulting for the last couple of years now. I asked for a medical certificate and he thinks it'll hamper my future career. So, he said I should get a certificate from a general physician. So, that's the world we live in then? You can't even speak the truth? And the way HR is behaving over the mail makes me feel like a total slave. I mean I am not at all fit for work these days, and it feels like, if she had her way, she would tie me down to a chair and ask me to push out code. what the fucking fuck. This is some fucked up industry and I think I am finally done with software development. But now, I don't have any idea what I am gonna do with my life or how am I gonna earn money. I am so burnt out and anxious that even the thought of working again gives me panic attacks. even working from home. What the fuck do I do?

Bout to go on a first date with this girl I been vibing with for a week and I am like getting seriously anxious like wtf. There’s no bug harder than dealing with what’s going on my head rn. Pray for me 🙏🏾

My boss has zero emotions and empathy. How ironic for someone into product management!

He is 100% logical, maybe more. He is smart that way and yes, that is a skill to learn from him. He has good product management hard skills.

But, he is an emotional void. Zero humane feelings. He treats everyone like a machine. He is overly obsessed with documentation and wants every single word to be his way.

My writing and communication skills are his pet peeve.

Last Monday, our CTO was in office and he wanted to meet me. I was working remotely, so leads notified me. Even though our CTO runs a monkey business, I was eager and excited to meet him.

This week, my boss will be in office. He texted me to catch-up on coming Monday. I am anxious and worried even though my boss has great skills in our work function.

Furthermore, I find my boss overly critical about everything I do. Maybe it's not me and he does it with everyone, because I haven't been part of a group connect, so no idea. But dude.. give me a break.. give me some room to breathe..

What I heard from another junior, who joined us last month, is that one of the folks who resigned in past was because of my boss.

Feel like that I will move on from my dream organisation as soon as I complete little more than one year.

And apart from that, I scratched my eye glasses, Reddit permanently banned my account for no fault of mine, wanted to catch-up with a cousin, who is going through a rough phase, to cheer up the lad, but he won't answer our calls.

What a shitty weekend.

And yes, my boss is a hipster in the way he dresses and thinks.

He literally keeps saying that we need to use dark patterns like click baits, incite FoMo in our app users, add feedback loops, etc.

Do you ever get anxious and do some work to calm down but then you forget about time and stay up until 6am finishing two features which were due in a month?

Background: I'm on autism spectrum so I get anxious easily and social situations just generally fuck me up. I also have social anxiety disorder. Well, it's just an extension of my ASD really. Making phone calls in uncertain situation is the worst thing ever and I do not do it.

F*ck Microsoft certification exams. I applied for exam accommodations due to my background. (Someone is constantly watching you, you can't move even your eyes off the screen, yeah, screw that. I need to fidget/stim a lot.)

Got accepted. Now I just need to reserve an exam time THROUGH PHONE.

Someone reeeaaally didn't think this through. Normal exam can be reserved online. >.>

I'm so anxious about exam results. This could be my last real semester if only I don't fail.

!rant Taking the kittens (they’re like 5-6 years old at this point but they’re always going to be kittens to me) to our old vet (45 minute drive from where we currently live) in a couple hours when they don’t like car rides or the vet and when we know they need to get vaccine shots and we’re not allowed to go inside with them. It’s the first time we’ve ever taken them to the vet and not been able to be there with them. 😭 I’m so nervous/anxious/scared for the little guys.

Wish me luck, friends.

I feel like a sailor waiting for an upcoming voyage. Restless, yet hopeful, yet a bit anxious about what will happen.

Also, am unemployed now. Lol. Feels awesome... Except for the financial part. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, am making way too many philosophical decisions as I stand at the edge of an important phase of my life. And rediscovering a part of my personality I forgot existed.

Anyways, hopefully future brings more robots, more AI, more fantastic things to build, and more money and success.

Does time tracking makes you anxious? I just had a small project for a fixed price(no time tracking) and I felt so much less anxiety while working. This one ticking clock makes my work so much stressful.

So I met this person via a social platform.

They were absolutely silly and weren't able to hold a conversation. So I, like a normal person, just stopped trying to keep things alive.

Over the years, I have realised and learnt that if a person is interested in being friends, they'd put in efforts and I alone will not have to drag things on my shoulder.

I started cutting out people right, left, and center who I felt were taking advantage of me or using me in some way or another.

I ended up saving a lot of time and energy. I no longer feel drained or anxious about something not working out. Not dragging saved me from draining.

Anyway, they reach out to me again after few weeks and I was like let's give it a try to establish a friendship, because befriending people is my weak point.

The cycle repeats. At first I thought it must be because of the asynchronous nature of the platform so I drop my Telegram Id in case they preferred an IM approach.

I swear in the name of sweet lord, the retard does the same behaviour. So, I stopped communication.

And one fine day, the person tells me that they lack social skills and want to learn how to make friends and stuff.

Very fair point. So, me being me, gave them a few tips and critically pointed out their behaviour on how they reply with a one liner after every 2 or 3 business days.

Absolutely no change in their behaviour. They kept texting me the same.

At this point, I was like why am I doing it? I could find better people easily. Because for me, communication is everything. I cannot function without a good communication between two living beings.

So, I asked them why are they even trying to learn social skills when they barely implement it and don't want to change to which they reply saying that so they can use it to befriend people and network to getter better job opportunities.

I fuck them off.

And fuck such people who have intentions, are not clear enough about it, and play people for their own selfish gains.

And this where another learning I got from @scout is have boundaries.

Why do all good people in my life leave? Damn it! I need those good people back and be friends with them and not retards who cannot even communicate beyond one liner.

I feel very anxious when developers interviewing me asks
1. is nodejs single threaded or multithreaded ?
2. How does node handle requests
3. How do u manage concurrency
4. What is event emitter and callback.

Dude i have given you my resume, without knowing these things i could never do that ?

I feel the discussion must be based on concepts and general problem solving rather than focusing on one technology. Tech can always be learnt.

i have been applying for jobs recently, and after getting some HR interviews that evolved to tech interviews, i just cancelled them all...

Every company seems to have hacker rank, and online coding sessions as tech interview stages which really stress me out. Its like everyone thinks they are google and its ok to make people go theough this pressure to join them.

I dont mind being given 10 days to implement a complex project, after which im either in or not. But 20 mins to solve something online while either the interviewer is watching me or the automated test is waiting to filter my application out... i get anxiety just thinking about that..

so im gonna stick with my current job for now, and focus on building my own business slowly on the side. I really felt anxious because of those tech interviews these past weeks and i feel so much better after cancelling all of them.

if a decent company comes along with the project approach, id love to apply, but otherwise ill just stick to where I am for now. dont know if im being immature or irresponsible career wise or if this decision will blow up in my face

stay tune to find out !

I took some days off and they are almost over but I still feel like shit and the idea of going back next week makes me anxious. But I work from home, earn more money than everyone I know outside the company (despite the equity politics that makes them pay me like a junior instead of a senior) and have more benefits than the ones I’m offered via LinkedIn, so quitting would be stupid.

Our team is only 3 members because the company fired too many people. Most tickets are max priority bugs and we can barely work on our team goals, which are also max priority, and when they say the clients with problems are getting angry I feel like they are going to get angry at me. That and I’ve been getting after hours messages during my time off telling me to hurry up because the client had been waiting for more than a week, and I didn’t know if I was supposed to work or to explain I was on vacations (feels like sick days) or apologize for leaving before solving the ticket.

When the test you spent an hour writing passes on the first try… not sure if I should be happy or anxious.

I read once "productivity is elimination of distractions" or something like that.
And honestly, it has worked so far.

Motivation is even better tho. But if I'm really unmotivated, or anxious, I subconsciously create distractions; then I have to deal with me inner child. Point is, motivation has a direct line to productivity, so I usually don't do what I can't bring yourself to do.

Finally got rid of my old job I ranted about so much. Started a new one on Monday. A bit anxious and terrified (there is a lot to learn) but it feels good. The team is fun and they know what they are doing. BUT most importantly: they know how to plan projects and know how to intervene if a project is about to run out of resources. NICE.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes

!dev

1. It's one of those few times in life that listening to Lq's Numb doesn't make me feel less anxious. Or Somewhere I Belong. Either way, anxiety levels are on all time high.

2. I have completely lost appetite. Usually at this point in time I'd go to doctor and ask for Xanax or something similar, to chill for a few days. But covid. I ain't going to any clinic, plus, ain't nobody got time for that.

3. On top of everything, I am also PMSing. The lack of energy, times n. (n>10)

4. Struggling to get out of bed for hours is now a reality.

5. I'm glad ("glad" is exaggeration tho) this will pass in a few weeks. I am hanging on to that hope and experience tells me it will pass. But my feelings are like "nah, we doomed. Let's just run away. Or just sleep until it all passes or we die of starvation."

6. My brain must work for the next few days. If I have to push it by drowning it in sugar, I will. But I'm also obese rn. Well, I guess it's "Hello diabetes!".

7. My hands and feet are cold. Like, freezing cold. Meanwhile, the rest of me is sweating. This sucks. Ngl.

8. I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle. Like, those last stabby stabs moments in a battle where you know you're gonna fall down soon. I know this feeling of doom and gloom is PMS related, but it's there. I have no solution for that aside from nicotine and sugar.

9. I can't even cry. Which is sad.
... Do you see what's happening there? That's the loop I'm in.

One of the funniest memories of my teenage years is when I fucked a girl and she was anxious about her parents might hear us, so I pressed play on her laptop and “I can never be your woman” by White Town started playing, and we were too busy to chose another one. Still one of my favorite songs 😂

It was making me anxious that I was the only one doing a PhD among my close friends. I actually was feeling like I'm not good enough for it, because those around me didn't feel like they're good enough for it. (ridiculous, I know. But it is what it is)

And then, one of my bestfriends went for her PhD. Her situation is complicated, so she actually didn't have much of a choice. But now I am motivated and feel like I might actually be able to do it. 🙂 Mainly because now I can at least ask someone close when I have stupid questions. 😁

It is starting to feel like less of an strange idea, and more like proper work. 😁

This is a continuation of my previous rant...
I did it! I overcame my anxiety to work on the dev database (don't worry, I made backups). At first I got really anxious and almost panicked at the thought of possibly messing up and procrastinated a few minutes. After the intial anxiety has passed I just did it and it worked. I didn't destroy anything nor did I made any mistakes. One step closer to becoming more confident when working with company assets

Maybe I am just sensitive.. but sometimes I feel that my new manager is being a little harsh on me.

Again, he might behave the same with everyone and I am assuming that it's just me.

1.5 months in the new job and not a single good comment/feedback I recieved from him. It's not that he criticises me or my work, or calls me a dumbass.

But whenever I submit anything for review, I get a ton of feedback where he expects everything to extreme precision.

He guides me, explains me post my failure, and has specific pointers of what he wants/how he wants things.

But all I am given is a set of documents to read initially with an expectation that I have to figure things out. When I am not upto the mark, he then guides me.

Why I worry?

1. I am on probation and this place is a start-up, don't want to get fired.

2. They got me as a Sr PM (which was also my previous role where I excelled), so I fear that expectations would be high from me. Failing to deliver those might get me in trouble.

3. He isn't a micro manager and quite supportive, but his communication style isn't working for me (so far).

Somehow, as always, I am getting along well with everyone in the org and everyone is talking good about me.

But with my immediate boss, the imposter syndrome kicks in real hard and I am super insecure. Every time I have to interact with him, I get super stressed and anxious.

I know things take time, but given that I am a Sr PM (and my boss expects me to be a lead PM, a position higher than current), I feel if the expectations are not delivered then I might get fucked.

my life is looking up, everything seems neat. what happens to my anxiety disorder? well, now I'm anxious because i feel like i forgot something bad, or like something bad is supposed to be happening. ffs someone trade brains with me pls

I am honestly flattered by the fact that @scor really, unironically thinks that “by the frequency and varsity and depth you post and comment and self imaging”, I can't be a single person, and there is a whole TEAM behind me!

Honestly, I don't care about insults. Neither yours, nor of that schmuck that is salty because he posted some stupid misogynic shit a while ago, I reposted it as a screenshot, and he was obliterated by the community.

I'm only posting this because people out there legitimately think I'm a hive mind. It's not every day that you're told whatever you do cannot be done by one person. To me, this is more of a compliment.

Looking past devRant, I would like to meet @scor and other haters IRL. I have no hard feelings. I'm just an autistic person with bipolar disorder. I post whatever I want, as it's somewhat therapeutic.

You don't have to acknowledge it, but here's an honest, personal message: if you at any point compare yourself to me and lose, remember, my personality and creativity is a negligent, slight payoff for a literal hell that is a mental disorder. My thoughts are thinking themselves. I can't control them. My body is twitching constantly. I'm both actively anxious and always tired. My intellect suffers a massive penalty in a depressive phase, like now.

Finding at least some positive side to that hellscape is absolutely vital, and any person with a disorder can tell you that.

The fact that I'm social, I have friends and a job is a miracle. I'm privileged. I've seen a lot of people less lucky than me. They weren't able to monetize their troubled, sharp brain. I was.

Folk might find this entertaining, interesting, or something else, anyhow, I just got banned from a dating group, most of the last conversation for archaeological purposes:

---------------------------
Admin
Mornings..so you will notice we have less members ..admin is removing any one that hasn't interacted within last 6 months that's all ??

User
You know only 2% of folk in a group talk !

Admin
thank you for pointing out the obvious

User
What I mean is, if you throw out 98% of people just because they don't speak in the group, that doesn't strike me as the best thing to do for everyone.

Admin
no I throw out the ones that never interact..the ones that are now in relationships since they join the group in the beginning and when the break our rules...it doest always have to be the admin team doing all the work.. especiall… See more

User
If you allowed folk to PM in private without first asking permission in public, the shy folk could interact.
In other groups it isn't unusual for such shy/anxious folk to message me, and ask me to rely a question into the group for them, as … See more

Admin
These rules were set into place for a reason due to untoward behaviour in the past..members have approached an admin to gain permission from those they are interested in..and members safety is paramount..maybe you will find the rules easier to abide to… See more

User
I'm not struggling, I@m just thinking of everyone else.

User
Can't you keep that rule, and not throw out 98% of folk just because they aren't talking in public ?
I don't see what benefit doing that achieves.

Admin
because it cuts the chaft from the straw and we would prefer quality over quantity in the group

User
Is that we anyone else but you though. ??
Perhaps we need a vote !

Admin
you go ahead mate and set up what ever vote you would like...it would be nice to see you do summit else instead of having digs at my posts the whole time..

User
Isn't it scaring away the very people the group is supposed to help ?
Since some folk are single because they aren't the life and soul of the party.… See more

User
When have I ever dug at a post of yours !

User
Since you are in charge, shouldn't you be the one asking us the members what we want..
I'd like a change of the rules here.… See more

Admin
like I said do what you want if you think it will get the group interacting more ..

User
Maybe I can see with an attitude like that why you are still single..

Admin
whoa...
How fooking dare you...I ain't single for a start and tbh your attitude has been pissing me off for weeks .everything is always a negative with you..your obviously not finding what your looking for here so you know where the door is ...
----------------------

Feeling super anxious and going through analysis paralysis

Finally, I finally got my dream job, but three weeks after starting, I will say I am going into depression.

First, I have to learn a new language (the lang is less than 7 years old) on the job. The language is so different from the paradigm I am used to-from OOP to functional programming, it has very little confusing documentation and a small but growing community.

Though I have been able to show some work, goddamit, it's taking me blood and sand to adjust and be productive.

My onboarding tasks are fixing bugs and implementing a feature, and it has been like walking in a dark tunnel.

I have to face my problem alone as all the devs in the team have swapped.

I rarely sleep, and I recently started to have an existential crisis!

Also, I work part-time on another project, and my output is so poor due to the fact that I am trying to adjust to the new job. Just this evening, I got a call from the manager who was passively aggressive, complaining and asking me to rethink (a passive way of saying "you are fired, if you do not...").

I am feeling anxious. It is taking so much time daily to adjust to the new job.

Will the depression pass?

Okay so, I’ve recently started going through our products’ security postures and their teams’ related practices and processes. I knew things were in a bad state, but I have to admit I’m a bit anxious at how bad things are… and it’s not like nobody cared or anything, quite the opposite; the teams are quite motivated about cyber sec. It’s just that they don’t know what the fuck to do and where to start even if they did.

Okay, that’s my job to figure out the roadmap to improving their security posture and processes and help them implement it. If it wasn’t bad enough that there’s half a dozen products whose cyber sec roadmaps I need to prioritise and manage somehow, I heard this week that due to some organisational rearrangements, the number of products under my stern guidance will nigh on double at some point very soon…

I need a team. Give me a team.

Hi guys, this is my first post, I am currently doing an internship as a backend intern and I'm constantly anxious if I'm good enough I come from a no name college and everybody here is from a top tier college and I constantly worry that I am not on an equal footing as other interns.

Make no mistake I work hard, yet I start to feel insecure. I hope this feeling goes away when I get more experience.

I work out of HQ office of my org and perhaps the only one from my team.

My boss will be working out of this office as well.

He is currently visiting, before he relocates full time.

I have my first in-person meeting with him. I am super anxious and want to avoid it at all cost.

This is more of an advice seeking rant. I've recently been promoted to Team Leader of my team but mostly because of circumstances. The previous team leader left for a start-up and I've been somehow the acting Scrum Master of the team for the past months (although our company sucks at Scrum generally speaking) and also having the most time in the company. However I'm still the youngest I'm my team so managing the actual team feels a bit weird and also I do not consider myself experienced enough to be a Technical lead but we don't have a different position for that.

Below actions happen in the course of 2-3 months.

With all the things above considered I find myself in a dire situation, a couple of months ago there were several Blocker bugs opened from the Clients side / production env related to one feature, however after spending about a month or so on trying to investigate the issues we've come to the conclusion that it needs to be refactorised as it's way too bad and it can't be solved (as a side note this issue has also been raised by a former dev who left the company). Although it was not part of the initial upcoming version release it was "forcefully" introduced in the plan and we took out of the scope other things but was still flagged as a potential risk. But wait..there's more, this feature was part of a Java microservice (the whole microservice basically) and our team is mostly made of JS, just one guy who actually works as a Java dev (I've only done one Java course during uni but never felt attracted to it). I've not been involved in the initial planning of this EPIC, my former TL was an the Java guy. Now during this the company decides that me and my TL were needed for a side project, so both of us got "pulled out" of the team and move there but we've also had to "manage" the team at the same time. In the end it's decided that since my TL will leave and I will take leadership of the team, I get "released" from the side project to manage the team. I'm left with about 3 weeks to slam dunk the feature.. but, I'm not a great leader for my team nor do I have the knowledge to help me teammate into fixing this Java MS, I do go about the normal schedule about asking him in the daily what is he working on and if he needs any help, but I don't really get into much details as I'm neither too much in sync with the feature nor with the technical part of Java. And here we are now in the last week, I've had several calls with PSO from the clients trying to push me into giving them a deadline on when will it be fixed that it's very important for the client to get this working in the next release and so on, however I do not hold an answer to that. I've been trying to explain to them that this was flagged as a risk and I can't guarantee them anything but that didn't seem to make them any happier. On the other side I feel like this team member has been slacking it a lot, his work this week would barely sum up a couple of hours from my point of view as I've asked him to push the branch he's been working on and checked his code changes. I'm a bit anxious to confront him however as I feel I haven't been on top of his situation either, not saying I was uninvolved but I definetly could have been a better manager for him and go into more details about his daily work and so on.

All in all there has been mistakes on all levels(maybe not on PSO as they can't really be held accountable for R&D inability to deliver stuff, but they should be a little more understandable at the very least) and it got us into a shitty situation which stresses me out and makes me feel like I've started my new position with a wrong step.

I'm just wondering if anyone has been in similar situations and has any tips or words of wisdom to share. Or how do you guys feel about the whole situation, am I just over stressing it? Did I get a good analysis, was there anything I could have done better? I'm open for any kind of feedback.

Since the last rant is talking about brains, I feel like this summer heat is frying my brain. It's been some of the weirdest days for me these last couple of days. I cannot focus on anything. Cannot make sane decisions or conclusions. I'm more depressed/sad. More disorganized. I don't want to eat anything. I'm sky-high anxious. I'm more shy than ever in public. I have no reason for that but I don't what's happening.

I've never been diagnosed but I'm certain I have ADHD, I get distracted extremely easily with absolutely "whatever" and it completely destroys my performance, I bet people think I'm dumb when in fact when I'm finally able to concentrate I can do things. It fucking sucks, feels like a curse. I realized I failed college because of this. Now I fear losing my job.

Right now I'm about to embark upon a great night of trying to catch up with shit I should have done earlier, which I *might* be able to focus on. I have no fun in life because I don't allow myself to, I somehow attained a relationship with someone and now that too is going to shambles because I spend so much time *trying* to do things and can't bring myself to doing them, and that time is stolen from that which I should spend with people I love and just enjoying life. I fucking hate this. I fucking hate it.

Also, I have this feature which I'm supposed to implement, and they tell me it's just an MVP which we'll use to test waters to see if people will use the functionality, it just has to work... which it does by now, but then they keep adding things before ever releasing. I feel so anxious about this and I didn't even take the job for good pay because I was desperate to leave another job which wasn't even in development. I don't want to fail this, I want to prosper as a developer. I actually wanted to do systems programming and game development, but here I am doing web shit.

Oh well. I shall throw myself unto thee.

Nothing gets me so anxious like endless work meetings that have nothing to do with my part of the task. Why am I even here? Should I understand this? Why is it taking 2 hours? Can I finally kill myself?

So I’m a new team lead for a group of awesome engineers. I feel like I’m too essential to this team, apparently they don’t do quite as well when I’m on holidays which worries me. I often try to explain what i know but it doesn’t seem to change the situation. I’m not getting specific feedback from anyone on how to improve my ability to disseminate information which might be because folks are intimidated/generally anxious. Does anyone here have any strategies to help others to grow and share your knowledge? Book recommendations are welcome too!