Aaron Smith’s Post

I spent some amazing time at a previous company before I joined Growblocks. I took a lot of valuable lessons, moments and friendships from that place. I wanted to share one thing that I learned there. Heartbeats ❤️ I don’t know who created this but wow, this was an amazing way to build: ✔️ Trust ✔️ Togetherness ✔️ Team spirit It was relatively simple. The team met once a week where each team member answered 3-4 questions about themselves. This could be personal and professional (.. personal usually trumped) We used one slide each time with the questions to answer. I threw a template together below and outline of each question we used. There is no rigid structure on what questions to use. Get creative and let the team impact that as well. Feel free to “steal” this and test it out - you won’t regret it.

Look past the titles, my community friends, your skills work across many types of roles. Don't know where to start? Think about what you most enjoy about community work & look for similar fields/roles. Take your community building skills (connections, relationship building) and use it as a superpower & to your advantage.

🔧 We've uncovered a glitch in our app, but fear not! The Coppersmith Recruitment team is on it, working tirelessly to fix things. If you're facing any hiccups or need support, hit us up at [email protected]. We appreciate your patience! 🚀 #CoppersmithRecruitment #TechGlitch #SupportTeam

Lyft Gives its Reputation a Lift The ride sharing company sent its customers an email on "the violence against innocent people in Israel and Gaza." It goes on to condemn anti-semitism "and all other forms of discrimination, worrying about potential danger to its drivers and customers while urging readers to use the app to report incidents. The intent of the message is good, reacting quickly to unfolding events. The conflation of "innocent people," while generally factual, makes it seem, unfortunately, that there's moral equivalency between the violent acts and perpetrators. There isn't. More clarity and context might avoid offending those who see no equivalency at this point in the conflict, and may never see one despite what happens next. Words matter as does the timing of the words addressing the Israel-Hamas war, which many higher education institutions, most recently the University of Pennsylvania, discovered to their chagrin. What are your brand values? Here are Lyft's. https://lnkd.in/exM5SK3F

Digitization is all about people, about the trust buildup of those around you – colleagues, vendors, customers, stakeholders, and network connections. That's why trust-building principles are a foundation of crenger.com software development. #crenger #plantdesigner #digitalengineering

Interviews yesterday were pretty fun! It’s nice to realize halfway through how much experience I have to pull from when answering questions about live service in gaming. So many scenarios are familiar thanks to the 8+ years of crisis management or general day to day happenings of community management. One of the things I really appreciate is how transparent and honest each panel was about diversity. Always ask how compensation stacks up across the studio, if folks feel heard and supported no matter their background, gender, or other. This is very much important on the community side as we not only work with numerous folks across a given studio and genuinely care about their day to day, but we also support the internal culture and “community” that is gamedev. When articles about layoffs, descrimination, or abuse pop up, we’re some of the first to push for answers. Not just to issue reactive comms to calm down a given fanbase, but in hopes of improving the lives of those who build the games that communities rally behind. Looking forward to more interviews and conversations. Much love.

Hey everyone, I’m back and proud to share that my next adventure is taking me to Reddit as their newest content designer! Before anything else, let’s get into a few shoutouts. A special thanks goes to these folks in particular–they were critical in many ways and this post couldn’t exist without the care they showed me: Nasikar Lezeau, David Rice, Aaron Avila, Donny Guy, Garry Guerrier, Michael Ochnicki, Natalie Remon-Simpson, MS, Ivan D. and Jahmal Heron. Here are a few things I kept in mind over the last few months: 1. You are more than your work For me, this mentality is an exercise in mindfulness. Prime example- I almost led this post off with “I’m Reddit’s newest content designer.” As cool as it sounds, that’s not who I am. I’m Tory, a person with more than a few passions, fears, quirks and aspirations, dreams (you get it). While the work I produce matters greatly to me (it always will), it no longer defines me. Somewhere along my journey I lost sight of who I was outside of the work I did for these companies. It took losing that to realize there’s more to me than what I create on the clock. I hope everyone (whether affected by a layoff or not) remembers that we're people first and employees somewhere further down the line. 2. Do what’s best for you I hit the ground running when it came to applying for new opportunities but that might not work for everyone. There’s value in every approach, but only you know what’s best for you and your families. Do that. There's a lot of noise out there on the best approach for layoffs and a lot of it is just that--noise. 3. Don’t expect “you” from other people Layoffs are generally one-sided conversations. If you’re going through one and you’re anything like me, you’ve spent a lot of time asking questions you’ll never get answers to. I always want to know why things happen or why people do (or don’t do) things. The problem is, if left unchecked, it becomes a distraction from reality. Thoughts like “Well, I don’t understand this because I would have done x,y,z.” didn’t bring me any closure, they brought me the opposite, resentment at first and then sadness and a pinch of bitterness later. I had to accept the fact that there are some things I’ll never know. Sometimes people handle situations differently than you would. And that’s ok. Hearing one side of the story is tough. Changing your life’s path suddenly is tough. Layoffs are TOUGH. And unfortunately, that’s just a life thing. But choosing to focus my time and energy on the folks who actively showed up for me, had my back, encouraged and uplifted me made all the difference for my mental state. I think I’ve rambled enough here for now, but as always if we’ve worked together in the past and you need anything at all, my dm’s are open. I’m happy to move forward in my life with a new opportunity and I’m happy to help anyone else out there do the same however I can. See? I told y’all this wouldn’t keep me down for long.

👨🏻💻 Engineer Spotlight: Breno Sapucaia dos Santos Magalhães We're excited to shine our next Engineer Spotlight on Breno, our Software Engineer! Here's an inside look at some of the awesome stuff he's been up to in and out of his role at hotglue: 🧐 What inspired you to become a software engineer, and how did your journey lead you to hotglue? My brother inspired me to become a software engineer since I was young. He introduced me to really old tech gadgets and video games, and I found so much freedom in them. I remember coming across an HTML book one day and thought, "hey, that's not hard to do". Now here I am coding for a living! I came across hotglue because an old friend of mine was an engineer at hotglue. He was able to connect me with the CEO, and it turns out that I was a good fit for what hotglue was looking for in a front-end engineer! ⭐ What aspects of your role do you find most fulfilling and exciting? The most fulfilling part about being a full-stack engineer (I started as a front-end, but soon moved to full-stack) is being able to complete hard tickets, like Redis improvements on the back-end or our UX/UI redesigns on the front-end. Being able to positively impact customers and increase my skills while doing it is the best part. 🏀 Beyond coding, what hobbies or activities are you passionate about? I love gaming, but I've been spending more time playing basketball to train for @basquete.kapiva - we are currently in the playoffs! Being able to have time for my hobbies is something that I really appreciate about my job. What’s the point if you can't live your life? I'm really happy to be part of a company that understands that!

A few words about career progress with Future Mind in an interview with two of our Mobile Development Team Leaders, Artur and Kuba.