Hi and welcome back, brave human!
I'm going to be honest with you, the last few months were rough. And I owe you an explanation for the silence.
I left my last job. Took a month off. Started a new one at Databricks as a Solutions Engineer, ( 2Xing my previous TC!!!!) which means I'm no longer a Software Engineer, and I'm no longer leetcodeing every day.
Which brings me to the awkward part.
This newsletter was built around LeetCode, coding interviews, and animations made by an intern I no longer have. ( He landed veryyyyy cool internships though!)
And now I'm sitting here wondering... what does this newsletter even become?
I genuinely don't know yet. What I do know is that I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not going to pretend I have it all figured out.
So consider this your official warning: things might look a little different around here. I'm figuring it out in real time, and I'd rather do that honestly with you than disappear and come back with a perfectly rebranded version of myself.
What content do you want to see?
If you have thoughts on what you want to see, hit reply. I actually read every email.
I started hosting!!!!!!
Last month, Assem Bekbolatkyzy, Altynai Saparbai, and I cold-emailed a bunch of strangers and invited them to a Valentine's-themed creative workshop in Seattle.
No big budget. No guarantee anyone would show up. Just a cold email and the audacity to think it would work.
They came. Tech content creators with 300k+ followers ( some of you favorite tech content creators attended) . VPs from leading tech companies. Heads of product. ML leaders. All from cold outreach.
We painted. We talked about AI, careers, hard-won lessons, and navigating tricky situations at work. The conversations were the kind you don't want to end.
And here's the thing, if you know Seattle, you know people disappear by 8pm on a weeknight. Everyone stayed past 9.
That's how you know something was real.
What this has to do with you:
I spent months in a place that made me smaller. And on the other side of it, I hosted a room full of some of the most incredible women I've ever met, because I just... asked.
The month off taught me that rest isn't the opposite of ambition. Sometimes it's the prerequisite.
And the cold emails taught me that the worst answer is still just "no." Which, if you've survived a job that made you flinch at Slack notifications, you already know how to handle.
Cheers to you hacking your week!
Denisse