#192 - Brain Refactoring: Overcoming Your Common Bugs & Obstacles in Tech Career - Dagna Bieda

Tech Lead Journal

“The four common obstacles that are stopping engineers in progressing in their journey are the imposter syndrome, burnout, trouble dealing with other people, and self marketing struggles."

Dagna Bieda is an engineer turned coach and the author of “Brain Refactor”. In this episode, Dagna discusses the common obstacles that prevent engineers from progressing in their careers. She also introduces her latest book, “Brain Refactor,” which offers strategies for overcoming these obstacles and achieving success in tech.

Dagna emphasizes the importance of understanding our “legacy mental code” and how it can impact our career growth. She outlines an algorithm for reprogramming our legacy mental code, discussing practical steps for identifying the root causes, planning the refactors, scripting new responses, and continuously executing improvements.

Towards the end, Dagda dives deeper into handling burnout and dealing with other people and provides practical tips to resolve those common bugs.

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:02:03]
• Dagna’s Career Transition - [00:04:27]
• Our Legacy Codebase - [00:10:08]
• Feedbacks as Debugging Point - [00:13:04]
• Psychological Safety in Receiving Feedback - [00:17:52]
• 3 Common Mental Code Refactoring - [00:20:49]
• The Brain Refactor Algorithm - [00:25:23]
• Script New Responses - [00:33:45]
• Merge Conflicts & Cognitive Dissonance - [00:37:33]
• Common Bug #1: Burnout - [00:42:07]
• Common Bug #2: Dealing with Other People - [00:51:21]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:57:02]

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Dagna Bieda’s Bio
Dagna Bieda is an Engineer turned Coach for Engineers and ambitious professionals in tech. With 10+ years of coding experience and coaching since 2019, she’s the tough love, “been in your shoes” kinda Coach. Her clients' backgrounds include a spectrum ranging from ICs to CTOs, from small startups to FAANG+ companies, from 2 to 20+ years of experience, and from self-taught devs through career-changing Bootcamp grads to college grads and PhDs. She helps her clients reach their potential and exciting career opportunities by refactoring their brains.

Follow Dagna:

• LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/dagnabieda
• Website – themindfuldev.com
• 📚 Brain Refactor – amazon.com/dp/B0DB3JZYL2

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