After learning about “Radical Candor”, I became obsessed with providing candid and compassionate feedback. I’ve been especially focused on the ability to communicate areas of growth for individual on my team.

And then a colleague of mine shared “The Feedback Fallacy” (published in the Harvard Business Review), which points to some research and outlines a few key problems why focusing on negative feedback might not be the best choice. Research shows that:

• people are bad at assessing other people
• we learn best with positive reinforcement
• focusing on shortcomings impairs learning
• excellence is specific to an individual

Like many pieces of business literature, it reads like an “all-or-nothing” approach (“negative feedback - bad, positive feedback - good”), and the most effective approach is likely somewhere in the middle. There’s a place for positive and negative feedback, and it’s the focus on positive reinforcement that I see as a primary takeaway from this article.

I’ve noticed that my assessment of others’ performance changes over time. It often depends on what self-help book I’m reading at the moment if I’m being entirely honest.

This piece made me think of the portrayal of successful people in media: there’s an inherent cultural belief that successful people know what makes them successful, and all you need to do is to follow in their steps! What is often omitted is a mix of luck, some talent or hard work, topped with another serving of being in the right place at the right time. Warren Buffet can probably tell you what’s the smartest thing to do with ten thousand dollars you have in your savings account. It’s unlikely that his advice alone will get you to his 98.2 billion dollar net worth.

It seems like once you get past basic competency, success identifiers seem unpredictable.

I attribute part of my professional success to having a reputation of a person who “gets shit done”. I naturally value qualities associated with that style of work. It’s only natural that I prioritize on communication and organizational skills when assessing the performance of others.

In fact, the article made me think about how I landed with the reputation as a problem solver. Every time I accomplished a project on time, owned the problem space, involved the right parties, or raised alarms early – I received positive reinforcement. People I worked with valued those qualities, and years working with those people shaped what I perceive as an effective work style.

Yet, this work style is effective for me, and is not a solution for my peers.

Since reading “The Feedback Fallacy”, I started focusing on the outcomes I like, as opposed to qualities I believe are valuable. Where before I would say “Great comms on project X!”, now I focus on specifics: “I know what you’re up to on project X, which helps me communicate with stakeholder Y and plan resources for the project Z”

I’m not an ill tempered person, and it takes quite a lot to get me riled up. In the pandemic however getting frustrated has been oh so much easier!

For once, there are less face to face interactions, which makes me feel removed from whomever I’m talking to. The interactions that happen over video chat feel a lot less personal, and despite regular deliberately scheduled 1:1 time it’s harder to connect with colleagues on a personal level.

Then there’s the lack of water cooler interactions between meetings. A colleague of mine correctly pointed out that before the era of video chat meetings, we’d have the time to decompress and process content between meetings with those micro-interactions. Having just a minute or two “off the record” after a large call helps process, frame, and align prior interaction. And just sharing a laugh or being able to say “well that was stressful” helps reduce the inevitable daily stress buildup.

Finally, all of the above is true for everyone else - and we’re already in a melting pot of individuals with different communication styles. People are getting frustrated, making other people even more frustrated. It’s a frustration chain reaction!

All of this led to me into a cycle of sending some snappy responses, feeling terrible after time would pass, setting up time to profusely apologize face to face, and wowing to never overreact to work stress sources again… Until the next encounter that is. It all culminated with me getting entirely too frustrated between 8:00 and 8:05 am last Thursday and taking a day just to decompress.

And that reminded of something I’ve learned years ago, and I something I would practice with rigour - until the background frustration level rose that is.

Early in my career I’ve been taught to cool down before sending that angry ping or an email – type it up, leave it in my drafts - come back to it an hour or two later.

In 9 out of 10 cases I end up deleting the message feeling relieved that an incoherent stream of hatred never saw the light of day. Most of the time when I’m angry I don’t really have a goal I’m trying to accomplish (other than inform all the parties involved of my feelings), and that’s not a great basis for professional communication.

In the remaining case, I would end up completely rewriting that email to remove the hostile tone and focus on the source of the issue instead. There are problems that are worth addressing with candor – but candor is too often conflated for the lack of tact.

And it’s hard to take a break at work - because there are often so many things to do, and so little time to do them. Which makes taking a minute to breather feel like a waste of time, when it’s one of the most productive things you can do in the long run.

So here I am, putting these thoughts into writing to remember to take a break before initiating aggressive communications – hopefully the more I think about this, the easier it gets to remember to pause, self-assess, and disconnect.

A couple of months ago I had a conversation with a fellow employee – let’s call him Balgruuf – who decided to quit the grind and become a career coach. Shortly after I’ve witnessed them interact with our mutual acquaintance – Farengar – who was in a difficult spot in their career. Balgruuf was enthusiastically instructing on what are the exact steps Farengar must take, and in what order. It generally felt like Balgruuf had this whole career thing figured out, and Farengar just stumbled along. Needless to say, Farengar quickly changed the topic.

I haven’t stopped thinking about mentorship since that day. In the 10 or so years of my career so far, I’ve had a number of mentors - both formal and informal. I also get the opportunity to mentor people around me – both sides of the relationship really fascinate me.

I’ve had some mentors who worked really well for me - and some who didn’t. I also had more different level of success with mentoring people myself. And one of the defining factors in a successful experience was this: people conflate mentorship with giving advice – two different, but oh-so-close feeling things. Let me elaborate on the difference with a tangentially related example.

Sometimes my wife comes home and shares frustrations that inevitably arise after a long day at work. There’s little to no room for my input, because she needs somebody to just listen, or maybe a rubber duck to talk at. And sometimes my better half wants to hear my thoughts on the subject. Needing to vent and asking for advice are two completely distinct scenarios in this case.

Just like in my home life, sometimes people come looking for an advice. But more often than not, they’re looking for mentorship.

Giving advice is prescriptive, while mentorship is more nuanced, and takes more finesse from both parties.

In Relationomics, Randy Ross discusses a role that relationships play in personal growth. He talks about the harmful “self help” culture which discounts the value of human element in self-development.

This is the gap where mentorship fits in. There’s one huge “but” though, and that’s the fact that the person needs to be ready for the specific feedback they might be getting.

Mentor is there to guide the internal conversation, encourage insight, and suggest a direction. Mentor is there to identify when someone who’s being mentored is heading in a completely wrong direction, or not addressing the elephant in the room.

In fact, I’ve been noticing a trend at Google to avoid trying to use the word “mentorship” overall, to avoid the go-to advice slinging attitude of your everyday Balgruuf. And it’s been a helpful trend - since framing mentorship relationship around guidance and reminding mentors to let those who are mentored to drive the growth is crucial for healthy peer to peer learning.

Even if so-called mentor has some aspect of life completely figured out for themselves, the person who’s mentored must drive the whole journey. Otherwise there’s really no room for growth in that relationship.

I’ve had this blog since 2012, and I’m only now getting close to my 100th post. All because I’m a perfectionist, which sure as hell didn’t make me a better writer.

I love writing, and I feel like I’m getting better after every piece I write - be it publishing blog posts, journaling, countless design docs, navigating email politics, or writing a book. I write a lot, about many different topics - if I’m interested in the topic for at least a few hours - you can bet I’ll write about it.

Then how come this blog barely gets one post per month?

I meticulously research and edit, generously discard drafts, and it often takes me days strung across weeks to put something together. Something that I feel is worthy of being displayed next to my name. Perfectionism at its core, attached to hobbyist web content.

I struggled with this when writing Mastering Vim too - the first edition was rushed out by the publisher long before it was ready, with various errors and inconsistencies in it, and a few downright unfinished bits. It took over a year of me avoiding even thinking about the book and two more editions to become comfortable with merely sharing that I published a book.

And all of this sucks the joy out of writing. I’m not a for-profit writer. It’s not part of my career path, and I obviously didn’t go to school for it (not that I went to school for anything else). And it sure as hell shouldn’t be grueling to have to come up with what to write.

This blog has a rather modest following - it brings in around 3,000 readers a month, with a few regulars sprinkled here and there (honestly - I would love to meet at least one of you weirdos someday). I don’t target a particular market niche, I don’t have a content or SEO strategy, and I opportunistically monetize to cover the website running costs.

What’s crazy is that nearly half of that traffic is organic search for a quick note I jotted down back in 2013! I could spend weeks putting together a literary love child and not even get a fraction of attention this back of the napkin screenshot received.

Back in 2012 I used this blog as a way to categorize my discoveries about developing software, and later what I’ve learned about working with people. Over the years I gradually expanded to travel (including that time I lived in my car for a year), and general things I like - like keyboards or tabletop role playing games.

I’m putting this together to remind myself that I love writing and why I started this blog. That not every piece of content requires hours of research, or even have a clear audience in mind for that matter.

I wouldn’t have blinked an eye flooding this blog with unfiltered thoughts, perspectives, and experiences if it wasn’t attached to my real world persona. It’s easy to throw out something I perceive as “unworthy” anonymously. It’s mortifying to publish such a piece at my-first-name-last-name-dot-com.

So here it is, the first post I wrote purely for fun! I’m still taking a light editing pass on it, and drastically cutting it down in size - I’m not a savage! But unlike in my usual writing, there’s no clear value I’m providing or a skill I’m trying to teach - and that’s a huge step for me. Feels good!

This review is written entirely using Vortex Core, in Markdown, and using Vim.

Earlier this week I purchased Vortex Core - a 40% keyboard from a Taiwanese company Vortex, makers of the ever popular Pok3r keyboard (which I happen to use as my daily driver). This is a keyboard with only 47 keys: it drops the numpad (what’s called 80%), function row (now we’re down to 60%), and the dedicated number row (bringing us to the 40% keyboard realm).

Words don’t do justice to how small a 40% keyboard is. So here is a picture of Vortex Core next to Pok3r, which is an already a small keyboard.

At around a $100 on Amazon it’s one of the cheaper 40% options, but Vortex did not skimp on quality. The case is sturdy, is made of beautiful anodized aluminum, and has some weight to it. The keycaps this keyboard comes with feel fantastic (including slight dips on F and J keys), and I`m a huge fan of the look.

I hooked it up to my Microsoft Surface Go as a toy more than anything else. And now I think I may have discovered the perfect writing machine! Small form factor of the keyboard really compliments the already small Surface Go screen, and there’s just enough screen real estate to comfortably write and edit text.

I’ve used Vortex Core on and off for the past few days, and I feel like I have a solid feel for it. Let’s dig in!

What’s different about it?

First, the keycap size and distance between keys are standard: it’s a standard staggered layout most people are used to. This means that when typing words, there is no noticeable speed drop. In fact I find myself typing a tiny bit faster using this keyboard than my daily driver - but that could just be my enthusiasm shining through. I hover at around 80 words per minute on both keyboards.

That is until it’s time to type “you’re”, or use any punctuation outside of the :;,.<> symbols. That’s right, the normally easily accessible apostrophe is hidden under the function layer (Fn1 + b), and so is the question mark (Fn1 + Shift + Tab). -, =, /, \, [, and ] are gone too, and I’ll cover those in due time.

On a first day this immediately dropped my typing speed to around 50 words per minute, as it’s completely unintuitive at first! In fact, I just now stopped hitting Enter every time I tried to place an apostrophe! But only after a few hours of sparingly using Vortex Core I’m up to 65 WPM, and it feels like I would regain my regular typing speed within a week.

Despite what you might think, it’s relatively easy to get used to odd key placement like this.

Keys have 4 layers (not to be confused with programming layers), and that’s how the numbers, symbols, and some of the more rarely used keys are accessed. For example, here’s what the key L contains:

• Default layer (no modifiers): L
• Fn1 layer: 0
• Fn1 + Shift layer: )
• Fn layer: right arrow key

The good news is that unlike many 40% keyboards on the market (and it’s a rather esoteric market), Vortex Core has key inscriptions for each layer. Something like Planck would require you to print out layout cheatsheets while you get used to the function layers.

As I continue attempting to type, numbers always take me by surprise: the whole number row is a function layer on top of the home row (where your fingers normally rest). After initially hitting the empty air when attempting to type numbers, I began to get used to using the home row instead.

The placement mimics the order the keys would be in on the number row (1234567890-=), but 1 is placed on the Tab key, while = is on the Enter. While I was able to find the numbers relatively easily due to similar placement, I would often be off-by-one due to row starting on a Tab key.

Things get a lot more complicated when it comes to special symbols. These are already normally gated behind a Shift-press on a regular keyboard, and Vortex Core requires some Emacs-level gymnastics! E.g. you need to press Fn1 + Shift + F to conjure %.

Such complex keypresses are beyond counter-intuitive at first. Yet after a few hours, I began to get used to some of the more frequently used keys: ! is Fn1 + Shift + Tab, - is Fn1 + Shift + 1, $ (end of line in Vim) is Fn1 + Shift + D, and so on. Combining symbols quickly becomes problematic.

It’s fairly easy to get used to inserting a lone symbol here and there, but the problems start when having to combine multiple symbols at once. E.g. writing an expression like 'Fn1 + Shift + D' = '$' above involves the following keypresses: <Fn1><Esc> F N <Fn1><Tab> <Fn1><Shift><Enter> S H I F T <Fn1><Shift><Enter> D <Fn1><Esc> <Fn1><Enter> <Fn1><Esc> <Fn1><Shift>D <Fn1><Esc>. Could you image how long it took me to write that up?

The most difficult part of getting used to the keyboard is the fact that a few keys on the right side are chopped off: '/[]\ are placed in the bottom right of the keyboard, to bnm,. keys. While the rest of the layout attempts to mimic the existing convention and only shifting the rows down, the aforementioned keys are placed arbitrarily (as there’s no logical way to place them otherwise).

This probably won’t worry you if you don’t write a lot of code or math, but I do, and it`s muscle memory I’ll have to develop.

There are dedicated Del and Backspace keys, which is a bit of an odd choice, likely influenced by needing somewhere to place the F12 key - function row is right above the home row, and is hidden behind the Fn1 layer.

Spacebar is split into two (for ease of finding keycaps I hear), and it doesn’t affect me whatsoever. I mostly hit spacebar with my left thumb and it’s convenient.

Tab is placed where the Caps Lock is, which feels like a good choice. After accidentally hitting Esc a few times, I got used to the position. Do make sure to get latest firmware for your Vortex Core - I believe earlier firmware versions hides Tab behind a function layer, defaulting the key to Caps Lock (although my keycaps reflected the updated firmware).

So I’d say the numbers and the function row take the least amount of time to get used to. It’s the special characters that take time.

Can you use it with Vim?

I’m a huge fan of Vim, and I even wrote a book on the subject. In fact, I’m writing this very review in Vim.

And I must say, it’s difficult. My productivity took a hit. I use curly braces to move between paragraphs, I regularly search with /, ?, and *, move within a line with _ and $, and use numbers in my commands like c2w (change two words) as well as other special characters, e.g. da" (delete around double quotes).

The most difficult combination being spelling correction: z= followed by a number to select the correct spelling. I consistency break the flow by having to press Z <Fn1><Enter> <Fn1><Tab> or something similar to quickly fix a misspelling.

My Vim productivity certainly took a massive hit. Yet, after a few days it’s starting to slowly climb back up, and I find myself remembering the right key combinations as the muscle memory kicks in.

I assume my Vim experience translates well into programming. Even though I write code for a living, I haven’t used Vortex Core to crank out code.

Speaking of programming

The whole keyboard is fully programmable (as long as you update it to the latest firmware).

It’s an easy process - a three page manual covers everything that’s needed like using different keyboard layers or remapping regular and function keys.

The manual also mentions using right Win, Pn, Ctrl, and Shift keys as arrow keys by hitting left Win, left Alt, and right spacebar. Vortex keyboards nowadays always come with this feature, but due to small form factor of the keys (especially Shift), impromptu arrow keys on Vortex Core are nearly indistinguishable from individual arrow keys.

Remapping is helpful, since I’m used to having Ctrl where Caps Lock is (even though this means I have to hide Tab behind a function layer), or using hjkl as arrow keys (as opposed to the default ijkl).

It took me only a few minutes to adjust the keyboard to my needs, but I imagine I will come back for tweaks - I’m not so sure if I’ll be able to get used to special symbols hidden behind Fn1 + Shift + key layer. Regularly pressing three keys at the time (with two of these keys being on the edge of the keyboard) feels unnatural and inconvenient right now. But I’m only a few hours in, and stenographers manager to do it.

Living in the command line

The absence of certain special characters is especially felt when using the command line. Not having a forward slash available with a single keypress makes typing paths more difficult. I also use Ctrl + \ as a modifier key for tmux, and as you could imagine it’s just as problematic.

Despite so many difficulties, I’m loving my time with Vortex Core! To be honest with myself, I don’t buy new keyboards to be productive, or increase my typing speed. I buy them because they look great and are fun to type on. And Vortex Core looks fantastic, and being able to cover most of the keyboard with both hands is amazing.

There’s just something special about having such a small board under my fingertips.