The Sea Squirt Effect: Tech Tales of Transition

Nico Zeitlin: From QBasic to Silicon Valley, a Journey Through Technology and Growth

• Alla Shashkina • Season 1 • Episode 4

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How does an early fascination with coding evolve into a career in the cutting-edge fields of Silicon Valley and aerospace engineering? Nico Zeitlin joins us to share his remarkable journey, starting from his childhood days writing code in QBasic, inspired by his older brother, to earning a degree in computer engineering from the University of Buenos Aires. Through his story, Nico reveals how a sense of freedom and continuous learning keeps him feeling most alive, driving his ambitious career path from Argentina to the heart of the American tech industry.

What does it take to navigate career challenges during Argentina's financial crises while juggling a family business and academic pursuits? Listen as Nico recounts his high school job writing software for Palm Pilots, his diverse responsibilities in the family business, and the first transformative experiences with the internet in coffee shops. Nico's reflections provide a poignant reminder of how far technology has come and its profound impact on human learning and evolution.

How does one maintain personal growth and resilience through professional highs and lows, particularly when balancing career and parenthood? Nico shares invaluable insights into the importance of alignment and purpose in his work, the emotional impact of professional setbacks, and the joy of pursuing childhood passions. With heartfelt advice on embracing continuous evolution and growth, Nico's story is an inspiring testament to the power of resilience and the Sea Squirt  Effect in making bold decisions and driving positive change.

You can reach out to Nico on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicozeitlin/

There is a wealth of information available and only so much time in the day. Therefore, I truly appreciate you spending some of your valuable time listening to this podcast. Your feedback is very important so please reach out to me on LinkedIn or over email: alla@evolvexlabs.com.

You can support us by leaving a review for this podcast, recommending it to a friend or sharing your favorite takeaways by tagging us on IG @theseasquirteffect. Doing so will help us reach more listeners like you!

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Music credits & copyright by "Odin v olen'yem parke" ("Один В Оленьем Парке").

Alla:

All right, hi and welcome to the Sea Squirt Effect podcast. This is our fourth episode, and in today's episode I have my former colleague, Nico Zeitlin. Just a quick background on Nico. Nico was born in Argentina and he was very, very intrigued with technology from a very early age. His parents bought him a computer when he was around 13, and he was hooked with software engineering soon afterwards. So he decided to pursue a bachelor in computer engineering from University of Buenos Aires and was working as an engineer in different software development roles, in both small and big companies alike. And later on he moved to the US to pursue a master's of engineering from UC Berkeley and upon graduation he joined one of Silicon Valley's most influential tech companies and that's where we met and he spent close to a decade in a range of different roles, from individual contributor to senior management, and more recently he went on to work in a new field small and mid-sized aerospace companies both as an individual contributor as well as a manager, depending on the company's needs. So welcome, nico, to the Sea Squirt Effect Podcast.

Nico:

Thank you, Alla. I'm very happy to be here and reconnecting with you. I've loved to listen to previous episodes and I hope I can contribute to this one.

Alla:

Awesome, so excited to have you here. So the first question that I love to ask my guests listened to previous episodes and I hope I can contribute to this one. Awesome, so excited to have you here. So the first question that I love to ask my guests on the podcast to kick it off is what makes you feel most alive.

Nico:

Yeah, that's a. You like to start with easy questions, right? So I found that I like to find ways that I can continue growing, continue improving, continue challenging myself and finding new boundaries. I think that that is probably one of the things that really gives me a thrill, that I haven't found specifically one thing or another to give me the similar thrill, right, and that means I'll give you a couple of examples just to ground this right. But it could be learning a new discipline. A couple of years ago I learned to fly and that was a new discipline for me. Wow. It could be being able to run a marathon when I wasn't much of an athlete before. So any way that I can push myself a little bit farther and discover new boundaries, that definitely makes me feel alive.

Alla:

That's why you own this podcast, because you know the sea squirts. Those are exactly funny. The name of the podcast is exactly what you just described. Of the podcast is exactly what you just described. It's this need to evolve in, the need to keep going and learning something new throughout your life. Otherwise, you just like see squirts, stop and start digesting your brain and die.

Nico:

Yeah, yeah I'm not ready for that and yeah, I, I love that metaphor. I'll add something I didn't know I was like that until a few years ago. I always knew I was a little bit of a. I am a little bit of a type A or ambitious person. I knew that. But I also thought that I would be able to transform myself in somebody that finds happiness and peace and well-being, can thrive in pretty much just a stable situation with a nurtured family without too many challenges. Right? I thought you know there's going to be a time when I'll be happy to take a step back and I won't be wanting any more challenges. Right, because I will be content in the current situation.

Nico:

I found out a few years ago that even though I am content and I've been very blessed in my life when I am not growing, I end up being unsettled. Right, I end up being rattled. I'm not sure if I still need to transform myself a little bit more, if I'll be evolved, if we do a podcast in another five years, but right now I am not challenging myself. I am unsettled.

Alla:

That's amazing. That's awesome. I love that. So we'll talk more about this. This is a great starter, but can you give us listeners and me a little more about your background and what really got you into tech and how did you end up in tech in the first place?

Nico:

yeah, I probably got into tech because, uh, really, my older brother, he, was into tech and that led to there being a computer at home and that led to there being a couple of computer books at home. My older brother is about five years older, so there's a big gap there. And so when I was just 12, 13, around that age, there was already first encounter with computers and I think that that opened those doors right. It would have been a lot harder had there not been an encounter with technology, right, but I had that, and I was probably always.

Nico:

I had an inclination towards technology. I have in my mind, I have this idea of technology being to some degree like a puzzle or like playing chess, where, uh, there are excellent ways to solve a problem, right, and we just need to really try ourselves to find them. So I I really liked that part, and that happened early on. And I knew right away, when I was wrapping up with high school, I knew right away that I wanted to pursue a career in technology. Even then, talking about being a little bit ambitious back then in my mind, I was determined to go to MIT and eventually become some kind of an innovator, inventor, astronaut, you know, changer of the world. Right, I was just a little bit over-the-top ambitious. That didn't work out, and I ended up going to the University of Buenos Aires, which ended up being quite a blessing in itself, because I think that the education level there is fantastic.

Alla:

Can you pause and kind of zoom into that first encounter of like when you realized you could actually make a computer do what you want, or at least to some degree what you want? How did that feel?

Nico:

it felt freeing the first times that, the first few times that I was writing code, I felt limitless. I guess what?

Alla:

language did you use first?

Nico:

QBasic was the first thing that I wrote in. So I had a it was an MSDOS computer and I was writing QBasic and, yeah, I definitely felt like it offered me unbounded possibilities to kind of write anything and have the computer do anything that I told it to. I felt like an adventurer and I played with a fantasy that I was. This rebel hacker against the world Never acted on it, of course.

Alla:

I love that.

Nico:

It was definitely part of that fantasy of feeling unbounded, feeling a rebel Again, never acted, but it was very much part of how I was feeling amazing.

Alla:

I love that rebel hugger. The energy of that is this. Is this so funny? Because the way you describe your encounter it's very vivid, like I can see that you totally getting into those ambitions and wanting to do something more than you just you know you're trying to do. So that totally aligns with what you said earlier about you being ambitious and wanting to do something in space, being in that astronaut, space engineering, which is interesting, like moving forward, right. So yeah, could tell us a little bit more? Now You've completed your engineering degree in Argentina, did you spend some time working there full-time right before you moved to the US? So what did you do there?

Nico:

Yeah, so in Argentina it is quite common to do what I did, which is to pursue the undergraduate degree by studying at night, while during the day working for essentially a full-time job, and that's really what I did. I pretty much worked since I turned 18. I worked always, every day, and so I was doing that while I was pursuing my degree. I was working for my real. The first job was while I was still in high school. I was writing software for Palm Pilots right, the little PDAs, so that may give you an idea of my age. So Palm OS, palm Pilots, were a thing back then and I was writing software for those that were eventually being used by salespeople for a medical company, and I was just 16, 17 back then 16, 17 back then. But it ended up being an opportunity to put my product out there, right, with actual customers, actual paying customers.

Nico:

But after that, once I started college, a financial crisis hit Argentina, and those happen quite frequently. A financial crisis hit Argentina, and those happen quite frequently. So when that one hit, I ended up working with my father to kind of help support what was a growing or an opportunity to have a growing family business he started by himself at the time of the financial crisis, and so it ended up being just me and him, and little by little that grew to a point where I could move to the sidelines and start working again in software engineering, but for a few years I was just working side by side with him, doing anything that was needed to grow the family business what area of the of the business was that like?

Alla:

what was that?

Nico:

I'd be doing anything at that point. Uh, this was again like it. It's very much modulated by a financial crisis, right? So at the time, we wanted to, let, let's say, validate a business. That's a nice Silicon Valley way of saying. We wanted to survive, right, we were just trying to survive. So at the time, I would be picking up the phone to make sales, or I'd be entering transactions in a little Excel spreadsheet, I'd be calling providers to find out the latest prices. It would be anything that was needed to get this. Again and again, I'm saying family business, but I'm really what it was was a one personperson effort to bring an income home.

Alla:

What year approximately was it?

Nico:

2002 through 2004, 2005.

Alla:

Yeah, I see Just kind of going backwards a little bit. Do you remember your first encounter with the Internet?

Nico:

Yeah, yeah, I do remember it. I went to a coffee bar, coffee shop I guess, where they had computers, and I visited yahoo and yahoo still had index pages. So I would just navigate the index right to find out what was out there. So the first time was, you know, it was not from home and I'm not even sure I had a computer yet, but there were coffee shops where you could rent a computer by the minute, really, by the minute really, and browse the internet. So that was the very first time it was. It was definitely fun. I was also, I think, unaware of the transformative power that the internet would have, right, it was more like oh, here is the website for Ford Motor Company.

Alla:

I didn't really know how powerful that would become. You know, when I asked that question, I just realized that our children will never remember this. You know what I mean. We can't ask our children like, hey, do you remember your first encounter with internet? Like it's so in engraved in the nervous systems these days that they won't even remember right. Like that makes me think, like, oh, how does it feel as a child to be, to grow over a thing such as internet? It must be, I don't know. I can't even imagine how that feels just kind of shifting gears here. But like the technology and how children are connected to technology, now it's visceral, like somebody told me that when a teenager, I think they don't have internet or they don't have a, an iphone with them, they feel anxious, they get bodily response. That is not just mind thinking certain things, but they get anxiousness in their bodies. I can't even imagine how that feels.

Alla:

As I was asking you that question, I was remembering my own experience with internet and I felt a different reality. I was in that room where I think it was at university, where I could go in that internet room for 20 minutes at a time and reserve a spot and I would sit down and I would do some research I think I was trying to get a scholarship in germany and I was doing some research around that, and that was back in russia like around 2000 and then I would get up from the seat and I would take a bus back home and I would just remember like I was just not there, I was just somewhere else, and now I'm here. I was so confused Like how is it, does it work? That internet is something bigger than where we are and that which is? That feeling like it's just so, it's so different and it's a different reality Confused me so much and I felt like, oh my God, this is going to be interesting.

Nico:

I think that the entirety of a human evolution really is so. Humans' ability to gather, to pick up knowledge, has been modulated by well, the actual biological ability and also the availability of information. Right, those two things to some degree kept humans from learning more and more, and right now we've removed one of those reasons, right, the availability of information is gone, and so I think we're really at a point where we can discover for the first time the biological capacity that we have to absorb new information. Right. Until now, it could have been something where you know you learn a new skill every 15 years, and that's not because you are not biologically capable of learning more skills faster, but because there was no more training available to you. But with the internet and basically making all of the world's information available to everyone every second of every day, I think for the first time we're going to see, well, this is how much we can actually learn in a day. Right. Right beyond this, right, our our brains start getting confused about the different concepts, right.

Alla:

But that has never happened before, and I think that's kind of a an exciting field to see what happens I love this conversation because just yesterday I went out for dinner with friends and we were talking about cognitive de-evolution, that is, I think humanity is going through because of that biological incapacity to actually be able to digest all that information that's abundant out there, right? And so how do we teach ourselves, how do we teach our children, that regulation that we need to learn to be able to filter, observe, remember, regulate, right as biologically advanced or biologically evolved, as you said. I totally agree. I feel like we are getting behind.

Nico:

Yeah, absolutely. At the end of the day, like for millions of years, the human brain has not evolved to be constantly receiving new information, right? This is a new development and our evolution can, I don't think, has kept up with it, right? So we're going to find out very soon, I guess yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alla:

I love that and I feel like we need a different episode just to talk about coping mechanisms, tools, strategies, like how to deal with all that. But for now, let's keep it close to the essential of the podcast. That transitions right. Did you know that I'm offering one-on-one coaching to people like you? I work with high achievers, perfectionists, engineers, data-driven nerds, leaders in tech, as well as endurance athletes who want to achieve peak performance, working on their mindset through the lens of human physiology and bioenergetics. In just eight weeks, you can build more resilience and manage your stress levels better. I see so much potential in you and really want to help you unlock it. Schedule a free discovery call using the link in the show notes. Tell us about how you got into the Silicon Valley. How you got into the Silicon Valley.

Nico:

Yeah, absolutely so. As I was saying, I applied to graduate school different schools throughout the US, but at the end of the day, berkeley basically in Silicon Valley or right around Silicon Valley was the one that I thought offered the best program, the best opportunity, definitely the best education in my eyes. So I ended up going to Berkeley. I earned there a master's of engineering in Robotics and Embedded Systems, even though really I didn't know what robotics and embedded systems were, but I was excited to learn it. Maybe that's a little bit of that growth mindset, right. I was excited to learn more about it.

Nico:

Applied to a range of different companies, but one stood out because it offered me an opportunity to work on what felt like the closest thing to what I I thought was uh, ai in the space of uh. So, after getting my master's in uh in robotics and taking a few classes in machine learning, I thought AI was a very exciting field, and so one company in particular offered me the opportunity to join what felt like a growing field of AI, and that's how I joined one of Silicon Valley's most influential companies, right, and worked there for about a decade and, as you said earlier in your introduction, I was able to work in a range of different positions. I joined as an engineer, but eventually I moved into management position, and that led to more and more opportunities to lead different projects and teams.

Alla:

I love that you and I worked together there and I remember Nico is always being like whenever you enter the room, when Nico is in the conference room, there's always this smile on his face, he's always happy, he's always friendly, like that's the association that I have with you when we work together and I don't know what it was, but it's just you had such a good, friendly, kind of take it easy presence, friendly kind of take it easy presence, and also what I felt and I probably couldn't express it then, but now thinking about it, I feel like you were one of those people that could read people's minds.

Alla:

You know what I mean, like when you, when somebody says something in the meeting, and you could just read between the lines and you could ask a few questions ahead of everything else, actually pointing out something that's not being said or not being talked about, the elephant in the room or whatever it was and in a very direct and polite manner. And I really loved working with you for that, because there was always this positivity with a very clear boundary or very clear vision that you had where we should be going, and so I appreciate that.

Alla:

Thank you so much of course thank you do you think some of that argentinian culture contributed to your um you know your personality Like. How did that synergy work?

Nico:

A little bit, but let me tell you which part and which not so much. Right, I think that in the American culture where we were embedded right, and in the American big tech culture culture where we were embedded right, and in the American big tech culture, a lot of the interactions were quite transactional right, where I'm going to say this with the purpose of achieving that, and I probably was a little bit of an outlier in that some of my interactions were less transactional and I am more comfortable approaching people to know how they're doing, you know, or if there have been any updates on some family issue, any updates on some family issue. So I probably end up being a little bit more social. So I think that my Argentine upbringing influenced how I approach people a little bit more on how they are on an emotional level than how they are in a professional level, and that might be a little bit more on how they are on an emotional level than how they are in a professional level, and that might be a little bit what you're remembering.

Nico:

But, that said, one thing that the american experience offered me that also very much influenced some of those interactions is, uh, I thought, the american big tech and especially you, you know, working in an environment with um, in in a very influential group, influential company, influential team. It also offered the opportunities to feel limitless, just like we did. I did back then when I was working with my first computer, and that I cannot credit to the Argentine upbringing, because to some degree, argentina through its different financial crisis, but its culture is one where there is less of a feeling of limitless. But being in that, in Silicon Valley, offered that feeling limitless and I think you may have seen a little bit of that as well. Right when I was coming into a room, I felt like we could achieve wonderful things and I also wanted to connect with you, allah, the individual right. There were both things, but there was something really exciting about the American culture, as well as what I what I hope was I was bringing from my upbringing.

Alla:

Nice. I love that. So describe the. You spend almost a decade there, so describe the highlight of your career. What did you do? Without going into details, of course, but most importantly like how did you feel as Nico?

Nico:

The highlight was probably at a point where I felt the product that I was helping shape was very aligned with my values. There was a point where I was able to make a big dent in an area of privacy that I care a lot about, and so, when all the stars aligned, I felt like I was being able to contribute to something that was much bigger than myself. Being able to contribute to something that was much bigger than myself, and that was the best feeling that I can remember from all of that period. It was fantastic. It definitely felt larger than me.

Alla:

Nice, I love that word that you keep saying it's the limitless. Limitless and larger than you, and aligned. Limitless, limitless and larger than you, and aligned. Those are a few things that I also keep hearing from other people. When they feel like at the highlight of their career, they feel limitless, they feel aligned, they feel like they contributed to a bigger purpose that aligns with a personal purpose for you, like privacy or other things.

Alla:

That's amazing, that just feels like you wake up in the morning you feel like, oh, you can conquer the mountains and you have all this energy to go forever and you love it right, and all the lows don't matter much, because all you care is that a big impact, that you have all the tools and support from your team, support from your leadership, to achieve all these things and it just feels like you're never gonna die thank you Alla.

Nico:

Yeah, I couldn't have said it better. Yes, absolutely amazing.

Alla:

So uh, and on the contrary, kind of like what was the down low?

Nico:

of your core.

Alla:

If, even if there was down low in your career, like how did that feel and what was sort of high level happening?

Nico:

it was probably very close to the opposite. Uh, it was when it was a time when I felt the limits come in quite hard, and that was, uh, after working for several months on a project for which I also had a strong alignment personal alignment for which values I believed in, that one had to be pushed back or canceled altogether, altogether, and for very valid reasons. I'm not uh, I'm not here to argue with uh people that were better prepared to make those decisions than me, but after a good amount of work, probably the worst time was being able to sit in front of my team. The team that had been working on it explained that we were going to have to stop developing it and that it wasn't going to go any further. Right, go anywhere. Having to face them, knowing that I couldn't do anything about it, right, those limits were right there. It was probably the worst feeling in that period.

Alla:

Yeah, and you mentioned at the beginning that you didn't know that there was a Nico that is the last to grow right, that Nico that wants challenges, or like there was. You didn't know that, the nico that wants challenges or like there was. You didn't know that you were like that before. So were there specific events that happened during that time that made you realize, like what it is inside of you that you want to do?

Nico:

I wouldn't say it was exactly during that time, but it was around the end of it, close to the end of it or even after that period of my life. I didn't know at the time that I had that relentless ambition, but I thought that I would be happy to settle down. What led me to this new discovery really was, after spending some time really away from that period, that company and that period of my life, I was in a journey of self-discovery and we can talk more about that later. But during that journey of self-discovery I tried different things and realized that I'm not going to be satisfied unless I'm pushing myself.

Alla:

Walk us through your decision-making process when you knew you have to do something else, and that day, or maybe that event where you said, okay, that will be my last day. And how did you feel?

Nico:

I would say that the trigger, or a lot of what comes next in our conversation, is fatherhood.

Nico:

I became a father, and that triggered two things that became really important to me.

Nico:

One was the idea that I wanted to be a very present father, and the other one was, after a couple of years as a father, I started to see how my son saw the world, and it reminded me of seeing that world with that same freshness, that same spirit of unbounded limits, right.

Nico:

So a lot of what I talked today about limitless is not really my own making. It's really seeing the world through what is now a five-year-old, but then around two, and seeing the world through those eyes reminded me of how I felt at different times, and it also encouraged me to find ways to be a very present father. And so all of that put together ended up leading to me wanting to pursue a career in aerospace, because that was part of how I saw the world once as a child, how I wanted to be that astronaut and change the world, and so it reminded me of that feeling and how I should shoot for the stars, maybe more literally than others, but after doing that right, I would have few or no regrets in a way that also allowed me to balance my lifestyle, where I could spend a lot of time with my family, those were. That was the one trigger with those two conclusions, and it was a difficult decision to make because I had built my identity around my corporate self. I would say Corporate sounds, it doesn't feel like the right word.

Nico:

I had built my identity around my engineering persona persona and it was difficult for me to take a step back, be myself as somebody that isn't just the guy that works in that company or the guy that has worked on that team. I was very determined to be, instead, the guy that is a dreamer or the guy that is a good father. I was determined to become that. But I had to let go of my other self first, and that was really, really difficult for me. I really struggled because I had come to really like who I had become. I like the feeling, I guess, of who I had become, even though I knew that it wasn't who I wanted to be forever.

Alla:

Yeah, I can relate on so many levels. I think when we become part of such a big organization, that makes us limitless at some point in our careers, our identity is shipped in such a way that it validates us so much Because we're successful. Right, we are validated by lots of things Features shipped in production, people using it, giving good feedback, our teammates loving to work with us, the company is compensating really well and all those things become our default safety net, right when we evolve around that safety net and that identity and that becomes just who we are. I was just visiting the area a couple months ago, kind of seeing my former colleagues. I realized how much I've been going through an identity shift in the past year myself, and it hasn't been easy either. So I can totally relate to what you're talking about. Yeah, and for what it's worth, I think that. So I can totally relate to what you're talking about.

Nico:

Yeah, and for what it's worth. I think that I am so, so happy and so grateful for those experiences. Right, this is in no way to say, oh, how you know what a terrible experience I've lived, where I allowed great opportunities to exist in my life, where I had influence and felt limitless, right, wow, this was excellent. I just think that there are times in our life where one thing is better and then there's times when something else is better, and you know, we'll come to this maybe before the end of our conversation, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's another time in my life when I want to pursue experiences in big tech again. And that's fine, also right. I think that the main thing, to some degree, is to recognize that there isn't one right answer. Unless you also account for the time variable, there is one right answer for today and then there might be a different right answer for tomorrow. The time variable is a big one.

Alla:

Absolutely. There is no right or wrong in our life of going through seasons where we feel that we want to achieve something and then we hit our limit at that time in that position and then we move on as long as we keep moving on and we hit our other limits. That goes through a different season, a different stage and it doesn't matter where you are right Corporate, not corporate, small, big, it doesn't really matter as long as you have that passion inside and that fire that you know feels like you are that three years old astronaut, ambitious little boy that keeps thinking about that ambition and wants to pass that to you know, your child. That is what matters, like, yeah, and I totally, I totally feel that. How did you explain your five-year-old or maybe younger what software engineering is?

Nico:

oh, actually I haven't had to do that. I'm a little bit of a I don't know if I'm an oddball, but I think so I try to keep him somewhat away from seeing me work and seeing me in front of the computer. In general I try to keep him away from screens, computers, ipads or TVs, and in order to do that, to keep him away from them, I try to avoid setting that example for him. He knows that when he's at kindergarten he knows that I'm working and he's obviously he has seen me in front of the computer. You know, here and there, but I do try to avoid having to set that example as much as possible. I want him to, at this stage in his life, to pretty much play. Just do child's plays.

Alla:

Yeah, it's so cool when you have children. We're just reminded about the importance of play. Right, I don't have to take seriously everything. I can just be foolish and just do something crazy.

Nico:

Children are such kids, so they're good.

Alla:

Yes, absolutely. Um, so tell us how? Did you have something line up already when you transitioned, or did it come later and talk a little more about that self-discovering moment?

Nico:

Yeah, I did so. No, I didn't necessarily have anything lined up, but I did. Obviously I started looking right away as soon as I made that decision. I guess as soon as I made the decision that I wanted to explore this childhood passion in aerospace, I immediately started looking for that. It was very difficult, not just because I was letting go of that old identity. I also had to almost start fresh right. I was in a new industry. Where I was, it felt like I could come in with my big resume, right With all my accomplishments, and be told well, you know that means nothing, you know welcome, you know you can be our junior intern right now. It's hard, man, like it's really hard.

Alla:

You can be our junior intern right now. Oh my God, how did it's hard, man Like. It's really hard. It's hard for your accomplished ego in a good way, right, and your identity that you Like. Not everybody could take that. How did you do that?

Nico:

I just kept my eye on how I was pursuing my dream. I kept thinking about that, right, and my dream would eventually um be closer and closer, so it didn't matter if, in the process, things got a little bit hard. I I knew that the goal was worth it, right, that I was finally doing exactly what my five-year-old would be proud of, my five-year-old and me as five-year-old I mean, would be proud of. And that journey of self-discovery well, we're definitely talking about it, right, it was definitely this that we're talking about now is part of it, right, it is figuring out how do I feel once I remove the recognition that I felt in my life, right, when I'm no longer recognized as this person or that and I have to create a new identity for myself.

Nico:

I thought at the time that if I was pursuing this career in aerospace, that was going to be enough to keep me satisfied. Right, a career in aerospace and family life, sorry, that would be enough to keep me satisfied. Right, a career in aerospace and family life, sorry, that would be enough to keep me satisfied. And a few months into that, I guess, I realized that I still was hungry for more. No-transcript. So what I needed to do was in addition to working towards a dream. I realized during that journey of self-discovery during those couple of years, that unless I was also doing something to sharpen my skills or acquire new ones, I wasn't satisfied enough. Um, and so that's when we can talk about other things, right, as I said earlier, right, it could be flying a plane or, uh, running through the Andes, right, but there are other different things that ended up meeting that part of my life.

Alla:

So what is it that you do now?

Nico:

Professionally, you mean right? Yes, professionally, I am in aerospace. I am a platform engineer or a company that builds imaging satellites. The images that it takes are done using a very exciting, somewhat new technology called the synthetic aperture radar, and basically what they do is they beam radar waves from the satellites to Earth and then they are able to build an image from the waves as they bounce back from Earth. And I get to work in their platform work in their platform.

Alla:

So it's pretty exciting to see how the field is making so much progress. That's amazing. Do you have to do a lot of computer vision stuff there, since you're working with images and stuff?

Nico:

like that. There is a good bit of computer vision. I cannot say that that's my role. My role is closer to the data pipeline. As a platform engineer, I'm closer to the data pipeline, but there is a good bit of computer vision. And, in general, when there are announcements in the all-hands channels, in the all-hands channels they have to do with launch schedules or with some new technology where physics are a part of it. Right, more than bits, right, but actual physics become a big part of how this company makes progress. So it's pretty exciting to see things like that.

Alla:

Amazing, I love it. So, yeah, I mean your career after you know the big technology company is very impressive, especially since you had to sort of start over. And yeah, I think aerospace engineering is such an exciting, exciting space and that aligns with your childhood dream. It's so cool, I love it.

Nico:

Thank you.

Alla:

Yes, so to wrap up sort of our podcast, what would you tell your your younger self, or, like, what would you tell your son? I? Just I mean it's a very general question, but something to take away for, like you know, your younger self I actually feel like I was always very fortunate.

Nico:

I was always blessed, and I don't think that my younger self could have done much better, nor much worse than it did. I am happy with how things went on for my younger self. I don't want to change anything. Everything that happened in my life is what led me here, and I was happy throughout my life and I am happy now. So I really don't want to go back in time. I want to leave my younger self alone.

Nico:

As for the advice I would tell my five-year-old, I keep telling him and I hope he'll know it forever and ever. I just want him to know that he's loved, and I think that's a good bedrock right From there on. He'll be loved as he pursues crazy dreams, like I'm doing, and he'll be loved if, instead of that, he wants to do something completely different from my dreams, right. Maybe he I don't know chooses to be a gamer or something, right? That is the opposite of what I'm trying to do, as I restrict TV and gadgets, but he'll be loved doing that too. Whatever he does, I think that the main thing I try to tell him is that he'll always be loved.

Alla:

So good, he's so lucky to have you and your wife, obviously, as you as his parents. Um, it's not very often to see that ambitious people like you, who achieve certain things in life, are sort of getting off children's back to achieve same things right, and put pressure on them to do better or to do at least the same thing. Like, yeah, it's hard, right, because, like, as parents, we want to validate ourselves as parents and you know, like, for example, like I'm, I suck at swimming. So, like one of the things that I validate with my daughter is to put her in a competitive swimming team, so she doesn't suck at swimming. And I realized, like two years after that, like she hates swimming, like she freaking hates swimming, like why would she, why would I keep pushing her? Just because I have an unsatisfied need to be good in swimming, right? So she said, mom, I hate it. I'm like no, no, keep pushing, resilient, right, like I'm going to. And so and I thought, you know, sometimes you have this, you know you go for you don't want to do a workout. You, after the workout, you feel better, right, and you feel better like elevated mood hormones.

Alla:

And so I thought like if I drop her off to the swimming practice and I pick her up and she feels better than before. That means something is working right. So I drop her off. I pick her up. She's miserable. I drop her off, she's miserable. I pick her up, she's even more miserable.

Alla:

I'm like, okay, that's it, like I don't have to put my ego in front of this. Um, she is, she needs to pursue what she likes to do and she loves dancing. Now she wants to be competitive dancing, which is which is good with me. But you know, this is like as parents. You know, we want our children to be better. That's just our, I guess, biology like we want them to evolve and progress in evolution to do better than us. But it doesn't mean that they have to go through the same experience. Right, it could be better in some other ways and some other dimension that we don't consider from our life right now. And so giving them this freedom to, and trust and love in the first place to do whatever they want with their life, to be happy and successful, that requires a lot of self-discovery, work and personal growth.

Nico:

I think so. I completely agree. At the end of the day, parenthood is one of the things that we we can train the least for. Right, we, we're all learning on the job. Right, there's no uh aws certification that you can prepare, you know, to become a parent. And so all of a sudden, right, you're it and you're trying to figure out one day at a time. And so things like what you, what you're telling, I can definitely relate, but the the most exciting part is that you are telling it. Right, that you're telling it means that you've come to a point where you've thought about it um, right, you've, you've turned the a point where you've thought about it. Right, you've, you've turned the corner. Right, you found a lesson to be learned, and I'm sure both of us have a lot more that we haven't learned yet, and maybe in another installment we'll be sharing those, uh, the, the new things in parenthood yeah, it's maybe.

Alla:

um, yeah, it's like somebody told me at the very beginning that it will get better, not because things get easier, but because you become better at handling them, and I feel like that's like that certification that you are undergoing through the entire life as a parent.

Alla:

It's like a work in progress and you do develop certain skills and certain things, hopefully right. It doesn't go like that all the time, of course, but hopefully at the end of the day, when your child is 21, you've given them the foundational understanding of decency, a safe environment to develop their needs right, express their emotions in a safe way, even bring awareness to the emotions and say, hey, I'm upset right now, it's okay to cry, it's fine, I can just do it, it's safe.

Nico:

Yes, absolutely Going back to you get better, just uh, because I do think it's related to your, to your podcast. I think that one challenge that we all face is that as we become better at things, we like to do them more right. It's nicer to do things you are good at than it is to do things that you suck at, and one of the challenges right with the, the b-squared effect and the idea of be constantly changing right is that it puts us in a situation where we are constantly trying new things that we are not good at and that might be exciting, for sure, but it's also it doesn't feel as good, it's not stroking our ego as much as doing the things that we are good at, and that's a real challenge. I think I've thought about this at times when, obviously, in this career, shift right, but also at times when I'm going from being an individual contributor to being a manager right.

Nico:

Or it could be in sports, if you're a skier and you try snow manager right. Or it could be in sports, if you're a skier and you try snowboarding right. Or if you feel like you're a fast runner and you want to try doing a half marathon right, and then you suck and you suck and you want to go back to what you're good at right. If you're a great skier and you put on a snowboard and you immediately fall on your face, the first reaction is to say, like why am I doing this? I'll go back to skiing, I'm good at that. And so I do think that probably a lot of your listeners are probably wondering how much sucky experiences they want to take as they try to move towards more and more changes in their life. And it's a challenge, but it can definitely be an exciting one.

Alla:

Yeah, I feel almost like sucky experiences is the reason we are on this earth, and the amount of sucky experiences that we exposed ourselves to directly correlates to our success and the. The task of our brain is to always keep us out of this sucky situations. Right, the brain wants us to be safe, wants us to default to the pathways that have been created ever since you were a child and even before, like with your ancestors, to go through a safe environment that keeps you out of trouble. But that's exactly where you have to not do that and do the opposite. So I think awareness there is like the first step right.

Alla:

Like you say, okay, I know this is challenging, and your first reaction is to be scared. Or maybe your first reaction is to run away from it or say, no, this opportunity is, I'm not ready for it. Right is to run away from it or say, no, this opportunity is, I'm not ready for it, right, and just fight, fight from it. But then the second reaction is like, okay, who is speaking? Is this my ego not trying to not embarrass herself? Or is it my child's three-year-old that has been exposed to something that was very uncomfortable and was embarrassed for it, or whatever. It is Going a little deeper in that self-discovery, and asking those questions is really what brings that awareness eventually. And then you say, okay, maybe I am scared, but that fire in me, that ambition to be an astronaut and be in aerospace when I was three, is bigger than that fear that I have or whatever excuses that you might come up with. So yeah, thank you for that, I love it. So, on that note, nico, where can people find you? Absolutely.

Nico:

The easiest way is definitely through LinkedIn, so hopefully you can share my name there along with the podcast information, but I do respond to LinkedIn messages, I promise. In fact, this is also how we helped coordinate some of this, so I'm around, awesome, all right.

Alla:

Well, thank you so much for your wisdom. It was such a pleasure to have a conversation with you. I'd love to talk more about cognition and human evolution and what to do in the future. But for now, thank you so much for your time and contribution and I love talking to you, Nico.

Nico:

Thank you, Alla it's my privilege.

Alla:

All right, here you have it. I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Nico Zeitlin as much as I did. We haven't connected in a while and I'm so glad we connected again because Nico's transition was absolutely remarkable. He truly embraces the C-squared effect and keeps evolving, as an engineer as well as a parent. His story inspired me at so many levels and I really hope it inspired you too. As always, embrace the C-squared effect, keep evolving, make bold decisions and strive to make the world a better place. Love y'all.

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Alla Shashkina

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