What Drives Job Satisfaction with Fabiano Beselga from ada | 🎙️#43
Our guest this week is Fabiano Beselga, Head of Technology at ada, music composer and YouTuber. He joins Leo, Pablo and Kirill for a discussion of his career path, work-life balance and product discovery.
- Fabiano’s path in platform engineering and in music;
- How to balance your work with your hobby and side-projects?
- Work-life balance around the world: Brazil vs. Germany vs. Spain;
- Creating tools for your side-projects;
- Continuous Discovery Habits;
- How to stay motivated and focused?
You can listen to episode 43 of DevOps Accents on Spotify, or right now:
Fabiano Beselga’s career journey is a blend of engineering expertise and creative passion. Starting as a software engineer in Brazil, his path led him through various tech roles, including working with HP and even founding a successful FinTech company. What makes Fabiano’s journey unique is his simultaneous passion for music, which began in his youth and has persisted throughout his professional life. This passion for music is evident in his role as a music composer and YouTuber, where he merges his technical skills with his creative side. The combination of these two worlds has allowed Fabiano to create tools that support both his professional and personal interests.
Balancing Work, Hobbies, and Side Projects
For many, finding the energy to pursue hobbies and side projects outside of a demanding job can be challenging. Fabiano shared his approach, which involves dedicating small, consistent periods to his music, rather than attempting to complete everything in one go. By setting aside at least 30 minutes each day for his musical endeavors, he maintains a steady progress on his projects without overwhelming himself. This discipline, combined with a genuine passion for what he does, keeps him motivated and allows him to continue developing his creative side alongside his engineering career.
Work-Life Balance: Brazil, Germany, and Spain
Fabiano’s experience working in different countries has given him a unique perspective on work-life balance. In Brazil, his company embraced remote work early, which allowed them to tap into talent across the country and offer a more flexible work environment. This mindset of prioritizing life quality over long work hours carried over when he moved to Germany, where he found a strong emphasis on maintaining strict work hours. Fabiano’s approach to work-life balance reflects the broader cultural differences between countries like Brazil, Germany, and Spain, each with its own attitudes toward work, leisure, and personal time.
My last experience in Brazil was with my company, and I had the possibility to shape how it works. But my mindset there was for the teams that I built: life quality first. So, if there was someone willing to work longer to finish something, like work long hours, I would actually give feedback that this is not what the company wants. It was actually critical feedback—like, "Don't do this. Go home, finish your things, do your life, and then come back tomorrow with a fresh mind." In my experience, every time I, like, if I'm tired working long hours and I'm struggling to solve a problem, I don't know, two, three hours, come the next day, like five minutes, it's solved. So, I think it's even more efficient. That's also what I see here in Germany. People are very strict on work hours. It's very hard to reach people after 5 p.m., for example. At least most of the companies that I have worked with here. Yeah. But, I mean, this is from my experience. Before in Brazil, my early career... Some of the companies I worked for, there was this sprint sometimes to deliver something, working on weekends, but something that definitely should be an exception. Otherwise, if this becomes a rule, it's not healthy, in my humble opinion. — Fabiano Beselga
Creating Tools for Your Side Projects
One of Fabiano’s notable achievements is the creation of Tonic Codes, an online platform born out of his own need to manage guitar and synthesizer presets. This project exemplifies the idea of "dogfooding," where the creator builds a tool they personally need, ensuring that it meets real user requirements. By engaging with both users and manufacturers, Fabiano has been able to create a platform that resonates with the music community. His experience in platform engineering undoubtedly played a role in his ability to develop and maintain this project.
Continuous Discovery Habits and Staying Motivated
Fabiano’s approach to product development is heavily influenced by the principles outlined in ‘Continuous Discovery Habits’ by Teresa Torres. By conducting regular interviews with users and mapping opportunities, Fabiano ensures that his projects stay aligned with real user needs. This method not only enhances the products he creates but also keeps him motivated. Fabiano emphasizes the importance of discipline, consistent effort, and staying connected to the end-user’s needs, whether it’s in his side projects or his main job as Head of Technology.
I’m using some techniques around product discovery in order to better identify the needs, requirements, and pain points of users. Recently, I got to know about a book called ‘Continuous Discovery Habits’ by Teresa Torres, in which she provides a framework to map the Opportunity-Solution space. By opportunity, she means not just problems, because opportunities can include needs, pain points, etc. It's not necessarily a problem, like in entertainment, for example. So, she classifies them as opportunities. There is this Opportunity-Solution tree where you map.
In a nutshell, at the top of this tree, you have your desired outcome, which is usually a business or product outcome like acquiring more users or increasing engagement in some part of the product. Then, you have some opportunities below that, which are actually voiced by the customer. So, like…
To give an example connected to my project, it can be to be a concrete example. This problem I just shared with you, "I want to remember the presets that I created so I can reuse them." This is one problem statement. Or "I want to share with the world," or "I want to get inspired by the way people are using my gear, the gear I have in different ways.”
To start developing this Opportunity Solution Tree, the recommendation is to start talking to customers, potential customers, or existing customers in these product discovery interviews. The author of the book recommends doing this weekly. She also recommends having what she calls a product trio. So three people from the company, one being the product manager, product designer, and one software engineer or the person representing the technology. Three of them go to talk to potential customers or existing customers in order to discover and understand more. From that, needs emerge from these conversations. She also recommends not to ask what people want or like, not direct questions, but to ask about them to tell stories of real facts. So, for example, you can come to a discovery interview and ask, "When was the last time you used AI in your work in a way that was useful for you?" Then the person is going to tell your real story, and then you're going to be interested in understanding the journey. Then you collect this story using the interview snapshot, which is also provided in our framework. And then in this interview snapshot, you map the story, some insights that people interviewing had from this, and you start mapping some opportunities that emerged from this talk. Imagine that over time, you're going to have weekly interviews, and you're going to map a lot of opportunities, and this helps to shape your Opportunity Solution Tree.
And then the second stage of this is that, based on the opportunities the team decides to move forward, you create solutions, you think about solutions, and for each opportunity, you can have multiple solutions. So brainstorm different solutions with the team. Instead of building it directly, you do some experiments, some assumption testing around that in order to see if that's the best way to solve it. That's really going to solve it. And in order to do these experiments, there are several ways to do it. It can be as simple as, I don't know, running a survey, A-B testing, doing more product interviews, etc. But then you validate your assumptions and then decide what you build, but with much more confidence that it's going to solve the opportunity or the problem you had before. So, in a nutshell, I really like the framework. I think it helps to connect the business outcome to the discovery part and also to be more mindful about building something that's really going to solve the problem and running some experiments before spending the time to really build it. — Fabiano Beselga
For those looking to integrate their personal passions with their professional goals, Fabiano’s journey offers valuable insights. His story demonstrates that with discipline, genuine interest, and a strategic approach to discovery and development, it’s possible to balance work, hobbies, and side projects successfully.
One thing that I learned, because I had, of course, other side projects in my life which I did, but didn't continue developing, is about the difference between this one and the others and why I'm sticking with and developing it. So, back in the days when I had the idea for side projects, I would dedicate a full weekend to developing it and then it would be ready, and I'd never touch it anymore.
And probably people listening to this podcast might have similar experiences. What's different for me right now is that, instead of doing this sprint of 48 hours and that's it, I have small periods of time, but almost daily. So, at least 30 minutes per day, I really block myself to work on this. Even if I move just a little bit, it's constantly moving. So this is one thing: discipline is better than a sprint.
So, this would be my first advice; secondly, do something that really matters to you, and ideally, something where you are also the final customer. Because in my project, I am also the final customer. So I feel the pain point as well, and I feel the need to develop it more. So yeah, dogfooding, that's what they say. And actually, it's interesting because during my entrepreneurial journey, I talked to three investors and everything. And one of them, the leader of one of the biggest VCs in Brazil, told me—I asked him, "What were your lessons learned from companies you invested in? What would you never do again?" And then he told me he would never invest again in a company where the founders are not the final users, they didn't start from a pain point they had.
And he explained like five examples of that, why he would not invest again. So yeah, this really stands out for me. Since it's also something that I use daily and I'm very inspired on the music side, it also inspires me to keep going. Talking to the manufacturers gave me even more motivation because, so far, their feedback was overall really, really good, and they are sponsoring, like, helping to promote everything. And when I see people using it, for example, there is a heavy user of one guitar pedal who is constantly creating new presets. So, seeing people using it also gives me motivation. Yeah, I think that's what I can think of. — Fabiano Beselga
Show Notes:
Connect with Fabiano on LinkedIn
And in the company he currently works for
Explore Fabiano's work and music:
Check out his personal project that we were discussing, a tool to save and share presets for your music gear, Tonic Codes: https://www.tonic.codes
Podcast editing: Mila Jones / milajonesproduction@gmail.com