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I find that most people employed in ICT know what a negotiation is, yet they inevitably fail to see one, even when it's placed right in front of them. I don't know the reasons (maybe our compulsively rational, binary mindset?) and I don't plan to study them. I will however claim,  rather ambitiously, that if we realize that everything is a negotiation, and deal with it accordingly, we can greatly improve the way we work together, and also be more effective. Some examples: a colleague reaches out to me and suggests we buy support for the Open Source monitoring product we use, because it's critical to our infrastructure. I say no, briefly arguing my reasons. We reach out to another team and suggest a change, they decline it. Are these negotiations? yes! and no! Yes, well of course they are: as the title says everything is a negotiation. At the same time, the conversation stops short of  the discussion with the intent to find a compromise , so it's only just a potenti...

Each week, in our weekly team meeting, we set out to explore complex/interesting topics. Recently we touched on learning to learn, and imposter syndrome came up, while discussing what can and what can't enable a "being good at learning" disposition. I'll admit that so far my reflections on imposter syndrome stopped at the personal belief that, if one can harness it, it can be turned into a positive force, a force that will encourage us to double-check our work, reduce bias, foster capacity to incorporate feedback, and thus lead to better, more sound results overall. In the weekly meeting multiple, different point of views were offered, and while considering this diversity it dawned to me how much of my own point of view is born out of my generally positive experience of working in ICT. I started out in 1996 when, at university, I was first exposed to computers, Linux, and the internet. I was lucky because the internet was just starting out, and so was I. Things were n...