Stories by Christian Marques on Medium

<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*cXJmCC1RiZZl0Vsrd4P3NQ.jpeg"><figcaption>Engineering efforts in Dwarf Fortress (generated by GPT5)</figcaption></figure>It was 2012, and I had just traveled from Portugal to the South of France to pursue my first software engineering job in a big corp — an endeavor that would soon prove unsatisfying, but which ultimately allowed me to meet a wide array of very interesting people. I ended up sharing an apartment with an eccentric Italian engineer and colleague called Lorenzo, and this was the first time I ever heard about <a href="https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/">Dwarf Fortress</a>. He would talk about it often over breakfast and describe it as “the most complex simulation ever made”, flexing his ability to play (and understand) it, a skill that was reserved to 0.01% of the world’s population.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/640/0*NZXl6Dnf8lkIJVTD.png"><figcaption>Original Dwarf Fortress UI - 2006 (Source: <a href="https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/screens.html">Bay 12 Games</a>)</figcaption></figure><h4>The Barrier of Entry and Emerging Narratives</h4>
Driven by curiosity, and as it was free and open source, I tried installing it multiple times during that period, only to spend half an hour looking at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII">ASCII</a> characters on screen not understanding what was going on, looking up internet guides without any success of making anything meaningful or even understandable, and ending up removing the software soon after that. It’s not a matter of pride, but to be perfectly honest, it was hard to get into it — and being a visually driven person made it much harder.
This happened multiple times whenever I would hear anyone mention Dwarf Fortress, and always ended up in the same outcome — uninstalling the software after some dozens of minutes experimenting with it. Even knowing that there were mods that would make the game more palatable, the inertia of overcoming that barrier was always bigger.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/640/0*9rkslz96vT6_jHg-.png"><figcaption>I got frustrated trying to make sense of what was going on (Source: <a href="https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/screens.html">Bay 12 Games</a>)</figcaption></figure>Regardless, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I discovered the YouTuber <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@kruggsmash">Kruggsmash</a> and immediately fell in fascination with these stories and, consequently, the game. It’s strange — falling in love with a game you’re not able to play, thanks to the emerging narratives and a creator who can wrap them up in a really compelling way. But that fascination kept growing, and the more I heard about it, the more curious I became; stories are some of my favorite things in the whole world. That’s why, when in 2022 it was announced that Dwarf Fortress would be released on <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/">Steam</a> with improved graphics and a fully functional GUI, I immediately put aside 30€ and decided to give it another go.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*fO3aKPXyg8XncpEt"><figcaption>The new Steam graphical UI</figcaption></figure><h4>Lifting the Veil on a Monolithic Matrix</h4>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/640/0*DJiRYi53PNRCMvS8.jpg"><figcaption>Dwarf Fortress‘ much awaited (at least by me) Steam Release</figcaption></figure>When the download finished and I booted up the Steam version, the veil was finally lifted. With the barrier of impenetrable <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII">ASCII</a> removed and a mouse-driven interface at my fingertips, I could finally see the matrix for what it was. And looking at it through the lens of a software engineer, what I found was a staggering, almost incomprehensible marvel of 21st-century engineering.
To call Dwarf Fortress a “game” feels like a disservice to the architectural audacity of its codebase. Modern AAA studios spend hundreds of millions of dollars on photo-realistic physics, motion capture and voice acting. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarn_Adams">Tarn</a> and Zach Adams, the brothers behind the game, spent two decades building a simulation so deep that it borders on madness.
In most software architecture — especially in game development — we rely heavily on abstraction. We use approximations to save memory, reduce processing loads, and keep the codebase manageable. Dwarf Fortress aggressively rejects this philosophy. While the engine uses brilliant algorithmic optimizations just to keep itself from catching fire, the design itself prioritizes simulation fidelity over performance shortcuts. Instead of abstracting data, it relies on a web of deeply integrated, autonomous systems that constantly poll, react, and influence one another. In fact, this refusal to compromise is exactly why long-running forts inevitably suffer from “<a href="https://steamcommunity.com/app/975370/discussions/0/3716062978734840948/">FPS death</a>” — the infamous late-game state where the sheer weight of calculating the path-finding, fluid dynamics, and individual toes of hundreds of dwarves brings even modern, high-end CPUs to a crawling halt.
<h4>Where Engineering Meets Emergence</h4>
The magic of Dwarf Fortress lies in how its seemingly disparate systems are designed to interact. There are no “scripted events.” A dragon doesn’t attack your fort because you reached level 10; a dragon attacks because the game’s global history simulator tracked its migration, its hunger parameters, and its attraction to the specific net worth of the gold statues your dwarves recently carved (or in reality, the perceived value of the collected wealth in your fortress).
The emergent narrative is simply the output of an incredibly complex state machine. Consider how the systems layer together:
<ul>
<li>
Literal Geology: Minerals and ores are generated based on real-world geological rules, complete with sedimentary layers, aquifers, and volcanic activity.</li>
<li>
Thermodynamics and Fluid Dynamics: The engine simulates the flow of water and magma, but also tracks the temperature of individual objects and how heat transfers between materials based on their specific melting and boiling points.</li>
<li>
Granular Anatomy: The game tracks the skin, fat, muscle, bone, and nerves of every individual body part. If a goblin gets struck in the arm, the engine calculates the velocity of the weapon, the material of the armor, the melting point of the metal, and the shear strength of the bone.</li>
<li>
Psychology: It tracks the stress levels, memories, artistic preferences, and dietary needs of every single dwarf.</li>
</ul>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/340/1*8UyjFx0Nj3IVjnCnV0e1Eg.gif"><figcaption>An ocean wave in the original Dwarf Fortress (source: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/18486ij/an_ocean_wave_in_ascii_gif/">Reddit</a>)</figcaption></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/488/0*Nr2svB9N0qFVnLwS.png"><figcaption>Dwarf personality system (source: <a href="https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Personality_value">Dwarf Fortress Wiki</a>)</figcaption></figure>And these are just a few of the systems, there are others such as history, weather, cooking, building, etc.
There is a <a href="https://dwarffortressbugtracker.com/view.php?id=9195">famous bug</a> in the game’s history where cats were mysteriously dying of alcohol poisoning in the taverns. The community eventually discovered the root cause: dwarves were spilling ale (fluid dynamics), the cats were walking through the puddles (getting alcohol on their fur via the material properties system), and when the cats later groomed themselves, the engine simulated them ingesting the alcohol. Because cats have small body masses, their simulated blood-alcohol content spiked, and they died.
This “bug” is a real testament to a collision of intersecting systems that most engineers wouldn’t even dare to architect, and certainly wasn’t part of it’s creators plans.
<h4>When the Simulation Gets Personal</h4>
Because Dwarf Fortress refuses to spawn resources out of thin air or rely on generic fail-states, the consequences for my own mistakes as a new overseer were vividly, and sometimes hilariously, grim. It didn’t take long for the math to generate my own bizarre tragedies (as it seems to do to so for every new player).
In one of my early runs (I called this episode — The Thirsty Hounds), I completely failed to secure a reliable water source. As the water reserves dried up, the engine’s biological systems kicked in, and one by one, my dwarves dehydrated and died. A standard game-over in any other game — but this simulation doesn’t stop just because the player lost. My fort’s dogs survived the drought. With their masters gone and no food in the stockpiles, the game’s survival and dietary mechanics logically converged: the starving dogs sustained themselves by eating the corpses of my fallen dwarves. It was incredibly macabre, but structurally flawless within the rules of the code.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/428/1*3Q1iZc9TYcB5V_ZvgQa-iA.jpeg"></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/356/1*U-4pRKzwAvo-N4_tl0aggQ.jpeg"></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/370/1*iC1pobKXvOUcuSAjIKrNZw.jpeg"><figcaption>A grim sight: Dwarves started dying of thirst and the whole colony ended up becoming food for the starving dogs</figcaption></figure>In another playthrough (I called it — The Bohemian Collapse), I aimed for a more utopian approach. I built grand taverns and focused on culture, successfully making my fortress a beacon of the arts. The game’s sociology and rumor systems kicked in, word traveled across the simulated world, and soon, droves of bards, poets, and artists migrated to my halls. It was beautiful until the math caught up with me. Because the game strictly tracks real labor, time, and caloric intake, my society collapsed. My fort was packed with people eating my food, drinking my ale, and reciting poetry, while almost no one was hauling stone or planting crops. My civilization collapsed under the weight of an unsustainable, booze-fueled poetry festival.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*EjVgqbmfuGAKAUfOHK25Aw.jpeg"><figcaption>A colony of poets and intellectuals</figcaption></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*7QgtWeFr93NFIDONm6M57Q.jpeg"><figcaption>Dwarves spending all their time in the tavern and the library — what seems like a joyful cultural renaissance, ended up in full colony collapse (no one was working)</figcaption></figure>Finally, there was the time I witnessed the terrifying collision of the game’s psychological stress mechanics and its granular combat anatomy (this time I called it — The Van Gogh Miner). One of my most experienced miners — ironically, a dwarf who had developed a severe phobia of enclosed spaces — eventually snapped under the cumulative stress of spending months deep underground. The simulation tracks mental health declines into specific psychological breaks, and he went entirely berserk. Armed with his pickaxe, he turned on his own crew. The engine calculated every single swing, block, and deflection. In the most barbaric moment of the rampage, the combat log calmly detailed how the crazed miner swung his pickaxe, bypassed his victim’s skull, and completely severed the other dwarf’s ear while he was still alive. It was a gruesome, hyper-specific tragedy born entirely out of overlapping arrays and variables. I had to lock him down in the mines so he wouldn’t pose a threat to any other dwarves in the colony, containing and ending the carnage.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*7bqkzU7hp8lhLGB6yI8hjw.jpeg"><figcaption>The barbaric cutting of the ear, when a mining Dwarf went berserk from claustrophobia</figcaption></figure>It is easy to look at the sleek, cloud-based, micro service-driven tech landscape of the 2020s and think of it as the pinnacle of software. But there is something deeply romantic and endlessly impressive about a monolithic 20 year old C++ codebase, lovingly maintained and expanded by essentially one programmer (major kudos and admiration for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarn_Adams">Tarn Adams</a>) for over two decades.
Dwarf Fortress is a marvel because it achieves the ultimate goal of any complex simulation: emergent narrative driven by uncompromising logic. The intricate, relentless math running beneath the surface — the same math that fed my dwarves to their pets, ruined my economy with artists and drove a poor dwarf to madness — is exactly what creates those beautiful, tragic stories I fell in love with on YouTube years ago.
It took me a decade, a global pandemic, and a graphical overhaul to finally get past the front door and I’m definitely still a n00b just scratching the surface of this incredible simulation, but now that I’m inside, I can confidently say: Lorenzo was right. From the perspective of a software engineer, the architecture of this project is breathtaking, and the experience of playing it is brilliantly and unapologetically chaotic. As the Adams brothers say: “<a href="https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Losing">Losing is fun!</a>”, but scrutinizing and admiring their “losing-engine” might actually be even more fun than playing it.
<h3>References</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/31/700000-lines-of-code-20-years-and-one-developer-how-dwarf-fortress-is-built/">700,000 lines of code, 20 years, and one developer: How Dwarf Fortress is built</a></li>
<li><a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/09/21/podcast-377-you-dont-need-a-math-phd-to-play-dwarf-fortress-just-to-code-it/">Podcast 377: You don't need a math PhD to play Dwarf Fortress, just to code it</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/q-a-dissecting-the-development-of-i-dwarf-fortress-i-with-creator-tarn-adams">Q&amp;A: Dissecting the development of Dwarf Fortress with creator Tarn Adams</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.polygon.com/features/2019/3/14/18264569/dwarf-fortress-steam-tarn-adams-villains-health-care">The co-creator of Dwarf Fortress is getting older, but his work remains unfinished</a></li>
</ul>
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Dwarf Fortress: an engineering marvel of the 21st century

Navigating the chaos of modernity with a 3,000-year-old compass

The Ressurection of Timewave Zero

The Ghost in the Mandelbrot

<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/964/1*3sMEIDsS6Uv6TpnZf8d9Xg.jpeg"><figcaption>Mooey Maria Hazel in January 2026</figcaption></figure>When <a href="https://medium.com/@christian.marques/the-ultimate-hamster-monitoring-system-45ddec50009a">we first wired a Raspberry Pi into Mooey Maria Hazel’s enclosure</a>, we were mostly driven by curiosity — and a bit of parental amusement. The initial results were fun, reassuring, and occasionally surprising, and leaving for some days without worrying about her was a true blessing (we could keep checking on her from far away). But the real value of the system only became apparent once we stopped checking the data and simply let it accumulate, letting the data tell its own story.
Eight months later, Mooey has apparently had enough of the micro vibrations and strange lights, as a couple of nights ago, she decided to climb to an apparently impossible place to reach, and bit off the small cables connecting the sensor to the Raspberry Pi.
She is now almost one year old, and we’re taking this opportunity to give her some peace as a birthday present, and take down the experiment — which leads us to look at the data a bit more carefully and try to make some conclusions.
Between May 2025 and February 2026, Mooey logged:
<ul>
<li>~3,800 running sessions</li>
<li>~566,000 wheel rotation events</li>
<li>~250 days of near-continuous monitoring</li>
</ul>
What started as a weekend project quietly has turned into a longitudinal behavioral experiment.
This is what we learned.
<h3>A hamster with an internal clock</h3>
One of the clearest signals in the data emerged almost immediately: time of day dominates everything (unsurprisingly).
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*uL5uF7Yo_Ut-gLZoOd49sA.png"><figcaption>Circadian activity heatmap showing only hours with recorded wheel activity. Mooey’s running behavior is tightly constrained to a narrow nightly window, with near-zero activity outside it across eight months.</figcaption></figure>When we plotted activity as a heat map — hours on the x-axis, days on the y-axis — a clear pattern appeared. Mooey doesn’t just “mostly” run at night. She runs at very specific times, night after night, week after week.
Her peak activity window consistently sits between late evening and the early hours of the morning, with only minor drift across seasons.
None of this data contradict what biologists already know about hamsters. Syrian hamsters are a classic model organism for studying circadian rhythms, and their nocturnal, highly habitual behavior is well documented in laboratory settings.
What surprised us wasn’t what Mooey did, but how cleanly and consistently these patterns emerged from months of passive observation in a normal home environment. Outside of an experimental setting, her activity still collapsed into a narrow, rigid time window with almost no exceptions.
In that sense, this project quantified just how strong and predictable the knowledge of hamster biology can be when measured continuously, at home, over hundreds of nights.
Insights: Mooey isn’t really reacting much to noise, light, or human presence (which really varied throughout the experiment, especially when we were not in the house). She’s running on an internal clock.
<h3>Not one single kind of run — several</h3>
At first glance, wheel activity looks like a continuous stream: sometimes short, sometimes long, sometimes fast. But once we grouped sessions by duration, intensity, cadence, and environment, something interesting emerged.
The sessions clustered naturally into a small number of distinct “running modes”:
<ul>
<li>
Short bursts — quick visits to the wheel</li>
<li>
Medium sessions — the default, most common behavior</li>
<li>
Long endurance runs — sustained, higher-effort sessions</li>
</ul>
What we didn’t see was a smooth spectrum. Mooey doesn’t gradually ease from short to long, or from slow to fast. She seems to pick a mode, run accordingly, and stop.
What we found is also consistent with how rodents are known to move: in discrete bouts rather than along a smooth continuum. This suggests that her running behavior is state-driven rather than continuously modulated by fatigue, even if it feels natural to describe it as “choosing a mode.”
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*aB20opq2PlJgEWWT.gif"><figcaption>One of Mooey’s first runs after we had set up the monitoring system</figcaption></figure>Insights: Even at hamster scale, exercise behavior is discrete and intentional, not random or purely fatigue-driven.
<h3>More Running Means Longer, Not Faster</h3>
Another assumption we had early on was that “big nights” meant Mooey was running harder. The data says otherwise.
Across thousands of sessions:
<ul>
<li>Speed varies surprisingly little</li>
<li>Total work scales almost entirely with session length</li>
</ul>
When Mooey wants to do more, she doesn’t sprint — she just stays on the wheel longer.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/380/1*rxstQhyA-CIlMBZu8bBqTQ.gif"><figcaption>Hamtaro doing an endurance run</figcaption></figure>This mirrors something we often forget as humans: endurance beats intensity for sustained activity and is consistent with how rodents use running wheels in both laboratory and naturalistic studies.
In rodents given free access to a wheel, voluntary running tends to reflect total time spent active rather than dramatic changes in speed; the dominant variation across days and individuals comes from how long the animal chooses to sustain activity, not how fast it runs.
Wheel running in rodents is broadly used in research precisely because it yields measures of when and for how long an animal runs, with less emphasis on rapid intensity spikes than on session duration and accumulated revolutions over time.
Insights: Mooey increases workload by extending time, not by pushing speed.
<h3>Does the Environment Matter?</h3>
We logged temperature and humidity on every rotation, because we deeply wanted to find correlations between the environment and her activity — thus one of the biggest questions of the experiment was: does the environment influence performance?
The answer is: yes — but only a little.
<ul>
<li>Higher temperatures are associated with slightly less running</li>
<li>Higher humidity is associated with slightly more running</li>
<li>The effects are real, but modest compared to time-of-day</li>
</ul>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/640/0*rDJ-38z3uHoQIby-"><figcaption>Hamtaro shows hamsters enjoying a rainy day, but do they really?</figcaption></figure>Studies of voluntary wheel running in rodents and other small mammals show that environmental conditions like temperature and light can influence overall activity levels, but these effects are generally modest compared to innate behavioral rhythms such as circadian timing.
Environment fine-tunes behavior, but it doesn’t override it. Mooey still runs when she wants to run — just a bit more comfortably under certain conditions.
Insights: Comfort matters, but habit matters more.
<h3>What We Didn’t See (And Why That’s Good)</h3>
Over eight months, we saw:
<ul>
<li>no sudden drops in activity</li>
<li>no erratic changes in cadence</li>
<li>no unexplained long-term decline</li>
</ul>
From a behavioral standpoint, this is exactly what you’d hope for. The system didn’t just satisfy curiosity — it quietly acted as a long-term wellness monitor, and kept us at ease when we had to be absent from the home for some days.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/498/0*HKbK2rvQ14CeHk_K"><figcaption>Hamtaro is a happy, healthy hamster (and so are its owners)</figcaption></figure><h3>Looking Back</h3>
What began as a fun hardware experiment evolved into something more subtle: a window into routine, habit, and biological rhythm.
The most surprising lesson wasn’t how much Mooey runs (although that was indeed surprising, looking at the records) — it was how structured her behavior is. Night after night, she shows up, chooses a mode, does the work, and hops off.
Just pure instinct and consistency.
Here are some of Mooey’s incredible stats:
<ul>
<li>
Median speed: ≈ 1.1 km/h 📊</li>
<li>
95th percentile speed: ≈ 1.6 km/h 🏎️💨</li>
<li>
~ 48.5 minutes of uninterrupted running (Same session also holds the distance record) 🏃‍♂️</li>
<li>
~ 1.15 km in one continuous run ♾️</li>
<li>
~ 6.3 km in one night (2025–08–28) 🛣️</li>
<li>
Consistency: Over ~250 days cruising speed barely changed, preferred activity window barely drifted, session structure stayed stable 🎯</li>
</ul>
<h3>The end — as requested by Mooey</h3>
In the end, the experiment didn’t stop because the data ran out, but because Mooey decided she’d had enough.
After months of quiet observation, she eventually chewed through the sensor cables (to our surprise , since they were quite out of reach — or so we thought) — a small but decisive act that we chose to interpret less as sabotage and more as feedback.
From a biological standpoint, this makes sense: hamsters are highly sensitive to subtle environmental disturbances, and constant micro-vibrations, faint indicator lights, or unfamiliar sounds — even ones we barely notice — can become sources of irritation over time.
Rather than rebuilding the system yet again, we took the hint. The project had already answered its questions, and Mooey had more than earned some peace and quiet. Sometimes the most responsible thing an experimenter can do is stop listening to the data — and start listening to the hamster.
Eight months. Half a million data points. One very committed runner. 🐹🏃‍♀️ We hope you’ve enjoyed Mooey’s adventure!
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/480/1*WfGDr8EGZkx-gSxF9p75qw.gif"><figcaption>Mooey eating turnip leaves</figcaption></figure><h3>Open-sourcing the data</h3>
We’re making the full dataset from this experiment publicly available as a set of CSV files. While it started as a personal project, months of continuous, real-world behavioral data felt worth sharing openly. The data is released as-is, quirks and all, so others can explore it, question it, reuse it, or simply learn from it.
If it inspires further analysis, replication, or playful experimentation, then the project has gone beyond our own curiosity — which feels like a good place to stop.
<a href="https://transfer.it/t/aqiarw41Ub4A">https://transfer.it/t/aqiarw41Ub4A</a>
<h3>References</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://medium.com/@christian.marques/the-ultimate-hamster-monitoring-system-45ddec50009a">The ultimate hamster monitoring system</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.jove.com/t/50186/recording-analysis-circadian-rhythms-running-wheel-activity">Recording and Analysis of Circadian Rhythms in Running-wheel Activity in Rodents</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031938498001401">Conservation of locomotor behavior in the golden hamster: effects of light cycle and a circadian period mutation</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763411002193?utm_source=chatgpt.com">The use of a running wheel to measure activity in rodents: Relationship to energy balance, general activity, and reward</a></li>
<li><a href="https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/faculty_publications/1470/">The Effects of Ambient Temperature and Lighting Intensity on Wheel-running Behavior in a Diurnal Rodent, the Nile Grass Rat (Arvicanthis niloticus)</a></li>
</ul>
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8 months of monitoring our hamster (Mooey)

The ultimate hamster monitoring system

Optimal Route Crafting: Finding the shortest path on the surface of a mesh

<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*tYBXmeUqmMbywv8Q"><figcaption>Fig.0 — The onboarding journey begins (Microsoft Bing Image Creator)</figcaption></figure>It’s now roughly six months since I joined Promaton as a front-end engineer working intimately with WebGL/three.js. Despite the course of time, I’m still feeling the excitement from my first weeks, which I’d love to share with you, as it has been one of the most interesting and thrilling onboarding experiences of my career.
New joiners at Promaton are usually invited to tackle an onboarding project, for about a month’s time, which is typically suggested by the team they will be working with. Generally, it is a relatively open-ended assignment.
The reasoning behind this is that new joiners can start their life at Promaton by getting familiar with the stack, technologies, processes, and team without the pressure of meddling in production code. This also provides them with more agency, ownership, and accountability for their project, on which they have to work by themselves.
My onboarding assignment was to build a prototype (or rather proof-of-concept) based on a series of hypotheses that had been determined by my team. The structure of the assignment presented the problems (mostly user experience pain points) and some of the hypotheses that had been brainstormed by the team in order to attempt and improve on these issues. From there, I was given total autonomy to consider how it would be approached. I approached it by researching the existing experience, outlining the user journeys and verifying the described pain points — which then led me to start writing detailed technical documentation, illustrating how the problem would be approached (Fig.1 &amp; 2). I was given the freedom to choose some parts of the stack and design the architecture I felt most comfortable with, and had some technical discussions with the team, helping to validate that the path forward would be a fruitful one.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/775/0*qGQ4OgH8tDumlWI7"><figcaption>Fig.1 — Choosing the tech stack and solutions</figcaption></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*JG631u-SkI1C7jLN"><figcaption>Fig.2 — Drawing user journey diagrams</figcaption></figure>During the course of a month, I was given the opportunity, freedom and ownership to build a prototype tackling some high-impact user experience issues. This is because we believe that you need to empower people if you want them to reach high-impact goals. Without wanting to go too much into detail, we’re talking about a web application that leverages Promaton’s AI and 3D visualisations to greatly improve dental clinicians’ lives, by saving them time and effort by automating implant and restorative treatment planning and design. I also had a huge amount of support from the extended team, who very promptly were ready to brainstorm, answer questions, suggest solutions and help with various infrastructure-related hurdles.
During this time, I had the possibility and agency to build this piece of software and experiment with different technologies I had been curious about. I had the chance to decide on the technical options, and in that process also learned a lot about the business context of Promaton, but also about the products, not only the ones owned by my team but also the wider-range portfolio of products, some of which I had to integrate.
Roughly one month later, I was presenting the prototype (still quite incipient at this point, as you might imagine, Fig.4) to the broader Promaton team, who provided very constructive feedback and widely celebrated the efforts made in this journey. The first iteration was completed successfully and well received. In the middle of this journey, there was also a very fun week-long hackathon, where I completely changed the context for a full week and made a little interactive map for displaying the geolocation data of our API usage — (Fig.3)
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*hoQbzJQ1Xbp_fZtp"><figcaption>Fig.3 — Building cool stuff during hackathon amidst onboarding</figcaption></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*kQMjAAsXdqB8TidP"><figcaption>Fig.4 — First iteration of prototype</figcaption></figure>Little did I know that this onboarding project would turn out to be so relevant, that after this intense month, we’d continue to work on it.
We performed a series of user interviews with real clinicians, and based on that feedback, continued iterating on the prototype for the next couple of months.
At a point, it became ready (we could consider it a completed second iteration, Fig. 5) to be presented to the extended team and technology leadership of our parent company.
This led to a brief moment of nervousness for me: showcasing the prototype I had been working on in an all-hands meeting with nearly a hundred people watching.
However, this quickly dissipated as the team continued to be supportive and constantly reiterated the practical value and potential of the work that had been done.
It ended up being a successful presentation, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
We now continue to work on this project with greater support from our parent company and continuous positive reception, which is where we are at the moment: performing user interviews and working on a third iteration based on that feedback.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*a-SAwGighMvRoZbq"><figcaption>Fig.5 — Second iteration of prototype</figcaption></figure>This leads me to the end of the story per se, but I still want to reflect on this journey.
I believe it not only very well represents a lot of the Promaton values, but also constitutes an interesting onboarding experience that is rarely seen throughout our industry, as usually, engineers joining a new company are typically given menial and routine tasks to start with and get accustomed to the codebase, the processes and the team.
With this very particular format of onboarding, Promaton is successfully promoting key pillars of its (engineering) culture:
<ul>
<li>
ownership (as new joiners are expected to own their onboarding project from start to end and be accountable for it)</li>
<li>
trust (as the bulk of choices made during this time are the responsibility of the engineer)</li>
<li>
empowerment (as people are encouraged to present to leadership, discuss and challenge ideas, take the helm of the project)</li>
<li>
building things fast (prototyping and testing ideas is widely encouraged),</li>
<li>
agility (continuous iteration and rapid feedback are essential to drive the development further)</li>
<li>
involvement (as people are encouraged to participate in user interviews, be proactive with UX questions, etc)</li>
<li>
teamwork (as support and collaboration from peers and other actors within the company are encouraged and welcome)</li>
</ul>
Feeling the real impact of your work, being given the opportunity to demonstrate your value and getting overwhelming support from your peers to achieve great results: this is certainly one of the best and most exciting ways to start working in a new company.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*SfUaiQ0Tdvw6COCa"><figcaption>Fig.6 — Reaching the onboarding summit (Microsoft Bing Image Creator)</figcaption></figure><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=172df3b5b037" width="1" height="1" alt=""><hr>
<a href="https://blog.promaton.com/the-on-boarding-ascent-climbing-the-peaks-of-ownership-and-trust-172df3b5b037">The onboarding ascent: climbing the peaks of ownership and trust</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.promaton.com/">Promaton</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The onboarding ascent: climbing the peaks of ownership and trust

<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*GuXYEW790g9EwSH04s-RJg.jpeg"><figcaption>Image from <a href="https://unsplash.com/@oriento">五玄土 ORIENTO</a></figcaption></figure>I’ve recently had a couple of experiences in the job market as a software engineer where after an entire recruitment process, the feedback just didn’t arrive, and emails weren’t replied to, which left me confused and struggling with unexpected feelings of frustration, rejection and self-worth.
In the world of job searching, it’s not uncommon for candidates to go through an entire recruitment process, only to receive no feedback and have their emails go unanswered. However, there are ways to deal with these situations and let go of negative feelings. Some have found that Eastern philosophies, particularly Zen Buddhism, offer useful philosophical lessons and approaches that can be applied to such situations, as well as many other complex, fast-moving and frustrating situations in life.
<h3>A brief context on Zen Buddhism</h3>
Zen Buddhism is a school of Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, and later spread to other parts of East Asia, including Japan. It emphasizes the practice of meditation and mindfulness as a means of attaining enlightenment, or a state of deep awareness and understanding.
Zen Buddhism is often associated with simplicity, directness, and a focus on the present moment. Practitioners of Zen Buddhism seek to cultivate a sense of peace, clarity, and compassion in their lives, and often use meditation and other practices to help them achieve these goals.
In Zen Buddhism, there is also an emphasis on non-dualistic thinking, or the idea that there is no inherent separation between oneself and the world around them. This perspective encourages practitioners to see the interconnectedness of all things and to approach life with a sense of openness and curiosity.
Overall, Zen Buddhism is a philosophy and practice that emphasizes mindfulness, compassion, and non-attachment as a means of achieving inner peace and enlightenment. Its principles can be applied to many aspects of life, including dealing with difficult situations like being ghosted by a recruiter.
<h3>How Zen can help you deal with job market rejection</h3>
<h4>1. Practice non-attachment</h4>
Zen Buddhism emphasizes the importance of letting go of attachment to outcomes and accepting things as they are. Try to let go of any expectations you had about the recruiter getting back to you, and accept that they may not have been the right fit for you.
<h4>2. Practice mindfulness</h4>
Pay attention to your thoughts and emotions as they arise, without judgment or attachment. Observe any feelings of disappointment or frustration that come up and let them pass without clinging to them. Understand that these feelings are natural and part of being a human being, but practice and direct your non-attachment efforts towards them.
<h4>3. Focus on the present moment</h4>
Rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, focus on the present moment. This can help you stay grounded and centered, and may also help you notice other opportunities that arise. Past and future are, in many cases, constructions our minds create. By immersing ourselves fully in the present moment, we cultivate a sense of awareness and clarity that transcends the limitations of time and learn to appreciate the beauty and richness of each passing moment, realizing that the present is the only moment that truly exists. Embracing the present moment allows us to live authentically and fully, unfettered by regrets or anxieties, and to discover the peace that lies within.
<h4>4. Cultivate compassion</h4>
Remember that the recruiter who ghosted you is also a human being, with their own struggles and challenges. Try to cultivate compassion for them, rather than anger or resentment. A good way to do so is to try and put yourself in their shoes and empathize with their experience. Recognize that they may be dealing with their own pressures, deadlines, or personal difficulties that led to their actions. By shifting our perspective from one of judgment to understanding, we open ourselves to a deeper sense of compassion.
<h4>5. Practice gratitude</h4>
Focus on the things in your life that you are grateful for, rather than dwelling on the disappointment of being ghosted by a recruiter. This can help you maintain a positive outlook and cultivate a sense of contentment and joy. Fortunately, the software industry is a thriving one and even if you didn’t land this particular job, there are still numerous opportunities awaiting you. Instead of fixating on the missed opportunity, redirect your attention towards gratitude for the skills and experiences you possess, as well as the potential for growth and new possibilities. By embracing gratitude, you open yourself up to a world of endless potential and cultivate a resilient spirit that can navigate through life’s challenges with grace and optimism, which definitely result in eventually landing the job you were looking forward to.
<h3>In conclusion</h3>
Being ghosted by a recruiter can be frustrating and disappointing, but it’s important to remember that it’s a common occurrence in the job search process. Essentially, being ghosted means that a recruiter you’ve been in contact with suddenly stops responding to your emails or calls, leaving you unsure about the status of your job application or the recruitment process. This can happen for a variety of reasons, such as the recruiter getting busy, the position being filled, or the company changing their hiring plans.
However, approaching the situation from a Zen Buddhism perspective can help you find peace and acceptance. Zen Buddhism emphasizes the importance of non-attachment to outcomes and accepting things as they are. To deal with being ghosted in a Zen way, you can practice non-attachment by letting go of any expectations you had about the recruiter getting back to you, and accepting that they may not have been the right fit for you. You can also practice mindfulness by paying attention to your thoughts and emotions as they arise, without judgment or attachment, and focus on the present moment rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. Cultivating compassion for the recruiter who ghosted you can also help you move on in a positive way.
It’s important to remember that being ghosted by a recruiter is not a reflection of your worth or abilities. Instead, it’s a common occurrence that can happen to anyone during the job search process. While it’s understandable to feel frustrated and disappointed, taking advantage of Zen Buddhism techniques can help you find peace and acceptance, and move forward with a positive outlook, stronger than ever.
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