Caio Borghi: Building Better Code by Staying Curious and Giving Back

From coding band websites on Notepad to solving complex problems at Swoogo, Caio Borghi has always believed in the power of persistence, curiosity, and community. Known online as Ocodista, he’s a senior software engineer with a passion for continuous learning and open-source collaboration.

In this episode of What the Code, Caio shares the early experiences that shaped his engineering mindset, the difference between blockers and challenges, and why great developers are great learners.

Staying Curious and Solving Hard Problems

For Caio, the best developers don’t avoid bugs. Rather, they see them as a step closer to the goal. “When I get to an error message that is different, this is progress. This is happiness. I’m in the path,” he says​.

Making that mindset shift from frustration to problem-solving changed how Caio approached his work. After all, failure is part of the job, and there are countless problems that might feel impossible at first but can eventually be conquered. 

“Great software engineers are great learners,” he says, “because everything changes so fast in our industry. We have to keep updated with the latest technologies, and keep improving yourself at all times.”

From Developer to Community Contributor

Caio’s proudest moment wasn’t building for a client—it was launching an open-source tool to help others find remote jobs. “That was like, OK, I’m able to do something on my own, and people use it and see some value in it,” he says​.

That sense of contribution stuck with him. Today, Caio shares what he learns with a growing online audience. He believes strongly in the value of community. “I think this feeling of trying to contribute back just grew through my career … I like this community feeling.”

His approach to mentorship is practical, as he encourages junior developers to take ownership of the problem they’re facing. Part of taking ownership is making sure you’ve done everything you could. “Before asking a question, try to think about what would be the possible answers,” he says. “Most of the time, you didn’t have to ask—you could try to solve it a bit longer.”

Using AI Without Losing the Learning

AI has become a daily part of Caio’s workflow—but he’s careful not to let it replace the learning process. “If there is a tool that helps you in your job, I think you should use it,” he says. But for newer developers, he offers a note of caution: “Try to review it, or try to learn when it makes some mistakes, because it definitely does, and it’s important to know when this happens.”

To him, the future of development will depend on people who can orchestrate AI tools with discernment and skill. “With AI being able to do so much, developers might change from specialists to more generalists,” he says.

Transcript

Amit Sion:

Welcome to What the Code here at the X-Team Studio. I'm very excited here to speak with Caio today. Caio, welcome to the show. Please introduce us to yourself.

Caio Borghi:

Awesome. Thank you very much for the invitation. I'm Caio, I'm 26 years old, and I've been working professionally with software development for the past eight years. I have a bachelor in computer science from University of São Paulo, and I have been working with international clients for the past four years.

Amit Sion:

That's wonderful. Caio, what drew you to be in the tech space?

Caio Borghi:

All right, so it started when I was 10 years old. I think that I put in my mind that I wanted to build a website. So I started learning HTML. Back in the time, I didn't know any fancy IDEs, so I started on Notepad, then migrated to Notepad++, which was awesome, because it colored the tags. And yeah, that was the very beginning of my journey in computer science.

Amit Sion:

It's funny, just that color of the tags makes such a difference because it makes you feel like this is actually real code now, doesn't it?

Caio Borghi:

It was like a band website. I was into YouTube, Bon Jovi, so I wanted to do some website just to learn, and also learn not only HTML but also a little bit about the history of the bands. So it was a very nice experience.

Amit Sion:

That's really cool. And did it get a following, the first site?

Caio Borghi:

Oh no, I never deployed anywhere. It only lived on my computer for a couple of times. I ended up abandoning computer since I joined high school, where I went to a high school that had a course. It was linked to the high school education that was informatics, where I was able to learn .NET, Java, Linux and the basics, but highly focused to the market. So I didn't learn any deep knowledge, only work knowledge, I would say, on the high school.

Amit Sion:

I'm so jealous of you because I'm quite a bit older than you and when I was at school, computers were for learning how to type, and we also had a program of moving a turtle by putting in coordinates to make it draw. And I remember back in 1996, one of the kids came up on the school assembly, this is in my final years, and he said, "Oh, there's this great thing called the internet, everyone, and people are going on there and creating all this amazing stuff." And I thought, OK, I'll check it out.

I went to the computer labs, where they were sitting around, and it was just a group of kids just sharing jokes on the internet. That's all that we saw of the internet. And I go, ah, that's for nerds. I'm not doing any of that. I'm too cool for that. But what I'm saying with all this is that you had such a different experience because you had it in a way where you were immersed into it from school. So you had an opportunity to get into something real from the beginning and get a feel for it, rather than to discover it as you go along, which I think is really exciting that that's available to younger folk to get into that. How do you think that has shaped your journey to get into the tech space?

Caio Borghi:

I think it helped a lot to have this early contact. It was a specialized high school. I had to do some exams to pass. I didn't pass at first, but they called me two months later, because I was lucky enough, one of the selected students never showed up. And I liked it. I liked it from the start. And that's funny, because the majority of students of my class didn't follow up. They didn't like computer or software development. I did. So I wanted to join a college, so I studied, passed it in the week. We have something called Vestibular in Brazil, where you do some exams and some universities can accept you. And yeah, then I have been there since 2013, which was the first year of my high school.

Amit Sion:

A lot of people, when they get into programming, certainly for me when I started as a developer, I wanted to build games. I wanted to get out there and build something from nothing and have people collaborate and use it. And then there's something really exciting when you build something and people use it. What was that moment that inspired when someone started using something you built?

Caio Borghi:

Oh, OK. Yeah, that's a tough one. I'm also into games. I was a heavy PlayStation 3 user, “Call of Duty. I also thought that I was going to learn how to build games at high school or college, and then I found out that it was really harder than I was expecting. But regarding your question, I think my joyful moment was when people started using my open-source tool that I created to help them find remote jobs. So that was like, “OK, I'm able to do something on my own, and people use it and see some value on it,” and I think that was the start on my mind.

Amit Sion:

That was your moment, right? That was your hook that got you excited, when people are actually connecting to it and actually engaging with something that you helped to contribute to.

Caio Borghi:

Yes, it was awesome. And also before that, I had worked at a couple of companies, and it's nice to see something you built really being used for some people, so that's also a nice experience.

Amit Sion:

What do you think makes a good software engineer? What in your mind distinguishes someone who's really great in their field of software engineering and developing?

Caio Borghi:

From the ones that I've talked to, I think the one common factor is curiosity, problem-solving, and not giving up on challenges. The best software engineers I know, they get bugs or something, like if they have an error, they are kind of thinking about that. Even if they left the work, they just get bothered of not being able to solve some problem. So they focus on it, and they learn as much as they need to learn until they are able to pass through that problem. And I think this is an iterative process. Once you do a couple times, it gets easier to learn. So I think that great software engineers are great learners because everything changes so fast in our industry. We have to keep updated with the latest technologies and keep improving yourself at all times if you want to be better.

Amit Sion:

I love it. The focus on being curious. I'm a big fan of the “Ted Lasso” show, and that is a big element of it, that if you're curious about what you're doing, it drives you to persevere and to work harder. And like you say, the perseverance is such a key element because you will hit walls all the time in your job. You have to be someone who is not turned away by that, you're going to go — the X-Team motto is Keep Moving Forward. You're going to hit something and then break through it because you know that there's going to be many more things each day, right?

Caio Borghi:

Yes, for sure. I think that at the start, everyone kind of gets frustrated when they get a bug. I think that one thing that helped me that was also a game changer was when I stopped being bothered about bugs. When I get to an error message, that is different, this is progress, OK? So this is happiness, I'm in the path. So once I started getting happy about good error messages or error messages changing and not getting frustrated, “oh, this broke again.” No, it's like, OK, it broke again, but now it's different, so maybe I'm on the right path. So you see that as a reward, and I think it helps a lot.

Amit Sion:

That's such a good approach to take, that the challenges are actually a gift, because they're an opportunity for you to learn, an opportunity for you to evolve. And for us, the company's been around, X-Team, for 18 years. And for us, like you said, you have to keep progressing and changing your tech stack. People ask for different things. In the beginning, everyone was asking us to build their websites, so we had to have lots of web developers. Then everyone wanted to have an app. You had to get iOS engineers, and you had to get Android engineers. And so we're building so many different apps and all that. And then people are going like, “oh no, no one wants to have a hundred apps on their phone.” So now we're building standalone apps and sites that are functioning like an app, and it evolves. Now, so much of it is about AI adoption and how you can build APIs towards AI to leverage it. It's about not staying stagnant, I think, in engineering. Wouldn't you agree?

Caio Borghi:

Yeah, I agree. I totally agree. And it's nice that you mention all these cycles because it is true. Everybody wants an app a couple years ago. Now we are looking at some framework full stack that maybe you can develop the web, and they generated a mobile version for you, or maybe your website is already mobile friendly, which it should be because it's like 2024. 

But yeah, I think that once you stop bothering with problems and start thinking about how to solve them, and be positive about it, because that will keep you motivated. If you're always going to get frustrated or mad when something fails, then you're going to have a hard time. Because I mean, from my experience, things fail all the time. You're going to need to solve impossible problems a lot of times. And then once they pass, they are not a big issue as you think they were at first. So this is also a good feeling that comes to me after I saw the bug or some unintended feature.

Amit Sion:

Compare the maturity of an engineer, someone who's starting out versus someone who's been doing this for a few years like yourself. What sort of characteristics or elements do you think distinguishes the two?

Caio Borghi:

OK, that's a good question. I think there was a really great book that I read that is called “The Pragmatic Programmer.” And after reading it, I understood that maybe junior developers, they don't believe too much in this themselves, and they kind of ask too much for help, I think. And I don't want to bully junior developers or anything, but most of the times, the answer is in front of you. It's maybe a stack trace, and if you get that stack trace and put it into Google, you might find another piece of information that may help you with the program.

What I think that differs from a junior developer, of a senior developer, is that the senior developer understood there's no magic, right? There's no magic answer or blurred technique that only a few people know. No, basically they understood that you have to read the message, you have to understand your requirements, and you can use Google to answer. And they won't ask for help or raise their hand or block someone else until they got to a really blocking situation. So once you start figuring out what is a blocker and what is not a blocker, is just a challenge, then you achieve some maturity that will definitely help you in your career.

Amit Sion:

That's really interesting. I didn't expect what you were saying with regards to not asking for questions because I think asking for questions is a great thing. But I guess what you're saying is the ability to learn, right? To not just straight away put your hand up and go, “Well, I don't understand this, let me search for this,” but rather—

Caio Borghi:

Yes.

Amit Sion:

To learn to problem-solve, to figure out, and that will enhance and mature you. Is that right?

Caio Borghi:

Yeah, that's correct. Please don't get me wrong. Asking for a question is great, but for example, if you got one error message and you got scared, you don't know how to solve it. And instead of trying to solve, you may try to reach someone that is more experienced to help you solve. And that's fine, as well. But once you start trying to solve the problems, until you hit a really dead end. For example, you don't have access to a VPN, you cannot solve this by yourself. So this is a blocker that you should mention to the team. But if you get like a, I don't know, my code doesn't compile, this is not a blocker. You need to read the error message and investigate and try to solve until you're completely out of options, and then you understand that you're really blocked. So I think I was talking more about perseverance than asking questions.

Amit Sion:

Yeah, I like that because that way you're building up that muscle, right? Because rather than just going, “Oh, I got stuck, put my hand up,” get the virtual teacher to come and help you, you're building up that muscle because you're working out how to problem-solve so that you solve that problem and then you're ready for the next one that comes, rather than seeing it as a setback or being afraid of it.

Caio Borghi:

Yes, exactly. Face your challenges, and try to solve it by your own. And another thing, I mentioned it in the book, is that before asking a question, try to think about what would be the possible answers and to see what would be the first question the person is going to question you back. So this way you can know if your question is a good question, or is it a not fully investigated question.

For example, if you bring me a problem, probably my first question would be, “OK, have you tried reading the error message? Did you take a look at the code? Did you search for some help on the internet?” If all of those three are yes, then OK, then I think it's a good question, and I'll always be happy to help you. But if you do this exercise, you'll probably notice that most of the times, you didn't have to ask. You could try to solve for a bit longer and probably you might reach the solution by yourself, which will help you because now you learn a new type of problem, and you have this in your mind. So whenever you face it again, you already know how to solve it.

Amit Sion:

Yeah, it's really good advice. And I think that there's something quite beautiful to seeing the maturity of an engineer that when they ask a question, it's interesting to the other engineers, as well. Because they can discern between something they could have solved themselves, and something that they go, “OK, this is a real head-scratcher, this is something that we should collaborate on and bring people together to figure out.” And I think that's where it gets exciting. And I think a good engineer would also be interested to jump in and support that. And that's why there's so many forums out there where engineers are supporting each other and collaborating because they get excited by the challenges. It's almost it's part of the characteristic of someone that leads towards this profession that they like problem-solving. They like a challenge.

Caio Borghi:

Yeah, I agree with you. I'm a curious person. I like to solve problems and also yeah, I think the curiosity when you have someone approaching you about a problem that you don't know how to solve is a motivator. So you can deep dive, and maybe talk to your colleagues, and try to think in a group solution. There are some problems that are really hard to solve, but I personally like them today. I think they are the most interesting ones, as well.

Amit Sion:

What inspired you to go from being in the tech space to actually having a social media presence and to be more, I guess, public in your workspace?

Caio Borghi:

I followed some Twitter accounts that started doing some learning public. They shared everything that they learned, and there was a very good community on Brazilian developers that were all sharing that space and sharing whatever they learned. So you learn something, you write about it, you post it in there, people will interact with it. And then, there was a community that was growing, and I wanted to be part of that community. So that's when I started writing some articles, creating some projects and interacting with people. 

And then things happened. Then I went to some events, met some people that I had met previously online, and it was a great experience. And then I think this also helped on the networking. It's also important to have other developers in the field that you know because, I mean, I think that people like to help each other. So once you join a community, if there is something that I can help or some knowledge that I have that you don't, I'll be more than happy to share with you.

Amit Sion:

It's a beautiful thing that happens in our workspace is that people like to support each other. And for us, we have this view that when the company was started, it wasn't started as a company but more as a community. We wanted to bring developers together. And I always say to new clients that when they get an X-Team engineer, even if they just get one, they're actually not getting the power of one. They're getting the power of all the X-Team engineers that support them because they have people that they connect with, friends that they work with that are collaborating to support them. So that the moment that they do hit a challenge that they can't just figure out, they're stuck on, they have other people to support them. And that's a really beautiful thing. I think it happens more in our industry than many others. And I'm curious if the reason is because of the tools that we have available to us to collaborate, or is it something within the mindset of the people that go into software engineering?

Caio Borghi:

That's an interesting question. I think to me, it was always because I had to look for the solutions at some place. And at the beginning of my career, as I worked with C# and some old version of C#, it was not uncommon to find an answer on a 2003 forum that has been there for 10, 15 years. And nobody talks about this anymore, but there was someone that raised this issue way before than I had, and the community helped them to solve. So I have been helped more than I helped people. So I think this feeling of trying to contribute back just grew through my career. So I like that. I like this community feeling.

Amit Sion:

Because I think about other professions where people are more competitive and more trying to reserve their information, whether it's lawyers or comedians or just so many different professions, where you're not putting your information out as much as in engineering, where people are just going like, “Here it is, here's the information that I have.” And also jumping onto forums and solving problems for others, which I think is just a beautiful element to be part of software engineering that way.

Caio Borghi:

I agree with you, and I think that maybe the open-source community helped a little bit in this aspect of our area because open source is not old, but has been there for a while now. And I believe that people learned a lot with open-source projects, and they just want to contribute back, and I agree, it's a beautiful sentiment.

Amit Sion:

Well, I see that you're absolutely right. I saw that with CMSs, right? That WordPress, which is the open-source CMS, is more than 40% of the web in comparison to so many other CMSs that are closed and are built by private companies. And there's a position of pride the software engineers have for how much they've contributed to the core of WordPress, which I think is, It's a beautiful thing, and it shows to a really vibrant community of engineers that want to be part of something.

Caio Borghi:

Yeah, I agree. I think it's great, and once you use a tool, if it's open,if the tool helps you, I think it gives you this wanting or desire to contribute back. And yeah, WordPress is a great software, and I think it's good to have open source as a source of learning and also sharing information, as we have now.

Amit Sion:

How do you see the evolution of AI that's really exploded this year, whilst it's been around for many years, but this year, it really has exploded. How do you see it impacting your career, your profession as a whole?

Caio Borghi:

Yeah, AI is studied since the beginning of computer science, but I think that I agree with you that it blew up with the LLMs. I think it's impacting me personally on the, I would say, tedious code writing. Like the autocomplete of GitHub Copilot or any other AI, too. It really helps you a lot with gains of speed, so you don't have to type everything, you can only use the autocomplete. I think it's evolving very quickly. I think ChatGPT was launched two years ago, and it has evolved a lot. I think there's more tools to come that will help in the developer day-to-day daily routine. I personally am a bit skeptical about AI replacing entirely a developer. I think in the long term, we got to see developers using AI as a daily tool, as we use IDEs and compilers. But yeah, I think it's awesome. It's really amazing everything that it's achieving, and I also think there are also space on the open-source community to build something together and to improve the tools that we already use.

Amit Sion:

That's great that you see it from a position of elevating the engineer, right?

Caio Borghi:

Yes.

Amit Sion:

Rather than replacing them. The way I've envisaged it, because I've spoken to quite a few X-Team engineers about it to see if they see it as a position of fear, and there's actually a excitement to it. The best way I would encapsulate it is that an X-Team engineer on their own is a musician playing an instrument. An X-Team engineer supported by AI tools is like a conductor of a symphony. They've got all these agents that are there to support them, to build what they're doing for the client, and that way the client is actually getting more service from us in that way. And I think if people can take that mindset, then they're not coming at it from a position of fear, but rather on, “How do I leverage this to be of greater service, to be of greater value and to elevate the work that I do?”

Caio Borghi:

Yeah, I think that's the right mindset we should have. If there is a tool that helps you in your job, I think you should use it, and AI has proven to be useful. It is evolving fast. I think that once they launch it, we were expecting to maybe replace, but yeah, I encourage senior developers to use it. But I also think junior developers should use it with a grain of salt because I think it's important to know what is wrong. I think when you use AI, knowing the expected output, you can be the judge of the response it generated for you, so you can find issues that when you are a junior developer, you wouldn't be able to identify. So I would advise to be careful if you're starting right now using AI. Of course, use it to study, use it to generate code, but try to review it, or try to learn when it makes some mistakes, because it definitely does, and it's important to know when this happens.

Amit Sion:

That's a really good point because a senior engineer would know how to use it to elevate and to, like you say, give it the menial tasks that it doesn't need to build. But you don't want a junior engineer to miss out on the opportunity to problem-solve because if they put too much to it, A, firstly they probably wouldn't notice the bad code they're creating, but B, they wouldn't be building that muscle that you spoke about of problem-solving by … the moment you hit a problem, well, we'll just throw it to the AI to figure it out for you. Well, how are you going to be able to build up your technical skills that way? Is that right?

Caio Borghi:

Yeah, I agree. I think if you don't throw it to AI, you probably have to use the old way, which is searching Google or maybe some YouTube videos or learning some articles or documentation, which is the great source of truth, which everyone should take a look when they're building something on top of a technology. But yeah, you shouldn't abuse too much, otherwise you won't learn.

Amit Sion:

How do you see this whole space, the tech space of being an engineer and programming and all that, heading towards the next five, 10, 15 years?

Caio Borghi:

We'll have more AI tools for sure. Personally, I think that the web development market usually likes specialists over generalists. This is a personal opinion. But I think with AI being able to do so much, probably developers might change from specialists to more generalists, or maybe full stack roles, because now you have AI tools that are already able to build projects. And I think that in five to 10 years, they're going to be more specialized into building niche solutions for each technology, and then the developer can become this symphony orchestrator, that you mentioned about the band, with more ease than today.

Amit Sion:

Are there things that we should be doing more to prepare for the future to be in line with that?

Caio Borghi:

This is a controversial answer because while I think that we have a lot of noise in our field, like a lot of new technologies, new releases, new projects, new tools, that it's hard to keep track with everything that is being released. You shouldn't try to learn everything all at once because I think it's not possible. But at the same time, you should prepare yourself for the future, learning what is the latest news. So maybe try not to learn about all the four or five models that just were launched, but try to learn about one or two and see how they can fit into your day-to-day routines. It might help you to prepare for when these tools are really advanced, and you won't be unprepared.

Amit Sion:

Absolutely, because it's an interesting profession from the perspective that you need to keep learning, right? Last week, we changed the carpets in our house, and I was speaking to the carpet layer and I said, "How long have you been doing this?" He said for 40 years he's been laying carpets, and he's really good at it. He knows exactly how to lay it for the different shapes and all that, but I'm sure he figured it out in year two and then has been doing it for another 38 years. Whereas if you get into our space, you have to keep learning, you have to keep studying and evolving, because otherwise you'll be left behind. Do you see that? Are you in that space of finding new things to learn to keep up to pace?

Caio Borghi:

Yes. I see myself trying to get updated with the latest versions. I still read a lot of chain blogs of new versions of React or TypeScript to try to get updated with the market, because things change fast. And I do believe that, if you don't try to follow up at least a little bit, you get behind, because everyone's going to use what is latest on the market, with small exceptions for legacy code or legacy projects that might not change tech so much. But if you're starting on a new project or a recent company, then you have to be updated, or someone else might get that position more.

Amit Sion:

Yeah, we've launched an internal academy for our X-Team engineers because we want to make that available to them to just continue to study at their own voluntary pace. Because whilst they're working at one client now with one technology, they may wish to learn new tech and evolve and work at a different client. And we want to give them that space because I think that, even if you're great at what you do, it doesn't stand still. You have to keep evolving. You have to keep training to remain relevant. I think it's the right way, though, as well. I don't think that people should see it as a negative because if we can keep investing in ourselves and learning something different, we're using our mind more. We're activated, we're evolving as a human. I think that's quite exciting.

Caio Borghi:

Yes, I agree. I like to call it a continuous improvement. In software, we have continuous integration, continuous deployment, and I think that for your career, you should look for continuous improvement. You don't need to improve like 80% every year, but if you try, I don't know, 1%, 2% a month or a year, you're not stagnated. And I think that's the important piece that helps you evolve in your career over the years.

Amit Sion:

X-Team is a remote company. We've been remote from the beginning, 2006. Do you work remote or on-site yourself?

Caio Borghi:

Yes, I work remotely for the past five years, 100% remote.

Amit Sion:

And how do you find it? Do you like remote engineering? Would you prefer in-office?

Caio Borghi:

No, I'm a heavy supporter for remote work. I think it changes my life. At the beginning, there was some challenges on the first couple months to create a routine to adapt to work from home. I think that is required. You have to be professional when you're working from home because I think you have, maybe not more pressure, but you need to be present. You need to make your work talk for you in a way. When you're essential or on the office, it's different. But yes, I love remote work. I'd rather work remotely. I have two small kids, which helps a lot. I can see them during the day. I work in a separated office in the house, but on the coffee breaks or lunches, I'm always with them, and I think this has increased my work-life balance like 300%.

Amit Sion:

That's beautiful. I think, too, how when I was a kid, my father would leave the house before I'd wake up and be at work all day. I'd come back from school, he's still at work, and he'd just make it in time for dinner. We'd eat, and then after about an hour or two, he'd be exhausted from the early morning and go to sleep. I didn't get to have as much of a relationship that way because of that. Whereas this remote work allows us to be around, be around when they wake up, be around when they come home from school, for us to have more life balance in a way that we're part of it, rather than the waste of time on transport. You think about the time that a lot of people have to spend on an hour or so commute to the job, and then an hour or so back. All that is dead time. You're not working and you're not with your family. You must be living a much more enriched life thanks to that.

Caio Borghi:

Yes. Yeah, you erase all the commute time daily, which is great. Over the time, it compounds to be weeks or months of your life spent away from your family, but also not in the work for some period that you're usually not being paid. So remote work has this incredible ability of, you own your time from the moment you wake up to the moment you start working, and then, after you stop working, until you go to bed. I think there is life that can be fulfilled in those moments, and this is a very beautiful aspect from remote work living. I'm very happy to be able to enjoy this with my family.

Amit Sion:

The crazy thing is that I think some business owners might think, “Oh, but how do we know that they're working and all that?” I find that as working remote, I work so much more because A, I'm not wasting those couple of hours in the commute, that's transferred into work. And I like my work, so I enjoy that time. And if I'm not there at the beginning of the day or towards the end with the family and all that, I enjoy going straight back to work and getting into it. And I actually can give more of myself to that. So if you were passionate about it, I think the companies are actually getting more from their people.

Caio Borghi:

I agree with you. I think once I started working remotely, it took some time. So I learned when to stop working because you have this flexibility of work and, if you have some issue, you may want to add some more time to the end of your workday so you can finish it. And also, I think you started to get measured by your deliverables and not your presence. And I think that's what matters when you're building a product. You really need to finish a task with quality, high quality, you need to be present to talk to your teammates, but that's all possible right now, thanks to the internet and video meetings. We're not present right now, but we are still talking, and I think that works perfectly.

Amit Sion:

A little trick that I started to do very early on, and people make fun of me in the company, I dress for work. So if I'm on a meeting when I start work, I'm actually wearing a buttoned white shirt and all this because it's part of my mindset that I'm at work right now, even though I'm in the study in the house and all that. And then when I'm finished, I get changed. I'm in my Batman T-shirt or whatever, and I'm not working anymore, even though I'm in the same space. And it helps me split that. And I think there's something that you need to tell yourself that whilst it's the same location, there's a division between work and the rest of your personal life, which I think is important.

And also I'd say for people with young kids, know when to stop working. It's not just about being away from the computer, it's about being present in what you're doing. When you're working, be very present in that, and give all your attention and focus and all that, and you do it well. And then when you're away, don't think about work. When you're speaking to your child, don't think about work. Be present and listen to them and be part of their life, because that part goes away very quickly, and they grow up very quickly. They notice. They notice when they're in front of them and your mind is elsewhere, and you're thinking about something that you're trying to solve at work. That's not right. Shut it down like you shut down a computer, and be present in that element of your life, as well. I think that's critical.

Caio Borghi:

Yes. That's funny you mentioned the dressing part. I also have some rituals that I like. So before starting work, I make my coffee, I take a shower, and once I'm in the office, I'm laser-focused on my job. And once I get away, I don't go straight to my kids, I need to go to the bathroom, maybe change clothes, or take another shower. So there is “turn on” and “turn off” moments. Otherwise, yeah, it happens. You get away from your computer, but you're still thinking about your job. You need to be able to find something that gets you in and out of your work environment and mindset.

Amit Sion:

Caio, I think that's beautiful that you've worked that out to be a father of young children and to be able to be present there, but also to have that identity within your workspace and your family space. It's critical, and it's something that generations, people have struggled with it and not being able to switch between the different versions of their personas. So I think it's something beautiful that you're giving both to your workspace but also to your family in doing that. Before we finish, one final thing, I want to ask you about in your own career, how do you aspire? What is the dream, the challenge, the thing that you're looking forward to think, well, once I get to that, I feel like I've really made something amazing.

Caio Borghi:

That's a pretty awesome question. Personally, I think I kind of reached that point a couple of times a couple of years ago. My dream was work for an international company, and right now, I think I dream of building my own product or maybe becoming a tech lead in the future, where I'm able to mentor other developers. And also there is another desire. I would love to do a talk someday about some technical aspect in some event, like a debut talk. So this is on my list to do. I feel already very fulfilled of where am I right now, but those are the things that I aspire currently.

Amit Sion:

I think that's beautiful, the fact that, at this point in your career, you've already achieved dreams that you set for yourself and being able to recognize that. Because a lot of people, they achieve something, and they can't appreciate, and they can't be feeling grateful for it because they're already thinking about the next thing. But at the same time, it's so good to always have something to strive for. I really believe that happiness is not about a current state. It's about us recognizing what we've achieved in the past and having the pursuit of something in the future. And I think that you've really cracked that, which is just wonderful.

Caio Borghi:

Thank you so much. Yeah, I think it's very hard. It was hard to get to this state of mind, but it's a good state of mind to recognize your achievements but also keep looking forward so there is some room for improvement.

Amit Sion:

Thank you very much for this conversation. How can people find you online?

Caio Borghi:

They can find me on Twitter. My handle is Ocodista from “Call of Duty” and then I-S-T-A. And I wanted also to thank you so much for the invitation. It was a pleasure being here with you, and I'm very happy to be part of this event and this talk.

Amit Sion:

Thank you so much, Caio. I've really enjoyed this conversation, and I think it's so great that we're seeing the direction, the things that you've achieved, and also the right mindsets that you've had to things. So I really appreciate having this conversation on the What the Code show.

Caio Borghi:

Thank you. Thank you so much.