February 24, 2022 by Ramon Raya

Talk Summary: I've struggled with anxiety since I was a kid and mainly focused on STEM because it made me feel like I could make sense of things out of my control. But once the pandemic started I realized that I needed to explore other avenues to handle this. In 2016 I was in Europe and came across a cool looking shop that had fascinating displays of tiny warriors and fantasy stuff that really caught my eye. Long story short, I ended up purchasing a small box of plastic warriors and different paints that I had no idea how to use. They were shelved for a year after that, until I needed a different creative outlet that I could do at home. I picked it up and started watching tutorials on how to use the paints and learned a few cool techniques. I started noticing that since I took up this hobby, my attention span improved and I was able to focus more on my tasks at work without the familiar feeling of anxiety from rushing through them. In this talk, I will share more about this journey and how having other hobbies can impact the way you do your actual work—not just as an outlet for stress or anxiety in day to day life, but also as a tool that can bolster your professional proficiencies.

Speaker: Ramon Raya

Ramon is an android engineer on the Design Systems team based in Canada. He was born and raised in the center of Mexico in the state of Guanajuato, and lived in Sonora for three years before eventually moving to Toronto about two years ago. Ramon has always been passionate about video games and tech. Recently, he picked up a new hobby in miniature painting (a whole world he never expected to get into, not being too artsy throughout his life). Ramon likes cats, manga, and meeting new people.

Moderator: Nadine Fong

Nadine is a recruiting operations specialist on the Technical Recruiting team. Having been with Yelp for the past 6 years, she's held various roles that oversee the logistics of recruiting including coordination, working with engineering and product interns, and now collecting, analyzing, and maintaining the Tech Talent team’s data. Helping coworkers connect has been a big part of her goals during her time at Yelp — for example, organizing traditional office socialization in the remote world (like internal trivia nights) to co-leading a new Employee Resource Group have been the latest ways of fostering and promoting inclusion on top of her day-to-day work.

About Yelping From Home:

Yelp’s mission is to connect people with great local businesses, and two of the teams working behind the scenes to make that happen are our five star engineering and product teams.

Playing an active role in our community is a value that we have strongly prioritized over the years. Typically we would invite you to come to Yelp’s HQ to network, grab a slice of ‘za, and learn about the technology and culture behind Yelp. With stay-at-home orders across the globe, Yelp (like many of you) has had no choice but to adapt to these changes. We understand that this is a strange and challenging time for many, so we’d like to invite you to join us as we navigate this new normal for the tech community together.

To stay connected, create space for folks to collaborate and share some of the things Yelp has been working on, we are launching our very own virtual tech talk series. This series of talks will feature Yelpers from engineering and product and will focus on themes such as career development, technical skills, workplace challenges and Yelp’s response to COVID-19.