If Advice Could Kill

Van Hickman & Tereza Iofciu
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Van Hickman and Tereza Iofciu take one piece of career advice everyone repeats and come at it from completely different angles. Not to tell you what's right, but to help you find what's right for you. reiteralabs.substack.com

Episodes

  1. 5d ago

    Let your work speak for itself

    "Let your work speak for itself," or its cousin "if you're good, you'll be noticed." Tereza makes the best case for it: in a perfect team, with a manager who is really paying attention, it works. Most of us don't work there. So Van and Tereza spend half an hour on what happens instead: the glue work that holds a team together and never shows up in a status update, the colleague nobody valued until they left, and why admitting you can do something in an hour may only get you seven more hours of something else. Somewhere in the middle, the advice turns into a different question, one you ask yourself instead of your manager. Half an hour. Still no advice. Chapters 0:00 — Intro 0:14 — The myth: let your work speak for itself 0:36 — It speaks for how they interpret it 0:55 — Loud gets noticed, and hard work isn't good work 1:41 — The promotion meeting, and the crash diet 1:52 — Performance culture 2:49 — Glue work and invisible work 4:05 — When the glue leaves 5:25 — Idealistic advice for a perfect team 6:07 — Bringing the grunt work into the open 6:48 — Will glue work finally count? 7:43 — A flag with a glue stick 8:12 — The work retrospective 9:51 — Turn it inward 10:52 — Doing it because you do it better 11:42 — The handover that never happens 12:13 — Slow down now to speed up later 13:02 — When you can be fired quickly 13:55 — Two ways to read the myth 14:46 — Getting out of performance culture 15:07 — Power, and the luxury of not playing the game 16:23 — Accepting there's a game 17:09 — Where they split: not our only options 17:48 — Communities outside work 19:15 — Work beyond the nine to five 20:12 — Paid for good grades 21:35 — The exhaustion of managing AI 22:16 — The myth in the age of AI 22:48 — The Lego developers 23:37 — Penalized with more work 24:26 — How you narrate it 25:13 — Where we've been 26:22 — The vegetarian 26:52 — Closing thoughts: someone has to speak for it 28:47 — Episode 5 tease, and sign-off Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-advice-could-kill/id6794660123 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033VEq8208cbjljCjtDxFR This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit reiteralabs.substack.com

  2. Sep 29

    Follow your passion

    "Follow your passion" gives you a clear path, and Van says so plainly: it is a good one-liner and it helps people see where to go. Then they spend twenty minutes on what it costs. Tereza has never had the single thing the advice assumes. Van grew up where the standard was perfection, so the things she merely loved never made the cut. There is a study in the middle of it, from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, on what advice like this does to the careers people end up choosing. It sent both of them somewhere they did not expect. They end up in different places on whether the word is worth keeping. Twenty minutes. Still no advice. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit reiteralabs.substack.com

  3. Aug 25

    Learn AI or be left behind

    Second episode is up. The advice this time: “Learn AI or be left behind.” Except that is not the version people actually say. The one you hear is friendlier, and sharper: “AI won’t replace you, but someone using AI will.” It moves the threat off the technology and onto the person sitting next to you. We went at it for half an hour and did not agree about the most basic part of it. Van thinks nobody is behind. Tereza thinks that depends entirely on who you work for, and said so about four seconds after Van finished saying it. What episode isn’t complete without a pizza metaphor baked in? We are two episodes in and still getting a feel for what this show is, which we said out loud on the recording rather than pretending otherwise. One thing we circled and never resolved, so we will hand it to you instead: if your company went AI-first this year and left you to work it out on your own, are you actually behind? Or does it only feel that way? ❤️ Van & Tereza This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit reiteralabs.substack.com

  4. Aug 10

    Just be yourself at work

    “Just be yourself at work.” It sounds like permission. So why does it keep costing the people who take it literally? In the first episode of If Advice Could Kill, Van Hickman and Tereza Iofciu pull apart the advice everyone repeats and nobody examines: who it was designed for, what you lose without ever being told you lost it, and why “weird” is just the word a workplace uses for not conforming. Tereza explains why she had to leave the career ladder to afford being herself. Van admits she spent years telling herself the corporate version of her was the real one. Neither of them walks out with a tidy answer, and that’s the point. Two founders, two continents, one question: was the advice ever designed for you? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit reiteralabs.substack.com

    Just be yourself at work

  5. Jul 25

    Trailer

    The trailer’s here. A quick 60-second hello before we start. If Advice Could Kill takes one piece of career advice everyone repeats and comes at it from completely different angles. Not to tell you what’s right, but to help you find what’s right for you. First episode drops August 10. Follow the show now, wherever you listen. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit reiteralabs.substack.com

    Trailer
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    4 Episodes

Trailer

About

Van Hickman and Tereza Iofciu take one piece of career advice everyone repeats and come at it from completely different angles. Not to tell you what's right, but to help you find what's right for you. reiteralabs.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Van Hickman & Tereza Iofciu
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    5
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Van Hickman
  • Show Website
    If Advice Could Kill