Announcement of Mental Health focused 150th DevClub.lv

HI!

What if burnout isn’t about weakness or lack of rest, but about systems pushed beyond their limits for too long?
Join this event to explore how burnout actually develops, how to recognize early warning signs, and how to redesign your personal and professional systems before they break.

You are welcome to Mental Health focused event on WEDNESDAY, February 11, 18:30, at Startup House Riga office, Lastādijas iela 12-k3.

Please, register here.

Agenda for “Mental Health” focused 150th DevClub.lv

Please, note that the first talk will be in Latvian

• Dr. Margarita Birkena from RSU Psihosomatiskās medicīnas un psihoterapijas klīnika will give a talk “Burnout: When the System Runs Out of Resources“
  This lecture explores burnout as a predictable system failure rather than a personal weakness. Using clinical examples and a biopsychosocial perspective, burnout is examined as a state of chronic overload, misaligned expectations, and depleted recovery mechanisms.
  You will learn:
  – how to recognize early warning signals of burnout (before a full system crash)
  – how burnout differs from depression and anxiety
  – why rest alone often doesn’t solve the problem
  – how to redesign personal and professional “systems” to improve resilience and sustainability
  – practical strategies for prevention and recovery that actually scale in real life
  (Language – Latvian)
  
  Margarita Birkena is a medical doctor and psychotherapy resident with a second medical specialty and a second higher education degree – because one discipline clearly wasn’t enough. She works with burnout, depression, anxiety, and psychosomatic disorders, helping navigate the debugging of the human mind, where signals are not always clear and documentation is fragmentary. Her clinical approach combines medicine and psychotherapy, with a strong belief that humans are the core infrastructure of any functioning society.
  Outside the clinic, Margarita runs a small distributed system of two Samoyeds, one of whom is also a certified children’s therapy dog and arguably has better emotional regulation skills than some adults. Her favorite film is The Lord of the Rings, which she considers an accurate case study of long-term group dynamics under chronic stress. She believes that the most reliable constant in any system—biological, psychological, or technological—is change.
• Together with Dr. Margarita will be Canis-therapy dogs. Option provided by Ķepu māja.

• Ilja Lapkovskis will give a presentation “Burnout Is a System Bug: Leadership, Culture, and Psychosocial Safety”
  Burnout is often perceived as a personal issue — a lack of resilience, poor boundaries, or insufficient self-care.In reality, it is far less personal than it appears.
  Burnout is a predictable outcome of how work is designed and led. High performers disengage not because they stop caring, but because unclear goals, stacked stress, and inconsistent leadership slowly erode focus, meaning, and performance. Teams keep delivering, but the work no longer matters. Burnout is not an alien disease — it spreads silently through organisations like a virus. If left unnoticed, it can cripple even the strongest teams. If identified early, it can be treated at the system level.
  In this talk, I’ll share how my own burnout reshaped me as a leader, and present practical, leadership-level actions that help prevent burnout before people reach the breaking point.
  (Language – English)
  
  Ilja Lapkovskis – I am a software engineer and a tech leader, and a few years ago I burned out – properly. Not because I was weak or unmotivated, but because I was good at what I did and kept pushing in a system that quietly rewarded it.
  After that, I made a leap of faith and went out on my own – trying to conquer the world of software development independently. Getting to the market like that isn’t easy. But it gave me the perspective I was missing before: clarity around goals, focus, and what actually matters.
  That experience changed how I think about leadership. Today I’m here not to talk about burnout as a personal failure, but as a system problem. And what leaders can do differently.
  I learned these lesson the hard way, and now I help teams see the light at the end of the tunnel before they burn out themselves.
  
  
• Dmitrijs Lebedevs will give a talk titled “Beyond the Breaking Point: Lessons in Resilience and Recovery”
  We often talk about burnout as an abstract concept, but for many of us, it’s a lived reality. This presentation chronicles my personal experience with professional exhaustion—from the initial causes to the eventual collapse. I will share the hard-won lessons I learned during my recovery process and offer insights on how to foster a sustainable path forward without sacrificing your well-being.
  (Language – English)
• The presentation by Dmitrijs will not be recorded and will not be available on our YouTube channel.
  
  Dmitrijs is a Software Engineer who walked a mile in almost everybody’s shoes in the industry. For the past 28 years, he rebooted from a developer and test engineer to team lead, architect, engineering manager and you-name-it. Today, as an explorer of entangled pathways of Software Development, he invites you to walk along with him during his talk.

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If you have any challenge where you are looking for external help, remember – Nine Brains can help you find world-class trainers and consultants almost for any need people in software development could have. Contact us to get to know more!

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