Sergio Hoffman

I like the idea, but I found that Reclaim filled up my calendar so much with 'focus time' that colleagues couldn't find any time to book meetings with me. It's highly configurable, but the defaults are very aggressive. I felt like I was spending too much time tuning the settings to get it right.

The components are top-tier—pixel perfect and robust. My only gripe is that new component drops are infrequent. I've been waiting for more 'application UI' examples for a while. But what is there is gold. Catalyst (their application kit) is a great addition.

Despite all its flaws, there is no other platform where you can dial up your spend and get such a predictable stream of high-intent leads. Performance Max campaigns, once you feed them enough data, are incredibly powerful. It has a steep learning curve, but mastering it is a core business skill.

I started my project with LangChain, but I found the level of abstraction to be confusing and hard to debug. When something broke inside a 'Chain', it was difficult to trace. I ended up pulling out the parts I needed (like the text splitters) and writing my own simpler orchestration logic. It's great for prototyping, but can be too magical for production.

The tech is solid, but the dashboard UI can be confusing with its specific terminology. Configuring indices and replicas wasn't as intuitive as I hoped. Once it's set up, it runs itself, but the initial learning curve for non-search experts is real. Still, it beats maintaining our own Elasticsearch cluster.

I run my life and my freelance business on Notion. The database features are incredibly powerful—I can link my projects to my tasks and my clients. It looks beautiful and is fully customizable. The new Calendar app integration is the cherry on top. It can be slow sometimes, but the flexibility is worth it.

We scaled from one country to ten in a year, and there’s no way we could have done that without Deel. Contracts, local compliance, taxes, and benefits are all handled. Our international employees rave about how smooth onboarding and payroll are compared to previous employers. The portal is clean and easy to use.

It does its job well—scheduling is smooth. But they keep moving features to higher tiers. I just need a simple link for clients to book, but to remove the Calendly branding or add a second calendar check, I have to pay a monthly fee that feels high for a simple utility. I'm looking at cheaper alternatives like Cal.com.