September 15, 2015 Book Reviews, Success No comments
Book Review: The Passionate Programmer
I think I’ve read “The Passionate Programmer” for the second time. Otherwise, I cannot explain why almost everything I read in the book sounded like a “Déjà vu”. Well, even if it was a second time, it’s worth it. Book itself if very easy to read. It is nicely organized in small chapters and contains short real-world stories from different people. I liked reading the book very much. Besides, since recently I started working on getting back on track with my career and blog writing this book came very handy.
What is this book about
Author, Chad Fowler, does really great job advising software developers on their career. This book definitely makes you think about your current position and gives sensible suggestions on possible actions to improve the situation.
The book helps you realize that your skills are just a product. A product that is highly demanded. For any high demand product there is high supply. And it is only a question where you find your product in all the supply available. Is your product a quality one? Are you sure your product won’t become obsolete over time? What is it you do to stand out from the crowd?
My takeaways
There is one take away from the book that I took action on already. I started writing Monday weekly e-mails to my direct manager with list of last week’s completed tasks and the goal for a current week. This is not to make my manager happy nor to make me look nice. I’m doing this for myself. For sure this will keep me focused and provide additional push for completing my work.
These below are some other action items from the book I want to take:
- Find out what is now highly demanded and how my skill set correlates with it.
- Read something about the industry I work in. Should be interesting, as it is nuclear energy.
- I need to put myself in “be the worst” situation.
- Proceed more actively with learning another programming language.
- Try AngularJs. Since I have experience with EmberJS, it would be nice to compare.
- Mentor myself (details in the book).
- Do some Kata.
- Never go too comfortable. I’m pretty sure my current just is exactly “too comfortable”. Time to change.
- Do “Refactotum” exercise (by Stuart Halloway).
- “Spend next year trying to become one of the alpha geeks.” This sounds strange, but why not?
- Find if I have any monkey traps (things I hold on to way too much).
- Go Independent.
You
Go ahead, read the book and create a list of action items for yourself.
Just Be Better Than Yesterday!
Blog course for Software Developers by simpleprogrammer.com
I want to share something with you, especially if you are one of those who’s been following this blog for a while.
Everyone is interested in succeeding. Succeeding for software developers often means boosting their careers. This can be done by mastering the craft and by marketing yourself. Even if you are one of the best programmers in the world, all you will get by only doing you work is just more work. Of course, if you work hard and exceed expectations you will get promotions. Unfortunately this is limited to your organization. And when you move to the next place you have to prove again that you are of great value. Basically, you are left without any sizable portfolio for all your hard work and all you have to show is few pages of a resume. You have to promote yourself online.
One of the best things I did to my career was starting this blog in 2009.
This is also something I would recommend to you. There are people who would like to help you.
To get yourself started just sign up for this free blogging course: http://devcareerboost.com/blog-course/
I’m sharing this because it helped me to activate my writing again. Besides, I completely agree with what John Sonmez (http://simpleprogrammer.com) has to offer in his course. I think that having a quality blog will not only help you boost your career but will also help you to be a better developer over time.
Thanks to the course I’ve finally moved my blog to a self-hosted environment. I hope you like the new design. I’m also planning to keep up with a blogging schedule.
The most important thing about blogging is consistency, probably something you haven’t seen on this blog in the last 2 years.
It is something I want to change. So, I would like to thank John for the inspiration. Thank you!
Share your thoughts and blog links.
Book Review: “Give and Take: A revolutionary approach to Success”
November 21, 2013 Book Reviews, Success 2 comments
Can you be a big boss if you are not greedy? Can you move to higher positions if you spend you time giving to others? Isn’t it better to take as much as possible? And to grab every opportunity you have to get promoted? Why would you help others if you don’t get back more or at least equal?
This book argues with conventional view on how people succeed.
The book splits people into three categories: Takers, Matchers, and Givers. It could be that most of people are Matchers. We always try to pay it back. Entire world is build on that – you pay people. There are people who would smash you into the crap if you stand on their way. It is commonly accepted that these people get what they want. There is type of people who help others without second thoughts.
Adam Grant, the author, says that takers get to high positions quickly, but only givers stay there for long. Though it could happen that givers got trapped and become doormats or pushovers, the book brings some tips on this.
One of the reasons I liked the book is that it provides a lot of research information. Book is not written out of thin air it bombards with facts to support ideas. Studies and research results provided in the book are thought-provoking. Just reading them is very interesting and sometimes even exciting.
For example if you were to ask wife and husband to give a percentage of their contribution to their marriage life. Ideally it should sum up to 100% and be 50%/50%, but turns out everyone thinks that they contribute more so you get something close to 130%.
Or did you know that your name could easily affect your choices in life? People with name Dennis are more likely to be Dentist. At least this is something author brings as the fact. On the other hand I just googled why this might be not truth.
There are many more of similar studies and facts about successful people in the book. I enjoyed reading them.
Some are questioning if book is truly bringing new approach to success or it is just useless junk. I found this interesting question posted by Iryna:
Hi Adam,
While reading a book, I decided to conduct a research. I interviewed my friends and co-workers and asked them to pick four values and arrange them from most to less important. I used values from the list presented in Schwartz study.
I found out that all the men picked values from taker list. Wealth, power, pleasure and winning. The majority of women picked helpfulness, responsibility, social justice and compassion. So, according to my research, women tend to be more giving then men. (Was not surprised of course by this result). However, as you know the majority of executive positions are still occupied by men. The question is, does “take and give” approach work when it comes to gender? Or man who is a taker will always be a step ahead of a giving woman?
Thanks,
Iryna
It is very legitimate question. I also think that book brings some controversy thoughts. Splitting people just by givers and takers didn’t seem good enough to picture successful person, since many givers were and are not successful. Frequently because they were doormats/pushovers, burned out or just went unnoticed. I’m wondering if we could maybe come up with idea of successful person that also shares similar properties of giver, but also has what’s best from taker.
Let me try: I think the way to succeed is to give people something that they need and value more than it actually costs for you. Even though I used word “give” and it probably sounded like takers motto. But why would that taker be bad? He is just smart, and besides he is helping others by giving them what they want. Isn’t he? I think that supporting other people is very wise, since they will watch your back. Building solid social network is important and you indeed can only build it by sincerely helping. Giving credit and prising people is also very important and a must.
Important is to know what others need and what it is you can give them back.
I honestly love to give and help, but what I love even more is to get. When I was reading the book I though that I mostly fall into matchers/takers group and was a bit ashamed (since they are bad, right?). But I just took assessment on the website of the book: http://www.giveandtake.com/Home/ChooseAssessment
Here are my results:
Doesn’t look that bad, does it? What are your results?
Pay it forward is exactly what this book advocates for. This is what my former scrum master did when she gave me this book and one more book. I’m really thankful her for this. I should be paying forward as well.
Dear readers this blog post is my payment to you. I don’t know you – I just share thoughts with you, but sometimes this might help me. It did in the past, since blogging pays off.
Do I recommend to read this book? YES! Definitely. It worth reading even if in the end you will find yourself not agreeing with some conclusions.
See the book on Amazon or buy it using my my referral link below.
Book Review: “So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love”
June 23, 2013 Book Reviews, Career, Success No comments
Recently one of my colleagues got so inspired by two books she read, so that she decided to simply start giving them away. She was guided by the “Pay it forward” concept, which “is asking the beneficiary of a good deed to repay it to others instead of to the original benefactor” as per wiki. Basically, if I like books she bought for me (hard copies) and if I like the concept I can continue buying books for other people, so they can spread the ideas and books even more.So far I read only one of two. The short one, called “So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love” by Cal Newport. It doesn’t talk that much about giving things away, so you probably should wait until I write another review, but continue reading for something more closer to our working lives – to our careers.
“Be so good they can’t ignore you” is a quote from comedian Steve Martin that captures what is needed to build a working life you love.
Cal, the author, takes us though dozen of different examples of people who achieved success and who have failed. He starts his book with groundbreaking statement that following your passion could be an epic mistake. He says that since decades books on success tell to find something that is the most appealing to you and simply follow it, they tell you cannot achieve greatness without doing what you love. But many examples Cal brings to the table prove this being wrong. My vision and what Cal also says is that people simply don’t know what they want. They have to try things, but trying all the things around could just easily be waste of time. Lot of things require efforts and work until you really start taking adult steps in it and can do something meaningful, and even more – understand if you really like it or if it was just a play.
As opposite to passion mindset which focuses on what world can offer you, Cal says that you can armor craftsman mindset, which focuses on what you can offer the world, because “regardless of how you feel about your job right now, adopting the craftsman mindset will be the foundation on which you’ll build a compelling career”.
“ The career capital theory of great work […] provides the foundation for all of the ideas that follow it in this book. It claims that the key to work you love is not to follow your passion, but instead to get good at something rare and valuable, and then cash in the “career capital” this generates to acquire the traits that define great jobs. This requires that you approach work with a craftsman mindset and not a passion mindset. ”
Do you know about 10,000-Hour Rule? It says that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice. I think it is understandable that sometimes it also requires talent in addition and [EDIT] not every way of spending those hours adds up. Regardless here is my question: how many 10K hours do you have in your life? On normal pace it is close to 10 years. So doesn’t sound like we have capacity to try lots of things in the world and simultaneously be good at them.
At some point in time Cal convinces us that if you have enough career capital and some rare and valuable skills you can push it towards great achievements and this is much better choice than looking for mysterious passion. In the book he also shows how he made decisions and followed “rules” described. I wish him good luck.
As my personal note I would say that book indeed inspires to put more efforts into improving skills I have at the moment. I consider myself quite good in what I do now, but it would be a self-robbery not to continue developing skills and not trying to push them forward. Jumping to something completely else might destroy all I have, instead I’m advised to take little bets.
The book doesn’t take much time to read, thus for some additional inspiration I would definitely recommend it, unless you are now reading some stuff to be so good at what you do, so that they cannot ignore you!
What I have done in 2012
January 20, 2013 Success, YearPlanReport 2 comments
I tend to have very ambitious plans and even realizing this I never regret because I believe that the higher you mark the higher you are going to reach. Of course there is some frustration and dissatisfaction when it is time for a review. If it is the case for you just neglect all bad and continue looking forward. Life is too short to spoil it with negative emotions. I visited so many places in the past year I wouldn’t believe if you told me this year before. Great and deep feelings of pleasant moments travelling somewhere in Europe together with my wife is the best thing taken from passed year. I hardly remember last piece of code I worked on, but I clearly see golden sun smoothly going down on the beach of Falassarna.
Overview of 2012
At the beginning of 2012 my life was about to change much once again. I changed my job, but this time it also meant change of a country. While we were finishing relocation paper work I tried to enjoy last month of being unemployed. I went skiing many times and slept well. Besides I released my e-book on design patterns.
Suddenly we appeared in Austria. Here is picture of me in front of my company’s logo at first day of our arrival:
Finding an apartment was a first challenge. After overcoming it and few others we almost stopped worrying. Starting in a completely different country and company with different mindset was extremely interesting and exciting.
After some acclimatization me and wife started to travel. Leveraging Schengen Area we really travelled a lot, I even did not expect that much. You will find complete list later on.
My professional life though did not thrive much in the past year. For sure I’ve improved my skills in many areas. For example my English has improved and a lot of new working experience was gained. I also learned some new to me approaches of delivering software and understood a lot about new company setup and its product available and used by millions. Additionally I introduced myself to few programming languages and did some pet programming.
Year ended with long vacation back in Ukraine together with my parents, friends and relatives. I wish I could be in many places at the same time.
Plan completeness
Now lets look at each of the items I planned year ago in my 2012 “Where do you want to be in a Year?”.
– Buy a car in Europe (some used German car)
Car is a whole separate topic. Turns out that keeping car in Europe is quite expensive. Just mandatory insurance costs close to 100 Euro each month. Of course it depends on car size and your driving experience and can be much decreased if you willing to drive Matiz while having 9 years driving background.
I didn’t buy a car in 2012 for myself, but I bought people carrier for my father. It was first time I really leveraged from duty fee. 20% of taxes were returned when I brought back confirmation of exporting car out of EU. Well registering car in Ukraine is tough task and I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with it.
In addition I now hold Austrian driving license and proud to state that I passed an exam with my first try. It might sound ridiculous, but many friends I know here didn’t pass exam immediately, even they had some experience from Ukraine. Even 3 other fellows who tried to pass exam same day with me have failed. One try costs 130, printed license costs 90 and medical check 35. Total 225 euro just to get license if you already hold one from other country. If you want to pass it from scratch it would cost around 1,3K.
If you do the math, renting car is by far more cheaper and preferable over owning one if you only have some weekend trips time-to-time. Unfortunately I cannot drive to Ukraine by hired car. This year I drove Hyundai i40, Hyundai Accent, Opel Corsa, Opel Astra. As of not rented I drove Hyundai i20, Fiat Scudo carrying twice as many people as in normal car and finally I had a chance to drive my Chevrolet before I sold it. I think I like driving.
– Travel though major cities in Austria (Vienna, Salzburg, Linz, Graz, Innsbruck, Bregenz, Eisenstadt, Klagenfurt)
It would be a titanic work to write about all places we visited with my wife during passed 2012 year, but thanks to her there is report on each of our travel. Below is list in chronological order with links to her blog.
- Dubno–Rivne–Luts’k (still Ukraine)
- Vienna (dozen of posts on our life in this beautiful city here)
- Baden (Austria)
- Graz (Austria)
- Alps
- Linz (Austria)
- Venice (Italy)
- Berlin (Germany)
- Whole week of Greece: start with Athens and continue to Kreta island beaches and adventures.
- Bratislava (Slovakia)
- More of awesome Alps, including ice cave and astonishing Hallstatt and Liechtensteinklamm
- Amsterdam (Holland)
- Brussels and Brugge (Belgium)
- Paris (France)
I won’t start commenting on those above, because it would take ages. If you can read Ukrainian you have all stories there, otherwise just see some pictures.
– Sport activities (have two-three summer hikes into the Alps & ski in the Alps)
I don’t have a bike. But you can ride one completely free of charge here in Vienna. You just register with your credit card and whenever you use bike less than 1 hour you are not charged. Me and wife used this to spend many summer days with joy and benefit for health. We also had one hike in Alps Reichenau an der Rax. So far I went skiing only once and not in so distant Alps. Want to ski in some “real” Alps.
Generally I’m not completely satisfied with completeness of this point. But environment in Austria is more suitable for active life. People ride, run, walk really lot in dozen of parks.
– Learn German for at A2 level (which is elementary)
Ich glaube meine Deutsch ist noch zu schlecht. I attended one intensive course and also joined language courses offered by my company. Placement test reckons me for A2 level. I doubt it being even close to truth, but I will continue with German in 2013.
– Improve English and rich C1 level (which is advanced)
Probably C1 is pre-advance. For sure I’ve improved my English. Online estimation gives me 7.7K known words versus 4.9K in the beginning of the year. But dictionary is very small portion of what can be considered as proficiency in a language. Fluency in speech is very important. Everyday work in English-speaking environment is a great advantage.
I have extensive blog post on languages I use here in Austria, called “Існує die Frage of Language. Или нет?”.
– Show kick-ass performance at work
For sure I performed really well. Many of my skills were noticed and acknowledged, especially technical ones. On the other hand I’m still lacking in self-confidence and communication skills and maybe some other soft skills. There is already one conference I’m going to visit to improve some of those. But I also doubt that I’m so bad in such things, as I have already been in role of tech lead and it was quite smooth. I think I need more time and motivation which is melting in new company.
– Get promotion (or get clear idea on career opportunities, if not possible)
I think I now have much better idea on career opportunities and raises. It is completely out of synch with what I expected when I just started. Have you seen films in which guys work years to get any promotion meanwhile fighting with others to be pick number one. Of course it is not that severe as in movies, but there are many factors which make it closer to movies than to Ukrainian IT reality.
– In Vienna find local .net community (user group, whatsoever) and join
As per me .NET user group here is marketing driven and besides is held in German so not something I can join easily, at least not for first years. Overall IT market is rather small here.
– Visit TechEd Europe or NDC2012 (if possible because of budged considerations)
I’m too greedy to spend almost 2K euro on conference while videos can be downloaded later. It is exactly what I did. Watched dozen of those. Though I visited small conference kindly offered by company.
– Have new friends in Austria, who share same opinions
Many new friends, but I wouldn’t say that I have any Austrian as my real friend. Also by “same opinions” I largely meant interest in technical topics. It is even worse with that. I tried code and beer session and it didn’t go well. I hope it is just matter of time.
– Write couple of WP7 applications and post them to marketplace
Nothing in marketplace. Played a bit with couple of ideas, but gave up. Not sure I still want to do this. I wrote couple of Win8Metro applications for fun and also gave up. It would be not fair to say that I competed this point.
– Release “Design Patterns” Book – I have 1 month to do so
I’m happy to know that I didn’t leave Ukrainian IT without any of my contribution.
Book has been released and is available on its web site.
– Read 15 books (see my LinkedIn reading list)
I read 7 books and have way too many in progress. Us usual there are Book Reviews on my blog.
– Learn programming language(s). I will start with “7 languages in 7 weeks” and then pick up one for deeper insight (not compulsory from book)
This year I tried many programming languages. Here are my posts on each of the languages from the book:
– Discipline myself to get up at some certain time
We have daily standup meeting at 10:30 so it forces me to be up at latest at 10AM. I cannot say that I failed with this, but also not completely what I wanted.
– Have more public visibility and community impact
This year I had drastically much less public visibility than year before.
More to come
I’m planning to have blog post on working experience here in Austria in general and in comparison with Ukraine as it could be very interesting for many of you.
Next year is promising to be life changing once again!
My First Presentation in a New Company
August 5, 2012 DevMeeting, Presentation, Success 2 comments
A long time passed since I’ve delivered a technical presentation. Mainly because I now live in another country and establishing myself in a new company.
Well “establishing” is loudly said. I’m just software developer. Probably it worth to write separate post on my experiences in this company, since it is very much different from one I worked in Ukraine and I’m sure from most other companies there. I think I had much better perspectives as speaker before I moved (at least those short-term perspectives).
I talked about OData protocol, starting with introduction (read blog posts OData and OData service with WCF and data in memory) and finishing with its applicability to a project we do. Thanks to this presentation I crossed some imaginary mental barrier to more frequent presentations and sharing knowledge, something that I like, and something that I started to take solid steps back in Ukraine.
Now I’m starting it from the beginning.
Presentation I delivered was rather not official and only team wide. It was first I ever delivered in English, so I was limited in number of language tricks which I can use, and probably it impacted quality. Also I didn’t want to make it look like I’m smart-ass, thus I used pace and tone of a normal working meeting. Well, to be honest, I even didn’t know how to behave in this new environment. But from what I see guys liked my presentation, so this gives me a bright spark of enthusiasm to continue sharing interesting stuff.
There are few pitfalls with continuing, some of them pleasing. For example, developers here on average are more experienced and it would be more difficult to surprise them with something. It means that I would need to prepare more in depth topics, which of course requires more time to prepare. But, in the end, it is great that I work with more experienced programmers than me. On the other hand, I’m afraid that most of guys I know here are not willing to spend their spare time to form or join some community of software developers, and I can understand them.
Since I already mentioned about community, I have some ideas about organizing something cool here in Vienna/Austria, for foreigner developers, like me. Will blog about it soon.
Book Review: “First Things First” and surrounding thoughts
April 15, 2012 Book Reviews, Success No comments
I like encouraging books. I like to be inspired by ideas that make us think we can do something to improve our lives. Despite, we all know that to change something we have to work extremely hard, usually after few attempts we give up, but never want to admit this. This is how we are built – we want to be better for less efforts.
Book “First Things First” is very good because it, unlike many other time-management books, brings to the table more dramatic and global questions of our path and purpose. Start with this: “How many people on their deathbed wish they’d spent more time at the office?”. Of course people work to make their living, but apparently working hard at work cannot be life goal itself. The goal could be to contribute to society and to your profession. I’m software developer and my goal could be to contribute to community of other guys, similar to me. Instead I catch myself on being hard-worker. I stay longer than others at work. In the end this only transforms me into Dark Matter Developer. I may get noticed at work and get better income, so I buy myself bmw z4 in few years. But, what’s the point? No happiness at home, no recognition in world of software developers and small but fast car for no kids. It is what you do, not what you own.
I never was lucky to truly embrace lot of time-management techniques. Maybe they are too difficult and take much time to get them rolling. Or maybe they are just wrong? They teach us to be effective and efficient, but usually we solve only short-term goals. Are you sure you are heading “the true north”?
From this book I will take & try one simple and great technique and would recommend you to try. Think about one thing for your personal life and one for your professional life, which would definitely improve quality of your life if you do them constantly and coherently. Ok? Just do them! Don’t concentrate on any other things… work on these two.
I have two for myself: Personal: exercise every morning. Professional: frequently blog quality posts. Though, none of them transparently represent how some aspects of life can be improved, believe me or not, I see great breakthrough, if I only do them.
Almost forgot, this should have been book review:
And it is! Thoughts provoked by book are great indicator of its quality.
Book worth to be read!
You may find my thoughts on other books I read by Book Reviews tag, many of them are also time/self-management and success oriented.
My book on design patterns is released
February 15, 2012 Book Reviews, Design Patterns, Success 23 comments
Dear Reader,
I’m glad to let you know, that I released my short free e-book on design patterns.
It is available on web site https://designpatterns.andriybuday.com/
As you many know early 2010 I started writing series of blog post dedicated to GoF design patterns. I tried to keep my examples of patterns very simple and in the way, that person reading example can build associations with real or close to real world situations. I also translated all of the examples into Ukrainian and then decided to assemble small e-book. And now it is available for you.
Here is some introduction in Ukrainian (I’m not translating it to English, since if you cannot read in Ukrainian there is no point).
Опис
Книга «Дизайн патерни — просто, як двері» є безплатною україномовною книгою, що містить унікальні приклади до шаблонів проектування. Завдяки своїй нестандартній подачі матеріалу вона дозволить вам легко опанувати основи розуміння дизайн патернів чи систематично і дуже швидко повторити їх перед інтерв’ю. Спосіб написання книги дозволить провести час, відведений на її прочитання, без нудьги, а подекуди навіть захоплююче.
Освіжіть у своїй пам’яті призабуті дизайн патерни!
У декількох словах
Книгу я написав із добрими намірами. Їх у мене було декілька. Я хотів упевнитися, що сам розумію усі класичні дизайн патерни. Ресурсів для цього є досить багато, але я вирішив реалізувати ці патерни самостійно та придумати власні приклади. Таким чином, починаючи із 16 січня 2010 я писав блог пости, які так чи інакше викликали зацікавлення в читачів. Щоб цей внесок в програмування був більш чітким, в мене виникло бажання випустити невеличку книжку, яка стала б колекцією цих блог постів.
Завітайте на сайт книги: http://designpatterns.andriybuday.com/
Та не забудьте подякувати автору, поширивши посилання.
Where Do You Want to Be In a Year?
January 21, 2012 Success, YearPlanReport 7 comments
Dear Reader,
This is continuation of my year plan/report thread. I had similar plan for 2010 and for 2011. Completion of 2010 list was almost 100% successful, and completion of 2011 was much difficult and not so successful, but 2011 brought many life turning events and decisions.
I’m frustrated to admit that my head doesn’t carry this phrase all the time:
Remember, life is limited in time, so if I don’t move in the right direction I will waste it entirely.
Here below is my resolution list for 2012
-
Buy a car in Europe (some used German car)
-
Travel though major cities in Austria (Vienna, Salzburg, Linz, Graz, Innsbruck, Bregenz, Eisenstadt, Klagenfurt)
-
Sport activities (have two-three summer hikes into the Alps & ski in the Alps)
-
Learn German for at A2 level (which is elementary)
-
Improve English and rich C1 level (which is advanced)
-
Show kick-ass performance at work
-
Get promotion (or get clear idea on career opportunities, if not possible)
-
In Vienna find local .net community (user group, whatsoever) and join
-
Visit TechEd Europe or NDC2012 (if possible because of budged considerations)
-
Have new friends in Austria, who share same opinions
-
Write couple of WP7 applications and post them to marketplace
-
Write couple of Win8Metro applications for fun
-
Release “Design Patterns” Book – I have 1 month to do so
-
Read 15 books (see my LinkedIn reading list)
-
Learn programming language(s). I will start with “7 languages in 7 weeks” and then pick up one for deeper insight (not compulsory from book)
-
Discipline myself to get up at some certain time
-
Have more public visibility and community impact – my way to MVP
My next annual report should contain evidence in facts to prove completion of above resolution. This resolution is bit smaller than 2011’s one, but as reality shows it should be more achievable because of this.
Please share your year resolution list! I will read with pleasure.
What I have done in 2011
January 12, 2012 Revision of my activity, Success, YearPlanReport 1 comment
Looking back at my “Where do you want to be in a year?” blog post for the Jan 9, 2011, I regret that I did not do many things I planned, but I’m also proud about many things I did, because many of them are not small ones, but rather life changing, like marriage and moving to other country.
Overview of 2011
At the beginning of the year I continued passing my MS exams, which seemed somewhat important and very valuable for me at that moment, also I enjoyed end of winter spending many days at skiing hills in mountains. Near that time me with girlfriend decided to let our parents know our decision about future marriage in summer. They started to be in rush, but not me – at the beginning of sprint I had been thinking more about choosing my first car, which I successfully bought for 7000$. It is used Chevrolet Aveo 2005 of fully equipped, except it has manual transmission. At the day I bought car I did not have place to live in Lviv – me with best friend where looking for new apartment to rent, because of crazy and alcoholic owner of apartment, we rented before.
My blog did not go well previous year. There are couple of months without blog posts. One of them is July. It was very hot month – I got married on 16th of July and while still having vacation we went to Europe trip to see Hungary, Austria and Switzerland the most.
Besides of Europe trip we with my wife visited really many places in Western Ukraine. Now we had car, so travelling was more quick and spontaneous.
By coincidence I was asked if I’m not interested to pass interview and relocate to other country just before my marriage. It went well and I was asked for other interview which by great coincidence was on-site in Austria when I was there with my wife. She was admiring Belvedere in Vienna, while I had my 1,5 hour interview. So in August I got an offer and accepted it. But as it is relocation to other country it involves lot of paper work to get work permit there, and took almost half a year to get approval.
This year also brought more responsibility for me at work, I had much of Technical Leader responsibilities & activities. I think that I worked in the most amazing and truly collaborative team from all of those I had chance to work in. We worked on WP7 project and challenging Silverlight project. I left those guys just before the winter, hoping to have few weeks of rest before final approval and relocation to Austria.
Before the New Year of 2011 I didn’t get approval so my “vacation” took longer, but I spent it reading a lot, sleeping even more, doing some pet coding and getting extremely lazy. To summarize: you won’t enjoy being unemployed for longer than month, not because of the money, but because of lacking social relations and absence of external challenges.
Was 2011 going according to my year plan?
See plan here.
– Release awesome free Design Patterns book in Ukrainian
I failed to do this in 2011, but I composed book, sent it to people willing to review its raw unedited version. As for now I have 5 our 25 responses on book. I’m going to create small web site for book and publish it there.
– Enterprise certification (finishing with 565 exam, very likely till the end of Winter)
I passed exam and got MCPD: Enterprise Application Developer at the beginning of the year.
– Learn to ski & swim well (I can both, but I want to be good at that)
I’m now above intermediate in skiing, but this is subjective view. Fact is that I can handle most difficult hills in Ukraine, like trostian on picture below and “black” trails in bukovel, can do basic ski-jumps and ski backwards.
As of swimming I did complete fail as I’ve been in water only 2 times during the year.
– Show kick-ass performance at work
I did not get official promotion, but I played role of Technical Leader, coded a lot and tried to show best of myself. I think I did great and could have done even better. Leaving this job was not an easy thing to do. I think SS is great Ukrainian company.
– Learn WP7 and Silverlight
Whole year I did coding for WP7 and out of browser application in Silverlight. Also with my friends won at Hackathon event, where we created small game for the WP7.
I also introduced weekly discussions around reading “Silverlight in Action” in my team.
– Start working on some “real” book (just collecting ideas on book)
As of now I don’t have any clear idea on “real” book. But the more I think on this matter the more I’m close to something on the edge of technology and people collaboration.
– Read 24 books (this year I will definitely hit this score)
Let’s count: 5 in reviews on blog, 4 more read, but no posts on blog yet. And also 5 in progress, 4 of which are almost read. (I tried hard to read as much as I can before New Year and that lead to 5 in progress).
In total it looks like not more that 13 books, which is even less than previous year report (15). Seems one book a month is my pace.
“Take quick look behind to analyze, don’t stop, think positively, go forward!” – I said to myself on this subject.
– Marriage (yeah, this really is in the list “OMG” I’m saying to myself…)
It is one of the things I’m proud about. Despite this world’s shifted mind I think that two can get married in their twenties and be happy for many years. I was really surprised by marriage statistics in Western countries. For example this statistics show that less people are getting married and along more are getting divorced. And this shows that my country is also at the top of divorce list. Too much about that crap.
Here we are:
And here are more of those photos at Picasa:
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| Wedding-Preview-900px-2 |
I’m extremely glad that I have so cute and smart wife. Just after marriage we travelled even more than before it. We have been enjoying each moment of being together.
Before I left work, we had been living in separate apartment not far from my friend and team-mate. Each day she prepared awesome breakfast and lunch to take to work. Then I picked up Taras and drove to work. It was routine, but it was great.
– Travel abroad (I’m planning for Europe tourist tour)
I had awesome week travelling though Europe after my wedding. See photos:
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| 2011.07.23-29.Europe.Trip.Honey.Week |
– Learn one more programming language (probably everyone heard about learning one language per year, why not?)
I read bits about Haskell and tried F#, but I’m not satisfied with my progress. So will have another try in 2012.
– Frequent dev meetings (this is hard, because preparing takes lot of time for me)
I did probably very few so called “developer’s meetings”, one of which was even paid. Despite this I introduced technical status meeting for my team in addition to scrum standup.
Karpaty alpinism (again health stuff, want to do this with my girlfriend)
We took Hoverla – the highest mountain in Ukraine:
Read complete story and see photos at my wife’s blog here.
– Became known presenter (couple of outside the company presentations)
– English (watch films, find guys to talk in English)
For anything of video I watched myself I preferred English. Which of course didn’t work for cinema where I go with wife and friends. Also I had to watch amazing “The Big Bang Theory” translated, but some series watched with pleasure in English.
And what is funny now I’m learning German :).
– Start coffee-and-code in Lviv
Fail. I thought about this many times and always lacked confidence in my social skills to do this. Probably it can be as easy as mentioning on blog and in twitter something like “Hey, guys! Tomorrow I will be in the XYZ coffee shop doing some coding. Come along and join.”
– Write couple of personal-small programming projects / contribute to open-source
Not much here – dozen of try-it-out projects, small open-source orm system CustomORM, wp7 project we wrote at Hackathon and maybe 3 wp7 i-started-it-and-left projects, ah and few competition type projects at TopCoder.
– Visit one of the solid conferences
I visited couple of conferences like Uneta Plus and Mobile Professional Days in Kharkiv, and of course many events here in Lviv like LvivIT and regular Lviv User Group events.
– Get money machine / some ideas / investments / whatever
I haven’t invented anything better than deposit accounts, which now don’t work that good as if they worked in 2009 while crisis. Month interest income is enough for one full tank of my car, which usually runs out in 1-1,5 weeks.
– Start some business even small and crappy – but have it to learn
Fail. And even more – complete fail. I didn’t even think about this much. But from other point of view, there must be something exciting me to start with and I haven’t found anything like this. At least I’m happy that I will be eligible to have wp7 developer account in Austria.
Became better-and-better in planning and achieving, continue growing, etc, etc…
Subjective. Isn’t it? I think I did great with this one, but you decide. I move into embrace of 2012 year which will definitely bring me lot of nice surprises, emotions and great time.
