Simple Victories
Around this time last year I saw a tweet from @anildash
The absolute best thing I've done for the past few years is keeping a simple list of personal victories (small or large) for each year. — Anil Dash (@anildash) 3 Jan 2015
The idea being, it’s easy to remember the failures throughout the year and let the good things slip by. For me it was about self confidence and an increased willingness to praise myself for small achievements.
Here are my 2015 achievements with a bit of added commentary:
Jan 5
Tracked down a jQuery annoyance and developed a solution.
For context, 2015 was a year of big change. I had just left my job of 3 and a half years to take up a short term contract before leaving NZ to find work in the UK. My new role was working on the Adobe CMS CQ/AEM.
This was my first week on the job and we had an issue where in edit mode the CMS would not load certain widgets. It turns out the editing components included their own version of jQuery loaded after the version the custom widgets were included in.
Jan 16
Rode to work and back every day
For a long time I had been saying I would ride to work but always ended up taking the bus or even just walking. This week I finally stuck to my guns and rode every day.
Jan 21
Filed first personal GST return and put aside income tax
Boring but an achievement none the less. If you fuck up doing your taxes you’ll regret it later!
Jan 30
Fixed osgi issue communicating between two bundles. Unblocked performance improvements.
Feb 18
Fixed issue within hour, in time for prod release
Feb 28
Rank SEM in CS:GO
March 18
Spotted hard to detect bug in varnish cache headers before prod release
April 9
Successful demo video processing using camel
CS GO Nova 1
The theme with the first few months of 2015 was work and Counter Strike.
Working on an application so close to prod was quite new to me, having spent the last few years in product teams that were quite removed from the people handling the day to day operations and implementations. Fixing bugs before they become an issue in prod is immensely satisfying and often goes unacknowledged (or overshadowed by the bugs you didn’t catch).
My contract ended May 1 and on May 4th we were off to the USA:
June x
Navigated a paddle boat around prospect park lake
I’m on a boat! Well kind of. For most of May and June my girlfriend and I were travelling through the US having a great time. On this day, after a rocky start, we conquered the reverse steering and enjoyed a nice afternoon in the middle of Prospect Park lake in Brooklyn, NYC.
June 22
Applied for Web Dev role at CERN
June 23
Uploaded CV to Reed and received 2 phone calls pitching 4 jobs.
Received call back for job interview
June 24
Successful phone interview. Booked in for in person interview on Monday.
July 1
Accepted for position as contractor at a digital agency
Applying for jobs is hard work and each job application is an achievement in its own right. I went through the usual channels of putting my CV on a jobs site and I’d seen someone tweet the CERN job while we were on holiday so I applied for that as well.
I was quite excited about an interview with a start up photo sharing site. After a disastrous technical interview (that involved whiteboard coding) I was not offered the role and took up the contracting position. It wasn’t my dream job but as a contractor I could cash in while keeping a lookout for something better.
July 20
Created Python script to generate sling mappings
Looking for ways to make my job more interesting, I started writing a few python scripts to help with repetitive tasks.
July 26
Celebrated 2 years with Rachel by moving house. Successfully drove in London.
What better way to celebrate spending 2 years with someone than to move house. This was an incredibly stressful day. Foolishly only booking the zipcar van for 2 hours meant we were rushing the whole time, and when you rush everything that could go wrong does go wrong! We made it in the end, returning the van only 5 minutes late. We would have a make up anniversary dinner on a Thames boat cruise later that week.
August 14
Implemented dynamic text replacement tag. Received a "Nice work" from dubious coworker
I like to start slow at new a job. Get a feel for how things work and why, once I’ve found a thing that is broken and I know can be better I’m able to introduce a fix. Receiving “nice work” from a coworker is icing on the cake.
September 1
Long listed for CERN experienced web developer role
Remember that job I applied for in June? They finally got around to selecting candidates for testing and interviews.
September 3
Identified issue with java Locale causing issues for Indonesia authorisation
September 10
Fix verified in prod for Indonesian authorisation issue
The language code Indonesia changed a few years ago and to maintain backwards compatibility, Java has special handling for the locale. In the Javadocs you can read about the side effects and it tells you what not do. Yea, we were doing that and it didn’t work.
September 15
Short listed for CERN job
September 30
Verbal offer for CERN job
After an online test and a pre-recorded video interview I flew to Geneva, Switzerland for a day long in person interview with 6 other candidates at CERN.
The day had gone OK, there was no whiteboard coding although we did have to do some paper coding. I wasn’t feeling very confident afterwards as I felt the panel interview could have gone better. A few days later they called to say they liked me and wanted to know if I was interested in the job. They thought I did particularly well in the panel interview (hah) and they’d like to make me an offer!
October 9
Scored for Wapping 8s. Won 4-2
October 15
China went live
October 28
Fix issue with Thailand and Indonesian forms not submitting dealer id correctly
Life goes on, the CERN offer takes a long time to come. It’s stressful and especially hard on my girlfriend as we start to consider a Long Distance Relationship. I carry on working and play hockey for an East London club.
October 30
CERN give details of offer. Good enough to accept!
Geneva is an expensive place to live and so is London. As my girlfriend would be staying in London we need to make sure we can actually afford the move. The numbers aren’t as high as I was hoping but they’re enough.
November 11
Quit agency for CERN
Having only been with the agency for a few months I’d already become a valuable member of the release team. They weren’t happy to see me go but understood the opportunity I couldn’t refuse.
November 12
Supported Colombia team with urgent issue
November 13
Helped identify prod issue, potential DOS
November
Romania went live
November 26
Identified and fixed issue blocking Hungary go live
December 1
Promptly fixed issue that broke prices in live environment by identifying error initializing properties and overriding when the shouldn't be
It was a busy time between quitting and my last day. There were a lot of releases to support and a dev team in Colombia to bring up to speed. On the 18th of December I finished work for the year and spent the week enjoying the best London at Christmas time has to offer. Spent Christmas with family and friends and then packed up my stuff and moved to Geneva.
For 2016 I hope to continue making the most of all opportunities presented to me. CERN is a great place to work so far and I’m looking forward to a year of hard work and constant learning.
I will continue to keep a list of victories but will focus more on non work related achievements.
As for Counter Strike, I made it up to “Master Guardian Elite” before the ranking system was changed, ending at “Master Guardian I”.