The year that was: 2010

In my last blog of the year 2010, I thought (like many others) of doing a short recap of this year. Like all previous years in my career, I hadn’t really any special goals to be achieved in 2010; just the long-term ones mentioned in my personal development plan. I like to embrace each day as it comes, so a new year generally doesn’t start with a resolution list.

Unlike most years in my career before, this one saw me doing 4 different assignments. When I say ‘different’, I really mean it. I started the year continuing to create a mortgages application (which had been ‘on’ for almost 2 years already).  After that I dirtied my hands in the well buzzed ‘cloud’ domain. From there on I moved towards software maintenance and lastly created a batch application for pensions; 2010 buzz words being ‘mortgages’, ‘cloud’, ‘maintenance’ and ‘pensions’. Also for the first time, Java wasn’t the common factor. Java wasn’t in the cloud then! And software maintenance is a totally different ball-game.

There was one other cool thing brought about by this year. I got the opportunity to lead the Java expert group at my company. It was something new, something I hadn’t done before, something very special (and still is). I enjoyed organizing all the events, summarizing them in our WIKI, networking with the group, and other stuff that came with this role.  This role was my highlight of 2010.

And unlike all other years that passed by, I do have resolutions for 2011. Resolutions for the Java Expert Group.

To the year that was. Cheers!

the 'Working from Home' ethic

It’s been around two years since my company implemented the ‘working from home’ concept. At first it was a little overwhelming, but now I’ve gotten used to it. Knowing that change is the only constant in life, I decided to give this change a try. Now after 2 years, working at a place without this model would be a ‘no-no’.

 The ‘working from home’ concept is often introduced as a ‘green’ solution: the one which saves traveling to office, which in turn saves precious fuel and is environment friendly, the one which requires lesser cubicle space, etc. I wouldn’t deny this benefit, especially in the winter seasons when getting from A to B could consume some or all of the day’s energy.

But it has far more benefits.  In the beginning, it was hard to grasp that you would not be coming to office daily; after all that’s what you always did. You might even get an occasional frown from your (orthodox) project manager when you tell him that you’ll be working from home the next day since he feels ‘yeah right, like anyone works at home!’. But time serves as the best healer to all of those inhibitions.

The book ‘Seven Day Weekend’ made me realize that through this and similar concepts, the industry finally treats you as an adult human being, rather than telling you what time to come, what time to leave, when to eat, décor, behavior,..! So true!

The biggest benefit of working from home for me is shutting down those involuntary disturbances that come with the office space: be it last minute meetings, reminders, questions or just occasional pop-ups, chit-chats, hi’s & hello’s. When I’m working from home, I get up according to my biological clock (without the alarm trying to drag me out of bed to catch that 07.11 train), pour myself a cup of coffee, and I’m basically ready to go. I have control over the environment (to most of the extent that is). I choose my work times, break times. I can choose to switch off the phone or not to check e-mails in times when high concentration is needed. Also at other times when I’m just going about with normal workload, disturbances are always voluntary. Questions from others are always streamlined.

I work best when I work from home. When someone asks where I go to get work done… my answer is ‘Home Sweet Home’!

That first go-live moment

Took some time, but it has finally arrived: the first go-live moment in my career. I knew that 70% of the software projects never went live, but why did it have to be me everytime in those projects. Executive decisions, budgeting seemed to take away the whole fun in developing software.

It took 6.5 years to be exact to see this day.  The moment was made possible by a Java Batch application (what do ya know!). A batch that imports files from various back-end applications and maps it onto the new database. Boring as it may sound, it still doesn't take away the celebration. What makes it sweeter was an on-time delivery made possible with a development team consisting of 2 developers. Now, I can finally say: "I've contributed something to the IT consumer world!". Hip Hip Hurrah!