2014 Retrospective

Blog

This was the first year where I wrote four blog posts every month, and the unintended side effect was that the posts become smaller. I'm not sure how much I liked that; on the one hand I got to write more quick articles with little helpful information, but to be honest I did not enjoy writing those little posts as much.

Next year I will be reducing this to only three medium length posts per month. I am hoping this will be a good compromise between quantity and quality.

QQ Cast

I absolutely loved doing the QQ-Cast with my friend, Jordan. We started out the year strong, averaging three hour long episodes a month. Unfortunately as the year continued "life got in the way" and we only recorded two episodes in the last three months of the year.

Next year Jordan and I will be following a release cadence of three times a month, but shorter half hour episodes. Obviously this is similar to the blog schedule.

Professional

It has been a crazy year for me professionally. Without going into detail, I switched teams at work and now have a completely different set of responsibilities. I made this change to in order to get out of my comfort zone and, as is a core value for my company, to learn and grow.

It has been very challenging, but very rewarding. I would highly encourage all software engineers who have been in the same roll for three years or more to consider changing positions. What you learn in the first three months of a new job is often more than you will learn the rest of the year.

Personal

I got married. I bought an FZ-09. I, as mentioned above, changed positions at work. That really sums up 2014. Next year I clearly need to focus more on having a better work / personal life balance...maybe I should take more vacations?

Happy New Year,
Tom