Reflections (2023)

Another year has passed and I am finally back to writing another Reflections. It’s been somewhat of an uneventful year but that may just be that my 2022 was such a big year for me. I felt that I achieved a lot in 2022, a bit too much perhaps. At least career-wise at my current company, I think that I have achieved everything that I wanted and more. I built a lot of confidence and proved that I was capable of leading at least a 10 man development team, so what’s next?

This has been what I’ve thought about the most throughout the year. Although I’m sure there’s still plenty to do and I’m proud of the product that my team has built, I wouldn’t say it was something I myself, was personally invested in. I wanted to explore new opportunities but for better or worse, I had become somewhat of a linchpin for my team and wasn’t really in a position to just get up and leave. I ended up talking to my boss early in the year and told him that I would stay in this position for one more year. At the end of the year, I might be gone but I might also still be here, just in a different position that didn’t have me in the centre of everything.

Lo and behold, in the latter half of the year, I was reached out to by a company that piqued my interest. The negotiations on my starting date were a bit complex but I’m lucky that the new company was open for me to push it several months back into 2024. It certainly wasn’t easy and a few unexpected events occurred but overall, I am happy with how I handled the situation. It did feel bad to have to wait for a while before I could share the news with my team but I guess that’s just how things are sometimes.

I don’t feel like I have very much to write about this year. A lot was continuing to build up from the previous year but at the end of these 2 years, I am satisfied with what we were able to accomplish. The product we were developing was finally gaining traction and a lot of the technical debts that I had felt at the beginning were resolved. In the end, I would like to think that I was able to leave the codebase in a good foundational state on which the team can continue to build upon without me.

Thankfully, a lot of things lined up at the end and the transition was smooth enough that I was able to take full advantage of my paid leaves that had been piling up (oops) and took this last month completely off. I was able to relax, do some travelling and also work on my personal finances which was something that I had put off for quite a bit. With my new job starting in about a week, it is time to start getting back into the swing of things.