Its a new year, 2022

Hey there, it's a new year, the pandemic is still going on, and remote work is established as the norm.

Image choice is intentional, Y2K was hyped up terribly and barely anything happened. Instead what we got Microsoft Echange going down for 2022.

Reflections on 2021

Honestly, 2021 was really rough on me. A vacant role existed for a manager and I took the opportunity. I rationalized that I felt like I hit my ceiling in that I have lots of ideas (which regularly come out as solid and reliable), but I was at my limit of bringing out code with my own mind and fingers. So I took into management thinking I'd be able to bring my creativity out faster.

This wasn't reality for me.
And it has not lead to me being happy.

Instead, I helped hire about 10 people. Some of them were not fit for the hired positions and things happened. Then I was begged to do some analysis and support like before for others. And I gave in and did that. Monthly there's some emergency that even ex-Big Tech engineers can't figure out that I have to wrangle (and I do so reliably). So I have to clear my head space, soak in all the details, and contribute as an individual again and the context switch is extremely hard on me. Then there was this many weeks process of taking inventory of all the logical domains that exist in our system, forgotten by nearly everyone due to churning and time. Next was this resource planning thing so we could argue about how many more roles we want next year given the plans we want to execute. Now there's this many month thing of figuring out how to improve our processes so we don't have dead end projects with wasted work.

And all in all, my ability to do personal projects at home for myself and my continual education (e.g. cryptography) has been completely stalled.

Barely any of my ideas really got out. My year was scraping the barrel for my knowledge and putting out fires. Maybe five to eight percent of my time actually went into documenting my ideas and plans out so others could execute it.

But there were some things did make me happy.

• I helped guide an associate engineer under my leadership and design to develop a new product that deploys products through a slack GUI application
• For the same engineer I helped him with a project tasked to him, with my help he designed a solution, developed it, and brought it to production.
• I recognized a show stopper a month out and mobilized my team just in time to deliver a solution. Check out Dynamic Handler Mapping for more on that one.

Those moments really allowed me to grow in this role and feel satisfied with my work.

What 2022 will bring

What's my goal for this year? To be happier.

How will I get closer to this goal? My time and energy towards work will change.

In the year 2021, I lost work life balance. In the year 2022, I will regain that balance and focus more on my social life, friendships, and personal projects. At work, I will decline more and only delegate when it is appropriate. I will focus more on what my role actually entails and develop myself there.

And if things do not improve, I will change where I work. This year did not reward me in proportion to my efforts and the impact it had on my life.

And finally. I hope that we get some sense of normality this year online.

However, It is off to a terrible start thanks to Mozilla.