Magic moments

  I have been working remotely for on and off through my career. I started back in the day when Skype was actually working good and video calls were still not a thing. Web cams were just making a break through and the calls were slo-mo by default. I have seen and tried almost all of other tools as well, mostly by necessity and I don't have a favorite, every tool for the proper job. Even though VoIP tools are irreplaceable long distance communication tool, my opinion is that they have been abused since day one. These tools are abused on so many levels, the biggest being the abuse of time. I will get to that later, I first want to share a couple of misuses I have been doing as well. Heavy data storage. I find myself often sending files to someone just so I have them for later use on another device. Its stupid, I know, but I still do it sometimes, I'm just used to it. Light data storage. Talking to a person sitting next to me. This is again for recall purposes and for chat history...

I have been fixing and tweaking bicycles since I had my first bike. So it comes as no surprise that I know how to change a bike tire. I have changed tires and patched tubes even on the trails with the bare minimum of tools, while raining. Regardless, I recently got new tires for my mountain bike and replaced the old ones in less than 5 minutes. However, after a test ride, I noticed that both tires were lopsided and improperly sited on the rims. I thought to my self, I probably inflated them too quickly, so I tried again with no success. Then I removed them and put them back on, tried again, and again and again. Same outcome, I tried multiple approaches. Nothing helped. I was doing something so typical for programmers, that this behavior even felt natural to me. I started a typical debugging rampage: I checked whether the rims were straight, I started suspecting the tubes were damaged or their walls thinned out. I even considered returning the brand new tires back to the store. The stan...

 Can you imagine army generals being forced to start as privates or corporals at the beginning of each war? Or if they change unit? Can you imagine having to start over as first grader everytime you change schools? Its absurd, isn't it? Now do you know what happens when one changes a programming company? Gets degraded 1, 2 or in some cases 3 ranks. It makes you wonder why? I have tried to rationalize this behavior, I have even heard the actual reasons, but it never made sense to me. It's even put into law, at least everywhere I lived and worked so far. The new employee is on a trial period in the first 6 months, and this is by law. Why? Companies don't trust their own recruiting process? What do they expect to happen in 6 months, that can't happen after 6 months and 1 day? What is the drawback of this? Its a lose-lose scenario for the companies. Considering every software company has a shortage of developers. Here is my logic: Great profiles hesitate to switch companies...

I recently started working on a software tool in my spear time (yea, its raining a lot this time of year). The reason I started writing it was out of necessity, so I can automate some of the tasks in my current job whilst keeping myself busy until we can travel more. I have been a Java developer for a long time and I started using NodeJS only recently. Regardless since it was a small utility tool and the world has already moved on, I decided to use NodeJS to write it. Now, I have never written a NodeJS application from scratch so far, I worked on some existing ones in my previous company, but never as a standalone console application. What I am trying to say is: I was hesitating a lot, because I had the feeling that I would drown in boilerplate code even before I start writing useful code. I needed something quick, just to finish my task and to get on with it... I read a couple of articles online and feeling confident, I started coding. Not long after, I had a basic standalone consol...

  I used to get cringes when I heard the word Project in the past. It is so undefined, so vague, yet it sounds so grandiose. It is so generalized and abused that even its definition is vague: A Project is: An individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim. Then, what is an enterprise, one might ask, so its definition is a vague recursive callback to the first definition: An Enterprise is: A project or undertaking, especially a bold or complex one. But we all intuitively know what a project is, right? It's that thing um... project managers talk about, that thing you work on... um... that thing someone plans and executes, most of the time. That thing we are late for 6 months already! See where I'm going with this? Regardless, lets switch gears a little bit, how do you feel when you have too much time on your hands? I mean when you have absolutely nothing to do, for whatever reason. You feel bored and useless, right? So you start thi...

  When I was growing up, capitalism was just making a breakthrough in my country, consequently our elders were still telling the centuries old mantra that: Money can't buy you happiness.  As time went by I was observing the complete opposite. To have a motorcycle you need money, to have a nice house you need money, to have a nice car you need money... so Money => Goods => Happiness. Additionally I would hear my father saying: Money are not everything in the world, but solve all the problems . Apparently this turned out to be true in most cases, except in ONE! Self value . That is the one that money can't buy. Money won't make you an expert at anything, only time and effort can. Needless to say, you can enroll in the best schools and commission the best mentors in the world, but that will not magically make you good at anything, it only gives you false feeling of accomplishment and bloated vanity. That's how far money will go, only make you a member of an expensive...

  I have changed dozen companies in my carrier so far. Even though changing companies often was unprecedented just 20 years ago, these days is rather a common thing.  Every time I have left a company, there was a good reason, some times multiple reasons, sometimes external circumstances. Regardless, never have I ever moved to another company for more money, or other material benefits. I claim this responsibly and I stand by this rule to this day.  Every time there has been a tipping point when I have decided: I give up, not worth it, I'm leaving . And I always ask my self, what is the root cause that is pushing me over the line. There must be an underlying common problem that prevails through the years. I have often pondered: What is that thing I can't tolerate in the companies I leave?   During my last interview (or what looked like one) I had a revelation. The outside image of the company matters to me, but I appreciate the brains much more. When I say brain, ...