ci/cd

Something has happened in the past few years.  Something that I never anticipated nor even would have thought possible.

I've become a developer.

Not a good one, by any shot, but it seems to be what I'm doing now.

Something else has happened over that time. I think I've landed in something I would call a career. And, generally, I can explain what I'm doing when people ask and they understand and don't immediately start to question my life choices.

Not that my previous choices were bad, nor were they not career-worthy... perhaps I was trying to fit myself in the place I found myself in.

So what do I do?

According to my wife, I "pute", which typically includes the action of fingers going down in bulk towards the invisible air keyboard with the sound, somewhere between a laser and a squirrel being continually run over by a rollerblade. (Side note: I'm envisioning the sound, I do not have, nor do I wish to have any experience in hearing this sound in person, and I hope no one reading this does as well.  Although annoying at times, squirrels are part of our ecosystem for a reason, so leave them be.)  I've tried to explain what it is I'm attempting to accomplish and pretty quickly her eyes glaze over and I can tell I lost her around 4 words in.

So, to her, I "pute".

I'm currently working on a bunch of different items that when linked together, become a platform that other developers can use to make their lives easier.  For a large multi-national company, first, the scale is fairly intimidating, and secondly, the amount of people who are waiting on my team of 8 people to deliver something tangible usually has me sitting back with my mind exploding.  A typical day has me building test computers in the "Cloud", writing scripts to assist making my life easier in building these computers, writing code (that I don't fully understand, might I add) as a means to configure these computers, envisioning the future, and attempting to get my colleagues to cringe as I either mention the word "pipeline" or make up some Agile-sounding term and suggesting that the work being proposed is impacting the Sprint Matrix Threshold, or for the fun of it, letting out a phrase or screen capture that implies I'm increasing current scope.

How'd I get here?  A few years ago, I was hired as Technical Writer into a group that didn't understand what Technical Writers were supposed to do. This left me with a lot of time to look over other people's shoulders (metaphorically, as I was 100% remote at the time) and pick up what they were doing. First up: I got to help figure out User Acceptance Testing for a new project. First thing I did when asked to do this: Google "User Acceptance Testing".  Secondly, I started trying to create small scripts that would accomplish useful tasks on this new product, such as start and stop computers based on the the order in which they were added.  LIFO (last-in-first-out) was one of my most-used terms for a while. 

Eventually, I was recognized as someone who could do this sort of thing and moved out of the Tech Writer role into an Engineering role (yes, I don't have a ring, but this seems to be the norm for Tech companies). I was building servers for customers, re-configuring them, attempting to make life easier for everyone, and many more fun things until one day I get tapped on the shoulder and told I have the opportunity to try something slightly different. After a brief amount of internal panic, I said "yes", because I told myself that I'm not allowed to say "no" when this type of opportunity arises and am trying to stick to it as much as possible.

The last year has been a blur of trying to get my bearings and mass confusion (mostly due to a severe sleep deficit caused by change in the adorable tiny human that arrived in our almost a year ago), and many hours spent in car, train, or bus between here and Toronto. But, it's offered me a chance to learn, grow, and try a bunch of technologies that would have made life very much easier 10 years ago, and more that I have trouble getting my head around.

Some lessons from the year:
1. New things are hard.  Don't give up when it seems like there are immediate brick walls.
2. If you're in the position to see someone with potential and take them along with you to help them grow, do it.  I'm thankful for the person who took me along for the ride.
3. Commuting sucks, but being in person with your team is good.  It's a trade-off. Thankfully, I like trains and have found some podcasts to keep me entertained.
4. Parenting is rewarding, despite not having more than a handful of solid sleeps in the past year.