Writing about anything from tech, baking, gamedev, to random life events.
Published on Dec 31, 2022
I started 2022 with 3 resolutions I plan to complete within the first quarter of the year, namely:
I managed to complete item no. 1 within the first quarter while working on a project at my previous company. They assigned me as the lead frontend dev, so I decided to finally give TypeScript a try.
Meanwhile the rest of them are completely forgotten about, at least until earlier this week, when I decided that it's high time I rebuild that personal site of mine, and that's how zhifei.dev is born.
I'll attempt building a complete Rust project again in 2023.
My previous company, ATF, was one of the best company I've ever worked at. The pay is good, the hours are flexible, the leaves are practically unlimited, and there's plenty of leeways. However, there's a limit to how much I can learn from them, and it's very rare for me to work on backend tasks, unless if it's R&D related.
Not that I didn't ask for the opportunity, I have, but it was constantly forgotten and I eventually give up asking. If I want to grow my skillset as a full stack developer, I can't continue staying with them.
Furthermore, in my last project with them, we had an issue with the project's planning and the team's leadership that are affecting me negatively. I tried to bring it up to my boss, but was told to sort it out with said manager directly. I refused, because I feel that it would be pointless at that point.
I'm convinced there's a way we can all work together in better spirits, but I'm too inexperienced to give proper inputs nor make a change. So I chose to leave instead.
I received two job offers from two major companies -- Maybank and SEEK Asia -- after close to 3 months of job interview.
The offer from Maybank was amazing beyond expectation, however, upon speaking to some members of their team (that I'm bound to join), I'm convinced that there's nothing much I can learn from them if I want to become a better developer. Their management style is pretty much akin to what I experienced in ATF, and they don't practice nor care that much about Test Driven Development.
Meanwhile for SEEK, the offer was decent though not as impressive as Maybank. What they do have that made me want to join them is how much they care about the well being of their team members, how serious they are about TDD, and how well managed their projects are (they shared about their project management methodologies during the interview).
And I made the right choice, my experience at SEEK has been pretty awesome so far. I finally get the full-stack opportunity that I've always wanted and has been working on a lot of backend tasks, in addition to the frontend ones.
I also got the chance to work on architecture level tasks, designing AWS workflows to suit our business' needs.
Our projects are very well managed, and the team's morales are extremely high. I've picked up a lot of good tips on running a good team, though I won't be needing them unless if I want to move to a more managerial role.
I've always had a phobia on dealing with AWS due to a scare I have in the past where I forgot to disable an EC2 instance and it caused me $150 in damages. I was able to gain more hands-on experience with AWS in my current company without breaking bank.
In addition, I also learned the Serverless Framework, which enables me to deploy my AWS workflow with a simple yml config file. This is game changer for someone like me who don't really like dealing with the AWS control panels, especially when there's heaps of them you need to learn to config.
I went into my current company with absolutely zero knowledge in Postgres or SQL. Had to do a couple of crash courses on YouTube in order to get the gist of it, as well as being able to tell the difference between LEFT JOIN and INNER JOIN.
Been using it for some personal projects these days over Mongo.
Like Postgres, I never had any experience with GraphQL and have been using Rest all these while. Because of how much GraphQL my current company is using for their projects, I'm now starting to see just how powerful it is. That's one more skillset added under my belt.
I've worked on a couple of tech articles in 2021, but stopped doing so after 4 months. I've been wanting to get back on it this year but to no avail. Content creation is just too hard. So I figure this time I'd just post basically anything tech related that I've learned, so that I can make it to 50 articles.
Another reason I want to continue on it is because the articles I've written in 2021 has generated some constant revenues this year. It's not that much at the moment, but I feel like if I really put in the work, I can make a good earning out of them.
Haven't release a single game since "A Crown for Crows", hopefully I can have the motivation to complete another game this year.
Another hard one to crack. Can't seem to stick to an idea consistently and complete it. I think I've started almost 10 incomplete SaaS-es this year.
One idea I have to go about doing this is to help my poor building management to work on an app that can help them manage their building management related affairs.
Another idea I have is to help a friend of mine who worked with a NGO to help teach refugees skills that they can use to earn money online, such as: video editing or web/mobile app development.
My year in tech for 2022 was pretty rich and fun. I picked up a lot of new stacks as well as gaining hands-on experiences with them in my current company. Looking forward to using them more in my personal projects, and picking up new ones next year.