Week 79: 2000s Bangers
This week has been jam-packed, strap yourselves in for a few words.
First, let’s celebrate some success. I came second out of five in My City, a legacy game which my board game group has been playing for pretty much an entire year. I’m pretty pleased because I’m probably the least competitive person in this group. Well done me, eh? 🥈
I’ve been migrating all of my Node.js side projects to use Conventional Commits and publish releases via Release Please. This is honestly a bit life-changing – it removes a lot of overhead of managing ~20 different libraries.
At the same time, my team at work have finally started writing the boilerplate for a new suite of tools we’re going to publish. It’s hopefully going to make error handling and monitoring our many systems a much easier task. I’m having such a great time.
I’m gonna talk about my role at work properly because I’ve finally made a decision and I’m feeling good about it. Way back at the end of last year I told my boss I wanted to demote myself from Principal Engineer back to being a Senior. I was feeling super burned out (mostly personal stuff really - the trial, Tootsie, the impact of the pandemic) and wanted to be back in my comfort zone which is definitely contributing more directly to the code.
Anna kindly counter-proposed that I embed directly in one of our teams (which really needed an engineer anyway) on a trial basis. I’ve been essentially doing the work of a Senior 2 for quite a few months now, dropping all my principal responsibilities apart from a few related to line management. After a good trial period, I’m just a noticeably happier person, as quite a few people have commented. This week I decided to pull the plug and, pending some reshuffling of job roles, I’ll step down officially soonish.
Despite a fair amount of my reasoning being personal, there are some changes afoot relating to the Principal role in my broader team which are great. I’m pleased to see that efforts are being made to allow Principals to focus more on strategic tech work. I guess I’m not ruling out ever applying for a Principal role again, but this is right for me at the moment (especially considering the rescheduled trial is now looming 😬).
One or two friends questioned why I didn’t just leave the FT. Honestly, it’s really great here, we’re treated very well (as evidenced by how chill and kind my manager has been about my step down), and I like all my colleagues too much.
Speaking of lovely colleagues, I saw a lot of them this week as I ramp up my office visits. I think I’m finding a 2/3 day split in favour of working at home is actually really good for me.
On Friday I went to a club for the first time in who knows how long. Is it inadvisable still? Probably. Did I have the best time? Yes absolutely. We went to Oslo’s 2000s Bangers night and I danced and sang for several solid hours. I love a 2000s banger. Still covid-free based on a few tests, but I’m hoping I’m still pretty safe based on how recently I had it.
On Saturday we met up with Luke to get Zabardast which is one of the places I definitely miss from living in Waterloo. We sat outside in the sun and looked at how much his flat has changed since we were there last. We got home nice and early and made a Rhubarb crumble tart.
We took the tart with us to visit Charlotte’s grandparents on Sunday and had a lovely time. We haven’t seen them at all over the course of the pandemic and it was great to catch up. We went for a short walk through some bluebell-filled woods, got fed well, and were complimented on our baking.
