November 2024, I got a very bad news from my office. They said that I am one of 13 employee that they have to terminate for cost saving and profitability. It was horible, and was surprising for me because troughout the year, nothing goes into my radar, I dont make any big mistakes, in my opinion I even accomplish quite of achievement. I managed to save aroud EUR 150.000 that year, I am rebuilding the company IT Operation departement by hiring a really good candidate, so on and so forth. But unfortunately, those seemingly not enough for saving the company for pursuing profitability.
I was sad a that time, yes, especially considering my resident status, and whole other “working abroad” shenanigan (limited resident permit, going through many other goverment related stuff due to unemployment status, etc). When I received that news, my focus is to ensure my family, especially my wife to keep strong, and supportive on my next journey.
Interview, Rejection, and Accepted.
December 2024 is my interview months. Lots of video calls, coding challenges from leetcode style to take home test, all of those are my daily routine. I haven’t really used to the environment where scheduling a meet could take up some times due to holiday seasons. It’s killing me to wait responses, living me in this situation where I cant do anything other than waiting.
I got a lot of rejection, many many rejection, due to various reasons: I dont meet their standard, I used to work with different tech stack, or simply cold rejected by the bot. I do admit my situation that time is also kinda weird. I have experience as Technical Lead, I even started to manage people aspect more than before (Team Lead). In terms of deep technical knowledge, I know a lot, but seems like not deep enough to be considered as senior engineers.
That facts hit me so hard that I need to even start reading many technical material once again, in more in depth. I review my understanding of Terraform for example, try to understand the tools better than before. Once I feel more confident again, comes the holiday seasons, that makes me wait longer for response, or had interview scheduled in early January.
But I feel very lucky that there’s one company, that schedule me an interview right before christmas, even had the second stage of interview at the very end of 2024. It goes very well, and I am confident to land the job.
That feeling was right! They offer me an SRE position 🙌. Yes it’s not a senior title, but with all the offers and adjustment, I still feel that’s a really good offer, so without any hesitation, I accept the offer, marking this part of the journey to the end.
A productive Month
Other than interviewing, and learning, January 2025 becomes surprisingly an exciting month. This month, I managed to start 2 projects, and able to ship it too. I know myself, I often had an urge to start new project, had all the things on my mind, start developing a POC, but then cant finish it for multiple reasons : skills, or time.
This month, I release 2 exciting project
ReadType - An app for reading book by typing
Since I start migrating from qwerty to dvorak, I am a regular visitor of MonkeyType. Even before I go to bed, after a session (often bad) Dota 2 match, I open MonkeyType and play some session. But more often, I feel like this experience could be better. Around that time I also want to read more documentation, or even book.
I try to find any options on MonkeyType to upload my designated book, then typing it. This way I can train my typing skills, as well as getting something from my typing. Unfortunately this seems something that MonkeyType doesnt have.
With that in mind, once again, a project, I start. I am choosing Remix as framework of choice, as well as daisy UI. Thanks to Copilot I can manage those Front End, styling challenges, quite well (at least it’s done, maybe not pretty, but done).
2 weeks later, I launch ReadType by sharing it on reddit, my social, and even on my homepage 🙌. The feedback are overwhelmingly positive. People seems like the idea, and start giving constructive feedback to it.
A podcast show - Amma Appa Cerita
Around the same month, together with my wife, we starting a podcast. It was started when I – with quite a lot of impulsiveness – grab a DJI Mic Mini, and bought it from the store. She was surprised that I bought it (to be honest so do I) considering we like record video, but not that professional.
This mic was very handy, and even as a newbie, I really like it. It was compact, easy to use, and versatile. I can see myself to also use that for my work on online meeting. In short, it feels worthed.
Then I started to learn more about podcast production. I bought Ferrite Recording Studio, and learn how to use it. With my iPad Air, and Apple Pencil, it was great. I am able to edit my recording well, and start publishing
My wife also start learning to speak in microphone, write some podcast material, and have a conversation flowing. Listing to what we publish now, I am proud of my production.
The podcast mainly talk about communication between maried couple, where I heard many had a hard time to talk about their feeling with their Significant Other. This also something I personally heard from friends, and on social media people struggle with. We are not expert on this, but in our marriage, we do things a little bit extra around establishing better communication, and we think this is worth to share with.
What’s next?
Three big exciting things waiting upon me. A new job, adding more features to ReadType, and publishing more episode to Amma Appa Cerita.
The time I publish this blog post, I am still surprised what those 2 months becomes. I wish this spirit, motivation, and productiveness, will remains, and I am looking forward for a really great 2025.