review
Looking Back at Highs and Lows of 2023
Highlights:
- Expanded scope at work
- 2 stand-alone teams versus one large one
- New area of responsibility
- Managing (and delegating to) team lead and tech leads for the first time
- Having skip-level 1-on-1s
- Got to hire some contractors (to work around the headcount freeze of last year)
- 12th wedding anniversary
- Twins turned 8 years old
- Published more blog posts than in 2022 (31 including this one versus 22 last year)
- Ramped up my pleasure reading, including:
- The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives, by Adolph L. Reed
- Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson
- Heavy, by Kiese Laymon
- Spook Street, by Mick Herron (#4 in the Slough House series)
- The List, by Mick Herron
- Old Man's War, by John Scalzi
- Tiamat's Wrath, by James S.A. Corey (#8 of 9 in The Expanse series)
- London Rules, by Mick Herron (#5 in the Slough House series)
- The Ghost Brigades, by John Scalzi
- The Last Colony, by John Scalzi
- Beacon 23, by Hugh Howey
- Successful cataract surgery
- Solo vacation this year was to Boston, to visit my cousin and do some touristy stuff
Lowlights:
- Didn't complete AWS Serverless badge (a work goal for the year that I ran out of time for)
- Had to deliver below strong ratings for an employee for the first time
- Did not work on my health enough
2022 Year in Review
Some highlights from this year:
- Very strong year-end review (best ever at my current employer)
- Substantial pay raise
- RSUs added to my compensation package for the first time in my career
- Promoted to senior manager at mid-year
- Returned to the office
- Hybrid model of Tuesday-Thursday in-office with Mondays and Fridays still remote
- 11th wedding anniversary
- Twins turned 7 years old
- I lost about 10 pounds
- Wrote 22 blog posts (including this one)
- Moved this site to Amazon Lightsail (more on that in a future post)
- Finally updated my library card so I can borrow books with Libby and in-person
- Completed some reading for pleasure, including:
- Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies (by Dick Gregory)
- Borrowed physically from the library
- The first three books of Mick Herron's Slough House books
- Slow Horses
- Dead Lions
- Real Tigers (borrowed via Libby)
- They Called Us Enemy: Expanded Edition (by George Takei)
- Black Cop's Kid: An Essay (by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar)
- Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies (by Dick Gregory)
- Completed Building Microservices (by Sam Newman) in technical book club at work
- Took an actual solo vacation (Philadelphia)
Some lowlights from this year:
- Ending contractor terms early for performance reasons
- Navigating a headcount freeze (which will persist into 2023)
- Not enough exercise
Another Year Gone
It’s annual review time again, which means this year has gone by even more quickly than usual. Filling out my self-assessment was a good reminder of all the work I had a hand in completing. I’m still deciding on goals for 2012, and I’m posting all of them here so I can look back on them over the course of next year and track my progress.
- Learn jQuery. I got a bit of exposure to it this year through a couple of projects that I worked on, and a .NET user group presentation or two, but haven't done the sort of deep dive that would help me improve the look-and-feel of the web applications I build and maintain.
- Learn a functional programming language. I've been thinking about this more recently since some of our work involves the implementation of valuation models in code. I also came across this article in the November Communications of the ACM advocating OCaml. Since I work in a Microsoft shop, picking up something like F# might have a slightly better chance of making it into production code than OCaml or Haskell. Part of my objective in learning a functional programming language is to help me recognize and make better use of functional techniques in a language like C#, which has added more and more support for the functional programming style of the years.
- Give a few technical talks/presentations. This year, I presented on NuGet at my job, and on Reflector at RockNUG. Having to present on a tool or technology to group has always been a great incentive to do some deep learning of a subject. It's also a chance to exercise some speaking skills (which developers need a lot more than they might think in order to be successful) and to handle a Q & A session. I haven't developed any new presentations yet, but some prospective topics include: LINQPad, elmah,
- Take more online training. We have access to Pluralsight .NET training through work. I watched quite a few of their videos over the course of the year. 2012 shouldn't be any different in that respect. I recently came across free webcasts on a variety of topics from DevelopMentor. Since they're downloadable as well as streamable, I'll definitely use my commute to watch some of them.
- Write a compiler. It's been awhile since I've cracked open "the dragon book", so I'm probably overdue to exercise my brain in that way. I found that suggestion (and a number of other very useful ones) here.
- Practice. I'd heard of the "code kata" idea before, but hadn't really explored it. Dave Thomas of Pragmatic Programmers has nearly a couple dozen here.
Charitable Giving in 2023
The number of hours left in 2023 is down to single digits as I write this. This year as in past years, the majority of my charitable giving is to churches within my denomination (Seventh-Day Adventist), with additional giving to non-profit journalism and other non-religious causes.
Religiously-Motivated Charitable Giving
Unlike previous years, where I only donated to my home church, I also donated to every church that I attended either in-person or online at least once this calendar year. This included Boston Temple, which I attended in-person when I visited my cousin there in October, as well as Oakwood University Church (online), Revision Church Atlanta SDA (online), along with the churches in my local area I visit most often in-person.
As I did last year, I donated to Adventist Community Services of Greater Washington (ACSGW). I also donated to my high school alma mater again this year.
Other Charitable Giving
Other destinations for my charitable giving this year included the following organizations (in no particular order):
Charitable Giving Plans for 2024
Having finally added back to the roster of charitable donation recipients I missed in past years, one change I anticipate making in 2024 is donating to whatever the organization resulting from the merger between CIR/Reveal and Mother Jones is ultimately called.
Non-profit journalists did great work this year in exposing the depths of Clarence Thomas' corruption, methods used by the Mormon church to keep child sex abuse cases secret, a healthcare company trying to deny coverage to a chronically ill patient, and more. Especially in a presidential election year, where for-profit newsrooms like The New York Times appear to be using their coverage to weigh in in favor of the powerful, non-profit newsrooms will be more important than ever. If you haven't already donated to a non-profit newsroom this year, I encourage you to get that donation in before the new year.
In 2024, consider supporting a non-profit newsroom in your local area. The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) has a tool that will match you with such organizations so you can donate to them directly and follow their coverage. I might be adding some Maryland non-profit newsrooms to my charitable giving plans before this time next year.