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Aloha,
The year 2020 started with a bang. Australia was burning and half the continents forests and animal population got decimated. The next month followed and Donald Trump tried to start World War 3 with Iran over the destruction of a damn UAV drone. While everyone was looking at Australia and the conflict between Iran and America there was a ground zero situation in China. The City Wuhan was locked up and set under quarantine because of COVID-19 the latest Coronavirus after S.A.R.S. The infection spread over the world and in march the political leaders and essential workers of this world were facing a pandemic not seen since the Spanish flu. Italy was hit hard by COVID-19 as its population is on average older than in other countries and the hospitals had not the equipment they needed. In the middle of march everyone in Germany who could work from home was sent into Home Office. Even the mighty Russia has sent its population on holiday although it has no COVID-19 patients (ofc🙄). Now in May I am still in the Home office and pair with my colleagues out of my small dining room. The time flies by in times of the quarantine. Nature healed so fast from the pollution of humankind. The air over Germany got so clean that the suns UV radiation is as strong as in the summer. Every day the sun shines and i just want to sit outside and work in the sun but i get sunburn so easily. I believe without this great weather it would be too much burden with all this stuff going on. Daniel tells me now and then that we have to wait till January next year till everything gets back to normal. Let's see when the word "normal" can be used again for this reality we live in. What can I say more about 2020? Every month has new catastrophe for the world in its cards and it's more then happy to play them all. (some volcanos exploded in April too...)
Two years at ThoughtWorks
After two years i feel i could tackle all the problems. Hahaha whom am i kidding i guess i could deal with some of them. Really it would be an overstatement when i said i can handle everything. As you can see my imposter syndrome is as strong as ever. After two years at ThoughtWorks I am still working with incredible people and i am still learning a lot from them. Looking back on my goals of my first year, i just wanted to get a good grip on all tools and programming languages i would use day in day out. In my second year it was all about learning more about consulting and my role within ThoughtWorks. I asked myself the question of what i want to do at ThoughtWorks besides software developing, and so I started taking more responsibility for my team on the account level. Through this I learned about myself that in order to be more happy i need to take on this responsibility next to software developing. My goal is clear now: become a tech lead. (Question to future self: how is it going with that?) To be honest i am fine if it takes some time. I will always remember Birgitta Böckeler advice: "Do not try to achieve everything in one year, you still have so many ahead of you until retirement.". I am who i am so i kinda did my thing. My sponsor is proud about my progress and would like to put me in the next Tech Lead training and i would gratefully accept this challenge. On the other side my comfort zone expanded so quickly in this two years that i am fine staying in there for a while. Things which I avoided are now as easy as buttering a bun. I remember how i struggled with running a standup or participating retrospectives in my first project. Sorry nighthawks most of the times i was too confused or tired from all this input in these retrospectives. I sometimes had the feeling i was acting like a weirdo in them. The same goes for coding. I liked following the lead of my pair so i could focus on taking everything in. Nowadays i get often bored from the coding as its not really challenging anymore. It's the "have done, will do" situation. From time to time I still have these beautiful frustrating moments when i don't understand something and my brain just goes awol. I hope in the future i am more relaxed in these situations. I guess that's it for the retrospective on two years at ThoughtWorks.
See y'all in a year 😄