Developer Champion
Just stuff.
During the last four weeks, I've been to a few conferences. Sick of wearing the same t-shirts and jeans, I've been experimenting with different outfits. By far the most successful t-shirt (yes, I know, I said I was sick of wearing t-shirts) was a new one I designed for the Develocity Developer Advocates showing our disdain for intermittently-failing tests.
Continue reading "Flaky Fashion"This is a post I've been meaning to write for eight and a half years. Inspired by this tweet from Ceora, I'm finally doing it.
I have a question for parents in tech, especially moms.
How has having children impacted your career?
I wanna hear the good, the bad and the ugly. Tell me whatever you’re comfortable sharing 😛
— ceora🌸🌺 (@ceeoreo_) May 15, 2024
The most immediate impact having a baby had on my career is I needed to work much smarter not harder. Babies (and children) take up all that so-called free time, and and almost all of your not-free-time, that you used to have.
Continue reading "Working Smarter, not Harder"
I wrote a 3000 word blog post in response to a Tweet about how having kids changed my career (which in retrospect probably doesn't even answer the question). So I decided to pull this section out into its own post. It became a 2000 word blog post about planning, sigh. This is why I find it hard to find time to blog.
So here are my Top Tips For Time Management And Planning for Working Parents.
Continue reading "Time Management for Parents"
Tomorrow, 22nd December 2021, is my last day at JetBrains.
I can't believe I've been here a whole seven years! I've never stayed anywhere even half that amount of time, I usually jump jobs every 1-2 years. I spent 4 years at LMAX, but I did have a tiny break in the middle to go and work for ThoughtWorks for 3 months.
Continue reading "End of an Era"
OK so here we go, my almost-regular annual roundup. Of 2020. Deep breath.
Right so first things first, obviously 2020 SUCKED. For everyone. Anything I say that's negative is not meant to be "oh poor me I had it worse than anyone" and anything positive is all about focusing on the positives, I hope I don't make anyone feel weird about good shit happening in a horrible year.
So caveats and disclaimers up-front:
How to start?
I’ve had a fantastic week of meeting with colleagues and friends, getting to know some of my organisation, brainstorming ideas for next year, working out how to prioritise and plan, being handed greater responsibility and freedom…
Now I’m sat in Berlin airport with loads of time until my next flight and what am I doing? Creating a brand new coding product to play Sudoku, writing a new personal blog post and (of course) updating my personal blog platform software (sigh).
I should be finalising my personal and team objectives for 2020, for Q1, and for February. I should be using those to plan next month/quarter. I should be using all the notes I took this week to create sharable content for the team and maybe even a new blog post or two for work.
But I’m not. I feel the urge to code, and I want to scratch it.
Procrastination? Or using the right energy for the right task when it’s there?
Right so yes. 2020, hello. One of my 2020 resolutions is to get back to my personal blog. Weekly. Yeah right. Let's
aim for weekly and be happy with monthly.
For my first post let's do the obligatory look-back-over-last-year. Not because it's trendy (I'm 41 now, I don't care about being trendy any more), but because it's super important for me to understand what I went through and what I achieved last year (every year), otherwise I get caught up in the hamster-wheel of the-next-thing-and-the-next-thing-and-the-next-thing. Progress should be celebrated, not just ignored for the next item on the ever growing, ever pressing TODO list. Also, looking back helps me to plan the next year. Doesn't have to be super-planned, but setting some goals, objectives, ideas for which direction I'd prefer to go in helps me decide how to prioritise that ever-growing, ever-pressing TODO list.
I didn’t see what an enormous impact Mum made on my life, because she was always there. There’s a quote in the book Good Omens: “It’s for the same reason you can’t see England when you’re in Trafalgar Square” - Mum was a constant, important, dependable presence for my whole life.
I wrote something for Mum while I was on the plane from Spain to spend what was to be our last two weeks together. I’d like to share some of that with you all now.
Continue reading "Me Mum"
This July my Mum passed away, apparently cancer was the one opponent she couldn’t beat in an argument. Mum had a huge impact on my life, as you might expect, not only personally but professionally too. Maybe I’ll talk about that some more in time. For now, I want to publish the poem my very talented cousin Izzi Giles wrote in tribute.
Continue reading "Ode to a Resting Warrior"So I came to the blog to update my upcoming events (at least something stays up to date) only to find it's been nearly a year since I last blogged! This is terrible!
It's not that I haven't written anything in a year, it's that a lot of my writing energy goes into stuff for the actual day job. Which is good, because that's pretty much what I wanted from the day job, but the blog makes it look like I don't write any more.
So I'm going to cheat. Here's the stuff I've written in the last 12 months.
I've also done a bunch of screencasts & webinars for IntelliJ IDEA, Upsource and Team City.
Oh yeah, and I had a baby. I'm contemplating blogging about being a working parent, but I'm a bit concerned that Of Course a woman is going to blog about Being A Mother, when previously I just blogged about... well, come to think about it I blogged about all sorts of things, including haircuts and hangovers, so I guess I could probably get away with it.