2015 in retrospect

Its Feb 2016 and seems like a good time to take a look back at 2015 and sum up a few things that stand out.

One of the most important things — took several weekend courses in Stanford, and got fascinated by the level of knowledge, expertise and communication skills of both instructors and students. The outcome of those classes — much better understanding of people, people needs and desires and also understanding that it’s much more important to have right people at the job or in personal life that I thought. People shape surrounding, surrounding shapes perception, and perception and focus shape life.

Another one — making great progress in hockey. Thanks to one of my friends I am now playing hockey and enjoying testosterone and adrenaline rush at least once a week. If you haven’t played I urge to you try it (in a safe and friendly games) and see how intensive and funs this is(not even saying that hockey is the best workout ever).

Thanks to the job and process I’ve finally learned to create software in a very iterative manner, literally deploying software in exceptionally small chunks in production. Helps to provide business values in a matter of days and not weeks and iterate superfast. Warning note — this requires a bit of automation in place and quite mature processes but this is becoming quite normal for tech companies.

Learned to identify things that don’t work and cut them immediately to free up time, energy and space for things that would work. Something quitting battles and focusing on something else brings much better and tastier fruits.

And what 2016 will bring?

• More learning about technology, software design and process to create great products
• Cutting down time between thinking and action — trying small things and assessing outcome in an iterative fashion and skipping long and painful analysis phase almost completely. Basically switching from ‘figure it out all upfront’ to try small thing right here right now approach
• Getting the desired outcome while enjoying life in the moment

Comments? Notes? Suggestions?

Bring them on!