Weeknotes #012: Senior Dev

What I did in the 48th week of 2020

Work

A couple of months ago I applied to be a Senior Developer where I work at GDS. Last week I found out I had successfully passed the interview 🎉. So I am now a Senior Developer on GOV.UK!

GDS hired four seniors in this round, I have been lucky enough to work with all of them on my time at GOV.UK. They are all excellent developers. There are several instances across the last year where I have seen each of them contribute to a codebase, to a team or to the GOV.UK community and I have thought “ooh, I should start doing things like that too”. So, shoulders of giants and all.

This week I tried to balance team and community stuff again. I helped out as a tutor with another internal Learn to Code session, helped sift for a round of hiring and attended a few network meetings. I really enjoy this stuff, but I think in the next few weeks I should ease off a bit and refocus on work in our team. Accounts is growing at a fair clip. I think we will soon have some interesting work for the current trial, and it will not be long before we have decided on next steps.

Otherwise

I have enrolled in some Chinese classes, and they are great! I have had difficulty finding classes at the right level before, luckily this time feels about right. My classmates speak at a good level, the teacher has found novel ways of keeping a class interesting and varied, even though they are all through video chat. I am finding it pleasingly difficult. As I dust off old knowledge I am surprised how much I have retained, frustrating gaps in vocabulary appear, but I have been surprised how much language I can string together when pushed.

Read

I pretty much ditched podcasts this week in favor of books.

Still plodding progress with Peter Scott’s essays. Short and enjoyable snippets of fen life and geese.

I read “Persepolis I & II” in a couple of sittings, drawn into page after page. I have not read too many comics and still have this lingering suspicion that they are all juvenile super hero fantasies. This clears away those misconceptions artfully. I really enjoyed it.

I also listened to all of “Where the Crawdad’s sing”. I can’t even remember how I ended up with this book in my library. I think it is another I was recommended and decided to add without reading the blurb. I am really enjoying this kind of blind date for books. I probably would not have read this if I had known what was in store, and that would have been a shame. I enjoyed it.

Listened to

Thinking about

| Huw