Looking Back on 2016

A retrospective of 2016.

Work

In 2016, I was able to work on various jobs outside of development.

From January to March, I worked on business improvement for our company’s warehouse. From April to June, I worked on business improvement for the merchandising team. Both were engineering-based business improvements, where I would conduct business interviews and create development requirements in GitHub issues. During business interviews, I discovered some development projects that didn’t need to be done right away, and I experienced the difficulty of priority adjustment and expectation management.

From July to August, I worked a little on business improvement for the marketing team. The period was short because of organizational restructuring and a shift in direction toward work that would increase sales and gross profit rather than business improvement. During this period, I also tried my hand at data analysis. Since data analysis was new to me, I read several books for reference.

Books I read for data analysis

I also worked on SEO. There were many parts that required internal coordination outside of development, and it’s still not going well. Since I had been away from engineering development work from January to August, I started thinking I wanted to do development work intensively again. So I consulted with the CTO and asked to increase the proportion of development work.

From September onwards, I mainly worked on product development as an engineer. Since I had been away from development for over half a year, the first two weeks or so after returning were like a rehabilitation period, and I struggled to regain my instincts.

I had a complex about frontend JavaScript, so I struggled with Vue.js.

From the end of November, I worked remotely from Kumamoto and spent the New Year there.

The benefits include having more time to focus on development.

The disadvantages include that the enthusiasm unique to startups is hard to convey. Since you can’t sense the office atmosphere, when there are urgent tasks, you have to shout @channel on Slack. Google Hangouts settings and network trouble problems are endless. Since offline communication is greatly reduced, you have almost no contact with people you don’t work with.

I asked for remote work myself, but I felt again that if you don’t understand the disadvantages and implement it, stress will accumulate.

Family

A family member passed away during Golden Week in May. I felt grateful for being able to take time off work when needed.

My first child was born at the end of December. Since I wanted to be present for the delivery, I’ve been working remotely from Kumamoto from November to early February. I’m grateful that I can work remotely to accommodate life events like weddings and childbirth. “Wouldn’t it be better to do it once or twice a week to get used to it, so you can work remotely anytime?” has come up as a topic for the Dev team.

Study

I stopped learning English midway through. Since my motivation didn’t last, I want to restart when the time is right.

For reading, I aimed for 10 books per month, but I actually only read about 2-3 books per month. All of the following books were excellent reads that I wished I had read a year earlier. This is probably the difference between experience first or knowledge first.

With remote work, I no longer have commute time, so I want to use the free time for studying.

I’m re-reading books like these. Since I have a lot of input, I want to output something like book reviews to this blog.

I wrote less private code.

This year, I first want to improve my frontend JavaScript skills. I also want to broaden or deepen my knowledge of other technologies.

Summary & Next Year

It was the last year of my twenties.

Next year I’ll be 30, so I want to live each day with a more concrete image of my future career and life plan than ever before.

That’s all from the Gemba.