First Year on the Job.

First Week on the Job | First Month on the Job
(If this ever gets to “First Decade on the Job”, then WLOWL.)

Anyway, it’s been about a year now and things are awesome. I’ve completely changed both as a developer and an employee since I’ve started. I’m hoping for another great year with way more on plate. Consider this an “end of the year review” for myself.

Accomplishments both development (yay) and non-development related (sigh)

Things I Have Learned

  • System Center Operations Manager: what it is and how it is used
  • Subversion: administration rather than just the TortoiseSVN part, still way more to learn on this
  • Creating test users under the domain and using “runas” helps with testing
  • 32-bit Vista will only recognize 3GB of RAM
  • Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is awesome!
  • Having a laptop dock saves seconds of your life a day
  • I don’t like Silverlight/WPF because of XAML. It’s ugly!
  • NAnt is nice, but MSIs are what the customers want/need
  • A downed Subversion Server on weekends makes for a really painful commit on Monday
  • Outlook does not manage emails well nor make support migrating to new machine fun
  • Sometimes working from home is way more productive
  • Web and Win development has its own gotchas and fails
  • Employers who trust trustworthy employees reap ginormous benefits (I think I’m pretty trustworthy)
  • The grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side of the fence, but you might end up having to landscape it, weed it, edge it. In the end it will become what you make of it.

Things I Would Like (to Learn)

  • Common Design Patterns
  • Enterprise Architecture and Design
  • One experienced C# developer (who enjoys the alt.net initiative) to brain storm and do code reviews.
  • Someone creates MSI Installers for us (I hate them)
  • Daily stand-up meetings with myself (yeah, I’m a lone developer)
  • Subversion Administration (helpful hooks, scripts, and processes)
  • Broadband wifi card (so I can work on the bus or just anywhere)
  • I need formal, hands on agile training from JP, not just reading blogs
  • Remove dependence on a cup of coffee a day

Areas of Improvement end of year reviews always come with this part

  • Provide training for others on Subversion, Mantis, and knowledge sharing
  • Ask for more feedback and detailed requirements
  • Improve on product roadmap knowledge
  • Understand more about customers’ needs and use of products
  • Attend more User Group meetings to learn from others

Something I need to improve on is quality of life. This startup has a lot potential and a lot of things to do, but I need to find something to do outside of this. I have a huge passion for development, but I need to find something to do off the computer. I mean, even my side projects are web-related and I just recently got the Android SDK so I can start making stuff for my brother’s new G1. I’ll need to start jogging again to build up some stamina in preparation for our snowboarding trip in December. I CAN’T WAIT!!!

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