It’s been over 3 months since my change to the site operations team at Xing and time has really been flying by.
Everything is new and I really don’t know what to do many times and that I find very delightful. The investigation, learning, figuring out how to achieve something, reading forums or stack overflow and trying to fit a puzzle into your head. I think this is what I love the most about computers, that moment when you understand the machine, what it does and why it does it. It’s the hack, making the computer do what you want. Getting out of my comfort zone is helping me appreciate the basics more.
During this time, I’ve played with many technologies, different programming languages, libraries, etc. It’s not about a product anymore I care, it’s about the platform. Even though I’m immersed in some low level details about the systems most of the day, the work itself feels at a higher level. The components are bigger and so are their interactions. I could compare caring about an app with caring for a model, the whole database instead of my schema.
But not all is about technology, the human side is very interesting as well. I get to interact with most of the engineers working in the company, so I talk to a very diverse range of people. Different languages, cultures, backgrounds, etc and I have to say most people are actually very grateful when you help them out. Others just seem like they don’t know how to ask things and I have to work on my patience, frustration can sometimes make us say the right things in a very wrong way, this goes for both sides. I also find that I’m more mentally drained when I finish the work. I guess it just takes a lot of energy to be constantly solving other’s problems even if it’s also very regarding.
I’m really enjoying this big new learning experience. I feel there are so many opportunities as when I started learning Ruby on Rails around 8 years ago. I see this as a new beginning, an evolution from developing software to developing platforms.