I am not a very enthusiastic reader of year or decade reviews. I will try to keep it as short as possible. Maybe a bullet list?
As always, if someone told me what would happen in the next 10 years back in 2010, I would probably stare at them in disbelief.
- I was hired as the first international support engineer, second in support in general, twelfth employee ever at GitHub at the beginning of this decade.
- We had our second child.
- We became totally debt free after a long time.
- We fully paid the mortgage on our first ever house after 15 years.
- I went from programmer, support engineer, manager, to director.
- We lost two really close relatives. A reminder of our temporary status on this planet.
- Thanks to GitHub, I traveled to great places in Europe and North America.
- I co-founded Thessaloniki Ruby Meetup, one of the first meetups in my home town, which sparkled the creation of numerous other meetups and an umbrella technological community skgtech.io.
- I had an operation to fix a life threatening situation. Who knows how long we’ll be breathing on this planet?
- I sold my 17 year old car, and bought a new one.
- I bought a second house. A bit bigger, in a nicer location, with my own parking space (finally!).
- I quit my job at GitHub after 9 years, to follow my dream and create HeavyMelon, a calm company. We are creating Supportress, a customer support tool that helps teams stay calm, happy, and productive.
- I started videocasting and podcasting at devkatiano.com
- I started biking to work, one of my most enjoyable activities in my life. I even video blogged for a while about it (in Greek).
I think 2010s is the best decade so far in terms of productivity. It’s also a bit mixed because we are getting older and this means death and near death experiences are more likely to happen.
I wonder what 2020s will bring. Hopefully, I will still be around one day before 2030 to write about it.
How has your last decade been? Seriously, I’d love to learn about it. Let me know privately or in the comments below.