2023 in review and goals for 2024 : Work edition

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Well, this has been a really odd work year. The first part of this year wasn’t massively productive from a value of delivery point of view, although good from a personnel management stand point, with new lessons on how to deal with high stress and how to minimise impact to your team caused by changes in other areas, but from a pure enjoyment point of view not one of the greatest, and I’ve been always one of the very, lucky people who have always enjoyed their work. Thankfully its an old lesson, to always value the joy in your work first so I decided that, going back to full time consulting, rather than a permanent role was where the fun was, I DID however, make a huge ton of good friends, and as a number of them left after me the network of good people I now know has grown.

The latter half of this year has been far more enjoyable. It’s been challenging, but fun. It has been filled with enthusiastic techs rather than political battles. It has been totally delivery orientated. It’s just been everything I’ve always loved In a job, and people that know me have noted that I am back to my old bounce, The new set of clients I have been working with have also squared the circle for me in improving my CV.

The next part is I have for my day to day work moved even further into the management role. Away from technical and that is simply down to discovering that it was the place I could do the most good. As a tech, there is a limit to what I can fix, but as a manager that represents the interest of delivery and technical people and tries to actually help them reach their goals, that’s a big thing and the sheer volume of good, if you can call it that, that such a view point can provide in a corporate environment is huge. It’s been very, very rewarding. And I’m going to be a little bit egotistical and say It’s actually made a few people’s lives and work better, and who could ask for more.

But if I look at the three basic areas that I normally review:

Management: I am still treating this as a growth thing, and something that I have noted with quite a few of my management colleagues at various different clients over the years. Managers do not treat their personal growth in the same way as techs and business people treat theirs. They think in terms of their growth, rising through an organisation, getting more powerful, but not in terms of their skill set, and I’m finding that that is a really wonderful thing to try for, can you be a better manager, not simply a more powerful manager, so that is where I’m going at the moment. its my main focus which means I’m not looking at getting any formal certifications as you would if this was a business or a technical position.

The old management certifications aren’t worth what they used to be and Agile while it is nearly the only game in town nowadays. It is being treated more as a religion than a faith. I’ll expand on this more on a separate blog post. To me Agile has been for the last 20 odd years merely the simplest way of getting a lot of deliveries done while keeping track of them. Now as always these things have grown into far more of a religion. There are people with silly titles. There’s people who do silly ceremonies that don’t actually bring you closer to your delivery and just chew up time and frustrate your team. I found that going a little bit old school on this and trying to just focus on things that help deliver is making my management style work much better. I’m getting good feedback from both the people I work with and the people I work for. one of this years challenges will be to try and better explain it as a process.

Technical: As always, I might do management as a role but what I am is a Tech, and I still fiddle with it constantly. The two technical areas I’m mainly working on both last year and the coming year is making sure that my Azure is as good as my AWS. and ensuring that I keep up to date on Salesforce. And while you might be expecting me to do AI, I am not learning it in the normal way. The large language model side. Everyone’s getting excited about that, but I like to dig under the covers, and particularly how vector databases are working and growing and how they work in terms of security are my big things that I have both been learning and am continuing to learn. thank fully I have a smaller client that has had me working on a challenging little problem on this very subject, and this is hitting all my geek buttons.

Business: My business knowledge is growing at the same pace as management. Because my new set of clients, even though they’re in the same field as my old ones, they are dealing with wildly different things. Unfortunately, I haven’t made as much progress as I wanted with my CII certification. That is still on my hard to do list and it’s getting more and more important this year.

2023 in review and goals for 2024 : Fitness edition

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This year has been an excellent year fitness wise, firstly we continue the never ending grizzle with the Sarcoidosis. and I was invited to participate in a long study on it, as apparently it has a very high suicide rate, 1. I was then subjected to a mass battery of tests, far more than I’d had previously and ended up in a meeting room with four consultants in which they said you’ve still got Sarcoidosis, We can still see all your lymph nodes inflamed and going for the burn, but all your scar tissue has gone from your Lungs and you are no longer showing any of the debilitating symptoms that are normal. And I said, Yes, that’s because I cough it all up, I have an amazing PT and Spin teacher who run me into the floor for 8 hours a week.
Then for the first time, the NHS sat down and asked me what I was doing and how I was doing it. After explaining the weekly schedule, the targeted exercises and the mental support I get from so many people, they went “Oh, do you want to swap chairs? You can sit where we are.” We all laughed and they said, “Just keep doing what you’re doing, your are an outlier on the study and don’t need the help, We’ll see you in four years.” So the way we are handling it seems to be just right 2, But it does, however, require constant maintenance. And as my weekly lung test shows I would be a fool to ever take anything for granted.
But moving on to less serious updates:
  1) I am now actively using a 40kg kettlebell and my arms have not been ripped out of their sockets, and I can strict press a 36kg 3 2) Thanks to the house move and a bill that made me squeak, I have purchased an I.C.G. home bike, which means, thanks to Louise I do spin twice a week at a level now that is topping at 1,200 calories per 55-minute session. Really good progress. 3) I’m back to fencing. Again, thanks to the house move I have run out of excuses and am now back to Haverstock fencing club, it is still as amazing as ever and alas my old bad habits are still there, but I am determined to get there each week and have fun while my knees last.

Goals

1) Lose some sodding weight. While both Sam and Louise constantly try to steer me to a realm of healthy eating, I still eat garbage, but its a bit silly now. I’m currently at 114 kilos; I need to get that down to 100 kilos. Thankfully,  Louise herself is changing diets this new year so we can be miserable together while I finally listen to what I have been told. 2) Get to at least 1 fencing competition. I have been told that its a serious game now and not the fun we used to have and to take part in the seniors instead, but I don’t care, I’m just going to go and have a fight. 3) Get the heat problems under control. one downside I discovered this year is I have been controlling the heat of my exercises a little bit too much, as I personally overheat easily as well as the lung thing does not like heat much, this resulted in me thinking I was better than I am in a real world situation both in fencing and when on a spin bike in a real class. To solve this I will be artificially jacking up the heat at home spin to rediscover what it’s like to actually do it in a class. as well as in general P.T., the simplest solution is to wear my fencing jacket for none fencing fitness, I did that on the last spin before Christmas and it took my watts per kilo from a slightly unbelievable 3.0 to a far more sane 2.8 which makes a lot more sense. 4) Get back to Turkish get ups. They were something I really liked as a challenge, but because my elbow hated me 4. We had to stop doing it, I really want to get that back and get to a solid 36kg.
  1. The no cure nature of it plus daily fatigue and the fecking cough can get a certain type of person down after a while[↩]
  2. and for that, I can never thank Sam and Louise enough [↩]
  3. Only once each side, but I don’t care, up is up[↩]
  4. ,I popped a nerve out and am not looking after it enough to fix it properly[↩]

Podcast interview with one of my favourite bosses.

Posted on by Mark Myers Leave a comment
Paul Brotzel is one of the few high-level directors that I have ever truly trusted. 1. and it’s fascinating listening to his history outside of a pub.
He and I are working together on some side bits, but I look forward to hopefully working with him again the next place he takes by storm.
  1. There have been 2 in total[↩]

The reality of CV writing

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I had recently written a post about rewriting your CV in todays work climate, what I learned, how to present it and all that kind of stuff, I had passed my new CV round colleagues, previous bosses and clients to make sure that it was exactly the CV they were looking for. and after some corrections nearly all of them stated that it was just what they were hoping to see coming across their desk.

Perfect.. New role here I come!!

The only problem was, that two weeks into job searching, and I was simply not getting any response to my CV submissions, so much so that I started to worry about my skill set and if I was missing something core in my abilities.

By the beginning of the third week, I decided that something had to be done. So I went back to the traditional way that I’d written CV’s for ages which is absolutely bring everything to the table. So I rewrote my CV again, but this time I listed every one of my skills, how long I had used them, everything I’d done, all of the improvements I brought to every client and company, all the successes, everything!

It was a full five pages, and I started using it on the following Monday, within three days I had four interviews lined up. I was apparently exactly what people were looking for, phew!!, just had my CV written wrong then..

However when I went to the interviews, I was asked for details that were already on my CV, I would answer the questions but was then asked why I had not listed it, this happened multiple times, after checking, it would turn out that agents would take my 5 page CV that their search filters would find, then quickly trim it down to the 2 page version before submitting it to the end client.

Ultimately all has ended well and I have a perfect new role, but the lessons I would take away in hindsight would be:

  1. You need 2 CV formats. 1) A full length full detail one that will get you through initial Agency filtering and 2) A 2 page summery version that clients want to read.
  2. When you are contacted by the Agent after they have filtered you from your 5 page CV, send them the 2 page version trimmed in the way they want 1
  3. Maintain a version of the full length one on-line in an easy short URL that you can give to clients in the interview if they ask.
  4. Makes sure your LinkedIn job history and skills match your CV exactly 2
  1. No personal contact details and highlight which skills they want from your full list[↩]
  2. Some clients just go to LinkedIn rather than ask for your CV so keep both up to date[↩]

Travel Toolkit

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Ever since I started in support some 20 odd years ago, I have always tried to carry a small toolkit with me, back then it was a very cheap one supplemented with Christmas presents for my dad who has always known a quality tool 1. Now it is custom built out of the very best bits and bobs that I know about.

This is my current carry. It’s a tiny bit on the heavy side for most ‘suits’ but then again I’m not a lightweight person. Let’s break it down 2:

Wera 8009 Zyklop

Hakkin Allen Key Bit Set

Keyless Drill Chuck

Wera screwdrivers have long been my go to make, I’ve adored them for years. And they have reached their Pinnacle with the 8009 Zyklop ratchet screwdriver. 12 built in bits rather than the normal six. Beautiful quality all around , thoroughly recommended. I do however swap out two of the torx bits that they supply with two flat heads which are still used a lot. In addition on the photo, we have another Wera part, this is off another screwdriver and is just an extensionas you sometimes need a little more reach. Next we have a set of screwdriver adapters for Allen keys, the funny rounded heads on these are so you can use them slightly at an angle. strangely there is also a chuck adaptor for drill bits, I just seem to need it a lot and don’t like using proper drills in a number of places as a hand chuck gives a lot more control, for this I carry just one 5mm drill bit and a little bag for the various small parts. The missing items off here are sockets, the 8009 supports them but I just never seem to need them.

 

MegaPro 24-IN-1 Precision Driver

Bosch Professional 2608000495 Handle for Recip Saw

Next we have a precision screwdriver. There are lots of precision screwdrivers on the market but all seem to be designed to be desk bound, The Megapro one is the one that I’ve come to love. Not only does it have a good selection of bits inside which most precision screwdrivers don’t, because they’ve got a tiny useless handle, but as the bits are inside its a nice single unit. Next is a Bosch handsaw. Well it’s not really a handsaw. It’s just a handle, but it takes the standard blades meant for the big electrical reciprocating saws which are easy to get hold of and have different types of blades, I have found this a easy way of carrying around a small saw because the handle is hollow and can hold two blades. The construction feels a tiny bit flimsy but it’s held up to sawing through a variety of things so far, so I’ve got no objection.

 

Cooksongold Reverse Action Craft Soldering Tweezers

Coast H3PR Torch

These are reverse tweezers, they default to closed rather than open meaning they can free up a hand and they work just as well as ordinary tweezers. Also because they’re held close by default, you don’t have to keep something on the end to protect the tip so they don’t get damaged or bent out to place.

Now you wouldn’t think you’d need a spirit level but I seem to 3, This one is a free one that comes with big Dell monitors.

Next is one of the nicest little torches I have ever met, Yes I’m aware that we all have torches in our phones, but quite frankly, battery life is a serious thing and sometimes it’s good to have a good torch that won’t overheat. This one is well constructed. It’s USB rechargeable, and you can also swap out the built-in lithium battery for 2 x AAA’s in case you run out.

 

Knipex Cobra® XS Water Pump Pliers

ns-06 Micro Nippers

Stanley Fatmax Folding Knife 

Next are a pair of Knipex Cobra® XS Water Pump Pliers, they double up as spanner and pliers for me, they are tiny but you would not believe how strong they are. If you doing electrical or electronic things in server rooms or with computers and you need more grip than this pair of pliers can give then you’re doing something wrong in my opinion. They are apparently used by all of the small toolkit people and I can understand why.

Japanese micro snips, I don’t know why Japanese but these kind of very small cutters from Japan seem universally good. I originally bought them for modelling but now use them for everything. They’re obviously smaller than a proper pair of wire cutters but they take up less space, and for the stuff I’m doing I don’t need any more. Obviously they won’t handle things like a nail or something really serious. But again, I am not doing large scale construction.

And the last tool is a folding Stanley Knife, it’s not something you tend to carry around in public, but a main stay of every tool kit, this one as normal, carries a couple of spare blades and is rock solid.

 

The Magma 3 pocket pack

All of these go in a little bag. I know that some people like all the foldout/fancy ones, but quite frankly, who has time for that. A decent indestructible bag works for me and I’ve ever found better than the Magma three pocket set. it just fits hand tools nicely.

There you go, my odd little portable tool kit.

  1. being both a professional electrician and an amateur carpenter[↩]
  2. This kit isn’t my absolute de facto kit. my day to day tools I use at home are not so compact. My go to screwdriver at home is a gigantic Stanley ratchet one and I have for the last 10 years been using a lovely set of precision screwdrivers that my dad bought me. In fact most of my home tools are ones bought by him at some point and they are both excellent quality and hold good memories but this is the custom kit I have built for travel[↩]
  3. mainly for mounting electronics to other stuff[↩]