Leaving Softonic

moving on

Pretty much exactly two years ago I started working for Softonic. I changed from the rather small opus5 to what has been the largest company I have worked for so far.

Working in a company of about 250 people with a development team of around 80 people is certainly a different beast. I learned a lot of things especially regarding scrum management and web technologies. I also learned that it is very difficult to change things once something big like this is in motion.

Size also brings nice things, Softonic offers a lot of "google-style" perks, like massages, conference trips, insurance, free fruits, sweets and soft drinks, a very nice office with chill-out room and great views. If you are interested have a look at: careers.softonic.com. It also means that you will always find someone interesting to talk to.     

But now it is time to move on. I am joining a smaller company with a new team, that I will write about in another post. I will stay in Barcelona though.

I want to thank everyone I worked with at Softonic, especially the brilliant SD team, SEO, the leads, the UK content team (for tea time entertainment) and everyone I chatted to in these years.

2012 New Year's Resolutions

It is that time of the year again where I make up stuff to ignore for the following twelve months. Last year I didn't do it, but this year I will give it another try.
I has been pointed out that these kind of resolutions doesn't really fit into the agile way of making decisions that I do subscribe to in my professional life. I will again try to make follow up posts to check how I am doing during the year and possibly adjust the goals.

So here we go.

No Screen Day -- don't spend any time in front of a screen or phone for one day a week. This can't be avoided for work, but everything else is forbidden. I am going to start with a low use day, like Tuesdays and then increase it to a day with more free time like Fridays or possibly two weekdays.

Sort out Fedora -- I am behind with my work on Fedora packages. This has to do with a lack of time, but also with the direction Fedora is taking, which has killed my motivation a bit. First I will catch up with all the work and then decide if I give up on maintaining the packages and switch to CentOS and let other people do the work. If I give up on Fedora there are other open source project where I could invest more time.

Cook new stuff -- I love cooking, but often I just rehash old recipes or do one of these "whatever is in the fridge" meals. So plan for this year: pick a new recipe every week and cook it on the weekend.

Now you are probably wondering where the usual stuff is. You know, the bits about weight and sports. I see those as a given anyway. I will continue to do more mountain biking and running and eat well enough to not end on the very lardy side.
I will hopefully also progress on my career without having to do major changes.

As these are pretty easy goals I might add harder ones or follow Cutts example in his quest to do a new thing every month and stay with it if it turns out to be nice.

btw: I shouldn't have told you this.