2017; Year in review

Date 2018-01-28

2017 started off busy as usual. I had moved into a new apartment in Zürich with a friend. I was a full-time computer science student at ETH, Zürich. I had just set up a Legal entity that would allow me to do freelancing work on the side while studying.

Highlights

  • I took 16 flights between Switzerland, Belgium, the UK and Germany.

  • I lost about twenty pounds.

  • I taught Functional programming at ETH as a teaching assistant for the second time.

  • I had my first experiences leading people on software projects.

  • I spent a few months writing Haskell at ETH at the department of architecture.

  • I wrote a thesis on a topic I proposed myself: signature inference for property discovery.

  • I gave seven tech talks.

  • I finished studying and now officially hold a degree as a master in computer science.

  • I declined an offer for my thesis work to be continued in my own funded company.

  • I collected 65 new failures.

  • I started working at FP Complete, fully remotely, doing exactly the kind of work I enjoy.

2017 was the best year of my life so far, continuing the tradition since 2012.

Job search

In 2017 I started looking for a full-time job for the first time. I learnt that rejection will occur much more frequently than I expected, and that this is nothing to be afraid or ashamed of. My search took eight months and I got rejected by about fifty companies. By some even multiple times. Eventually I found my dream job, where I now love my work.

Health

Having only one full-time job allowed me to start looking into what it means to live healthily. I started spending a lot of time investigating nutrition, exercise and sleep. I plan too continue to do so in 2018.

Focus for 2018

For 2018, the plan is to focus on health, human interaction, productivity and technical advancement, in that order.

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