Last year was definitely one of those years that I will tell about to my grandchildren. Most of the people I know will remember it as a difficult year, but for me in general it wasn’t so bad, quite the contrary. Taking the pandemic and everything into consideration it could be a lot worse.

So, you might be wondering by now - what did Mario go through over the past year?

Becoming a parent

Year started with the splendid news of me & my SO becoming parents. Can’t describe the feeling when we got the news and after the kiddo was born. It’s one of a kind. Still is. I’m grateful for all the support and help our families and loved ones provided. Same goes for all the people I (we) work with.

Once again, thank you all. <3

On the other side, after our child was born all the parenting memes made sense more than ever.

Jokes aside, having a child is the most positive experience I (we) had and doesn’t look like this is going to change anytime soon.

Switching jobs

The projects I worked on year before that started feeling like a drag. Writing code didn’t feel like magic anymore and I decided it’s time to change that - sooner better than later.

Of course, COVID-19 pandemic broke out at that time. Most of the companies put a brake on hiring, at least on the outside. Having kid on the way didn’t help. Felt weird. Uncomfortable. On the plus side this situation motivated me to get a great job, not the first one I get accepted at. I always questioned myself - is this the company I want to dedicate a third of my life for the next few years? Is this the job I could tell my kid for years to come, “hey, your old man was part of that”.

Fortunately, I had and still have “fuck you” money fund and I could take time to “shop around”. I encourage you to have one too, since you never know when situations like COVID-19 will occur.

Spent countless of hours in interviews. Spent a bit less on interview projects. Still a lot. At that time I joined the “interviews are somewhat broken” camp. Won’t go into details, but let’s say, not all companies respect your time. Especially if interview process takes many weeks.

Fast forward, I found a great job. The one where I can sleep without a problem the night before my vacation ends. Where Mondays don’t feel like a drag.

I’m grateful for that.

Web development bootcamp instructor

Next major milestone for me was being a Web development bootcamp instructor. Over the course of 3 months I teached a class of two digit eager individuals the basics of web development. Felt “the magic” again.

Doing it beside full-time day job wasn’t easy, but I loved it. So did the young padawans. Being graded >9/10 by the students gave me the confirmation it was all more than worth it.

On-site to remote meetup transformation

Since the pandemic didn’t look like it will stop anytime soon, we had to make an important decision. Stop Spletne urice Maribor meetup for unknown amount of time or go all remote? We decided to go remote. Most of the stuff stayed the same, but you can’t replace meeting people in-person. On the positive side, we were able to host people from the other side of the pond, Swizec for example.

Credit where is due, under the circumstances the team couldn’t do it better. Thank you Jernej, Blendor, Mateja and Spela for making it happen. Great job, I’m glad I can chip in once in a while.

Special thanks to all the wonderful people willing to share knowledge. <3

You can find more about the meetup on our website, Youtube, Facebook or Twitter.

Succeeded:

• started a second (or even third?) iteration of personal blog
• avoided signing up to work for a company that declared bancruptcy a few months later
• switched jobs in the middle of the pandemic
• after almost a year, no remorse on switching jobs - yes, I count this as a double success
• became open source maintainer (for a while)
• completed 3 month web dev bootcamp with 15 students as instructor
• continued with remote work
• on-site to remote meetup transformation (Spletne urice Maribor) still going strong

Failed to:

• prepare a meetup talk in 2020 (lost a bet there)
• polish my frontend skills
• keep my ‘oooh, shiny’ character in line

Plans for 2021:

let’s keep that a secret for now. :)