What's next?

Well… I don’t really know. The thing is, I’m a Jack of All Trades, Master of None.

I don’t know anything deep enough to blog about it in a technical, engaging way. I can talk about a lot of things and see how they can interconnect but that doesn’t make me an expert on it. Some people thing that broad knowledge translates to mastery of any of it. I’m too critical of myself, always thinking that, although I want to master a topic, I can’t really get there, usually due to being lazy as hell.

One advantage is that sometimes it is easy to see the global picture and understand how the parts interconnect, as I mentioned earlier. This gave me a leg up when working with support, specially on my last job as a net/sysadmin. I could clearly see how network changes affected several applications and vice-versa. This helped me implement better solutions that helped the teams a lot.

I am trying to change this but I can already see it’ll be an uphill battle. I started trying to read Java Concurrency in Practice, but that didn’t work that well so now I’m trying something “lighter”, The Well-Grounded Java Developer. So far I’m enjoying it quite a lot, it’s much easier for me, still a learner, to get through it and really understand what is being discussed. I think that might be related to a lack of a degree/formal education or just because English is not my native language.

Not having a degree certainly made a difference on my work choices and it also affects, from time to time, my self-esteem. I have a tendency to think everyone is way better than me at everything I try to do. While this is certainly true on my new job, I deflect this by thinking that the people I work with are, at least, 5 years ahead of me, so I am now trying to catch up and compensate for the lost time.

Until next time!