Writing this from Sofia Airport, after a pretty intense working week. Lots of time catching up with colleagues new and old. I’m pretty wiped.
Against the background symphony of assorted sniffles & coughs in both airports, there’ve been hardly any masks in sight. Travelling feels like a real adventure right now.
My main objective this week was to talk about my team’s upcoming work for 2023. We started the process remotely by sharing some docs, but discussing in-person meant we could discuss finer points (and some creative ideas) over coffees and ad-hoc walk-ups, so by the end of the week we were fully aligned. Refreshing after previous planning cycles.
Over many technical conversations, one major theme was about how to scale our enablement functions across multiple teams. Today we all repeat some of our work, e.g. Continuous Integration. More interestingly, the topic of doing native app enablement in the future came up, which is very different to anything I’ve ever done before and is low-key exciting.
Speaking of, we soft-launched the FT Crossword app this week. Really nice starting to hear real user feedback.
With almost all of the London-based members of my old team coincidentally in town, including folks who’d left the company, on Wednesday we all gathered at a restaurant for a reunion. Amidst all the nostalgia and recollecting, we realised that this was the first time we’d all got together - because some key people joined during the pandemic. But with such strong bonds, it all felt natural.
Over a conversation about Individual Contributor vs. Managerial tracks with a friend in the depths of South Park, someone claimed they could solve all of our problems and handed us a business card. The entire interaction has genuinely puzzled me.
Last week I overtrained (4 runs!) so spent most of the week in recovery, but on Saturday I managed to sneak in a shorter recovery run around one of my old circuits, taking me past my old apartment and through the war museum: I really miss my old neighbourhood.
