For the whole time I was developing the extension, I was getting invitations to recruitment processes on a nearly constant basis. And I ignored pretty much all of them as I didn’t want more disappointment to drive me insane. My way of thinking was that once my project was out, I’d use it to prove my expertise until I have got relevant work experience in desired fields. Anyone who wanted could see it in action or read source code if they knew where to look. And, uhm, it kinda worked.

Somewhere in March 2021 I found time to give Mastodon a proper shot. The idea of decentralized social media based on a common protocol has been allucring me for a while. And to make it even more interesting I opted for a hard way: I launched my own Mastodon instance on a cheap VPS.

In 2017 I failed two job interviews for React developer positions. Normally that isn’t much of a news by itself, but it all happened at a time when I was incredibly frustrated and I badly wanted something new. After receiving devastating feedback from my interview rounds, I needed a few years to rebuild my professional self-confidence. Things went very, very wrong back then and they would keep going wrong over and over again for a while. That’s how it all started and it didn’t feel romantic at all.

I have been working in IT since 2011. Once in a while I am asked to give advice on getting a job in this industry. Much as I love sharing everything I’ve learnt, giving a concise one-size-fits-all answer is quite a challenging task.

In 2019 I was working for this well-known local equivalent of Initech from The Office Space, building and maintaining dozens of landing pages designed to sell entertainment services to millions of people. Apart from tight deadlines, delivering magic as ASAP as possible and bazillions of legacy code my work was slow and devoid of any adrenaline. It was so bad I had to invent my own ways of injecting fun to dull days in the office.

Faint female voice broke the silence. Light faded in. I opened my eyes. Still disoriented, I got dressed and picked my smartphone from a wireless charger. No new mail. No Twitter mentions. No missed calls. All right then… Wait, what? Why is it showing March 2120? Why is my system corrupt? What happened last night? And why did ‘last night’ take 100 years? What happened to that bat virus from China?

When I’m starting this piece, news of the day is that Facebook’s userbase declined for the first time in history. The side effect, apart from crashing stock prices, is that it became fashionable to brag about having quit Facebook a while ago and calling others to do that. I’ve been living ‘Facebook-free’ since mid-2010s and I want to say: sure, if you feel like it, go ahead. But first, let me tell you what is gonna change if you decide to quit Facebook cold turkey. Because, you know, maybe you shouldn’t.

When I’m writing these words, 2022 is around the corner. I guess it’s a good idea to write some sort of summary of 2021. It also looks like a perfect opportunity to say something foolish so that I can laugh at my past self next year.

Hell froze. I bought an Apple computer. And now I should write ten paragraphs on how Apple is supremely better than anything and bait those poor Windows plebs to argue with me. I totally should. Not today though. Even I maintain certain standards for cheap laughs on my own blog.

In 2016 the corporation I was working for signed a contract for building a unified business solution for all of its companies. The project was developed by an external entity, a very well-known name in the industry. We, the IT department employees, were supposed to maintain the new system once it was done. For a brief moment I thought something new and interesting was behind the corner. Then, a few years later, I abruptly woke up to a feeling I had made one of my biggest professional mistakes.