2024 in Review

Reflecting the year 2024.

Goodbye Seek#

I tried frontend programming#

After massive Unification project was done in early 2024, my manager has moved to Platform Engineering team, working on Kubernetes adoption project in the company. While me, still in the same team, Discover, the team that builds the front page of Seek and its other brands. We’re heavily focused on frontend since that’s the way to attract & impress the candidates (and search engines) use our sites.

I remember in 2023, I told my manager that I want to work on frontend since I have never professionally done it before but unfortunately, there weren’t many tasks related to frontend assigned to our team at that time. This time, I finally able to get into frontend programming. I was so excited to do frontend programming, only after many weeks to realize that it’s not my passion.

I’m pretty sure it’s because of my skill issues with Typescript/Node/React. There were many things that I personally don’t like about it, and most condensending thing is, I feel like my work is not as thrilling and not as impactful as me working on the backend/infra parts. You know it when you screwed up production servers and the services crashing and go brrr… The worst thing could happen with frontend programming is probably your site turns blank. Reproducing and debugging the issues the user reported are also super difficult. It’s just a whole new beast that I can’t fit into my brain anymore. That got me thinking, perhaps I should just stay building the backend & infra.

Mentoring a grad engineer#

In Seek, we conduct a grad program where newly graduated engineer gets a placement in 1 of the team for 2 rotations of 6 months. I got a chance to mentor 1 out of 6 engineers in KL in our team. At that time, I was working on migrating our traffic from our legacy set up to a new setup based on Kubernetes & Istio. It was an ask from Platform Engineering team and I feel like I could this as a something to teach the young engineers about backend & infrastructure. Moreover, it’s so boring to work on this kind of stuff alone and not share the knowledge to the team. Hence, I was happy to mentor the grad engineer in the team.

Most of the time, what I did was giving her guidance on what needs to be done, roughly how to do it and connects her to the right person inside and outside the team to figure things out on her own. I may not be able to help her in all situations (especially when it’s related to frontend works) but she can find the right person to talk to when she needs help. ‘Connecting’ people feels so amazing in a large organization.

She did really well in her period with me and she shows a really good enthusiasm. Moreover, from our last conversation, I’m glad that she feels ‘clicked’ with team :D

Switched team to Platform Engineering#

After several months learning frontend programming, I moved into Platform Engineering team, following my former manager. I’m now working a lot more with AWS, Go, Backstage and a little Kubernetes. There were challenges in the team, but I genuinely enjoying working in this team. All team members are in Australia except for me & my manager. Everyone is kind, humble, helpful and brilliant engineers.

I’m helping internal users to be productive working with cloud. I never knew that I would enjoy talking to customers. The impact on the code that I was working on was magnified because they are used by the whole organization, which is very satisfying.

Since this is a relatively small team, I’m doing more hands on work again.

Resigning from Seek#

Throughout the year, I was passively taking interviews from variety of companies, just to understand the market and to understand if my skill is still relevant to the market. I remember in the beginning of 2024, there weren’t many good opportunities out there. The market was pretty bad at that time.

In Q4 2024, I was talking to a recruiter which then connects me to a job opportunity at IPID.tech. After a series of interesting interview rounds, I visited their office in KL and met them face to face and I was impressed with the team. I received a good offer from them and tender my resignation at Seek afterwards.

It was a hard decision because I enjoy working at Seek but I feel like it’s time for me to explore something new for my growth.

Too many memories made here#

Towards the end of my tenure there, I was so happy to be able to meet most of my colleagues and managers from Australia in person in KL. We had good dinners together. Also, towards the end, I realized that I have made so many friends here in the office despite coming to office only a few times a month.

One more thing I realized was, changing team allows me to meet new sets of people. Now it’s double the fun. The relationships made are what makes the job meaningful :)

Connecting to people and community#

Catching up with ex-colleagues#

In the beginning of the year, I was super happy to finally catch up with the person I respected the most in the industry after many years. It was great to learn that he’s still killing it with Python! He’s just crushing all modern and hype things in the industry and just get things done! I bet he must be busy printing money 💰

One lesson I learned from him was: it’s important to think of the system as a whole instead of looking into 1 specific component, especially if you’re an entrepreneur. He mentioned that the core ’engine’ that he built was a pretty simple service but what comes around it is where the values comes from. I used to spend so much time working with individual components, but it’s also important to look at how each components interact & complement each other as they evolves.

A few weeks after that, I had another catch up with my ex-colleagues from Onapp during my era, including the ex-CTO from UK. After ~4 years working from the same office, it’s great to learn where they are at in their lives and how their families are doing.

Attending meetups#

I used to avoid local meetups before, for a few reasons: It’s hard to find time with young baby at home & it’s abit hard for me to connect with new people, my social skills sucks, kind feel like a social anxiety. However, after reading a book called ‘The Art of Talking to Anyone’, ironically I energized after meeting new people. Previously, my energy used to feel drained after meeting new people.

Now I have some friends to catch up during meetups and some familiar faces. Towards the end of the year, since my baby is getting older and he need less attention from me, I was able to attend meetups around the town: Grab, CNCF & Clickhouse. I’m hoping to deliberately attend more meetups in 2025. It’s great to know people in the industry outside your company :D

What’s next in 2025#

Taking a new role#

Next week, I’ll be starting my new role as a Senior Software Engineer at IPID.tech. Obviously this is a big bet for me, leaving a stable job for a higher risk but higher pay. I’m excited to work more hands on in this new role since this is a small & relatively new startup compared to my previous company.

Building a new side project#

I’m partnering with a friend/ex-teammate to build and launch a new mobile app, which I may or may not announce it in my blog. It’s still in early development and I’m in charge for backend part and I’m trying to make it as boring as possible. It will be launched hopefully in H1 2025.

Fin#

Happy new year to everyone, hope you have a tremendous year ahead. Free Palestine!