career

Sticky Authorship

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sticky authorship

There is a little emotional and psychological problem I call “sticky authorship” syndrome. When you create something — a web site, a picture, an application — you inevitably become its author for life. No matter how long time ago it was, and how perfect you are nowadays, you are still the author and your work still characterizes your professional level.

Since our past produce (as seen from the future) are always far from perfect, we are usually ashamed by its mere existence. And we desire to re-make it, despite of the absence of time to do that or the boredom we will suffer while doing that. Inability or reluctance to remake it causes stress and depression.

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Lower EQ is better for you

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Brain and masksEmotional intelligence (EQ) is considered to be much more important than usual intelligence metrics, such as IQ. We use IQ only to solve logical problems. And we use EQ to solve every other problem we meet in our life: at work, at home, in family, with friends, on the streets, so on. This is EQ that defines our everyday behavior, not IQ.

Once in a while, 13 months and 13 days ago I did an EQ test. 13 months and 13 days ago my score was 61 out of 100. After 13 months and 13 days of training my EQ by observing and noticing others’ emotions, taking others’ emotions into consideration, introspecting my own thoughts and emotions, so on, I’ve ended up with 77 out of 100.

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Canada to lose IT

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One of the goals of my voyage was a research (not scientific research, of course, but mostly personal, subjective research) on what Canada is for me, what long-term and wide-range opportunities it can give to me, both in life and in work. And as a software developer, I’m very interested in what the Canadian Information Technology (IT) sector is like.

All hail infrastructure!

Maybe I am not the best IT professional of all time. Maybe I have no experience in running a business. But I do know the very key point for success of almost any business in any place: infrastructure. Every business is delivery: delivery of goods to buyers, delivery of services to customers, delivery of resources to partners. And every kind of delivery needs an infrastructure: roads, flights, a mail system, Internet, communications, and so on. It needs a cheap and reliable infrastructure.

Before I came here to Canada I was expecting to see some progressive country, a smaller brother of the U.S. What I see here in Toronto is disappointing me very much. The most significant things look even worse than in Russia, where I am from; worse than in that third-world, prehistoric, corrupted “mafia state” with bears on the streets and vodka flowing from the taps.

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Here comes the panic, here comes the cure

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Don't Panic - Marvin android robot from Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy

Recently I’ve found one funny aspect of myself: I am not okay when everything is okay.

Moscow

Once in a while, few years ago, I had a very long period of depression for maybe 3-5 years. It was not that medical depression with anti-depressant drugs to eat all the day as in some movies, of course. Just a “writer’s block” applied to a programmer (programmer is a writer in some meanings). Then, once in a while, I decided to stop being miserable, made a plan, and started to implement it, step by step.

That is how I’ve relocated  from provincial Krasnoyarsk to the rich and perspective Moscow. It was not easy for such a hick to move to the capital and almost the only prosperous city in the country. Rent, job, friends, funds – everything was a problem. And I’ve solved them all, one by one.

After 3½ years in Moscow I was as prosperous as the city was. Well, maybe I wasn’t rich businessman or whatsoever — it is just not my field. But as a hired webdev professional I was fine: I could find good job in 2-3 interviews only, I could earn 1.5-2 times more money than average developer earns, I could make a career from ordinary developer to head of department in 1 year (that is surprisingly fast indeed), so on.

The Malady

At that point I decided life has became too easy, and thus too boring. So instead of eventually growing further, I intentionally invented new big problem for myself. I decided to relocate to another country. What a challenge!

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