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Perfect Employer

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So, I’ve finally decided on what my ideal employer is. It is good when you do anything you want to do and is being paid, for sure. But this exact universe does not work this way. Though you still can get some goods from it.

1. Interesting challenging project. It should have real problems to solve, not just “find and embed, download and install” kind of tasks. This is easy enough, since almost any modern web application is an invention.

2. Scalable highly loaded system. Amazon Web Services (AWS) are good, other clouds are even better. If there is no scalability in mind (for now or for later), it is not interesting technically. I am not Web Site Developer, I consider myself as Web Application Developer, and I want to change this title to Scalable Web Application Developer with time. This is one of my mid-term goals.

3. Professional qualified team. I do not want to be the only smart guy. I want to learn from others, those who are much better than me. I want to see how they think, want to adopt their experience. Also, I prefer not to do all the parts of the work; some are better done by specific professionals, such as UI/UX, or front-end JavaScript coding, or graphical web design. And I am mostly senior server-side developer, or junior scalable architect.

4. Community contribution. I want to make my own professional background while solving employer’s business tasks. These goals do not conflict with each other, but for some reason everything written within the companies I worked for was treated as “know-how”, “intellectual property”, “not disclosure agreement” related, etc.

5. Have something to publish: magazines, conferences, blogs — any kind of knowledge sharing with references to employer’s business field. I will never use this possibility with 99% probability, but if I’ll wish to, I’d like to be allowed to. And, of course, there should be something to be proud of: innovative, modern.

I wonder if I’ll ever find such an employer. Moscow, United States, Canada – wherever. I was not that lucky yet, though close to it. But I still hope I will find it sooner or later.

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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