Hello folks!

[Mugatti]

Hello everyone.

Below is a quick summary of my story. Please excuse my English, it's my second language.

- I'm 40, soon to be 41. Divorced ~6 years ago, no kids. Too old? Some would say probably, but I am used to late starts in my life and this doesn't really bother me much!

- I work for a large software company as a software engineering manager. I've been with this company for ~13 years! It pays relatively well. I have zero debt thanks to my salary. (But as you might guess, I don't want to sell my time anymore!)

- I have my own place, a one bedroom condo, my first "big" purchase. I got two small studio apartments in my home country that I rent out to students. Unfortunately, I also have "mid-life crisis car", a bimmer which I regret buying. All of these were purchased with cash.

- In fact, only time I was in debt was when I first moved to the US and got me a brand new Civic. Someone (who now I understand was very "scripted") convinced me to get a loan to "build my credit score". LOL! You can see that I don't like debt. Not sure if a positive or limiting quality of mine this one.

- Most people who know me think that I'm a success, while on the inside I'm not happy at all and feel like I'm failing in life. I think this is mainly due to not having any real control of my time.

- My relationship with my last girlfriend (which was the first serious one after my divorce) ended about 6 months ago, because I wasn't able to explain to her this at all. She wouldn't understand why I would worry. She lived paycheck to paycheck herself, and wouldn't understand why we weren't spending a ton on fancy restaurants and expensive vacations. Why I wouldn't buy a $1M house. Why I wouldn't get a fancier car (because according to her, I could afford it!)

- I'm currently reading Unscripted (at page 98) and I checked out some of the threads here.

- I hope I can stick around! I don't really do social media (never did facebook, quit snapchat last year, deleted twitter in January) or forums that much, but from what I can tell, there's a lot of really good information here, and I hope I can make use of it!

- I have some questions about my current project, but I should probably finish reading the book before asking them!

Thanks for reading and sorry for the long post!

-MGT

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Welcome Mugatti!

 

[Mugatti]

My (now weekly, apparently) update:

- I'm at chapter 30 of Unscripted . I'm picking up the pace, but it goes slower than my usual reading. This book is causing a lot of introspection and is making me feel uncomfortable just the right way.
- I finally put my "red circle" on my calendar: Nov 17, 2018. Thanks @Vigilante for an old post I came accross. It'll be interesting to talk to my manager about this. I'm still thinking about whether I give the notice now, after my vacation in July, or just before quitting. We'll see.

-MGT

 

[Mugatti]

Tagging @MJ DeMarco per the "Welcome" message. Hi, and thanks for the book!

 

[Mugatti]

Small update:

- Still reading Unscripted . Just done with Chapter 19, and I have to admit that the topic around fixed mindset hit me hard. This is definitely me, and it was something that I was really blind to. I thought about 10 minutes what my experience since childhood was. Well done sir, I wasn't expecting this much of a surprise reading a book!
- Still working on my side project, although now I understand that it doesn't fit the "Control" commandement (and possibly some others!) I still want to release it as an MVP due to the momentum, but I'm not sure if I'm a victim to a sunk cost fallacy here.

Will update the thread further as I get along the book, or when I'm finished with it.

-MGT

 

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[Mugatti]

It's been a while, and there's been some updates:

• My initial project is shelved due to me failing Commandement of Control. I was depending on a service that was acquired by a BIG_COMPANY, which already plans to integrate the service with it's systems. I'll keep it running for it's few users for now, but everyone knows that I may have to pull the plug, either due to technical or legal reasons.
  
• Next: the second project, idea partially verified. Working on the prototype of the key differentiator part of the system ("USP"). Other necessary parts (hosting/devops, auth, parts of the api) are functional (in prototype form.) I'm aiming to provide "10x" improvement over existing systems, solving some strong pain points. The open question is are those pain points big enough to encourage users to learn a different system than they're used to? Almost all existing systems look and feel similar for the most part with mostly a common workflow. I'm aiming to make it less painful and easier. Thus the prototype I'd like to try soon with some people lined up to test it.

Learned a few things

• Kubernetes: This is the future of cloud. (Or something like it will be.) I used it in the previous project, and my knowledge carried to this current project just fine! Whole workflow of creating an app and deploying it is automated.
• Let's Encrypt: Free HTTPS certificates. I automated usage of this in Kubernetes as well. I needed HTTP for the previous project and didn't want to manually do SSL (and pay for certs!). Automated with Kubernetes.
• Keycloak: This is an identity provider server. I now have a fully secure auth system. I can have local users or link with FaceBook, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Google and Microsoft accounts. I can enable two factor auth for enterprise users. It's fully reusable at this point.
• Read Ca$hvertising. I believe I learned stuff, but I won't really know until I try things out in the wild!