It's been a long time since my last post. The main reason has been that from January onwards I've been feeling fairly down and my outlook on life has been pretty dark. I've been struggling with a fairly shitty job, the stress of adjusting to life as a parent and feelings of loneliness. I've felt like a person simply shuttling between jobs, overwhelmed by the challenge of dealing with an extraordinarily dysfunctional workplace, and stuck in a rut with the development of my Swedish. I've often felt like an invisible person shuttling from job to job with little or no social contact outside the forced relations at work and the safe haven of my small new family.
These factors all finally took their toll and as a consequence I didn't much feel like writing or felt that I had much to share.
A few months ago I started a course of counselling. The therapy sessions, although ongoing, have really helped me and I now feel less despondent. As a consequence my mood has lightened a little recently so I felt it would be a good time to start trying to find small bits of time to blog.
Recently a lot has happened to me. Some of it has been good, some bad, some neither of those things, but all of it was noteworthy in some way. The biggest news perhaps is that I've finally sold my apartment in London and my connections to London are now only those few good friends I left behind over eighteen months ago. I'm happy that from now on I'll only be paying rent and not a mortgage on a property that has stood empty for eight months.
My girlfriend and I are also getting married this summer, and on the 13th of August (assuming she doesn't murder me before then) we'll be tieing the knot up in her home town of Bollnäs. We're planning on moving closer to that part of the country in the next year or so as neither of us is particularly at home in Malmö and haven't made too many friends whilst we've lived here. Selling my apartment was a great first step, and thanks to the overpriced London property market, we will now be able to buy a nice house in Hälsingland with a very small mortgage.
Anyway, if you've checked the blog and wondered what happened there it is. I feel motivated to write again, so hopefully the next post won't be four months away.
Saturday, 28 May 2011
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
dysfunction junction - notes from working life in a small Swedish software company
I've had blogger's block these last few weeks. That coupled with being up early to work out, and caring for my daughter at night hasn't left a huge amount of time to record what's being going on. So I've procrastinated and not felt I've had much to report on.
Whilst this malaise and period of lethargy took hold of me, I have continued to work for a small company who have a Intranet software solution for franchise companies. I'm working in a team whose mandate is to improve the product, replace legacy code, and fix any bugs that get reported. As approximately three and a half months have passed since I joined the company I thought it would be interesting to summarise my thoughts so far.
So far, I've figured out how the system 'works', to use a sofware development terminology it's a big ball of mud which is a polite way of describing a mess. The challenge is the sheer size of the application, the lack of any coherent architecture and horrible code. To compound this problem you have (although better, but far from perfect) code bolted on, which is a bit like building a luxury condo on rapidly eroding cliff.
Not only do large sections of the product need updating, but the way the small development team works needs fixing. Each person works on their own project with little or no interaction with the others. Communication is infrequent or non existent, to the extent that people sitting feet away from each other often type Skype instant messages to each other rather than just opening their mouths. Last weekend one of our clients was annoyed as no one responded to an email he sent out of hours over the weekend. When a subsequent witch hunt / post mortem was held, I pointed out that if you assume that a group of people will respond, precisely this situation will arise. If however, you actually put in a out of hours cover rota, and have an explicit person handle it each weekend, you reduce the risk of this sort of thing occurring. The owner didn't see it this way, and it felt like he was trying to do it on the cheap, as at no stage has anyone mentioned to me that I should be checking the support emails out of office hours, and for me it summarized the company's problems perfectly.
The owner of the company doesn't seem to trust the developers, and also wants me (as I worked running a similar team in my last job) to help address and improve things. This puts me in a difficult position, I've been hired as a grunt, a software developer, at the risk of sounding obtuse, where's my incentive to put too much into this role? My long term plans don't involve Malmö, or Skåne, I doubt the owner will want to stump up a higher salary, so although I'll work to make sure things run smoothly, my motivation is low. You may think this is cynical and a tad inflexible, but then again, that's how the old employment foxtrot goes.
Whilst this malaise and period of lethargy took hold of me, I have continued to work for a small company who have a Intranet software solution for franchise companies. I'm working in a team whose mandate is to improve the product, replace legacy code, and fix any bugs that get reported. As approximately three and a half months have passed since I joined the company I thought it would be interesting to summarise my thoughts so far.
So far, I've figured out how the system 'works', to use a sofware development terminology it's a big ball of mud which is a polite way of describing a mess. The challenge is the sheer size of the application, the lack of any coherent architecture and horrible code. To compound this problem you have (although better, but far from perfect) code bolted on, which is a bit like building a luxury condo on rapidly eroding cliff.
Not only do large sections of the product need updating, but the way the small development team works needs fixing. Each person works on their own project with little or no interaction with the others. Communication is infrequent or non existent, to the extent that people sitting feet away from each other often type Skype instant messages to each other rather than just opening their mouths. Last weekend one of our clients was annoyed as no one responded to an email he sent out of hours over the weekend. When a subsequent witch hunt / post mortem was held, I pointed out that if you assume that a group of people will respond, precisely this situation will arise. If however, you actually put in a out of hours cover rota, and have an explicit person handle it each weekend, you reduce the risk of this sort of thing occurring. The owner didn't see it this way, and it felt like he was trying to do it on the cheap, as at no stage has anyone mentioned to me that I should be checking the support emails out of office hours, and for me it summarized the company's problems perfectly.
The owner of the company doesn't seem to trust the developers, and also wants me (as I worked running a similar team in my last job) to help address and improve things. This puts me in a difficult position, I've been hired as a grunt, a software developer, at the risk of sounding obtuse, where's my incentive to put too much into this role? My long term plans don't involve Malmö, or Skåne, I doubt the owner will want to stump up a higher salary, so although I'll work to make sure things run smoothly, my motivation is low. You may think this is cynical and a tad inflexible, but then again, that's how the old employment foxtrot goes.
Monday, 6 December 2010
I've been back at work now after my paternity leave for about three weeks now,and I'm really feeling the grind. The feeling is compounded by being the new guy, the non-native Swedish speaker and still being a a bit rusty.
It hasn't helped being given some real turds of projects. The first proper one I got wasn't possible unless we changed major parts of the application (ironically, it was a tool to make using that part of the system more usable). The second a small piece of work also uncovered a reasonably large flaw in their site navigation (oops!).
All of this has left me feeling a bit exposed. It's also been compounded by a feeling that my ability to speak Swedish is deteriorating. Out of frustration at my own vocabulary and a need to get my actual work done, at the moment I have to communicate mostly in English. This feels like a bit of a failure, and I can't help feeling that when our technical lead explains things I get the slight feeling of being talked down to. Perhaps it's just paranoia, or him wanted me to feel at ease, either way it's slightly unsettling.
There are lots of positive aspects of my job, for example: everyone is very pleasant, the working conditions are relaxed: one of my colleagues brings her dog in everyday. Unfortunately her dog spends a large part of the day licking his large and very prominent ball bag directly in my line of sight. Yes, you might think, but do you have to look at him doing it? Well, the meaty slapping of a canine tongue (think soggy towel swung at wall) against scrotal sack is quite hard to tune out some days. I'll try and get a picture, but I can't get over how pink they are and how they are totally at odds with his dark brown coat. I also feel I'm learning lots and reactivating the part of my brain that used to be good at writing code.
From a linguistic perspective I quickly realized that up to now I had learnt many words for different social situations and day to day interactions, to the extent where I feel happy making small talk, but asking questions about work uncovered large gaping holes in my knowledge. I've therefore taken to keeping a browser open at work with two tabs open. One is a online Swedish to English dictionary, the other is the site which my flashcards are on. So when I hear a new word, I can quickly look it up, and add it to my new work vocabulary list which I study each morning on the way to work. I've also been involved a lot of exchanges like this:
Me: "What's the swedish for modify?"
Colleague: "modifierar"
Me: "*sigh"
Still slowly but surely I'm getting
It hasn't helped being given some real turds of projects. The first proper one I got wasn't possible unless we changed major parts of the application (ironically, it was a tool to make using that part of the system more usable). The second a small piece of work also uncovered a reasonably large flaw in their site navigation (oops!).
All of this has left me feeling a bit exposed. It's also been compounded by a feeling that my ability to speak Swedish is deteriorating. Out of frustration at my own vocabulary and a need to get my actual work done, at the moment I have to communicate mostly in English. This feels like a bit of a failure, and I can't help feeling that when our technical lead explains things I get the slight feeling of being talked down to. Perhaps it's just paranoia, or him wanted me to feel at ease, either way it's slightly unsettling.
There are lots of positive aspects of my job, for example: everyone is very pleasant, the working conditions are relaxed: one of my colleagues brings her dog in everyday. Unfortunately her dog spends a large part of the day licking his large and very prominent ball bag directly in my line of sight. Yes, you might think, but do you have to look at him doing it? Well, the meaty slapping of a canine tongue (think soggy towel swung at wall) against scrotal sack is quite hard to tune out some days. I'll try and get a picture, but I can't get over how pink they are and how they are totally at odds with his dark brown coat. I also feel I'm learning lots and reactivating the part of my brain that used to be good at writing code.
From a linguistic perspective I quickly realized that up to now I had learnt many words for different social situations and day to day interactions, to the extent where I feel happy making small talk, but asking questions about work uncovered large gaping holes in my knowledge. I've therefore taken to keeping a browser open at work with two tabs open. One is a online Swedish to English dictionary, the other is the site which my flashcards are on. So when I hear a new word, I can quickly look it up, and add it to my new work vocabulary list which I study each morning on the way to work. I've also been involved a lot of exchanges like this:
Me: "What's the swedish for modify?"
Colleague: "modifierar"
Me: "*sigh"
Still slowly but surely I'm getting
Monday, 8 November 2010
Lots, to report, not much time, So this may be short and badly written and even more badly constructed.
The big news is that our daughter was born at 0223 on Friday morning. After being woken at four am Thursday and told that my partner was definitely going into labour, we were disappointed and bemused when the contractions stopped around ten later that morning. It transpired that perhaps it was an 'eye of the hurricane' type situation as after a visit to our midwife in Lund (Malmö was totally swamped with a baby boom earlier this year) later that day, the contractions started up again. At just after six in the evening we drove to Malmö hospital. About seven hours later, although the time passed very quickly for me, a perception not shared by my girlfriend, our daughter Ida was born.
Without sounding clichéd, it was a wonderful, and at times quite surreal experience. Apart from the wonder of seeing your child emerge into the world, after spending nine months speculating what she'll look like and daydreaming who she'll be and how her personality will develop. There were lots of little typically Swedish cultural touches which made me chuckle. An example was the celebratory birth fika at four in the morning, I'll attach pictures when I get the camera back) complete with mini Swedish flag, glasses of apple juice (in place of champagne). Medical staff constantly congratulating when they meet you or speak to you for the first time as new parents is also amusing and a nice touch. The patient hotel concept, where the new family can bond whilst spending a few nights under medical supervision, is also a typically well thought through service.
It also means that I'm on a two week paternity leave break from my new job. Sweden has great parent leave entitlement for fathers. If you've worked at a company longer than six months you're entitled to take up to six months paid paternity leave. Sadly, this won't be available for me, and even if it was, I'd be wary of taking it, especially as I've just back into employment.
A friend of mine put this year into perspective for me on a short facebook comment, and made me realize how much of an adventure this year has been:
1. Moved countries
2. Learnt a new language (Ok, it's not quite mastered yet, but it's a work in progress)
3. Got a new job working in a company where English is not the office language
4. Brought a car, acquired driving as a new life skill
5. Started a family.
Shit, how am I going to top that next year?
The big news is that our daughter was born at 0223 on Friday morning. After being woken at four am Thursday and told that my partner was definitely going into labour, we were disappointed and bemused when the contractions stopped around ten later that morning. It transpired that perhaps it was an 'eye of the hurricane' type situation as after a visit to our midwife in Lund (Malmö was totally swamped with a baby boom earlier this year) later that day, the contractions started up again. At just after six in the evening we drove to Malmö hospital. About seven hours later, although the time passed very quickly for me, a perception not shared by my girlfriend, our daughter Ida was born.
Without sounding clichéd, it was a wonderful, and at times quite surreal experience. Apart from the wonder of seeing your child emerge into the world, after spending nine months speculating what she'll look like and daydreaming who she'll be and how her personality will develop. There were lots of little typically Swedish cultural touches which made me chuckle. An example was the celebratory birth fika at four in the morning, I'll attach pictures when I get the camera back) complete with mini Swedish flag, glasses of apple juice (in place of champagne). Medical staff constantly congratulating when they meet you or speak to you for the first time as new parents is also amusing and a nice touch. The patient hotel concept, where the new family can bond whilst spending a few nights under medical supervision, is also a typically well thought through service.
It also means that I'm on a two week paternity leave break from my new job. Sweden has great parent leave entitlement for fathers. If you've worked at a company longer than six months you're entitled to take up to six months paid paternity leave. Sadly, this won't be available for me, and even if it was, I'd be wary of taking it, especially as I've just back into employment.
A friend of mine put this year into perspective for me on a short facebook comment, and made me realize how much of an adventure this year has been:
1. Moved countries
2. Learnt a new language (Ok, it's not quite mastered yet, but it's a work in progress)
3. Got a new job working in a company where English is not the office language
4. Brought a car, acquired driving as a new life skill
5. Started a family.
Shit, how am I going to top that next year?
Saturday, 16 October 2010
Back at the code face
I've been very busy the last two weeks, it's been a flurry of interviews for different companies and then I began a two week trial period at a small software house. I mentioned in a previous post that I'd had the epiphany of working at a lower level and going back to being a code monkey.
The company makes software solutions for large retail chains and franchises. It's not a sector I know much about, but then again I didn't know much about public healthcare provision, but ended building software for a government agency for over seven years. I also think it's interesting to see what challenges other sectors face.
The company language is Swedish, the interview questions were in Swedish, with me answering in English. So far, I've spoken a mix of both. I mainly speak English when I have to talk about technical stuff, as I'm still building up my vocabulary for software development. I'm actively writing down words I don't know and have to look up, so I feel it'll be extremely useful having Swedish in my ears every working day, and should really help my language skills. I'm really looking forward to the time when I can easily express myself at a reasonable level at work.
Yesterday I was offered a full time job after successfully passing the two week trial. It's a huge relief, and the opportunity arrived just at the right time. Now my partner and I can focus on the impending birth of our daughter, who could arrive any minute now.
The company makes software solutions for large retail chains and franchises. It's not a sector I know much about, but then again I didn't know much about public healthcare provision, but ended building software for a government agency for over seven years. I also think it's interesting to see what challenges other sectors face.
The company language is Swedish, the interview questions were in Swedish, with me answering in English. So far, I've spoken a mix of both. I mainly speak English when I have to talk about technical stuff, as I'm still building up my vocabulary for software development. I'm actively writing down words I don't know and have to look up, so I feel it'll be extremely useful having Swedish in my ears every working day, and should really help my language skills. I'm really looking forward to the time when I can easily express myself at a reasonable level at work.
Yesterday I was offered a full time job after successfully passing the two week trial. It's a huge relief, and the opportunity arrived just at the right time. Now my partner and I can focus on the impending birth of our daughter, who could arrive any minute now.
Saturday, 2 October 2010
Cause for careful optimism
I've had a good week: I've attended three interviews, one with a company, two with recruitment consultants and have another lined up this week with an IT consultancy. Switching back to software development seems to have been the correct decision.
The momentum started when my Job coach passed my CV on to two of her colleagues, who recruit for permanent and contract IT staff respectively. I met them last Friday and seemed to make a good impression. I carried out the interview in a mix of Swedish and English. I began in Swedish and switched to answering in English when my vocabulary began to handicap me. My interviewers carried on asking questions in Swedish, and I had no problem understanding what they were asking me. At the end of a very general 'getting to know you' type interview where they asked about my career history, my education and my personality, I was invited to interview for a small software house in Lund.
The job itself wasn't exactly perfect, it was working with a a less interesting part of the software development toolset and language I'm familiar with. The interview itself went reasonably, I started answering in Swedish, but after a while the interviewers wanted me to answer in English so I was more comfortable and they continued to ask questions and comment in Swedish. I understood everything they asked, which will give me a lot of confidence for future interviews.
Sadly, on Friday I found out that I didn't get the job (apparently the choice was between me and someone else, and the other candidate had directly relevant experience). Although it was disappointing, it seemed a nice friendly place to work, I thought it was a bit of a long shot, given I didn't have direct experience of windows forms as I've mainly worked on the web side of things.
I also interviewed with another recruitment consultant for a more interesting position on Friday, again the interview was mostly conducted in Swedish with me falling back to English when my vocabulary failed me. By now I'd begun to notice a trend in the interviews, and the following reoccurring questions were asked:
What are your main strengths?
What are your weaknesses?
Why did you do geography and university and not computer science?
How would your former colleagues describe you?
Of course, the interview cliché question came up every time: "so, where do you see yourself in (insert number) years?" Resisting the temptation to beat my head on the table at the inanity of the question when asked is very difficult. We both know I'm not going to answer honestly, so why bother?
I was a bit wary when the recruitment consultant started asking about salary expectations, and seemed surprised when I knew the market rate for a software developer in the area. She also began to visibly squirm when she admitted the job was under the market rate. Incidentally, this handy website will tell you.
Personally, I find it very strange to go to an interview without knowing how much the job pays, but I guess you have to accept the cultural differences in the labour market. We then proceeded to play a game where we both pretended that the salary wouldn't matter and that even if I got the job I'd stay there when a better paid position was offered elsewhere. It was an interesting experience, but I feel quite wary about the position (comes complete with two week audition like period), and indeed the recruitment consultant, who seemed to want a lot from me just to put me forward.
I have noticed when dealing with recruitment companies proving you can speak Swedish is imperative. If you can cobble together a covering letter or email, I think it will really make a difference. Although the Swedes pride themselves on their ability to speak English, they seem very reticent to employ someone who can't at least understand Swedish.
I also got a letter confirming that I'll be started SAS (Svenska som andra språk) next week, which at least will fill in the time until I find work.
The momentum started when my Job coach passed my CV on to two of her colleagues, who recruit for permanent and contract IT staff respectively. I met them last Friday and seemed to make a good impression. I carried out the interview in a mix of Swedish and English. I began in Swedish and switched to answering in English when my vocabulary began to handicap me. My interviewers carried on asking questions in Swedish, and I had no problem understanding what they were asking me. At the end of a very general 'getting to know you' type interview where they asked about my career history, my education and my personality, I was invited to interview for a small software house in Lund.
The job itself wasn't exactly perfect, it was working with a a less interesting part of the software development toolset and language I'm familiar with. The interview itself went reasonably, I started answering in Swedish, but after a while the interviewers wanted me to answer in English so I was more comfortable and they continued to ask questions and comment in Swedish. I understood everything they asked, which will give me a lot of confidence for future interviews.
Sadly, on Friday I found out that I didn't get the job (apparently the choice was between me and someone else, and the other candidate had directly relevant experience). Although it was disappointing, it seemed a nice friendly place to work, I thought it was a bit of a long shot, given I didn't have direct experience of windows forms as I've mainly worked on the web side of things.
I also interviewed with another recruitment consultant for a more interesting position on Friday, again the interview was mostly conducted in Swedish with me falling back to English when my vocabulary failed me. By now I'd begun to notice a trend in the interviews, and the following reoccurring questions were asked:
What are your main strengths?
What are your weaknesses?
Why did you do geography and university and not computer science?
How would your former colleagues describe you?
Of course, the interview cliché question came up every time: "so, where do you see yourself in (insert number) years?" Resisting the temptation to beat my head on the table at the inanity of the question when asked is very difficult. We both know I'm not going to answer honestly, so why bother?
I was a bit wary when the recruitment consultant started asking about salary expectations, and seemed surprised when I knew the market rate for a software developer in the area. She also began to visibly squirm when she admitted the job was under the market rate. Incidentally, this handy website will tell you.
Personally, I find it very strange to go to an interview without knowing how much the job pays, but I guess you have to accept the cultural differences in the labour market. We then proceeded to play a game where we both pretended that the salary wouldn't matter and that even if I got the job I'd stay there when a better paid position was offered elsewhere. It was an interesting experience, but I feel quite wary about the position (comes complete with two week audition like period), and indeed the recruitment consultant, who seemed to want a lot from me just to put me forward.
I have noticed when dealing with recruitment companies proving you can speak Swedish is imperative. If you can cobble together a covering letter or email, I think it will really make a difference. Although the Swedes pride themselves on their ability to speak English, they seem very reticent to employ someone who can't at least understand Swedish.
I also got a letter confirming that I'll be started SAS (Svenska som andra språk) next week, which at least will fill in the time until I find work.
Friday, 17 September 2010
Happy Anniversary
Here it is, one year of living in Sweden. Put on your ridiculously small party hats and fire those party poppers.
It's crept up after being a long way off. As the tone of a few recent posts have been a bit negative and whiny and dare I say, self pitying. So in order to mark the passing of the year, I thought I'd list the positives of my year here so far:
1. Our Daughter will be born at the end of October.
2. My Swedish has improved drastically. Sure it needs a hell of a lot of work, but I think I'm through the hard bit of learning the language. My written Swedish needs plenty of work, but that just takes time, and access to full time education. The proof of my progress, for me was that I sat through four hours of parent's education and another two of father's education at Lund hospital this week. I'm not going to claim I understood everything, but I think I got about 75 to 85% of what was being discussed. I can now also happily eavesdrop on people's telephone conversations on the bus now too. I'm sure I'll get sick of this quickly as it is a bane of modern life normally, but it's a nice indication of your language skills.
3. Necessity has made me realize that actually I really disliked being a project manager, and I am now actively seeking a return to the code face as a software developer again. Being responsible for other people in the work place is like herding cats, and therefore best avoided.
4. The day to day challenges have forced me to do things I would typically avoid or procrastinate over.
It's crept up after being a long way off. As the tone of a few recent posts have been a bit negative and whiny and dare I say, self pitying. So in order to mark the passing of the year, I thought I'd list the positives of my year here so far:
1. Our Daughter will be born at the end of October.
2. My Swedish has improved drastically. Sure it needs a hell of a lot of work, but I think I'm through the hard bit of learning the language. My written Swedish needs plenty of work, but that just takes time, and access to full time education. The proof of my progress, for me was that I sat through four hours of parent's education and another two of father's education at Lund hospital this week. I'm not going to claim I understood everything, but I think I got about 75 to 85% of what was being discussed. I can now also happily eavesdrop on people's telephone conversations on the bus now too. I'm sure I'll get sick of this quickly as it is a bane of modern life normally, but it's a nice indication of your language skills.
3. Necessity has made me realize that actually I really disliked being a project manager, and I am now actively seeking a return to the code face as a software developer again. Being responsible for other people in the work place is like herding cats, and therefore best avoided.
4. The day to day challenges have forced me to do things I would typically avoid or procrastinate over.
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