semver-yourself

One day I noticed that concepts of semantic versioning apply surprisingly well to my life story. Major version marks self-reinventions and identity pivots. Minor version goes for new realisations, roles or behaviors. And optional patch version is for all those little steps forward along the life journey.

Then I thought, this could be an interesting concept to play with. Maybe someone would find this useful beyond a funny thought experiment. It was quite challenging to track back minor versions though, so strictly speaking it’s not really semver. But anyway.

v0.x “hello world”

I remember little to none of my early childhood. According to my parents I was extremely overactive and ignorant of any social order. I loved tearing things apart, watching construction machinery operating, climbing trees and digging deep holes in the backyard.

v1.x “joyful bookworm”

My memories of those times are blurry. I read like crazy, especially pop science. Nuclear reactors was my favourite topic. I loved playing chess with my dad. I didn’t socialise much. My mom says I was often bullied at school but I neither cared nor noticed somehow.

v2.x “nerdy prankster”

I spent days building custom cars out of Lego Technic, and kept reading lots of books. My lifelong best friend shared the passion for Lego, so we’d sit in the back of the classroom and build things. Another passion of mine was everything that burned and / or exploded. I’d make all sorts of dangerous things out of matches, fireworks and basic chemistry. Some of my tricks caused concerns at school but my studies were stellar so I didn’t get much trouble.

v3.x “computer geek”

Shortly after I discovered boundless capabilities of a computer, this was all I did. I stopped doing math competitions and was reading much less now. I’d spend nights at my dad’s office playing with all sorts of software, browsing internet, digging into system internals and trying things. And we’d have night-long binges at my best friend’s house building stuff in Flash and HTML. I also started to socialise a bit more, a close circle of friends formed.

v4.x “party animal”

With my discovery of alcohol everything changed again. Computers were my second nature but now I was mostly preoccupied with finding ways to get drunk. I moved to the capital and went to high school there. I distanced myself from “nerdiness” and enjoyed a high spot in social rank. Being a good student felt effortless. I stopped reading books completely, but I knew for sure that I wanted to make software in the future, just like my dad. I somehow managed to prepare well enough and get into a top CS school, but the first two years at university were little more than a perpetual party.

v5.x “confused entrepreneur”

During my third year of university I toned down partying, looked around and saw very little sense in what was going on. Most of curriculum seemed pointless, so I picked a few key areas (mostly maths and computer sciences) and focused on side projects as well as running a web studio we had set up with friends some time earlier. Still, there was very little sense of direction. I despised the thought of having an office job and dreamed of going straight to big business by growing our studio. But how to do it, I had no idea.

v6.x “frontend guy”

Things changed abruptly after the summer military training I undertook. There was little to do, so I had two months to reflect, and came back determined to change something. An interview invite came across, and I gladly accepted. I failed the interview miserably, and that was the trigger. I realised that I love JavaScript way more than C# I was interviewing for. I tidied up my side projects and public profiles, built a decent CV, and started reaching out to companies. After a few weeks of intense interviewing I’ve got a bunch of attractive job offers, and joined Altoros which felt like the best fit culturally. There, I instantly fell in love with the job, it was just like Lego. I spent days and nights in the office, and soon was leading and growing a team. After 1.5 years I decided to move from services to product development and joined Fitbit. I went deeper and deeper into web development, spoke at conferences and was an active member of frontend community.

v7.x “tech generalist”

At some point I started to get curious of other things around. Backend, infrastructure, product, management, hr, processes, etc. The broader I went the more exciting it felt. I started to read a lot again. I went teetotal. I tried to apply systems thinking to whatever I got ahold of and for the most part it worked very well. And we also grew fast, so I became the go-to person for quite a lot of things. Then I joined Palantir, and there breadth of opportunities to make lasting impact went truly off the charts. I was free to mix soft and hard skills in pretty much any way conceivable, define new roles, and wear as many hats as I wanted. I became a global citizen, splitting time between Singapore, New York, London and Palo Alto.

v8.0-alpha “no name yet”

For now it is sufficient to say that after 2.5 years at Palantir I spent 6 months reflecting and traveling, then started a job that I absolutely love.

ZIJ/semver-yourself

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