Masterplan for 2024

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By André Jaenisch on 18.01.2024. About 5 minutes reading time.

Like I mentioned in my recap for fourth quarter of 2023 I went to the jobcenter and declared myself jobless. In consequence they are trying to find another mode of employment to me. I have no plans to give up on freelancing.

At least that’s what I thought. Here’s the thing: I studied mathematics on BSc. But I failed my thesis. Therefore my highest qualification is the school exam.

My motto for 2024

Get qualified

So instead of getting pushed into another employment I learned that it is possible to test for an external assessment as IT specialist.

This qualification would be of less value than another academic degree but it also means I can utilise my eight years of experience in the industry to shorten the time I need to learn. Depending on the institute I sign up with I will have to learn for six to eight months (again, depends on the institute). At the end, the Industry Chamber will exam me. If I pass, I can call myself an IT specialist. Which is something.

I’m currently in the process of acquiring the respective paperwork to be allowed to follow through on this. I want to be frank: I’m nervous. The usual target group for exams like these are people leaving the school. So I will be a few decades older than my peers. My interviews with the institutes also made me learn that only a handful of people are going this route each year. Which is fine?

Looking at the plan, I’m really disappointed to have to learn Java over the course. It’s such a verbose programming language which has no significant advantages over using something more elegant. Perhaps I can convince them to write in Kotlin (which I learned for Android development) or Groovy? The latter is used in Jenkins, a CI system popular in many companies. Or at least, in widespread use. That’s not the same, but whatever.

It’s frustrating to learn that each and every institute is requiring a Windows system (at least I can use their hardware during that time). This operating system is so awful to use for programming. The only upside I can see is that it makes it easier for operations to administer the system fleet. Yes, there’s a WSL, but at that point I could as well run Windows inside of a VM and use Linux as host. I’m not happy to face a system that spontaneously decides to reboot whenever it pleases. I hope I can use git for version control to have at least some guards against data loss. I haven’t read the fine print because I need to get the paperwork behind me.

I will also have to accept presence requirements. Either from home over LAN subjecting myself to a timetracking (and most likely keylogging software or similar) or in the subsidiary of the institute (under the same surveillance but at least on someone else’s infrastructure). The afternoons promise to be a bit more flexible, but I’m working against a clock. That sucks. But the German bureaucracy is slow to change. At least each option is in walking distance from home.

Oh, and no vacation. Like, at all. That will be an interesting summer with kids at home for six weeks.

If I pick up an employment, all state assistance will be nullified immediately. My last job interview early January turned out to be different than what I expected. I had to down the offer because I wouldn’t stay there for long.

Undergoing training and qualification means I have to cut down on the time I can spend on the side as a freelancer. At most 15 hours per week are permitted. That would translate to 3 hours per day. I had had conversations with people in December and January informing them on this limitation to allow for transparency and planning.

Journaling

Speaking of I realised that recapping each quarter is a little too long for my taste. I’m trying to write a recap each month this year. In introspection I learned that journaling is important for my mental health. I’m not at the point at which my time estimates are accurate, but listing „wins of the day” helps me get into a positive mindset. I need this. Over the course of the year I developed a way to journal from whichever device I have at hand. There are a handful of systems I still have to incorporate to keep an overview but the data sources are available already.

Contributions

For the next couple of weeks I’m going to wrap up my contributions to LernTools, so I can hand over the codebase to them. I feel like it will be in a way better shape than before, allowing for easier development of new ideas.

Ideas

Speaking of ideas, there is an app idea I will develop in the first quarter and submit to F-Droid. If that works, I perhaps take the bite and submit it to Google Play Store as well, although their acceptance criteria got harder.

I picked something with low complexity to learn the fundamentals. I already have one or two different apps in the working but need to study more before I feel confident to submit them to an app store.

Learning about Android development will help me in my own product idea because … no, this is going to be a secret for now. If you are curious, get in touch.

Others

Also something I need to whip up is a portfolio page. I already have something but I’m never satisfied with the results.

I’m not entirely sure whether I can stick to it but I want to blog more. There’s also the idea to utilise the newsletter with Buttondown to educate people of software challenges I faced and strategies to overcome them. If I then have the time I am also recording a podcast on why The Small Web Rocks! It’s one of those things I have bought a domain for.