So it's about 30 months now since I took over building and leading an engineering team.
Building is the right word, as on the first day I started there was no team. There were just 2-3 engineers in India, that started doing some testing in the last sprint and had absolutely no clue what they are doing. (Somebody told them they are the test team and that the software to test is in Artifactory …)
Something over 18 months ago a big change happened in my work life. After years of trying, learning, searching for ways forward, changing jobs on the same level … I was appointed team leader in my company and tasked with building up a team completely from scratch. I already wrote on the topic several times, this is a follow up.
Looking at the current situation in the Ukraine and the world, I am reminded at something I realised a couple of years ago in an another context.
Back then I was talking about the time before the big changes, thru Internet, Social Media etc., and made a remark that since then only technology progressed. We as mankind are having problems keeping pace, which is clearly visible in the toxic atmosphere on Social Media and the downfall of Internet from knowledge pool to ads infested big-tech owned shark pool.
Seeing what is happening in front of us in Ukraine, unfortunately I have to revise my remark. Not only did we not evolve since the 1990, we didn't make a step forward since 1930.
One side of the conflict NATO kept on pushing their agenda of expansion under a shroud of “bringing democracy”, the other side invested heavily in the military and just waited for the right moment to start re-building the old empire.
Both sides are saying to everybody willing to listen, that this is because “the others are simply on the wrong side of history”. Who are the others and what is the right side of history?
What's the result? Ordinary people getting under the wheels of “big” politics and dying. Children getting traumatized, families getting shattered. Just now the radio is bringing the news that people of Kiev are called upon to go out on the streets and start throwing Molotov Cocktails at the advancing troops.
I spent my childhood in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I lived thru a lot of things that these people have to face right now. There is nothing that can justify this. Nothing …
Now it has been a bit over 12 weeks since I took up new responsibilities, so time to give you an update what went on since the last post on this topic.
What I can already reveal is that it became easier to master a day at work and also some stuff started to fall in place :)!
6 weeks ago I took over my first job in management as a team lead in a big OEM car manufacturing company.
I worked for the last 14 years in different positions in testing, development and project management within the same company and did some 2 more years before that as an external HiL and In-Car tester for a different OEM. So I think it's safe to say, that I was a techie and now I became a boss.
I decided to write a blog post about my first 6 weeks into the transition, because I hope this will help me reflect on my experiences and sort the stuff in my head … and there is a lot :).