Salam and hello everyone!

Well, it has been another year, and it is good to have a retrospective writing of how far I have been this year. A year I spend most of my time balancing between community and professional careers - pursuing my next milestone - to become a developer relation kind of guy.

And to start with...

Rocket Learning with Xsolla

I have been in the industry for 4 years (in the early year of 2023). Moving to Xsolla is a right step for me at that time, because my goal is to deepen my mastery over frontend development. Developing more and more React apps, learning the "root" of the React itself, the bundlers, the customisation, which brings to me learning micro frontend using Module Federation. Well, it is fun, though there is a use case that I feel is wrongly used.

Not just that, I reflect my skills through the hiring process as well, since I have been the only bar raiser locally, so I had to interview most of the front-end candidates. While I learn how to understand people, I also have to reflect my skills as well, and how can I keep my professionalism when hiring devs. Of course it is not easy, but I had to do it anyway. From there, I learn how our local talent is (though the sample that I get is still small, and there are still a lot of blind spots that I need to learn as well).

I also enroll in a lot of courses to upskill myself, and the courses help me in understanding deeper both the development and the workflow. Learning SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), Epic React, Microfrontends, and Three.js Journey, are something that is eye-opening for me.

There is a lot of planning underway, but until August, I feel that I need to have a move on, for a change of air, thus I joined Decube, a data observability product.

My Wellbeing

Beside the dev part, this has been a healthy year for me as well, for I have weekly sports routine, going to the gym, meeting people and share some insights. I went to the several natural places in Malaysia such as Fraser, Cameron Highlands, Taiping. I also went to hotsprings, do some extreme sports such as water rafting, just to enjoy myself.

Since Xsolla provides us with gym membership, I maximise that opportunity by going to the gym, picking up weights, and improving my wellbeing. At the same time, playing badminton and futsal weekly increases my stamina a bit, so I no longer feel fatigue quickly.

However, I got COVID-19 twice this year 😅 - once around February, and another one on December. Well, I braved through both times, which brings me to 4-timers overall since COVID-19 started. What a life!

Starting A Community

Since my personal brand effort for years started to bear fruit, I keep on writing articles here on dev.to, while engaging with my followers and friends on Twitter. Discussing more about careers, engaging with other people, exchanging ideas and knowledge.

Around March 2023, I just thought that I wanted to start a community using Discord. Little did I know, just in less than 1 year, we reached more than 2k members (both active and passive members), and appointed a total of 10 admins to help me curate the contents. I didn't really expect to go that far, but I am happy other people share the same sentiments.

This year alone, I met a lot of great people. Just to make me feel that I am nobody - people share their insights, and I share mine. Zahin Zulkipli, Afrie Irham, Malcolm Kee, and others are the people I met and I adore, because I know that I still have a long way to go.

The Malaysian dev landscape on Twitter has been more livelier as well, thanks to the people. But of course, it is only because these people are in my circle.

Passion in Teaching

I am invited to become a mentor and a coach to a boot camp organised by KelasProgramming, a local programming course company by Iszuddin Ismail. And for a 6-month long online bootcamp, I coach nearly 100 students for web development.

It has been an experience to coach people and mentor them at the same time. This forces me to structurise what I know, and share it with the students. I know it is not perfect for now, but I identify my weakness in delivering content, and plan to improve it, both in the next batch of bootcamp, and my content creation that I plan to start next year.

A Change of Air

In September, I moved to Decube, a startup company. Honestly, I didn't really learn much about frontend stuff, but now I had to learn more about project management and leadership. I also paved my own way to be DevRel (though it is not official), by leveraging my personal brand.

It is not easy though, because from day 1 I joined, I had to be involved in building a new module. Luckily, with my heuristic approach in code diving, I am able to pick up quickly and manage to deliver with the whole team.

What's Next?

This is an important question, since this affects what I want to do next year.

First, I am gonna spend my incoming years to reach my goals by growing alongside Decube for now. I need to pave the road myself, and I have a clear goal now.

Continuing my passion in teaching is something that I need to improve, both in bootcamps and the community. I will start the content creation next year, but slowly (because I am still shy in front of the camera 😖). I already have some in plan, just wait for it!

Probably, there will be a "next stage in life"? I don't know.

But one thing for sure, I will continue to take care of my health, the community, and my career. Hoping for a yet challenging future ahead.

My Takeaway In 2023

I learned that there is more to life than coding alone. Taking care of your health, exploring the unknown, teaching and learning (yeah, forgot that I learned Russian and Japanese this year alone), learning insights from great people. It has been a learning year for me generally, and I want to keep on giving.

And that's it, folks! Thanks for reading till the end, and have a great 2024 ahead!

Until next time of writing, peace be upon ya!