2022: Year in Review
Year of the Momentous Occasion
The What & The Why
Every year, since 2017, I’ve been performing a “out-in-the-public” version of annual self-assessment. Assessing in public has given me an opportunity to share the progress with my mentors and peers, allowing me to strike interesting conversations, enriching this experience overall. Moreover, such reviews motivate others to embark on a similar journey. Few of my friends have started “looking forward” to my annual reviews. All in all, it’s a fulfilling and inspiring annual exercise I continue to undertake at the end of each year.
This isn’t whole lot different from annual self-assessments in various companies. The premise being to look back, introspect and identify areas for improvement.
For those interested in my previous reviews: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021.
Here’s a look at how the year unfolded
⭐️ Highlights ⭐️
💍 The Union
2022 was poised to be the year of big announcements for me personally. It lived up to the expectations and I couldn’t be happier with the way things panned out. Although Covid had slight a bit of part to play, I am glad it was limited to the decisions made with respect to dates. Everything post that was high on anticipation, preparation and merrymaking. The actual events (yes, plural) were everything I wanted and more. I am grateful 2022 happened. Big shoutout to everyone involved, including but not limited to Shriya, our parents, close relatives, family and friends who participated in the festivities in person and in spirit 🙏🏻
📈 Career Growth
On the back of E3 to E4 [SDE1 to SDE2] promotion in 2021, I was striving in 2022 for getting in the league of big dogs, a Senior Software Engineer. Meta’s level hierarchy slots E5/IC5, roughly equivalent to Amazon’s SDE3/L6 (courtesy: levels.fyi). I made my intentions clear to select few team members [incl. my manager and senior managers]. I believe, it was one of the key “enablers” that set me up for an intellectually fulfilling 2022. I love the transparency in Meta, specifically in my team, that allowed me to share my career aspirations openly. I was lucky to work on some key strategic and tactical projects throughout the past 12 months. These projects allowed me to develop my technical competence in seemingly unexpected areas — product development, mobile development [native & cross-platform frameworks] and fairly tiny bit of machine learning. I thoroughly enjoyed the working relationships I built along the way and overall I feel happy when I look back at 2022 in terms of career growth and progress.
🛂 Global Talent Visa Stage 1 ✅
At the back of November ’22 news of industry-wide layoffs and tech sector contraction, I channelized my effort towards securing my family’s stay in the UK. I had heard about Global Talent Visa in August 2021, few months after I joined Meta through internal workplace communication. Sensing the uncertainty in the job market due to broader macro-economic factors, I sought after the safety net offered by Tier 1 UK visas. I’ll be sharing more of my learnings in 2023 once I secure the Tier 1 sponsorship. For now, I’m glad I was able to get stage 1 endorsement out of the way. On to Stage 2 next! 💪🏽
👨🏽🏫 Mentorship (2021: NA, 2022: 53)
While preparing my application for Global Talent Visa, I learnt about the mentorship opportunities made available through platforms like adplist. It didn’t help me directly in securing the stage 1 endorsement. However, I invested considerable amount of my free time in November & December 2022 in giving back to the tech community. I find immense pleasure and joy in talking with early career technology workers, undergraduate and helping them navigate the painstaking interview process. It reminds me of the past 5–7 years of my time in digital technology and I’m glad I have reached a stage in my life where I can provide valuable guidance to my juniors. Join me at adplist if you want to mentor / find a mentee.
2420 minutes ⏰
53 1:1 sessions 🎙️
17 countries: 🇳🇬 x 13, 🇮🇳 x 11, 🇬🇧 x 6, 🇰🇪🇺🇸 x 3, 🇧🇩🇨🇦 x 2, 🇨🇱🇫🇷🇩🇪🇮🇷🇮🇹🇵🇰🇵🇹
🇿🇦🇹🇼🇺🇦 x 1
✍ ️️Writing (2021: 5, 2022: 8+)
This year I created a separate publication on Medium to house my thought pieces related to technology. https://medium.com/technology-with-chai
The tech articles I wrote this year:
- Google way, Facebook way, and Twitter way
- How to land your first internship offer? 👶🏼
- How to build your portfolio quick & free? 💻
- Open Source Contribution 101 🌱
- Daily Habits of a Software Engineer 👩💻
Other than technology, I scribbled 3x on random topics
- Know Thy Neighbour
- Autumn of 2022 in Windermere [travelogue] 🏞️
- The lion that got tamed on Virat Kohli’s captaincy resignation 🏏
This is in addition to the book reviews & notes I maintain in a separate medium publication: https://medium.com/read-with-chai
New Countries (2021: 0, 2022:2)
I was lucky to visit 2 new countries in 2022 viz. Scotland 🏴 and Philippines 🇵🇭 This takes the tally of total countries I’ve visited to 7. A travelogue on both these trips is overdue 😪 amidst a long list of to-do items.
7 down, 189 to go. 🌏
🦷 Health
With a new year, came a new dentist for me! 4th different dentist in 4 years. Spent 4 months in another round of restorative treatment. Hopefully this time it’s a long-lasting solution. Post the multiple fillings & on-lays, I started my cosmetic treatment invisalignᵗᵐ 😬. Hoping that by mid 2023 I’m off the aligners and that it draws the “long-drawn dental skirmish” to a close.
🔌 Electronics
Since Jan ’22, I’ve extended my presence in the third-world [1st physical, 2nd digital, 3rd virtual reality]. Oculus Quest 2 (referral) is a cool gadget. It’s bulky, clunky, graphics are primitive 🐣, user interface is awkward 😳 at times. But, it’s a completely different, unique experience that I can invoke anytime I want. After 10–15 minutes of mountain climbing in virtual reality, I always feel weird in my hands & palms 🖐🏼 taking the headset off. Pingpong 🏓 and Beat Saber are my other 2 favorite games. But I’ve to admit, I don’t use it as much as I’d like. This lack of stickiness means there’s lot of work to be done for Meta’s metaverse dreams to be realised.
🎖Miscellaneous Wins
💻 Take 50+ interviews at Meta ✅
In reality I managed ~30. Given the ongoing hiring freeze, I’ll take this as W.
👔 Refer 75 eligible, aptly matched candidates [measure: get 5+ offers] ✅
Referred ~30 candidates [100+] roles. 3 ended up getting offers.
Events & Activities
⛵️ Explored Camden Lock & Regent’s canal in a boat
🎶 Coldplay-live concert — yet another memorable day of 2022.
🏃🏽♂ ️Ran 5.6k in 30min 5sec at Battersea Park, London with Metamates
🛶 Canoed [1 bladed paddle] at Hackney Wick, London with Metamates
🎭 Watched live play 2x [Lion King & Moulin Rogue]
🍽 At Shangri-La, Shard 🤩
Lowlights ↘️
Personal Finances 🏦 (2021: 🍏 +69%, 2022: 🌶 -25.99%)
Biggest lowlight has to be the miserable equity performance in ’22. Overall, my investment portfolio value has shrunk more than the SP500, the benchmark index I track against. It doesn’t come as a surprise given the tech industry contraction and my portfolio’s tech-focused composition. As an approach, I set aside majority of my investment money in picking & choosing stocks instead of putting everything in the index-tracking ETF. Hypothesis here being, on a long-enough time horizon [10+ years], this strategy will pay off better and hopefully outperform the SP500. It’ll take a considerable amount of time to play this strategy out and evaluate the lasting impact. But with time on my side, I hope to stay the course and trust it to end up ahead of the curve.
However, there are 3 bright spots I’d like to recognize
In 2021, I had no investments in 🇬🇧 UK’s financial instruments viz. ISAs [🇺🇸Roth IRA equivalent] and Self-invested Personal Pension SIPP [🇺🇸 401k equivalent]. In 2022, I was able to start my journey in UK’s Roth IRA world through Stocks & Shares ISA provided by Freetrade. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to max out the contribution limit which I hope to correct next year onwards.
2. Improved credit score in UK 🇬🇧
All the efforts to prove credit worthiness in the 🇺🇸 were rendered null and void as UK’s credit markets don’t recognise your 🇺🇸 FICO scores. To make matters odd, top 3 credit rating agencies of both the countries are same — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. 😳 So in 2021 I started building credit score in 🇬🇧 through loqbox (referral). In 2022, I completed 12 monthly payments with loqbox and opened credit cards with American Express (referral) & HSBC.
3. Diversified with real-estate exposure
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a direct real-estate exposure through BTL [buy-to-let] or holiday let or auxiliary options in 2022 due to numerous reasons. Here again, I found a workaround, an intermediate low-barrier-to-entry solution, real estate investment trust [REIT]. I invested small portion of my liquid funds to start off the real-estate investment journey in UK with Portfolio. Portfolio is an app and a suite of real-estate products, including podcasts, books & education/informative material. I consumed a lot of it in Q2 & Q3 when economic outlook was not that bad. As the markets tumbled, so did my interest in acquiring knowledge related to property.
Workout 🏋🏽 (2021: 36%, 2022: 31%)
Unlike last year, this year I averaged 9–10 days per month. This translates to roughly 2 visits per week which is below average. Without giving reasons/justification for the dip, I can sum up this year’s workout regime as a lowlight.
These numbers are ballpark figures. They aren’t 100% accurate as they are track activity solely on the phone. Unfortunately I don’t have better readings as I have stopped using my ⌚︎fitbit [charge2]. Needless to say, I haven’t yet succumbed to the 🍎 Watch yet.
📚 Reading: (2021: 7, 2022: 9)
Despite the increase in number of books read, I’d consider this in lowlight for couple reasons
- I didn’t read consistently enough
- I didn’t achieve my 2022 goal of completing 12 books
I started 15+ books, only to finish 9. I don’t have concerns with discontinuing books midway. However, purely from metrics & goals standpoint, I under-achieved and hence a lowlight.
Miscellaneous Letdowns
- 🚙 Permanent UK Driver license — Got the provisional in Aug ’22 but yet to book practice sessions and the actual behind-the-wheel test here 😅
- 👷🏽♂️Maker — I haven’t pushed forward in a decisive way towards finding back income stream opportunities. May it be through app, platform, website, startup; I am yet to make meaningful inroads in the elusive startup/entrepreneurship space.
2023 Tweaks ⚙️
- Meditate more 🧘
- Exercise more consistently 🏋🏽
- Prioritize more ruthlessly 🤓
- Eat less red meat 🥩
- Drink more water 💧
- Communicate better 🗣️
Meditation & Mental Health
Personally I feel happier and content than before, as I look back over the past year. However, I feel I have slightly ignored one area of mental health. Writing daily journal 📓, reading books 📚, engaging in positive self-talk and staying aware of my feelings constitute my mental health activities currently. But I feel I can do better here through meditation. Writing daily journal is one way of processing feelings experienced throughout the day. However, I’m going to step up on the meditation front which is more thoughtful form of processing the life. I’ve tried this before and the habit has been notorious in terms of stickiness. But I intend to give it yet another shot. Hopefully, talking more openly about it acts as the “grand gesture” and helps me stay accountable and on track. I don’t anticipate immediate benefits from this activity though I feel in the long-term this will lead to a balanced, positive outlook for me. I’ve heard good things about Headspace and Calm so I’ll be trying those out.
Exercise
All things said and done, 180+/365 days was a modest target which I was unable to hit in 2022. I intend to correct it in 2023.
Prioritization
In general, I think I can do a better job of identifying high-impact projects at work and focusing effort on them. Pareto principle 80/20 is definitely at play and I should be leveraging it better. This goes beyond the work setting. I intend to be conscious in the battles I choose to fight going forward. It’s going to be tough to stay on course without a reliable metric to track against. “# of times I went off track” or “# of times I prioritized poorly” is a very loose metric definition and too complex to track consistently.
Communication
Through the Global Talent Visa application process, I have realized the importance of establishing thought leadership and expertise in the field of choice. Speaking at public events, publishing papers at international conferences, filing patents and in general communication (written and verbal) are going to be key in unlocking the next phase of my career & personal growth. I don’t have concrete set of action items other than consciously being on the lookout for opportunities to read, write and talk. I believe, I can reap direct rewards through improved outward and upward communication of my work within Meta and externally.
