Since I wrote “Things to be grateful for in 2019” and “Things to be grateful for in 2020”, writing this topic has become a routine at the end of year.

Just like 2020, this year we’re still in a pandemic. Even, Indonesia is in its darkest situation due to the high number of Covid-19 cases. Sad news everywhere, even coming from the closest ones.

2021 is also a sad year for me. My brother got covid in the mid of year and was isolated at Wisma Atlet. I lost my friend. Many of my friends are affected too. It makes me very depressed. Everybody’s depressed.

I try to look back, from the beginning of the year until now, there are things that I can be grateful. Yup, there are always little things we can be grateful for.

Here are things I’m grateful for in 2021:

Still working from home

This year I’m still working from home. Since the beginning of the year, my company has declared that we’ll be working from home, at least during 2021.

This is something I’m truly grateful. Working from home is very beneficial for many things, such as being more flexible in work, more efficient in daily expenses, and personally, WFH improves my communication skills.

Got promoted

This year I got a promotion from the company. When I got the promotional email, I had mixed feelings. Of course, I am happy and grateful. But on the other hand, I also have a dilemma.

The dilemma that I experienced was more to the next thing that I need to do after getting a promotion. Luckily my manager and my lead are always direct and give me feedback on every one-on-one.

Involved in SIPLah project

SIPlah is an innovation in the procurement of goods/services for education units (satuan didik). This project was initiated by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (Kemdikbudristek) in collaboration with several digital platforms, including Bukalapak.

In the middle of this year, I was temporarily transferred to another squad to help develop the project. I helped develop it for about three months.

The most challenging thing about this project is the ever-changing requirements. Apart from that, there are also some things that I need to adapt again, such as processes, services, and interactions between teams.

Got an opportunity to do azure migration

Bukalapak has established a strategic partnership with Microsoft. Bukalapak will adopt Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platform. You can read the news here. This partnership has an impact on us, software engineers, to migrate services to the Azure platform.

At the end of this year, I was lucky to be involved in this migration project. I’ve migrated two micro-frontends and mentored one engineer as a cloud coach. The nice thing about this project is that I get to work with new people outside of my squad. It’s always a pleasure to work with new people.

Learn about tech debt management

As a software engineer, tech debt may be a common term. I’ve known the term tech debt for a long time. All this time I thought the only way to manage tech debt was to pay for it directly.

Bukalapak this year released online training for its engineers on how to manage tech debt. The training was very enlightening for me because I got another point of view and ways on how to manage tech debt. I learned how to measure complexity and priority. The final outcome of tech debt management is a document that we can provide to stakeholders, so they can make decisions about which tech debt needs to be sorted out first.

Become a speaker at Kemah Budaya Kaum Muda

In July, I had the opportunity to share knowledge about software engineering in a webinar held by Kemdikbudristek at the Kemah Budaya Kaum Muda (KBKM) event.

KBKM is an interesting initiative to gather good and creative talents in Indonesia. We discussed a lot about how technology can have an impact on us, and how we can release a feature quickly and immediately effective.

Release this blog

Actually, I already have the rizalasrul.com domain since a year ago. Initially, rizalasrul.com was developed with Nuxt + Tailwind. After that, I migrated it with Notion + Fruition. Then currently using Hugo. I’ll discuss more detail in another post.

Read more books

As I write here, I read quite a lot when compared to last year. Not only reading, but I also had time to make a summary of what I read on my Instagram. I hope next year I can read more.

Write more

Through writing on this blog I’ve proven to write more. Not only through this blog, but I also write a lot at work. This year I wrote more RFC documents. I also wrote more and changed some SAD.

Writing is one of the skills of software engineering that I missed. I didn’t expect that software engineers would need to write much.

But I realized that writing is not just a software engineer’s job. Writing is a common job of all fields in all industries.

Get vaccinated

This year my whole family has been vaccinated. My wife and I attended the vaccinations organized by my company. Vaccinations are held in a very orderly manner. I was very helpful about that.

Found a high-quality podcast

Since WFH, I’ve been working more with podcasts than songs. I found some very good podcasts. One of them is Endgame by Gita Wirjawan and Tech Lead Journal by Henry Suryawirawan. You should check them out.

Go to the cinema again

After last year I did not go to the cinema, finally, at the end of this year, I was able to go there. I thought the movie that could make me go to the cinema again was Spider-man: No Way Home. Turns out it was Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

Still consistently investing

I am very grateful that I can still invest. This year I opened another RDN account for new financial goals. Hopefully, it can still be consistent forever.

Health

With all the inconveniences this year, I am very grateful that my family and I are still given health. My wife and I are not exposed to covid.

I hope, and I’m sure you guys also have something to be grateful for.

This article is part of the 30 Day Writing Challenge. I’ll challenge myself to write whatever comes to mind.