Freedom

I think I've written about this before (here and here), but the other day some spots came to my mind. They were the typical "why I'm so lucky to work like this" and "what I miss to work like I did in the past". Before continuing let me clarify:

• like this == being the owner of my own schedule
• in the past == 9 to 5

To answer first question, to be honest, I don't know the why, probably a combination of circunstances made it suitable: to know the right people working in the right project, to be able to share with them some time, efforts and preferences, the needs of the project, a bunch of lucky and probably some others that I will never know. But one thing has been clear from the beginning of this adventure, I'm enjoying it so much and it's easy to answer this why.

First of all, the most important thing and the main reason: the people. The team is more like a group of friends than a work team. We're all sharing a codebase, stack and technologies, but we are also sharing feelings and personal experiences, problems, solutions... and the Sprints!.

And the other main thing is to be able to be the master of my schedule. Out there is quite difficult to combine work and life. If I can organize myself to share quality time with my children (take them to the school or extra activities, to have lunch all the family together, to play some games, help with baths or school work...) I'm happy enough.

If I can manage my schedule I can perfectly watch the World Cup interesting matches, give my wife her time for studying (she's studying right now) or to have fun with twins/friends... or just write posts like this one :). I can also workout when my body feels ready for it, not only when the work gives me free time no matter how I am. It's good enough, isn't it?

On the other hand I think the only thing I miss from working 9-to-5 with an on-site team are the chats about this or that new technology, or even the practical challenges about doing stupid - and not so stupid - things better, faster or in a more freaky way. To fix this I'm trying to get involved with other stuff like FOSS projects, local meetups/labs or some other projects related to devops with friends. This allows me to distract the mind about the working stack while trying other technologies. Matter of improvement, they say.

In the end it's all about freedom and the ability to determine the course of the daily schedule and overall life direction.