23rd April 2025

Hedgehog update

We got an update about the hedgehog. April is looking a lot better! She's put on a lot of weight and has pulled through from being sick. She needs to put on more weight before she can be released again. I'm so glad she is doing better!

Work update - New team!

I don't think I talk that much about the more life kinda stuff on here, but next week I'm going to be starting on a new team at my work. I'll be switching from being a frontend developer working with Javascript, back to being a backend developer working with Java. Well, since this website was pretty much the extent of my ability in front end, I don't think I was very cut out for being a corporate frontend developer, plus, utilising the frontend components was really quite boring and felt really limiting and unimaginative. My new role will be integrating company data into the in-house "ML" and "AI" data systems. I'm nervous about it, but excited too.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why I was accepted over a more technically capable candidate, but I suspect it was because I really wanted to improve the situation for the customers. Right now I feel like I do a lot of busy work, but I feel like by moving into this area I might be able to make some improvements to the customer's experience through actually improving the data and the content. I think it'll be an interesting learning experience anyway. I think I'm looking forward to it, but I'm quite nervous too as I don't really know what to expect.

There are some members of my current team that I'm pretty sad to be leaving behind, but to be honest I think at least one of my team members will be glad to be rid of me. I'm hoping that my new team will be kind and accepting, and that they'll be quite laid-back like most teams I've been on before. I don't mind working hard every once in a while, but I don't want to feel like I'm expected to really push myself every single day, because that's really exhausting and stressful. I hope that by switching to work on fewer projects at a time, I'll have the time with the projects I'm working in to really get to understand how they work, and get comfortable working in them, because currently I struggle in aspects of all of the projects that my team own, and they own about 10 projects which is a bit insane.

But, well, I guess you can never predict what kind of situation you might find yourself in, I just hope that the atmosphere is nice and that it will be an environment where I can feel confident to ask questions and say when I don't agree with something. I want to learn a lot and become prepared, what with the economic situation recently, that I'll be able to find a good, well-paying place of work in the future if things go pear shaped.