Reflection on 2023 and Goals for Next Year

This year, I reflect on the past year and write my goals for next year.

Personal

I reflect on whether I was able to do what I couldn't do last year.

Kubernetes → I didn't achieve CKA certification, but I spent some time studying.

Expanding knowledge of AWS and GCP → I was able to do some work with AWS. I obtained the GCP Associate Cloud Engineer certification.

ISUCON → I was able to participate this year.

Speaking at external conferences → I had an accepted event, but I had to decline due to various circumstances. I have an accepted CFP for next year's event, so I should be able to speak next year.

Overall, I can say that I was able to do a fair amount of what I couldn't do last year.

Every year, I organize what I want to do (based on interests), what I should do (things I want to do for my future career), and what I need to do (things that are better to do for work), and set my goals for the year. This year looked like this:

System Design → Achieved
Implementation of Radix Tree and integration into goblin → Still too difficult for me...
Computer Science → Not achieved
Obtained GCP Associate Cloud Engineer → Achieved
Improved knowledge of Go → Did a bit
Kubernetes → Did a bit
Algorithms and Data Structures → Did reasonably well

I was able to spend time on everything except for 3, so I feel like I did a fair amount of what I wanted to do.

I was able to make it a routine to output what I had input (normalizing the combination of input and output), and I was able to make coding quizzes a part of my routine. While it's easy to slack off on things that require daily accumulation, I was able to work on them sustainably by effectively controlling my motivation and time usage.

On the other hand, I couldn't spend much time creating the software I wanted to make. While I had opportunities to write code through coding quizzes, I haven't been able to write much code otherwise...

Work

This year, I took a six-month parental leave, so I only worked for half the year.

Since it was only half a year, what I could achieve was limited compared to previous years, but I was finally able to start a project I had wanted to tackle for a long time, which was good.

It had been a while since I had been away from work for six months, but I was able to return more smoothly than I expected and felt a bit of growth compared to before my return, so there were no negative aspects at all. (The short, focused time I spent honing my skills during parental leave was not wasted.)

Thanks to parental leave, I became more conscious of doing things as efficiently as possible, and my daily rhythm became healthier, which was good. I want to continue this in the future.

Depending on family circumstances, I think it was very good that I was able to take parental leave. Children grow remarkably fast, so I want to secure as much irreplaceable time as possible to watch their growth up close.

Reflection on Goals

I wrote my goals for 2023 as follows:

I want to set the goal of "creating weapons." This is an extension of my 2021 goals, but I want to be conscious of something a bit different. Specifically, I want to have something in my area of expertise that is a hard skill, not a soft skill. I don't think I can reach the level of a pioneer or expert in that area within a year, so I want to have at least one thing that I can confidently say I'm good at.

Although I wrote this for my goals, I feel like I ended up going in a direction quite different from my goals, as I was doing things broadly and shallowly rather than deepening something. However, I feel like I was able to plant the seeds to grasp something I can call my strength.

Goals for Next Year

I want to set the goal of "increasing my weapons."

Regardless of whether they are soft skills or hard skills, I vaguely think that to strengthen the combination of skills as a risk hedge, I need to increase or develop what I can say I am good at or capable of.

Thoughts

I am thinking about what kind of career I want over the next ten years, dividing it into short-term (up to 35 years old) and long-term (35 to 40 years old). My thoughts on this have been stable this year, with little fluctuation regarding my career.

On the other hand, regarding what actions I should take toward my career plan, I have some confusion due to the rise of generative AI this year.

That said, I have somewhat organized my thoughts on what stance I should take in response to the evolution of generative AI, so I want to bet on that and look ahead to the future.

Next year, due to changes in my life stage, I have a feeling that it will become more critical to figure out how to create disposable time and how to consume time efficiently.

I think there will be changes not only in terms of time but also in values, priorities, and life plans.

In such a context, I wonder if my vision of how I want to be as a software engineer will also change.

I hope next year will be a good year both personally and professionally.

In summary, I believe that to handle generative AI, humans need the ability to understand what generative AI produces and the ability to give instructions that generative AI can understand. Even if we leave the conversion of knowledge into some output to AI, the source of knowledge itself is human, so I believe we should not abandon learning. If a society comes where we can leave everything to AI, that would be singularity, and I am not considering the future of that time...

Postscript

There were several things I had to do in my personal life.

Study real estate
- I want to shift from renting to owning a home due to changes in my life stage, so I will study.
Review insurance
- I think it's time to review this due to changes in my life stage and age, so I will do it.
Health promotion
- I am in my early 30s, but I want to review my diet, exercise, and health in preparation for my 40s and 50s.
- I want to invest time and money to raise my health awareness without being stingy.

After turning 30, there was a period when I still lived with the mindset of being in my 20s, but this past year, I feel like I have aged both physically and mentally...

I feel a bit of pressure and conservativeness to make my life more solid, so I want to keep fresh by gaining various stimuli every day.