Goals

This is where I keep track of my tech goals every year to keep myself on track in my tech career journey.

2023 Goals

My goal for 2023 is to:

  1. Get back to delivering talks in at least 1 meetup by June 2023 and 1 tech conference by September 2023.

  2. Block out a weekend every month to write a tech post that documents my learning journey - sharing with a wider audience would be a bonus.

  3. Start generating content ideas that goes beyond technical implementation by reading and actively taking notes interesting things I read.
    • Part of technical leadership is about being aware of the bigger picture and being a better human. This is one of the ways I intend to act upon my mentor’s advice to build up my expert power.
  4. Continue learning functional programming through writing more Scala code and documenting my learnings through my functional programming series
    • This is a longer-term project that I intend to shape gradually on the side, to bridge the learning gap for data practitioners who would like to learn Scala for functional programming.
  5. Monetize my speaking engagements / expertise through designing a data engineering course (and other side hustles)

2022 Goals

My goal for 2022 is to:

  1. Attain my seniority and become a Senior Data Engineer
    • Update 2022-08-27: As of 2022-08-08, I am a Senior Data Engineer.
  2. Speak at PyCon 2022 (Might as well give it another try, right?)
    • Rejected. :sadface:
  3. Deliver talks in 2 tech conferences locally and internationally
    • Pivoted away to focus on my career transtiion.
  4. Pass AWS Certified Machine Learning Specialty exam by March 2022
    • Update 2022-08-27: Passed as of 2022-05-07.
  5. Enhance my Github portfolio with a meaningful side project that demonstrates end-to-end data / machine learning solutions
    • Update 2022-08-27: I am currently working on a meaningful side project that demonstrates end-to-end data solutions for a non-profit. Not sure if the code repository (if any) would be hosted on Github though.
  6. Continue learning functional programming through writing more Scala code and documenting my learnings through my functional programming series

  7. Write a tech post every month to document my learning journey and share with a wider audience
    • Update 2022-08-27: Due to turbulent changes in my personal and professional life, I would have to cut down on documenting my learning journey publicly for the time being.
  8. Make regular weekly updates to my TIL blog, which is built using Pelican
    • Similar to above; currently using Notion for quick note-taking on the go and still trying to find a suitable TIL approach that works for me.
  9. Monetize my speaking engagements / expertise through designing a data engineering course (and other side hustles)

2021 Goals

My goal for 2021 is to:

  1. Speak at PyCon 2021 (I can dream, right?)
    • Standby :sadface:
  2. Deliver talks in 4 tech conferences locally and internationally
    • Tally: 4 (2 pre-recorded, 2 virtual live)
    • Update 2021-10-31: Goal achieved - With my last live talk at PyData Global 2021 and the next conference (PyCon APAC 2021) being a pre-recorded talk, I have wrapped up on tech speaking for year 2021 and will be planning for year 2022.
  3. Pass CKAD exam by August 2021
  4. Enhance my Github portfolio with meaningful side projects that demonstrate end-to-end data solutions
  5. Learn functional programming through writing Scala code and documenting my learnings
  6. Write tech posts at least once a month to document my learning journey and (hopefully) share with more people
    • Update 2021-12-31: I tried, but burnout and imposter syndrome got the better of me. :sadface:
  7. Make regular weekly updates to my TIL blog, which is built using Pelican
    • Update 2021-12-31: Same as above :sadface:
  8. Make at least 4 Pull Requests on open-source projects
    • Abandoned due to multiple competing commitments in advancing my tech career
  9. Monetize my speaking engagements / expertise through designing a data engineering course (and other side hustles)
    • Update 2021-12-30: Made a tiny first step! Stay tuned for more updates.

2020 Goals

My goal for 2020 is to:

  1. Speak at a headliner tech conference in Asia
    • Update 2020-01-16: I will be speaking at FOSSASIA Summit 2020 in Singapore, which is on 19 - 21 March 2020.
    • Update 2020-03-22: Goal achieved - I spoke at FOSSASIA Summit 2020 on 20 March 2020. It was a relatively muted conference this time due to COVID-19, but it’s a good start. Reflection on talk here
  2. Speak at a tech conference outside of Asia (preferably in Europe and/or North America) (and hope I do not embarrass my country on the international stage)
    • Update 2020-05-21: I will be speaking at EuroPython 2020 Online, which is on 23 - 26 July 2020. This is a significant milestone for me as it will be my first time speaking at Europe’s largest Python conference, and I am immensely honoured to be sharing the (virtual) stage with highly-esteemed speakers in the global Python community.
  3. Deliver talks in at least 4 tech conferences locally and internationally
    • Tally: 7 (5 with 1 talk, 1 with 2 talks, 1 invited keynote)
    • Note: Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, international travel to conferences is made virtually impossible and many conferences have been moved online.
    • Update 2020-12-12: I delivered my first invited keynote at PyCode Conference 2020.
  4. Enhance my Github portfolio with more side projects
  5. Write more tech posts to document my learning journey and (hopefully) share with more people
  6. Make more regular updates to my TIL blog, which is built using Pelican
  7. Make at least 4 Pull Requests on open-source projects
    • Tally: 5 (3 merged, 1 aborted, 1 in progress)
    • Current research interest: Temporal analysis of large-scale transportation networks to model the evolution of epidemic networks and predict COVID-19 trends.
    • As a beneficiary of open source, I look forward to taking part in online sprints to contribute to open source projects that have benefited the data community.
    • Update 2020-12-26: Another pull request to pandas 1.2 merged!

2019 Goals

My goals for 2019 was to:

  1. Speak at a tech meetup (and hope my reputation in the tech community does not go down the drain)
    • Update 2019-09-01: Goal achieved - I did my first-ever public tech meetup talk on 27th August 2019, and over 100 people attended my talk (a larger turnout than usual). Reflection on talk here.
  2. Build up my Github portfolio
    • I uploaded more repositories on Github, filed issues on BigDataX workshop repos, and even made a pull request on pandas-dev!
  3. Write more tech posts to document my learning journey and (hopefully) share with more people
  4. Speak at a tech conference so that I can share what I’ve learnt with even more people
    • Update 2019-08-22: I will be speaking at Women Who Code CONNECT Asia 2019 in Singapore on 31st August 2019. See you there!
    • Update 2019-09-01: Goal achieved - I delivered my first-ever conference talk on 31st August 2019. Reflection on talk here
  5. Make my first Pull Request on an open-source project
    • Update 2020-01-03: Goal achieved My first pull request on pandas 1.0 was merged!