Truth be told, the most fitting word for my 2010 is crazy.
Working crazy hours: back-to-back 80+-hour weeks (Q2) and working through four-straight weekends (Q4). Industry changing crazy fast: Facebook credits, FrontierVille, EA buying Playfish, Disney buying Playdom. Zynga crazy hiring: acquiring companies in Austin, China, and Germany, setting up shop in Japan, and filling our SF offices to the point where you have to get lucky to get a parking spot… or a restroom stall. (And crazy over-counting: finding instances of double- and triple-counting in our tracking, heh).
So much has happened and so much has changed that it’s hard to believe only a year has passed. I’m a senior dev now—asked more questions than I ask others. (Me and another guy compete for most-cynical senior dev on the team). I won two company awards (Q2 and Q3). My closest friends on the team are now on a new team working on a new game. We went to Vegas… and almost left one guy behind. We had a month-long, office Dominion league. My car was totaled and I bought a new car, in the process becoming thoroughly frustrated with the car choices these days. I went to New York City and ate a lot of good food including lunch at Jean Georges (three Michelin stars!).
And silver exploded. And I read a book.
I’d say I fulfilled my resolution for 2010, no doubt due to being at a company where even one week is a long time. 2010 wasn’t an easy year for me; it was a lot of hard work and late nights. But things worked out well, so I’m recycling my resolution for 2011: “Make big(ger) plans; aim high(er) in hope and work”.
I’m cheating, honestly. I already know I will fulfill that resolution. Much of what I learned, worked on, and secretly slipped into the codebase in 2010 is in preparation for a refactoring of the front-end code that no one asked for and no one will schedule my time for, but is desperately needed and is a project I can’t stop thinking about. Ditto for a redesign. (I’m a cheater; I’ve already started working on both during this “break”.)
Like I said: crazy.