A few weeks back I decided to leave Netlight. It has been great, and I have to say it feels a bit weird to leave such a cool company. The reasons for leaving is that I will be running my own company, and I want to be able to travel over longer periods of time.

Work

I will be exploring what it is like being a freelancing software developer. When I am leaving Netlight I am probably giving up some sort of power to say no. Netlight has a huge book of clients and a crazy high utilisation rate. This gives them the opportunity to turn down less exciting assignments in order to find the most fun and challenging work for their people. I will probably not be in that position to begin with. That is where my expectations are at anyway. I have saved up a bit, and Stockholm seems to be really hot right now when it comes to tech. It probably will not be an issue, I am just trying to set my expectations right.

My vision right now is basically to not work full-time over twelve, or perhaps six months. When I am on an assignment, I do not mind working as much as possible. But between the blocks of hard work I would like to spend longer periods of time in some sort of deeper vacation mode. Or perhaps investing my time and money in building some kind of product.

Travel

I am currently thinking a lot about this thing called solo travel. I do not feel like it is worth it to wait for someone else to go with me — I might be stuck waiting forever. Instead, I will be starting out on my own. Travelling solo is such a wide-spread thing now that I am sure I will be connecting with people pretty quickly. Visiting a co-working space or some kind of meetup probably helps a lot. Feeling lonely is definitely a big “issue”, but not to a degree where it gets in the way or stops me from trying it, it is more of a challenge to overcome.

The absolute worst case I can come up with for the travelling part is that I do not feel comfortable at all being solo, go for a few fun dives, write code from cafes and co-working spaces, and shoot some photos. I will fly back home after three weeks or so. What is the harm in that?

Work with me!

I have spent a lot of my time in the React eco-system. Redux has been a big part of that aswell. I enjoy working with design and UX challenges all the way from contributing to user-testing and data-driven decisions to implementing a design system. I am also comfortable with building a REST API or configuring a linux machine. I’ve previously worked with Laravel and PHP if that’s of any value.

At my current assignment we have been using pairing and mobprogramming to improve knowledge sharing, overall code quality and efficiency. I have also contributed to our agile work a bit by facilitating retrospectives. I would like to think that I communicate really well and I always strive to understand the business value and the why behind whatever software we are building.