Forem: aleksandarPerc

Me, AWS and Netlify

aleksandarPerc — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 07:44:46 +0000

Into the city

When I moved to Cloud City I noticed that everybody was nice and friendly. What was striking is that the community was large, but the technology everybody was using, was even larger.
I was new so I wanted to get to know the city. My idea was to make my MyApp scale quickly with the help of the technology of Cloud City and its community.

At the pub

I managed to find an apartment near Serverless Heights, which is a pretty large neighborhood in the area. The first few days were boring, but I found a small pub with a great beer named Codereviewer, the pub, and the beer are named Codereviewer.
One night I was sitting at the bar where several developers had been celebrating the end of a stressful sprint. They were very open so I joined the conversation from time to time. After few more beers, they started to talk about girls in the neighborhood and then somebody mentioned AWS and the moment just stopped. Each of the guys took a moment to bring back memories of her image, of her beauty. As it seemed AWS was the most wanted girl in the whole city and everybody was talking about her. One guy mentioned that she could come to this pub, and by the looks, everybody gave him I suspected that that was the reason they came to the pub. By listening carefully I understood that she wasn't an easy girl, but was approachable. She wouldn't expect dinners and presents and was very respectful of your money and hers too. She would always split the bill evenly. As long as you behaved you had a chance with her.

When I met her

The next day I came to the Codereviewer and sat at the bar, again. There was nobody I could recognize from the evening before. I ordered a cup of coffee and started scrolling on my mobile phone.
All of a sudden the murmur stopped, it took me a few seconds to understand what was happening. Everybody was looking at the door. I turned my head and there she was. AWS. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Long blond API Gateway was waiving as she walked. She was walking toward the bar with her beautiful legs, I raised my view toward her Cognito and a little bit more to her Lambdas. And what Lambdas she had! It was like she came out of PlayDev's magazine cover. Perfection.
She sat beside me. When she ordered her drink she turned toward me and just started the conversation. I won't go into details, but after I gave her some details about me, we were a couple. The first few days and weeks were incredible, it looked like the relationship was moving forward really fast. She let me play with her Lambdas and I played a lot I must admit. :-)

When I got to know her better

Weeks and months passed. Everything was great but we couldn't push our relationship to the next level. When things were going great she would distract with something out of the blue that she thought wasn't right at the moment. After a while, I noticed that I wasn't playing as much with her Lambdas anymore but was constantly preoccupied with "where are the keys", "you left the toilet seat up", "there are these bills you have to pay"... the list went on and on... For everything that she put on, there should be two guys waiting for her and her needs and I wasn't ready for that. I am a little bit conservative in that department. After several months we broke up. I just couldn't handle it anymore.
I was devastated. She just sucked all of the joy I had in me. I was thinking about leaving Serverless Heights and even my MyApp. Instead of working on MyApp, I was taking care of AWS. We all suffered.

And then came Netlify

After two months I met this girl named Netlify. I didn't need any manuals and she had great Lambdas. She is wild. Getting to know her Identity went quick. We just enjoyed being together and went from zero to married in no time. I just had to Git Push and MyApp will have a little sister NextApp in December.

Between you and me AWS and Netlify have the same Lambdas but don't say it to the guys at Codereviewer. ;-)

What if your web project was a house painting job?

aleksandarPerc — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 11:36:08 +0000

I had several jobs in my life, and one of them was painting houses.
This post is not an anecdote, instead, it is an analogy between our work as developers and something more familiar to the rest of the world.

So, let's get started!

What if your next job was as a painter instead of a front-end (or any other) JS developer? And you had a "standard" team you would have in a web project...
So, you have your manager, designer, backend developer, and, of course, a client.
And here the usual story goes... Your client Mr. C asks of you an offer for painting the interiors of his house.
The manager wants to make an impression on the client, and rushes to the team and asks for an estimate on the work required.
The team gathers and starts to discuss. The usual questions pop out and the manager has the answers ready, how many square meters does the house have, how many windows and doors, does it have furniture... All of a sudden the designer asks the purpose/type of the house, and everybody turns to him and gives him "the look". Why would he ask such a stupid question? The client asked to paint the house, why can't he just say what colors to use on which wall and get it over? Everybody ignores him and continues to estimate.
After a few seconds, a question pops in your head and you say it out loud "how old is the house", since you are the most experienced painter in the team it seems logical to ask such a question because... but the manager interrupts your thoughts with a loud voice, making sure everybody understands what he is saying "could we cut the stupid questions? WTF has the age of a house have to do with our job? Please focus on the estimate". You doubt yourself a little bit and go silent until everybody will be in a better mood.

After an hour everybody has put his expertise to work and came out with an estimate.
For a house of 100m2 = 325m2 to paint (the ceiling is at 2.25m so there is 10x10x2.25 of sidewalls and the ceiling)

Design: €300
Painting: €1300 (€4/m2 * 325)
Material: cca €300
Total: €1900

But the manager gives a second thought and decides he will add 30% to the €1900 and rounds it a little bit.
It is time to give the offer to the client. The client accepts delightfully the offer of €2500, which is much less than he expected.

The manager comes back to the team and "We have a contract! We are gonna earn some money!!".
Everybody is cheerful and the manager hands the address of the house. WAIT!! The developer realizes that the house is 50km up in the hills and they will have to travel each day to that location. The manager makes a quick adjustment to the project and proposes to work longer hours but they will have fewer days to travel. Not everybody is happy but it is what it is.
The next morning everybody is pumped out and just wants to get started. Even the manager decided to give a hand. They go to the store and buy the paint and brushes and head up to the hills for an hour-long ride.

It was an older house but well preserved, at least it looked like that from the outside. The team unpacked and entered the house. The inner walls had some cracks and they needed to be filled before they start painting. They realized they didn't bring any filler,. so the manager jumps in the car in an "agile" way and heads to the shop, while the designer and two painters start enlarging the cracks so the filler can enter.
The manager was back with the filler, which added €50 to the costs and an additional €120 for impregnation. The store manager recommended it to him because a wall with so many cracks would need it. He openly asked the painter (you) "why didn't you add the filler and impregnation to the costs?" and you reply "I've asked how old the house was, didn't i?".

You both decided to pass on this one since there was much work to be done and discussing simple mistakes wouldn't help.

The next day your team starts painting after the impregnation has dried out. Everything is going as planned, apart from moving the furniture. The client said there was furniture, but it was very old and heavy. So it takes a lot of time and effort to move it around. But as a team, you cooperate well and the furniture is out of the way. Because of that, it will take one more day to finish the job, but it is not such an issue since it didn't cause additional costs, apart from the travel.

The first coat is almost over and you have two more hours of daylight. So the team decides to go out for a beer to celebrate.

The next day everyone is at the house preparing for work, but you notice that there isn't enough paint to finish the job. The manager pulls out the estimations and all of a sudden his eyes open wide and his head is turning red. "How TF did we mess it up like this?" You take the piece of paper from his moving hand and soon find out that you forgot to calculate the inner walls. The estimate was only for the exterior facing walls, not for the kitchen, bathroom, and other inside walls. In a split of a second everybody is yelling at each other and pointing fingers. For a few minutes the rage goes on, but everybody manages to go quiet, but can't look each other in the face. By making a quick measurement and calculation you estimate that another €200 of paint is needed. The manager jumps into the car and runs off to buy more paint.
As much as the team has put the effort in finishing the job, due to the delays you can't finish it on time. The whole team is traveling home silently. Not a word was spoken.

The next day you all gather at the house and are in a better mood because there are just several more hours to finish the job and you are off.

By the end of the day, the work is finished. Everyone is still quiet but the work is done. The team waits for the client so he can take a look at the work and pay you off.
After several minutes in the house, the client is pretty happy with the work done. Everybody looks at each other silently, congratulating each other with a nod.
The client just has one remark and says it out loud "I noticed you didn't cover the furniture and floors, so I guess I'll pay tomorrow when you finish cleaning". And there is one more day and one more travel...

Now, take a few deep breaths. Try to calm down. Yes, it is happening all around the world.

There are many things that you can overlook in your project. Even the simplest ones. And it all adds costs to the project and lowers your profit. It is very easy to look in the other way and pretend it is not your job, or even to point fingers saying "You didn't give me enough time", however, there is responsibility toward your team, your firm, client, and in the end toward yourself.

The potential risks you can anticipate on each project or task are somewhat of an indicator of your and your team's seniority.
If you are solely focused only on immediate risks and currently don't have the mental power to predict possible risks then it means you are at the beginning of your digital career, but also if you predict too many risks and can't tell which are relevant or of higher priority. Education can bring only part of the skills you need, the other part must be "forged in fire".
Start small, and if your team does not have a habit of anticipating/detecting risks, you can do it for yourself, without a spoken word. With time you will get better at it and will be able to do it automatically, without actually thinking about it.

Projects will come and go, tasks will eventually end up in the Done column, what will not pass, as lightly, is the actions you've made in tough times. So, always have in mind to treat each other with respect and to act and think with the right amount of emotions.

What do we do for a living?

aleksandarPerc — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 07:44:34 +0000

When someone asks me “What do you do for a living?“, I usually answer what most of my colleagues say - “I make websites and applications”. For the average person that is all they need to satisfy their curiosity, however, there is a much deeper answer to the same question.

How it all began

It all started way before the internet era when we were just hunter-gatherers. Even back then some lazy person thought “Do I really have to go out each day? Is there a better way to do it? With less stress?”. So that same person started to observe the surroundings and noticed that instead of gathering he might start growing food. All of a sudden, he didn’t have to go that much outside and could focus on other things, more fun things.

From those days till today we have gathered in larger groups and optimized our efforts by specializing. In that way instead of everybody doing everything, we asked individuals to make just one thing but to be good at it. Now, everybody is doing a different thing but the group can do more of it and of better quality. Today's groups are called firms and we have individuals called specialists that create amazing things. If another group liked what yours were producing you could exchange.

But what if several groups were producing the same thing? Or even hundreds? At what rate could you exchange your products for the other? Things could stay as they are if everybody continued to produce the same amount and at the same quality, but that is not in human nature. If it were, we would be still climbing trees and living our lives not ever touching the ground.

The shift

In today’s times starting a war to get someone else’s goods is out of the question, so what we have left is competing with each other, to make our products stand out in whichever way we can, to make it more appealing to the others that want it. Today we call the “others” customers.

In every emerging business, there is always the starting point, where everybody is almost the same, then one firm makes a move and rises above the other. Those left on the bottom will eventually perish. That is the evolution in real-time. As things evolve competition gets higher. These days competition has gotten so high, that firms have to hire other firms to make more specialized work. Work that they can’t do themselves. Work that will give them a certain advantage over the other.

In this digital age is there a better solution than to hire a digital agency? We as digital agencies can create tools and experiences needed by others to achieve their goals. Also, we can take even the role of consultants and help firms set goals, tactics, and strategies. With our help firms can take a step higher moving away from the bottom, from disappearance.

Us! Finally...

Agencies group specialists and depending on the skills of those specialists they can create services that will be offered. The services provided depend greatly on the agency’s ability to attract and gather skilled specialists that will help the agency stand out and create a competitive advantage over the others in the field, so they can be chosen as providers by other firms.
Even if an agency provides services that look the same it will be at a different price, speed, or quality. Competition and evolution are the same for all. There is no escape from it.

Because of the competition and evolution and our desire to always achieve more, we have to be constantly learning, experiencing new things, and making sure we question and evaluate everything we learned so far, so we can create services that matter, that really make a difference.

“The services are a reflection of the people creating them.”

No project should be treated as the one before, because we risk falling into a trap that will make us walk always the same path, fall to the bottom and perish.

Analysts might try to track performance in the same way and create the same reports, believe me, it is doable. The designers could copy some designs they’ve seen and adjust the theme colors. Developers could reuse the code from another project and just make some tweaks. But by doing so, we are not creating a difference. Yes, it is easier. Yes, it is faster. But we won’t have something to look back one day and be proud of.

The meaning of our work

It is our responsibility as individuals to make an effort and create services and products that will help our clients stand out from the rest, that will be tailored by their needs and not ours. That will create a meaningful difference that will move them up on top of the competition.

Everybody can make a difference by first understanding the goals set and then tailoring a solution to meet that exact needs instead of just “walking the old path”.

In this internet era, where everything is moving so fast, everything is evolving at great speeds, more than many other fields. We are the ones making a significant difference by dedicating time to ourselves, our skills, the products and services we create and help the ones who are hiring us as agencies climb one step up on each project we make. We are the heroes of today.

So next time someone asks you “what do you do for a living?” you might answer something like “I make the tools needed by others that will help them evolve and survive today's competitive times. I help businesses, as well as individuals, succeed and create amazing products and experiences” but we know what a reaction to that answer could be, so you might stick to “I make websites and applications for a living”. ;-)