This year was an exciting one for me — I graduated from St. Andrews with a B.Sc in Computer Science, learnt to snowboard and worked at a fast-paced start up in San Francisco. The year flew by — I went straight from the manic study of my final year in an honours degree, to the workaholism and excitement of a fast paced job.

Travels

Although the majority of my air miles this year were work related, at the beginning of the year my uni friends and I managed to squeeze in some proper travel — a week snowboarding in Bulgaria, followed by taking the Orient Express from Sofia to Istanbul. It was a great success; I proved that gravity pays no attention to skill and was shredding black runs by my fourth day on a board; We saw the Whirling Dervishes dance in Istanbul and bartered in the Grand Bazaar

Getting flown out to San Francisco for my interview felt like a holiday, and although a weekend isn't really long enough to adjust to the time zones of the other side of the world, was a nice break from the final weeks of uni.

Quitting in a Downturn

As some of you may have heard, I recently quit my job at Slide and have moved back to the UK. Slide was a great company, and I had the privilege of working alongside a great team at the cutting edge of web technology. I learnt a huge amount - probably more in my 6 months there than in all my years of uni. For several reasons, however, whilst evaluating my position and looking forward to 2009 I decided to move on, and so have returned to the UK for the immediate future.

There is much talk of unemployment and difficulty finding work with the current economic crisis, however I am hopeful that the value of my skills will surpass the shortages of the recession — I'm highly mobile, quick learning and hard working — I don't think that I will be massively affected by the situation.

I plan on working freelance as a web developer for at least the next few months. I am confident that the skills that I had the opportunity to develop at Slide will stand me in good stead as a freelancer. I am looking forward to the increased freedom and self reliance contracting will bring.

If you know of anyone looking for a talented web developer with experience designing highly trafficked dynamic web applications, please do not hesitate to contact me.