EDC as my CV

Just before my latest job change, there was, of course, a period of updating, polishing and redesigning my CV. Originally, and for quite some time, I have used Europass template as probably every European student does:

Then decided to streamline and try to get more visual/minimalist approach with custom CV done in Inkscape:

And in the end settled with CV as code in Markdown format and hosted on GitHub as it offers the best possibility for extension:

But whilst helping a friend write his CV I started thinking about what does that sheet of paper actually represents and how is it actually perceived... There is always that little extra something that is actually missing to connect facts into a full picture. Thinking about it and literally looking through my pockets, backpack and desk drawers I decided to try and think about how do actually my souvenirs, memorabilia and mementos describe my past experiences and give some insights into my thoughts on relevant topics describing my career as a set of mementos and trivia rather then a sheet of paper.

1) Nextorch Tactical Pen (University - BSc Weapon Systems)

This is probably the oldest item on this list - a beautifully machined aerospace grade alumin(i)um pen with a Fisher SpacePen cartridge on one and tungsten (wolfram) carbide tip on the other end. It can be used: to write upside-down, in space (0G), underwater, minus double-digit to plus triple digit degrees Celsius, and alternatively, it is an effective Kubaton or glass-breaker. The very definition of tacticool, with Darth Vader, approved mate pitch black powder coating.

Even simple things can be made into a state-of-the-art product. There is always a niche for high-quality products. This pen instantly brings back vivid memories of Miroljub Ad?i?, Professor Emeritus, who always used to say: "My dear colleagues - whatever you decide to do, be the best in that field and have no worries about finding a job. There is and always will be lack of highly skilled experts in just about any given area". That vision of "elite technological mages" as Professor Mom?ilo Milinovi? used to call them is perfectly complementing Artur C. Clarke's 3rd law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Needless to say, that is something I have strived for ever since, an amalgam of arcane knowledge and excellence, always trying to grow, expand and learn new skills.

2) NI Badge / Mission & Vision Statement (National Instruments Internship)

Simple. Clear. Effective. Issued to every single employee of NIEE Employee alongside his badge. Containing mission and vision statements alongside simple vector graphic.

Company culture is something you may not be able to fully formulate, funnel into a text form, or fancy graphics, but it IS something you can feel. Even more so if you have ever been in more prestigious/elitist ones. On the other hand, you can definitively feel the lack of it and interestingly enough it changes through time and especially older members can feel it. In my humble experience, rapid scaling is absolutely incompatible with culture preservation. Simple things, habits, and benefits are the first one to go with new optimization. It is impossible to form a culture based on a rigid set of external / limiting constraints, but to paraphrase Dave Snowden - in complex systems you can only stimulate positive and shun upon negative behavior, thus forming set of enabling constraints which are a sort of endoskeleton. Culture is a company backbone and as animal kingdom shows - a limiting exoskeleton will not get you far. NI was "built to last" on a fail forward attitude. In a world of blazing fast technological progress it's all about finding right people able to handle it. Those who will try rather than freezing and in doing so will inevitably from time to time fail. Removing fear of failing is a safety net and enables and promotes learning. There is nice finesse alternative phrasing of this principle Du?an (dear friend and ex-colleague) often likes to point out - when fall is imminent try falling flat on your face rather than on your butt. For sure it hurts more, but you at least covered the distance in the process and progressed.

3) NI Screwdriver (National Instruments LabVIEW Student Ambassador)

Interestingly enough this was one of most highly sought out National Instruments giveaways. Pen-like screwdriver perfectly worthy of an engineer's pocket protector. Ideal for adjusting Phoenix Contact connectors. Additionally NI kept them in high demand by not giving away too much.

The style is something that you can instantly recognize and if over-enforced can easily lose its charm. SOLID principles pop right into my mind when looking at this one. Single responsibility - It is not a Swiss army knife or a multi-tool, it does one thing only and it is pretty decent at it. Another thing I'm thinking about here is sometimes prestige comes from controlled production/distribution. Like a women's dress: if it too revealing it is just plain vulgar, but some mystery is spicing one's imagination and letting mind fill in the blanks. It is essential to keep volumes at manageable rates rather flooding the market, killing interest in a product or compromising in quality. "Never compromise - not even in the face of Armageddon" - Rorschach, Watchmen.

4) IMU Sensor (EdePRo - Dpt of Guidance Navigation & Control)

This small trinket is an Inertial Measurement Unit from one of the prototypes. Broken even if maybe it does not look so right away.

Actually, this is a souvenir from one of my field tests during my time in defense R&D. It was broken during impact and still carries some of the soil as the missile shattered. A first thing that comes to my mind that there are a stress and shock limit to any and everything. People included. Few thousand G force will break you instantly, or leave you damaged beyond any repair. You can always push yourself further, but be aware that every single system has limitations and that the "mind over matter" mantra is not enough to get through every single rough patch. More importantly, as someone said - as a teenager, I used to fight to prove myself, with the experience I learned to choose my battles. Energy is a limited resource and there is no need to waste it for things that will not benefit you in the long run.

5) Key Ring (SRTechnics, Bosch, USB Stick, Ljubljana Half marathon)

"Remove before flight" - reminds me of time in SRTechnics, times in MRO (Maintenance, Repair Overhaul) industry. Working with aircraft industry may sound a lot more glorious then it is - never ending self-serving bureaucratic chains. However, procedures do limit both possibilities of error and the possibility of progress.

There are always procedures and heuristics that do exist for a reason. Typically to provide guidance and bind complexity to a more manageable set of prescribed actions. Problem is that complexity is not easily tamed and what worked yesterday might be devastating tomorrow. More fitting would probably be ever-evolving guiding principles, but again that would require for a very specific mindset. I've seer bureaucracies detach from business starting to develop life and strange symbiotic (best possible scenario) or parasitic (realistic case) relationship with the core business, evolving self-serving procedures on its own as defense mechanisms and probably could continue their unholy existence even after the failure of the original core business. Personally, that is why I believe bureaucracy should be minimal and constantly kept in check and purged with fire before it lays eggs should it try to grow for its own sake.

USB stick - Saved my neck on numerous occasions. Sometimes unexpectedly faster alternative to shared drives.

On the other hand. Sometimes you need to bend, bypass or break rules to do any real work. Actually, this is precisely why big companies hire consultants for, as a sort of a hack for their internal procedures. A fresh, eager and unbound force. As a consultant, you will in a sort of a firefighting role: When things are going smoothly don't expect credit, but when they start getting off track do expect fire and don't expect to be loved - settle for mutual respect. How often have you called firefighters just to say they are doing a great job or to thank them for a great work they are doing?

Lenovo docking station key. Security requirements.

It is faster and better to ask for forgiveness then to ask for permission, but if breaking the rules - respect the most obvious, simple and direct ones. If you are kind enough to at least try and offer some respect for the formalities, you could get some slack or play dumb when breaking rules. For me among most interesting were encounters when faced with a cargo plane cult of some form of Agile, whether it is Lean, Kanban, Scrum, 6 S(t)igma, TRIZ. There will always be high priest adamant in beliefs, but in the end, methodologies are just sets of tools. And as with all tools, if you get too attached and emotional, you will be hammering screws in no time. And software is not a physical product and as such can be hardly treated as a traditional manufacturing process.

Ljubljana half-marathon finisher medal. Beautiful city with people supporting you all the way through. I do highly recommend it.

Perseverance. Everything requires time and energy. I am not Murakami, but a prolonged effort is an enriching experience. Breaking the wall feels awfully liberating, but while everybody will agree on how awesome end results maybe - you do need to be at least a bit masochist to like the process of getting there. Developing masochism and having support will help you as the journey is well worth it.

6) Bomb Mug (SRTechnics partying gift)

Bomb shaped beverage container.

If you follow most of the rules and are able to provide quality time and again, you will gain benefits. Those that considered you quirky might not come to like you, but will surely respect you and that should be enough for a stable working environment. Respect is more often important than love, as long as we all agree to cut down on backstabbing and have open communication. Interestingly there is always time for coffee and chip chat colleagues, as getting to know them often it will not only make your life but also work easier. Strangely enough, I always feel like both an outsider and integral team member everywhere I worked. Maybe my being open-minded and outspoken led other people to treat me in the same fashion.

7) Branded Paperclips (Zuhlke)

One of the first thing that I noticed during an interview with Zuhlke - high quality branded paperclips. To this day I have one on my passport back cover to attach tickets when traveling.

When operating as premium service there is no space for cheapness or questionable quality, even in trivial everyday objects. Surely it is a marketing thing, but as a consultant, one should always behave as if under customer microscope, because that is often the case. I had an opportunity to work with different masters of this trade and it was a pleasure being alongside fighting through enemy (code) lines with pure skill and nothing but a Swiss army knife in the pocket. What was more intriguing and inspiring was my senior colleague and mentor at a time who would keep his calm in the eye of a storm. Somehow in his presence, even if it seemed passive from time to time, problems would disappear as if he would change objective reality and bend space-time to make them trivial and outdated. His magic was that of least intrusive action and minimal energy touch that would set system in motion. Having seen that people well in their fifties stay active software engineers and kick ass did both inspire me and made me set a personal goal. 

8) SECRID Wallet (Zuhlke partying gift from colleagues)

Awesome and stylish minimalist wallet. Premium quality leather around RFID blocking aluminum. Do check them out.

Pareto principle 80-20 in practice: 80% users use only 20% functionality, you can develop 80% of your product in 20% project time... or in this case, if agree to cut down your wallet to 20% essential functionality - you will reduce its volume by 80%. The best possible solutions are typically simplest - Ocamm's razor. In software, good architecture is clean, minimal and beautifully self-evident. Over-engineering is a form of academic masturbation and thus barren. Sorry for my vulgarity beforehand and the long quote coming, but I just can't beat C. A. R. Hoare: "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. It demands the same skill, devotion, insight, and even inspiration as the discovery of the simple physical laws which underlie the complex phenomena of nature."

9) SEIKO 5 Watch (Zuhlke company partying gift)

This is my humble opinion one of the best bang-per-buck watches out on the market with automatic non-winding movement with a date and day complication, pure, simple and most of all not-too-big like nowadays popular ashtray-sized watches. 21 jewels. Not Swiss made.

There is no school like the old school and you can make good things for a decent price. Getting this strange alchemy right is not an easy task, but companies and products that have achieved this gained cult following and stable enthusiast fan base. Also as a mechanical engineer I cannot, but admire analog solutions for analog problems, resistant to nuclear holocaust and EMP blasts. Reliability does not require peak, but adequate performance.

10) Passport

I got my first passport with only two weeks on this planet and left the country with just ~40 days and I have collected them ever since. During volatile nineties, I've got quite a few as my country changed and shrunk (SFRJ -> SRJ -> SCG -> SER) and as my father worked in Ministry Of Foreign Affairs, at a times, I have also had a service passport and a diplomatic one.

Pack Fast and Travel Light. As my wife says - if you don't like where you are for God's sake move away - you are not a tree. Please do not claim that there is no alternative as there always is. For me feeling as solely responsible for my destiny is not cumbersome, but liberating. As already mentioned - coming of age for me meant learning how to handle fight/flight/freeze reflex. There is no need to stay and fight for your beliefs every single time. There will always be injustice and people will be wrong on the internet as well. I am what I am and see no need per se to explain myself or my actions to others.

11) Wedding ring

Damascus stainless steel. Handcrafted, both forged and engraved in Czech Mountains by a family run company Kredum.

Sometimes value does not come from raw materials item is made from but from time and skill invested in crafting it. We all are our own products in a sense, and despite a head start, or a handicap there is nobody else to blame for the end result. There is so more to life than just job that defines us. I did always admire people that were focused on solely one goal, but I also felt that is a bit unrealistic, or perchance too sterile, rational and emotionless. Some of the most interesting people did meander their ways through life until (if ever) getting it right.

Conclusion?

I feel that my mementos bring up thoughts on relevant topics and that could start a dialogue that is far better suited to describe me, but that however requires time. Time - free running counter, the only thing that we do actually have an abundance of and constantly lack.

What about you - what trinkets would you consider as your representatives and ambassadors? Do you feel that EDC is more descriptive then CV?