2022 hasn't been without its challenges. We are still an evolving young digital agency. But we've found our legs this year. If 2021 was our blast off then 2022 was our first orbit. Experience played a large part in weathering the storms that came our way. But also, a little bit of luck.

At its heart, Stack Five is a people-first company. We just happen to be coders and technology nerds. When Jordan and I first dreamed up the idea for Stack Five, it was only ever about creating a place where we would love to work. We wanted to have a team of great people that enjoyed working with each other and shared a love of building things with code. The fact that others have joined us on this journey is amazing to me. Their trust in us to lead this team is still something that I don't take lightly.

This year we've had some turnover. That always sucks. But everyone that has left has moved on to bigger roles with more responsibility. This makes me happy! Developers that have worked with us grow rapidly because they get more ownership and autonomy. It's one of the biggest draws of working with us since you don't often get to make technology and architecture choices on bigger teams. Unfortunately, this also means that they outgrow their role quicker than we anticipate. And it's tough for us to compete on some of the absurd salaries in the tech space since we're just a small agency. So we understand and are always grateful for the time that we get with our team members.

Seeing people develop both professionally and personally is one of the most rewarding things about running a team. It's amazing to see the difference that confidence makes in an already competent developer.

We've been fortunate enough to find like-minded people both inside and outside of our company. Partners have been the story of our sustained and shared success this year. It has been a great way to support other businesses and bring value to our clients. We were also accepted into the 

 this year. This was a huge milestone for us because we've been big proponents of Next.js and Vercel.

This is the fun part! We did 19 projects as a team in 2022. They ranged from 1-day tiny open-source libraries to 8-month greenfield product launches to 12-month enterprise contracts. Last year I made a spreadsheet to visualize our projects throughout 2021. This year I decided to do something a little more visual. #dataviz 😂

A wordcloud of the technologies that we used in all of our projects this year.

Unsurprisingly, Next.js is the largest word in our wordcloud. Vercel is right up there as well. We really focused on Next.js + Vercel this year, and almost half of our projects were built with this pairing. That's why 

 was such a huge deal for us as a team! Node.js was our second most used technology. This makes a lot of sense as Node.js allows us to fill a customization gap where platforms are lacking. Sanity became our headless CMS of choice this year. And building custom Discord bots was a surprising, but welcome, new area where we were able to help clients.

A pie chart illustrating the percentage of days spent on our projects in 2022.

Last year, 3 of our projects represented about 70% of our total work days. This year has been very different. We're a smaller team and our engagements have been shorter. Call me an optimist, but there have been some interesting silver linings from working on smaller engagements.

It's already hard to build a culture as a remote team. Being on a full-time engagement tends to further pull you away from the team. You're essentially embedded on the client's team. Having more greenfield projects has allowed us to be more collaborative. We're able to be more involved in each other's day-to-day work.

Longer-term contracts usually require our full-time hours with a client. Having shorter engagements has allowed us to be more flexible with vacations, personal projects, and team events.

3) Refined processes and increased learning.

Shorter engagements haven't meant less work. It's just meant that we've put in more reps under our belt. We've created boilerplates, templates, and processes that have sped up our delivery times. And we've been able to take learning opportunities with new technologies, like Discord bots, and turn them into paid work with clients.

At the beginning of this year, Jordan and I made 4 goals for Stack Five. We ended up making 2 of those goals. The other 2 goals were great lessons in running a small business during a changing market landscape and an economic recession.

Our first goal was to grow our revenue. By the end of this year, we'll make about 60% of the revenue that we did in 2021. We saw roughly the same amount of leads as last year though. But I noticed that there was a reluctance to spend or pull the trigger on projects. Many of our high-quality leads from referrals or existing clients were pushed into 2023. Some clients decided to try and take on their projects internally or prioritize other projects first. I don't always get the full picture when talking to clients. But my gut tells me that people are being more conservative. This makes sense considering the mass tech layoffs, interest rates, and inflation.

Our second goal was to grow our team. Obviously, this doesn't work if you don't have the revenue to support it. At the beginning of the year, we started with a team of 5 full-time developers. By mid-year, we had 2 members leave. We decided to only backfill one position, which ended up being a good decision. If we had overextended ourselves then we may have been forced to lay off. Instead, we've got runway well into 2023 and can keep everyone employed and busy.

Our third goal was to improve our team's experience. It's exceedingly hard to build a culture as a remote company. When I worked in an office, I used to go around at lunch and gather people to try out a new restaurant. At my startup, we played video games every lunch. We've tried a few things with our team at Stack Five. Some have worked and some haven't. What's been the most important is that we've tried. Now, we have a few things that have stuck and our team looks forward to those things. And none of them include awkward forced social interaction 😂

Our last goal was to strengthen our brand. 

 was a huge part of that. This redesign has taken our brand to a new level. We have our good friend 

 to thank for that. We also came to the realization that (for us) our brand is our people. We are a people-first company. For myself, that has meant being more consistent on 

. It's not about posting content for the sake of marketing. It's about writing and sharing honestly about our experience.

This year I learned a lot more about my own motivations and why I continue to walk this path. Understanding your own motivations is vital when you're running a business. Even though we made less money and didn't meet all of our goals, we pivoted and made good decisions. In hindsight, more money and more people aren't very good goals anyways. They don't line up with our values. And they depend on a lot of factors outside of our control.

I feel grateful to have made it this far as a company. So many things could have gone a different way. I am grateful for a partner like Jordan. Our personalities and skill sets fit together like puzzle pieces. We've been creating magic since the first time we worked together years ago. And I'm lucky to call him my best friend. I am grateful for our team. We are a small but mighty bunch. Each one of us could be the rockstar on any dev team in any top-tier company. And somehow we've managed to find each other.

This year has been much less stressful than previous years from a business standpoint. That's been critical for me because my personal life has been much more stressful. We have more processes in place, so a lot of things feel more effortless. We've also narrowed our focus with our technology niche and our partnerships. In our previous years, the only goal was survival. In 2022, it's been more about defining the future. And our roadmap is clearer than ever to me.

Stack Five - Reflections on 2022

When I resigned from my first job, I told my manager that I wanted more pain 😅

What I meant was that I wanted to learn more and to be stretched. I wanted more responsibilities and higher expectations of myself.

For the next 3 years, I dove head first into the world of consulting, startups, and entrepreneurship.

I got to work with talented teams and brilliant people. I learned and absorbed as much as I could.

Subjecting myself to this sort of rigorous learning by immersion had some adverse side effects.

Learning a new job and then figuring out how to be good at it is just the beginning. You also have to learn processes and, most importantly, people. It took a heavy mental toll on me and I found myself burnt out several times over this period.

Being around people that are experts at what they do can leave you feeling like you don't belong on the team. Constantly being the least experienced person is the best way to learn, but you become very aware of how little you know.

Family and personal time were sacrificed for professional growth. I had to work hard to balance work and my family. But things like my hobbies or time with friends suffered.

My health became secondary because I didn't make time to focus on it. Exercising was almost nil and I would eat out often. I also had the toxic mentality that sacrificing sleep for "the grind" was some sort of badge of honor.

, I decided to try and figure out how to deal with the chaos. I didn't really have much of a framework in the previous 3 years and mostly just dealt with things as they came.

I wanted to focus on implementing more balance into my life. I didn't want my kids to grow up without ever seeing their Dad. And I needed to improve my mental and physical health.

Here are some of the things that worked for me:

Instead of being goal-oriented and results-focused, I decided to create a schedule and routine that would help me to spend time on the activities and areas that I cared about. The idea was to grow in the areas that mattered to me through consistent and manageable effort.

, I scheduled time every week for outreach. The idea was that showing up every day and talking about our business would eventually help us to find more clients and developers to work with. To this day I can't explain the formula to you. I just know that it has worked. Today we have a team of 5 passionate developers working with a handful of awesome clients. I am still amazed that we've made it here and I am grateful for our success!

Another example was bringing consistency to my health. In the beginning, my wife and I just knew that we wanted to live healthier. We started to fix our eating habits by committing to only eating out Friday - Sunday. We also started working out for 10 minutes 3 times a week. These were life changes that we felt were manageable for us. This evolved over the course of the last 3 years and our diet and exercise routines look very different today. I've lost 55lbs to date, but more importantly, I feel a lot better day-to-day physically 

a video with Jerry Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais, Chris Rock, and Louis CK

. In their discussion, Jerry is asked when he felt like he had made it as a comedian. His answer always stuck with me. He said that when he made a decision to be a comedian and went out to his first club, he had made it. Then after that, it was just showing up every day. The success and money would come eventually, but that wasn't the goal. The goal was just to get out there and be what you wanted to be.

This was a profound realization for me, and it's a mindset that I've adopted. It has helped me to detach from the idea that success comes from earning a certain amount of money or meeting some business/career goal. Success for me is doing the things that bring me satisfcation and being able to spend time with people I enjoy and care about.

This was the single biggest factor in helping me to bring balance back into my life. It was also the hardest one to implement and commit to. It took a lot of reflection, consideration, and time. It wasn't a simple decision between a few important things and a few unimportant things. At this stage in my life, everything that I give my attention to is of pretty high importance to me. Sorting through that and deciding to cut out something is hard.

As an example, not too long ago I realized that I had not been spending enough time with my parents. There were months between visits. They weren't getting any younger, and I became even more aware of this when 3 of my grandparents passed away within the span of a year. Deciding to spend more time with my parents meant taking an evening after work to visit them. The tradeoff would be missing my kids bedtime (since they are young and sleep relatively early), something that I hate missing.

These changes didn't happen overnight. It took another 3 years for me to see the results that I have today. And while I love seeing the results, the way that I got here was to try create a 

 from my efforts. It was about living the life I wanted to live today by creating routines, habits, and a schedule around the activities that were important to my life holistically. I'm still the same person that loves to be stretched and to be put in uncomfortable and new situations where I am forced to learn. But now I am able to do it without sacrificing my family, friends, and physical and mental health.

Stretched

A theme that I've noticed in my life lately is the idea of tradeoffs. Saying yes to one thing is saying no to another. We only have a finite amount of time in the span of our life, so what we decide to do with it matters. Here are a few of the tradeoffs I'm currently experiencing:

Development vs. Marketing/Business Development

Today marks 11 years since I started my first job as a front-end developer. For 9 years I was focused on becoming the best developer I could be. My focus changed when I realized that Stack Five needed someone to bring in new projects or we wouldn't survive. I started shifting my focus towards "business development", something I had no experience in previously. Long story short, I managed to get us enough projects to 

, and I have been on the journey of learning my new role at Stack Five ever since. Do I miss being a developer? Definitely. But am I happy with the tradeoffs? 100%. I feel like a newbie again. I'm learning so many new things every day, especially this year as I plan our new marketing initiatives. I'm taking the lessons I learned from being a developer and applying them to my new job. And since I was a developer, I can shape and mold Stack Five so that it is a place where other developers can thrive and hopefully find their dream jobs!

. I've worked from home about 8 years out of my 11-year career. I won't rehash all of the commonly discussed pros and cons. You can easily 

 and find 77,800,000 articles explaining that. I will say that my current opinion on remote work is that you will have to accept the tradeoffs and the challenges that come with it. It is extra hard to build a team and a culture remotely. It's hard to get people out of their shells when they are new and to find ways to truly connect with them. There were so many great relationships I made over the years that were born out of proximity rather than compatibility, and I am better because of them. Don't get me wrong, I love that our team is fully remote and that I have zero commute. But I am also growing increasingly aware of the tradeoffs that I've had to make as a result of making Stack Five fully remote.

I grew up in an immigrant family with a dad whose sole responsibility was to make sure that we didn't starve and had shelter over our heads. The role model that I had of a good husband and father was one that worked all the time, even on the weekends. I had to redefine my understanding of a good husband and father when I got married and had kids. When I first started Stack Five, I had a tremendous amount of guilt and fear because I always thought I wasn't working enough. It felt like the weight of my family's future was on my shoulders and the only thing I could do to give it a better chance was to put more time into my work. But this isn't what my family needed. They needed me, not Stack Five, so 

. My kids are still relatively young (ages 8, 6, and 4) and I want to be there while they still want to hang out with me.

It was mostly a series of different events, observations, and reflections that shaped the way that I think about my work and life. But there 

 one singular event that pushed me to think hard about my life. My good friend Andre died when he was only 25 years old. Life is too short.

, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.

Steve Jobs

Your first thoughts might be that I'm referring to money, but I'm usually thinking about this tradeoff in the context of both time 

 money. The simplest example is with my business Stack Five. Do we make more money for ourselves (profit) or reinvest it in our team, new initiatives, and our culture (growth). Luckily, this one is an easy answer. I will always pick growth because it also means profit for everyone on our team and the company. I've worked at many companies where their leaders pick profit over growth and the result is that usually, 

 (think high-stress environments, expected overtime, or dead-end jobs).

Another instance where I struggle with profit and growth is when investing time into learning to do something new (growth) versus taking back time (profit) and paying someone else to do it. This is a really tough one for me because I love to learn, but my time is so limited. My approach has been to treat each decision as a separate and unique case.

In some cases, the tradeoffs are very one-sided, like when I had to learn business development for Stack Five. Paying someone to do that for us would be too high of a cost and learning this skill is a core part of running our business. Another one-sided example is deciding to cut off work at 5pm every day so I can spend time with my kids. In other cases, the tradeoff is neutral, like when I am deciding whether to paint our walls. Painting is something I can do and is a valuable money-saving skill to learn (growth), but I could also take back my time (profit) and pay someone else to do it.

However, most of the time, I run into a situation where the tradeoff is only slightly unequally balanced. This is where I have trouble. For example, when I am planning where to invest my time at work, should I help and get some of the design/development work done for our projects (profit) or should I focus on other parts of the business (growth)? Being partly billable is a common thing for smaller consultancy owners. My dad has owned an exhaust shop for 20 years and he still fills the role of driver, mechanic, or floor manager. But the business couldn't run if he filled these roles all the time. It's about being what your business needs at a given time.

Tradeoffs are inevitable for everyone. You make them even when you don't realize it. What's been most important for me is to actively recognize the tradeoffs in my life. That way, I can consider if they are really worth making and fully accept the outcome.

Tradeoffs

This blog post was originally inspired by a conversation I had with 

 about feeling undervalued at companies we had previously worked at.

Early on in my career as a front-end developer, I had a manager tell me that my UI design ideas didn't matter because I wasn't a designer. That didn't sit right with me. Although he was technically correct in saying that I was not a designer, it left me feeling boxed in because they would not even entertain my ideas. I had been siloed into a singular role by my manager and the company. They didn't want me to go beyond my responsibilities as a front-end developer. That didn't resonate with the view I had of myself.

I don't believe I am alone in feeling this way, especially at larger companies where roles are more narrowly defined. It's understandable though. A business runs smoothly when each part of the process is effective and efficient at its purpose. That means that deviating from the purpose and responsibilities that a particular role is given is a detriment to the business. But this forces people into one-dimensional roles. It creates jobs that only exist to repeat a process over and over*. And it creates roles where people view you as synonymous with your job title. I believe that people are inherently multi-faceted and can be effective at contributing in more than one way.

I eventually left that company to expand my skills. I worked for a JS consulting firm for one year and then for a startup for another year. Each role gave me more autonomy and responsibility. It also gave me the opportunity to contribute value in ways that I couldn't in my previous roles. I got to work on the backend, building APIs, data modeling, architecting end-to-end solutions, and doing devOps. I got to work on my UI/UX design skills designing large and small-scale web applications as well as mobile and tablet apps. And I continued to hone my skills on the front-end, diving deeper into React and JavaScript. These two years were fun and tiring. I worked with many talented people, whom I took every opportunity I could to learn from. I was able to lead projects, have my opinions valued, and contribute to the companies I worked for in ways I never could before.

Working in a role where you are underused can lead you to feel that you are not living up to your potential. This feeling is sometimes subtle and hard to identify. It usually gets overshadowed by other (also very important) feelings of stability, security, and familiarity that come with a known job and workplace. These are all important things that a job needs to provide as well, but ignoring that inner tug to live up to your potential can have detrimental effects on your sense of self-identity and self-worth in the long run.

 so that I could utilize all of my skills to help clients. If there's some way that I know I can help or some piece of knowledge that I can apply, I am able (and always willing 😜) to share that with the people I work with. It's also the reason that we give our developers the autonomy and flexibility to spread their wings. We do R&D projects together as a team where everyone has the opportunity to contribute in whatever way they want to. And everyone is encouraged and given the time and space to learn and explore, whether you're a front-end developer that wants to do more UI/UX design or a backend developer that wants to experiment with Machine Learning. This has actually helped our business immensely. A lot of the side projects that we've done over the years have translated into client work down the line. By expanding our internal knowledge and expertise, we are able to go after projects and business that we would not usually be able to go after.

I wrote this partly because I wanted to share my non-linear career path through different roles and job titles. But I mainly wrote this because I wanted to encourage anyone that feels undervalued to go out and show the world your value. Find small opportunities in your day-to-day work if it's too daunting to leave your job. Find time in the evening or on weekends**. Just don't ignore that tug inside of you. If there's a thing you know you could be great at then please get out there and do that thing!

*I think many (if not most) people find comfort in having a job that is well defined and singularly focused. It makes it easier for them to focus their efforts and skills. I'm speaking to the odd few who feel underused in a role with narrow responsibilities.

**I wanted to caveat this point by saying that I strongly believe in work/life balance. You have a responsibility to your loved ones and to yourself to not burn out and become 

Feeling Undervalued

This is an excuse that I've given myself time and time again. I'm writing this today as a reminder that ignoring that feeling can lead to good things.

When I was 17 I really wanted to learn to play the guitar. My two best friends were musicians in bands, so I was exposed to a lot of good guitarists. The spark of interest was there for me, but I never committed to starting because I felt like I was already too old to learn it (yes, I felt this was at 17 😅). I felt like there were already too many guitarists in the world. If I truly wanted to be a good guitarist then I would have needed to start at a much younger age. One day, one of my musician friends made me come with him to a music shop. I saw a beginner Fender guitar on sale for $200 and spontaneously decided to buy it.

Fast forward a few years and I was part of my church's band as a guitarist. I had also started what you might call my first real business as a freelance guitar teacher, with 14 students at its' height. I made many lifelong friendships because of my decision to start playing the guitar. But the most life-changing outcome of my decision was meeting my wife, who was a singer in my church's band. All of this happened because of a decision I made to pursue a spark of interest.

In 2013 I was working at my first job as a front-end developer. At this point in my life, I had not completely figured out what I wanted to do with my career, even though I had been working as a front-end developer for about a year and a half. I think a lot of people with "career" jobs feel the same way. That year, my company sent me to a dev conference in Montreal called ConFoo. I was completely blown away and taken in by the amazing things people were doing on the web. JavaScript was just starting to really take off with frameworks like AngularJS coming onto the scene. Part of me really felt like I had already missed the boat. Other developers were building amazing things and I could barely write a line of code (I was pretty much a copy-paste coder back then).

I came back from that conference and I couldn't shake the feeling that something big was happening in the web development community. I decided that I needed to follow my gut. I made a career-changing decision that I would put aside my other ambitions (most of which were actually just hobbies) and focus my career on being the best JavaScript developer I could be. This decision opened doors for me and has given me a core drive that I can always come back to. At the end of the day, I am a JavaScript developer that loves to build things. It has completely changed the trajectory of my career and is in large part why I'm lucky enough to be running Stack Five today.

So why am I writing all of this? It is a reminder (mostly to myself) that a spark of interest can lead to life-changing events IF you act on it. Ignore the feeling that you're too late or too old to learn something. Ignore all of the many reasons not to do it and trust what your gut is telling you. A spark of interest is enough and life is too short. Just go for it!

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized." -Sun Tzu

It's Too Late

This is a timeline of how 2020 has turned out for me.

Pre-2020 - Planned to turn Stack Five into a product agency

March - No income for 3 months. Started applying for jobs.

April - Mindset change. Dropped all ongoing job interviews. 

April to June - Refocused on business development and sales. So outside of my comfort zone.

July - An influx of projects! The BD work paid off!

July to September - Team went from 2 to 7.

September - Enough runway to last well into 2021!

for the long version of the story! If you're interested in chatting or have any questions, feel free to drop me a DM on 

2020 Thus Far (TLDR)

Warning: This is long and unedited. You'll probably get bored and won't finish it. 

 if you're just interested in the highlights.

In many ways, I consider 2020 our first real year in business, even though Stack Five was started in 2018. It was originally a corp that I created for my solo consulting business. I mainly worked full-time for one client - adidas. Jordan, my business partner, also contracted for adidas. We considered each other business partners, but we kept things separate with our consulting work. 2020 was supposed to be a landmark year for us. Jordan and I had talked for years about running our own business. So we planned extensively to finally make the jump from consulting. 2020 was going to be the year that we started building Stack Five as a product agency. Of course, 2020 had plans of its own.

We both lost adidas as a client at the beginning of the year. This is probably the closest thing to losing a job that I've experienced. Also... not the greatest start to a business. There were talks that our contract would get renewed. But talk is cheap.

We spent the first 3 months of 2020 working on 

. These were great learning experiences and really awesome case studies to show that we can launch products! But they didn't make enough to pay the bills. As we waited and prayed for something to materialize with adidas, we also worked on a new potential client. This project was large and would have covered us for at least half the year. We did a lot of discovery and planning work (for free, which was a mistake that we learned from). The team loved us and we thought we had it in the bag. We didn't. They took all of our discovery work and continued to shop around for better quotes. A pretty expensive lesson, but a lesson nonetheless.

By April of 2020 I had gone 3 full months without making any money. I have a wife and 3 kids to think about, so I was starting to get anxious. I decided to start looking for a job. This wasn't how I saw my first year in business going. If I was going to "give up the dream" and work for someone, then I was going to shoot for the moon. I decided to apply to 4 of my favourite companies. Shopify, Microsoft, Github, and Automattic (makers of Wordpress). I ended up getting responses from 3 out of the 4. Only Microsoft didn't respond.

The interview process for these types of big tech companies is often long and drawn out. That was fine. I had prepared and I was ready to spend the time. Shopify moved the quickest, which made me happy since they were my most preferred option. All of the interviews were moving along just fine, but inside I still felt uneasy.

It's hard for me to describe the feelings that were going on inside of me during that time. The lockdown had just started so my kids were home from school. We were trying our best (but probably failing) at being their interim teachers. We weren't able to see any of our friends and family. The news about COVID seemed to be getting worse every day. I had tried to start this business and seemingly failed. And now I had to deal with the pressures of interviewing and finding a new job. There were definitely several sleepless nights.

I don't remember the exact day it happened, but it was like a light switch flipped on. I had many talks about it with my wife because it was a decision that affected our family. She's also amazing at bringing me down to earth. I took a lot of time to think and get perspective. And eventually, I realized that this was life giving me opportunity not adversity (or opportunity thru adversity). So I made the mental shift and took action right away. I dropped all of my ongoing job interviews and started focusing on growing Stack Five. I was going to sink or swim with this business. One of the biggest drivers of this decision was the opportunity cost of not doing this now. The Canadian government had just announced CEWS so we had a safety net for a few months. We also had some savings in the bank. And the worst-case scenario was me having to look for a job. Not a terrible worst-case scenario by any means. So why not take the chance and pursue a dream? We only have one life to live.

My whole life I've focused on the creation of the end product. I've been an artist, musician, designer, and developer. I spent the first 10 years of my career as a JavaScript developer and UI/UX designer. The goal has always been to be really good at the craft. The reason that I'm saying all this is to convey how big of a shift it was for me to move into business development and sales.

I could write a whole separate blog post about going from developer/designer to business development/sales (and I just might one day). Long story short, it was the biggest transition I've had to make in my career.

The day-to-day of business development for me was simply connecting with people. I reached out to everyone I could think of in my network. I went through my entire LinkedIn contact list and sent messages to every person that I had even a small connection with. I joined Twitter and talked to people. When I ran out of ideas, I started reaching out to other agency owners and business leaders to find mentorship and guidance (I'd highly recommend this for any first time entrepreneur). I did this with almost no results for almost 3 months and it was hard.

Then one day it just clicked. I don't think there wasn't a particular thing that I did that caused it. It just seemed like the momentum of putting in the time towards spreading the word finally caught up. Around the end of June, for about 3 weeks straight I was having 3 to 5 meetings a day, often with new clients. By the end of July we had 10 projects rolling and 5 contractors.

As of today, we have enough runway to operate into March of 2021. We still have a long way to go and there is still a lot of work to be done. But I feel like we've weathered the storm. I am so fortunate because there are a lot of business that did not make it through this year. I try to remember to be thankful everyday because I get to spend time with people that I love working with (both our team and our clients) on projects that I really care about. Entrepreneurship is hard and unpredictable. It's definitely not what I expected.

I don't get to code and design everyday anymore. Those crafts will always be part of me. They just aren't the mediums that I use to create day-to-day. But that doesn't mean I'm not a creator and maker anymore. Now I'm focused on creating new relationships and making existing ones stronger. I work hard everyday at building Stack Five into the type of company that I always wished I could work at. A company that values relationships and balance over growth and profits. It's a different type of craft, but one that I'm grateful that I get to work at.

2020 Thus Far

In February of 2019, I found myself looking for a solution to monitor my 1-year-old son. There were a lot of options, but I had some very specific criteria.

1) I didn’t want to buy and setup hardware

We had tried hardware solutions in the past and I didn’t want to buy another one. I really believed that there had to be a software solution out there.

2) I wanted to use one of my old devices as a monitor

We have a lot of old smart devices laying around (iPods, iPads, old phones), so I wanted to make use of them instead of buying yet another device and 

contributing to the growing e-waste problem

3) I wanted to be able to view the camera through my browser

I am on my computer for at least 8 hours a day. I wanted to be able to quickly view my cameras through a browser so that I could keep an eye on my kids while working. This happens quite often when my wife needs to step out for an hour or so to run an errand or do groceries. The kids are usually fine in front of the TV, and they can always come and find me in case of emergencies. But I just want that assurance that they are okay.

4) I didn’t want to have video stored of my kids

This last point was the most important to me. The privacy and security of my family and especially my kids is of utmost importance to me. I was wary of many existing solutions because I knew that they recorded and stored video data. I understand why they do this. It makes sense, especially for home surveillance. But 

We created Viyo for people that care about the security and privacy of their family and loved ones

We created it for us, for people like us who want an easy-to-use solution with no app download and no hardware purchase. We created Viyo for people who care about the security and privacy of their family and loved ones. And ultimately, we created it because we care about giving people the choice to not have their video data stored.

 if you have any questions, thoughts or feedback.

Why did we create another DIY security cam app (viyo.io)?

My first role as a front-end developer mainly involved building static landing pages with HTML, CSS, and jQuery. JavaScript was mostly an afterthought. JS was something that I would copy and paste snippets of if I ever needed to use it.

Fast forward two years and I was at a crossroads in my career. I was not passionate about building static pages. But I was eager to continue learning. I just didn't know what. Fortunately, my company had a training budget and I was able to go to 

, a developer conference in Montreal. This was a career-changing event for me. When I saw all of the projects and talks showcasing what people were doing with JavaScript, it was an eye-opening moment.

As soon as I got back from that conference, I immediately shifted my focus to JavaScript. I made a decision that I was going to be a JavaScript developer. That was the real beginning of my journey. I started learning the basics and trying to put them into practice in my day to day work. In the evenings and weekends, I concentrated on learning the new hot framework, AngularJS. Eventually, my desire to learn more led me to find a new job as a JavaScript consultant. I was finally able to build JavaScript applications as my full-time job. After a year, the same itch to learn more led me to move to a startup, where I was able to focus on building with React, Redux and Node.js. In more recent years I have worked for clients through my consulting business (StackFive.io), where I get to help businesses solve interesting problems utilizing my skills in JavaScript.

I've continued to learn and grow as a developer, implementing my learnings on projects like Viyo.io and ReactLibraries.com. But I will always center my focus around JavaScript. It has been the catalyst for my career and the thing that first made me fall in love with web development.

How JavaScript has shaped my career

I wanted to write about my experience working remotely in light of the recent influx of people embracing this new work reality due to the Coronavirus. I've had the privilege of working from home in some capacity throughout my entire 9-year career, most of which I spent full-time remote. So, my hope is to share some of my experience with you, as well as what has worked for me. Not everything here will apply to everyone, but I hope that this helps some of you as you embark on this new professional experience.

It was 2013 and my first daughter was on her way. My wife and I had also just purchased our first home. I was working as a front-end developer at a large non-profit and was moved on a team that was already fully remote. It was perfect timing, I thought. More time at home to spend with my wife and new child, and I would be around to help get things settled at our new place. This was my first foray into working professionally at home full-time and boy was it a mess. I pretty much made any and every mistake you can make working from home. Working remotely comes with a lot of perks, but it also comes with a lot of challenges.

Since that first experience, which was really more of an experiment, I've had to make a lot of adjustments to make working from home work. Some of these included adjustments to my mindset, workspace, routine, and schedule. I'll share the 4 most impactful changes I made that helped me to be the most productive I've ever been, and really enjoy the benefits of working from home (while avoiding the pitfalls).

1) Work it out with whoever you live with

If you have a spouse, partner, roommate, or someone that you live with, you need to sit down and have a serious conversation about your work arrangement. Working in an office comes with a lot of inherent structure and boundaries. None of these will be in place in your home. You might be thinking, "well I have the most amazing spouse and they'll always respect my boundaries". That's nice. Have the conversation anyways. If they are that amazing then they will appreciate the transparency and communication. Just don't leave things to assumptions. For me and my wife, we have a few ground rules that we have both agreed to. I won't go over all of them, but some examples include:

Messaging me first if my basement office door is closed and she wants to come down

Keeping the kids out of the basement during work hours (generally 8am to 4pm)

No expectation of me doing housework during work hours (I'll still change the odd diaper or take out the trash because I want to help. But the expectation is set so that there is no confusion and conflict)

The rules that you actually set don't matter and they will be different for each person. It's about pre-emptive communication when dealing with situations. Particularly situations that affect your work. One of the biggest benefits of working from home is the flexibility that it affords. It's great to take advantage of that flexibility. Just make sure that you and those you live with agree to respect it as well.

I used to joke with colleagues that I could work from my bed or my couch. Have you ever tried grinding an 8 hour day from your bed? Hello chronic back pain! There is also something that triggers mentally when you put yourself in a place that is designated for work. Your mindset instantly shifts and it helps you to get into the flow of things faster. This is especially helpful if you do work that requires flow, such as design or programming. Personally, I've created my own office space in a corner in our basement. I have a standup desk that I bought from Amazon, along with a second monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer and filing cabinet. I try to keep my workspace relatively tidy because I've found that having a cluttered space affects me mentally. Most importantly, I have a door that closes.

When you work in an office you are almost certainly bound to a routine. The very act of getting up in the morning, getting ready for work, and commuting forces you into a routine that helps you to get into "work mode". That doesn't happen when you work remotely. Your work mornings can be the same as your weekend mornings. I'm sure for some people they are able to get into the flow of work without a routine. Maybe you thrive on the spontaneity of having a different morning every day. That's great! That just never worked for me because I realized that consistency made me more efficient and productive with my time. This is generally how my mornings go:

Open WorkFlowy/Trello and review the tasks I have for the day

Have a standup call with my business partner Jordan

There are variations to this morning routine, and obviously, there are days that are an exception, but I rarely go a regular workday without doing all of these things.

4) Make it a point to connect with people

It took me 2 years of working remotely to discover that I needed this one. I have always been a more introverted person and I love my alone time. It's different when you experience this every day for the majority of your workday. At that point in my career, I was also starting to transition from an intermediate developer to a senior. I think that this added to my feelings of isolation because I was longing for more feedback in my work. I wanted to find more areas where I could grow, and ultimately, find out where my career was headed. If your company doesn't have processes and procedures in place for regular feedback, then schedule them yourself. Make it a point to ask colleagues about their week while on a call with them about work. Connect with old coworkers on LinkedIn and invite them to a Google Hangout, then flip on your video just to put them (and yourself) in an awkward situation! Okay, maybe not the last one. But try to connect. It's a basic human need, and working remotely will make it more of a challenge.

This topic is something that has always been near and dear to me. Working remotely is something that I feel passionately about because I believe that it is a large part of taking control of work-life balance. This is also why we run our company, Stack Five, completely distributed and remote. There are so many organizations that could benefit from implementing a remote work policy or even, dare I say, turning themselves into a completely remote team. I hope that the 4 tips I gave above will help some of you that are adjusting to working remotely. And if you've already been working remotely, I would love to hear about what works for you in your specific situation. If you have questions around how we work remotely at Stack Five, or just want to chat about your specific remote work situation, feel free to DM me, drop us a line on Twitter 

Making "work from home"​ work

. These are my reflections on personal growth, career, and tech.

Geoff Chan