
When I tell people that I had 5 startups (yes, see [my projects](/projects)), worked for 2, graduated 1.5 years ago as a Industrial Engineer in Computer Science and straight out of school got hired at one of the largest tech firm, then people are always coming up with the same sentences: "You have too much time", "Geek", "Get a Hobby", "Get a Girlfriend". Well what if I would tell you that this is something easy to achieve? Something that everyone is able to do in life? Would you be interested in learning my story?

All of this comes from just one simple thing, and that is a **different way of thinking**. By applying a different mindset, you are able to gain the confidence to go bold and chase your dreams, to start something and accomplish it, to learn from your mistakes and iterate upon them. 

In the society of today, we are all controlled by our targets, the rules we live by and the people above us forcing these rules upon us. Because if we are successful, the people above us are this as well (the oh so called world of "hierarchy"). Every day we are sitting there, working in our well known cubicle - insert cliche here - where everytime if we want to stand up and try something bold, we are pushed back and are told to "focus on what matters and that gets us the results!". Just how many times didn't your manager tell you not to do something, or to chase bold ideas because they won't allow you to achieve your targets this year?

But how do we break this circle? Should we stop doing what we are doing now and start living a new radical life? Certainly Not! The system as it exists today, is a system that is there because it works! It is a system that evolved over the years and is the core foundation we run on. Destroying this would just completely destroy all the work we did in the past, making us start all over again and discard our learnings. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, let's first look at what I believe went wrong and how we can learn from it, because face it, growing is all about taking the mistakes from the past and learning from them.

Let's start at the year $currentyear - age$, the day you were born, the day that our senses came to live! Back then, we were a simple human being, a brain fresh to the world ready to start receiving different signals into its cerebral cortex (more specifically the visual cortex, auditory cortex and somatosensory cortex) which processes these signals, stores them and creates abstractions of them to finally allow us to start experimenting and learn.

Take a deep look at the last part: **start experimenting and learn**. This part is what society made us forget over the years. Because just as well as we start to learn easily when we are young, we also learn what society demands of us, the things that we should forget. It is this that makes us forget the things that matter! As a baby and young child we utilize a tremendous feature called "Curiosity", a feature that allows us to dare to do things without being shot back. Take walking as an example; when we as a baby processed enough impulses that made us grasp parts of the world, we want to achieve something new, we want to spike our curiosity and learn more. One of the first ideas we then receive through our parents is the goal of walking. So we then utilize our curiosity to see how we can learn to walk, how we can learn to replicate the behavior that they are demonstrating. Try after try, Step-by-step we try to use these 2 legs under us, move them in such a positions that we are able to balance them, and when our first failure happens, what do we do? We try again! It is just this that society teaches us to forget, the ability of trying and daring everything. Because **it is through trying, failing and iteration that we succeed in life**.

After reflecting on this a couple of years ago, I decided to put a motto for myself that I would follow in everything I do and every decision I make, to **"Shoot for the stars to be able to land on the moon"**. Meaning that we as a human being should always aim for impossible goals which we know will be hard, but that we want to try, to put us ahead of everyone else. Here just as well we will see that we will sometimes fail, sometimes will be shot down. But this is what should give us strength, the strength to try again. 

So why would you do all of this? Why would you put work in chasing impossible goals? Well it's all in the sense of learning faster than anyone else! Think about what will happen when you chase impossible problems? You will work on solving impossible challenges, challenges that nobody else encountered before. By doing this, you will thus also be able to gain more experience than anyone else. Enabling you to solve those problems when you encounter them again in just a fraction of the time. It is this that shows how important it is to **Learn from your mistakes**.





The Achievers Mindset


Today marks my 1st anniversary of working as a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, and wow what an exciting time it has been! But before I go deeper into my experiences and lessons learned, I first would like to start by thanking some people without whom all of this would never have been possible.

My first thanks goes to Ron Pooters, who was my mentor since the beginning, guiding me through all the tips, tricks and steps of working at a company as large as this one, without whom I would've never been able to ramp up in a role as exciting as this one. Even though he has become a manager now (in fact he has become my manager!) he still appears as the first time I met him, an awesome guy striving and fighting to bring up the best in everyone and help them achieve a greater purpose. 

Secondly I would like to thank my first Manager and lead of the Customer Success Unit - Thomas Kessler. He was the one that believed in me before I even started, giving me the chance to start in this awesome architect role where I was able to grow and prove my worth. My second fiscal in - even though I had a struggling year, this believe is still there and I was allowed to continue in this fascinating role. Next to all of this he guided me through the different procedures and growth process a young graduate as me needed, to be able to show my worth to the company. 

Through the year I had much more support from the different colleagues around me (to call a few: Wesley, Nathan, Karim, Tine, Gitte, Nills, ...), who I am also eternal grateful towards, since without the support of these awesome people, I would've never been able to go from being seen as a "rookie" who came straight out of University in this field to the more "evolved" kind of person (the road is still long) where I am right now. My colleagues allowed me to feel part of the team, motivating me and giving me the chance to prove myself.

A good practice that is being done within Microsoft is reflection. What did we do last year, and how can we improve on this? and what I would like to do with this post is share my most important lessons of my first year, with the fresh and naive mind a student has (or had).

## 1. Planning

Every job you start takes time to master, do not just expect everything to become clear from your first week. You can however accelerate things, by **taking the time to understand your role description inside-out and creating a battle plan**, know what is expected from you and make a mapping from it so that you know where your focus points are and what you will be challenged on. Just think of this as creating your own personal *Go-To-Market strategy*, without one you are like a fish on dry land, hopping around to find water, your source of life.

One way that I have learned to accomplish this throughout the year, is to **create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for myself**. Allowing me to measure what I do, and react on things when I lose focus. In a customer facing role for example, a KPI could be *the number of engagements you spotted in that week*? or even *the number of weekly customer meetings you had*? but other KPIs could just as well be *the time you spent on training yourself*. Because in the world of today, everything is moving at the speed of light and we have to try and stay up to date with everything happening around us.

## 2. Execution

Now you have your Battle Plan and KPIs set up, but how do you actually execute? An approach that works for me is to understand that even if you have those KPIs in place, that you tend to forget about them. One way to remediate this is to put a meeting in the beginning of my week - even if it's just for 15minutes - as **a reminder for myself to be aware of** these KPIs and **measure them**.

Next to that there are a couple of other things that work for me in executing these plans and allowing me to spend more time on the subjects that increase my impact in the end:

* **When you encounter something that could be automated, automate it!** This doesn't have to be big, but it helps reducing your work in the longer term (just make sure that you know how much time you will spend automating it versus the time it will gain you, a basic calculation of investment vs ROI).
* **Plan your battle of the rocks:** moving a big rock takes time and effort, why not instead plan a few smaller rocks representing the achievements you want to get within a certain timeframe? By focusing on a few smaller ones, you will be able to gain more energy and motivation when you complete each one of them and be less likely to fail when tackling a rock that is too big for you at this moment in time.

## 3. Personal Growth

A last point that I want to tackle are my personal learnings in the area of "Personal Growth". I can for sure say from experience that this has been the most difficult area by far for me as a person, not only because I was going from a "student" mindset towards an "enterprise" mindset, or that I am a *ENTJ* type of person. But also because of that you start working with people far more senior than yourself (which is a good thing, that you will have to learn to appreciate and utilize!).

Something I have noticed around me, is that for a junior profile as mine, it's good to start off humble and build up your experience. A nice quote I got from my managers here is that: "Gray Hairs Count", showing the importance of it. **To illustrate some of my few key takeaways in how I try show humbleness**:

* **Put others first:** Know your own self-worth, and rather than spreading it around, just show interests in others and ask about their job/day/... This will not only gain you a lot of respect (because others come first), but it will also improve your networking by it, getting to know everyone around you.
* **Listen:** Instead of charging into a conversation and start talking about how you want to get things done, try to listen. Never dominate the conversation, but come in with facts, numbers and your voice when it really counts. This will save you a lot of energy in the long-run and also gain you respect. Since really, who wants to be known as the "know it all"?
* **Say "thank you":** People like it when they feel appreciated. Therefor take the time to show how much you appreciate their work.
* **Speak your mind, but politely:** Instead of starting everything sentence with "I think", "We should do..." why not start the sentence with: "Is it a good idea to ..."? By just changing this little nuance in your sentence, people will feel less offended.

Another approach to show this and be less likely fall into the trap of coming over too direct is by paying attention to **a few key points that you should try to avoid** while at work:

* Gossip
* Judging
* Excuses
* Negativity / Complaining
* Exaggeration
* Facts versus Opinions

I hope by sharing that I am able to bring over some of my struggles that i had during my first year at a big corporate as this one. What were the struggles you had? Feel free to share them in the comments below and start the discussion! :)

Lessons learned after being at Microsoft for 1 year

While working at Microsoft as a Cloud Solution Architect in Data Platform, one of the things we constantly thrive for is improving ourselves and our customers by spreading our energy and passion. A way to improve this is by focusing on our growth path to see which skills we lack and how we can improve those. One of those skills for me is **leadership, and how we can grow towards managing a team and reaching new heights**. Just think of managing a team of Architect, managing a Product team or even managing the technical strategy of Microsoft (=CTO).

In previous articles, I already defined the core values ([see them here](https://xaviergeerinck.com/tag/business/)) that I think a leader should express (Focus, Inclusion, Commitment, Exploration and Listening). But what are the skills that others have that we still need to learn? This is what I will tackle in the following few lines.

> Do you want to instantly see the results of this article? [Skip to the summary](#summarizing)

## Discovery

I started by discovering what the current leaders of today are doing and focusing on, as well as some job descriptions that fit with the profiles of leaders. In here I will list up some leaders and job descriptions that fit my interest for finding skills regarding "technical leaders" rather than the normal "business leaders" in a summary kind of style.

### Leaders

#### Kevin Scott - CTO Microsoft

**Summary**

* Keep on creating prototypes with your own products
* It takes ~9 months to know what you're doing in the role before being able to contribute
 * Make yourself vulnerable and meet with as many people as you can meet with in "sponge-mode"
 * Don't throw your opinion around before you are well informed
* Responsibilities
 * Integrating all the products into one coherent whole
 * Make good products that customers want and that are reliable, fast and meet their expectations of functionality
 * Expressing the technology strategy (which things do we need to be building?, how should we build them?, ...)
 * Through memos, talking to developers, reviewing projects

**Career Path**

| Date | Company | Description |
| - | - | - |
| 2003 - 2005 | Google | Engineer Shopping & Advertising |
| 2005 - 2007 | Google | Sr Engineer Created 25+ search engineering team |
| 2007 - 2010 | AdMob | VP Engineering Grew product & serving systems 30x to >1B requests -> got acquired by Google 
| 2010 - 2011 | Google | Sr. Engineering Directory Integrated AdMob and double its traffic
| 2011 - 2012 | LinkedIn | VP Engineering Responsible for engineering for all LinkedIn products, infrastructure, tools and QA
| 2012 - 2013 | LinkedIn | Sr. VP Engineering Responsible for engineering for all LinkedIn products, infrastructure, tools and QA
| 2013 - Now | LinkedIn | Sr. VP Engineering & Operations Responsible for engineering for all LinkedIn products, infrastructure, tools and QA
| 2017 - Now | Microsoft | CTO |

**References**

* [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkevinscott/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkevinscott/)
* [https://www.codenewbie.org/podcast/what-s-it-like-to-be-the-cto-of-microsoft](https://www.codenewbie.org/podcast/what-s-it-like-to-be-the-cto-of-microsoft)

#### Michael Curtis - VP Engineering @ Airbnb

**Summary**

* 2 market (supply & demand) problem solved by tightly managing the community till there is enough supply and demand for the hockey-stick.
* Engineers are now "business process owners" who want a problem and be in charge of solving it.

**Career Path**

| Date | Company | Description |
| - | - | - |
| 1997 - 1999 | iAtlas Corporation | Software Engineer acquired by Altavista |
| 1999 - 2002 | Altavista | Software Engineer |
| 2002 - 2003 | America Online | Software Engineer |
| 2003 - 2004 | Paradigm Healthcare | Director of Engineering |
| 2004 - 2007 | Yahoo | Engineer through Director on Yahoo Mail Infrastructure |
| 2007 - 2008 | Yahoo | Sr Director for Yahoo Social Platform |
| 2008 - 2009 | Yahoo | Sr Director for Yahoo Mail |
| 2009 - 2011 | Yahoo | VP Engineering Mail and Messenger |
| 2011 - 2013 | Facebook | Director Engineering |
| 2013 - Now | Airbnb | VP Engineering Scaled Airbnb engineering from 40 to 1000+ |

**References**

* [https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtismike](https://www.linkedin.com/in/curtismike)
* [https://www.techinasia.com/airbnb-mike-curtis-engineer](https://www.techinasia.com/airbnb-mike-curtis-engineer)

### Job Postings

#### Chief Technical Advisor to the CTO

* Help formulate and drive technical strategy
* Lead team of advisors, PMs and developers focused on driving technology and cultural change
* Run strategic initiatives, incubations and programs
* Build a product vision and roadmap

#### Principal Development Manager

* lead, mentor and grow a team of engineers and architects
* Collaborate with UX, marketing, 3rd party
* Align with SLT on strategy
* Drive initiatives around the company, partnering with other segments
* Skills Needed:
 * Business Leadership – Lead consumer and services business
 * Engineering leadership – Manage engineering pool (hire, grow, manage) and be a role model for technical excellence and customer quality
 * Drive – Passion to turn vision into detailed plans and execute against complex plans
 * Collaborate – Partner with product teams to manage dependencies, jointly deliver updates, and continuously improve our engineering capabilities
 * Communications & planning – Clearly communicate engineering roadmap, backlog, and team updates across the organization
 * Culture – Contribute to a team culture that embraces diversity and inclusion and makes your team awesome place to work

#### Group Program Manager

* Lead PMs focused on driving adoption, satisfaction and removing customer barriers
* Set product strategy
* Lead team through all phases of product definition and delivery
* Accountable for customer satisfaction, product success and business results
* Identify revenue and margin objectives
* Establish relationship with Open Source Community
* Partner with Engineering, sales, marketing and partners to ensure all functions are aligned

## Summarizing

Looking at what we found in the discovery phase, a red line can be found of skills that are needed to be in a leadership position:

### Customer Obsession

The most clear one is as always **Customer Obsession**, without **customer satisfaction** your product will die and nothing will come forth from it. Which is why you need to know the ins and outs of your customer, their satisfaction, their needs and their opinions

### Product Quality

Another important thing that is often overlooked, or neglected and that is in combination with Customer Obsession is the quality of the product. If your product is not reliable, fast or has a wrong UX, customers will not be retained. Resulting in a high **Customer Acquisition cost (CAC)** but even a lower **Lifetime Value (LTV)**.

Therefore you need to make sure as a leader that you know which **KPIs define your product** and customer obsession. Without these you will not expire the growth that you expected and your product will experience doom sooner than later.

### Product / Technology Strategy & Roadmap

As a leader, you will need to put a clear **strategy and roadmap** for the product (as a VP in engineering) or for the company (as a CTO, more horizontally focused) that can be communicated to the outer world, but also towards the inner parts of an organization.

Large scale organizations are like a Container Ship. Once you steer them, the effect is not instantly visible. Therefore you need to do everything you can to speed this up, because the speed that an organization runs on, will define the **speed to market** that you can achieve.

### Empower your team

The last point I want to summarize from this is your team. As often thought, **you are not in charge of them! They are in charge of you**. Your team is the one that will deliver you your success, so you should treat them like it. Listen to them, empower them and give them the freedom they need to be successful. Because in the end, with a good team you can take on the world.

So you want to become a leader? Review my lessons learned from the top leaders and roles in technology


I recently started at Microsoft, where I joined at the perfect moment. Microsoft has been transforming under the lead of our new CEO Satya Nadella. Who brought a new fresh breeze of air through the company, with as goal of “Hitting Refresh” and preparing us for the years to come.

As lucky as I was, I joined a few weeks before he released his book. Which made it special for me, since every Employee receives a special Employee Edition of this awesome book, including notes by Satya. (I can say that these notes were really well thought-off, seeing that even the Index at the back had extra notes in them to reference back to certain pages where notes were added). Of course I instantly set a goal for myself to finish this book, but I added a small little task for myself, which was to mark everything I personally found very interesting. These parts not only include some marked lines by Satya, but also my own reading between the lines.

This Blog Post will summarize my Key Takeaways from this book. The top part will include the points that I found Critical, and that I think everyone should learn — including some remarks from myself. Whereas the bottom part will be more literal copied parts with references to the pages.

> Disclaimer: Please note that almost everything besides my own comments written below comes from the Book Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella. If you like the parts that I included below, I recommend everyone to acquire (https://news.microsoft.com/hitrefresh/) a copy of this book and read it yourself. It is a very well written book that includes a lot of brainstorming for the future, and will definitely give you a spark to think about the future yourself.

## My 5 Key Picks

### Page: 119 — About leaders

“To be a leader in this company, your job is to find the rose petals in a field of shit”

> If I had to summarize myself how I see a leader, I couldn’t have done it any better. It is short, to the point and a hidden call-to-action for existing leaders.
> We can look at a leader as an operator of a machine. Machines are built up using a lot of different cogs of all sizes that coherently work together as one giant machine. So by definition it is important to select cogs that you know you can trust and rely on before operating your machine. Since without these cogs, it all falls apart and you would not be able to operate anything.

### Pages 119 and 120 — Leadership principles

1. Bring clarity to those you work with. By taking internal and external noise and synthesizing a message from it to deliver to your team.
2. Leaders generate energy, not only on their own teams but across the company
3. They find a way to deliver success to make things happen. This means driving innovations that people love and are inspired to work on; finding balance between long-term success and short-term wins; and being boundary-less and globally minded in seeking solutions.

> The key point in this list described above for me, is point 2: “Generating Energy”. Did you every talk to someone that had such a specific way of talking that you were instantly convinced? Or someone who talks in such a way that you are amazed by everything that person says? Well this is a kind of energy a leader needs. The energy that is contagious and makes other people move and follow the leader in every step they take.
> An excellent example here is Satya. When he got promoted as a CEO, he talked in such a way that the whole culture started to shift. His energy was transmitted to the people close around him, who in their turn passed the energy down towards the people close to them. If we can continue this chain till the furthest shackle. It results in everybody being on the same line, moving as one entity and reaching for the furthest stars.
> If someone ever asked me what I think are the best hiring qualities a recruiter should look for. Then my top answer would definitely be to look for the people who have energy. Because I know that those people will be the ones that can help your organization move and focus on the more innovative things.

### Page 125 — Our Partners

“For everyone working with partners, I encourage you to ask yourself “what could be?” and explore new, creative ways to do interesting things that add value back to our platforms for customers”

> This sentence speaks for itself. Without our partners we would not be able to get to the point where we are now. They are your first line of defense in receiving critical feedback, that can help you finetune your application for a better customer experience. Without them, we would need to receive this feedback from our customers, which is a good thing but also a dangerous thing. Customers criticize more easily which can have an impact on brand name and customer acquisition.

### Page 166 — How quantum computers will become part of our lives

“Quantum computers will not stake the form of a new stand-alone, super-fast PC but will operate as a co-processor, receiving its instructions and cues from a stack of classical processors”

> For me this was very interesting and opened up new ways of thinking. I always thought that quantum computers would replace our existing computers. But after reading sense, it makes more sense that quantum computers will focus on what they are good at. Allowing us to iterate further on what we already have, rather than reworking it.

### Page 203 — The different run-times through history

“There were 2 different run times already (First PC, then Web) and now we are progressing towards the third one: AI”

This is key. Seeing my age, I only saw the second run time coming since the PC battle was one that was already won (See Linux, Windows and Mac OS). Web however was just starting back then and has meanwhile reached a mature enough stage for us to be looking at a new run time.

Looking back at when the Web run time started, we can see the same patterns arriving now. Just as then, now AI is arriving in more startups, people are jumping on board, the general public is seeing and acknowledging its existence more and more. Helping me believe that AI is indeed the next run time. The question that I have however is the timeline. AI has promises, but in my opinion a lot of work is needed for it to become mainstream.

## Other Picks

### Pages 38 and 39 — Three business and leadership principles learned from cricket

* Compete vigorously and with passion in the face of uncertainty and intimidation
* Put your team first, ahead of your personal statistics and recognition
* One brilliant character who does not put the team first can destroy the entire team

### Page 126 — four initiatives every company must make a priority

* Engage with your customer base by leveraging data to improve the customer experience
* Empower your own employees by enabling greater and more mobile productivity and collaboration in the new digital world of work
* Optimize operations, automating and simplifying business process across sales, operations and finance
* Transform our products, services and business models (become a digital company)

### Page 150 — Three areas we have to work on to make AI a reality

* Big Data
* Massive Computing Power
* Sophisticated Algorithms

### Page 150 — About Artificial General Intelligence

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is the point at which a computer matches or even surpasses human intellectual capabilities

### Page 150 — The layers of Artificial Intelligence

* Bottom Layer: Pattern recognition
* Middle Layer: Perception, sensing more and more complex scenes (estimated that 99% of human perception is through speech and vision)
* Top Layer: Cognition — Deep understanding of human language

### Pages 151, 152 and 153 — The state of AI today and where we are going

* Bespoke (=tailored/commissioned to a particular specification): This is how AI is today, only for a few companies
* Democratized: Make tools so that everyone can use AI (this is what Microsoft is doing)
* Learn to Learn: Get computers to the point where they Learn to Learn

### Page 162 — Scientific and engineering breakthroughs needed to get to quantum computing

* Math breakthrough: The Topological Qubit
* Superconducting Breakthrough: Fabrication process to yield thousands of topological qubits that are both highly reliable and stable. A promising technique is available here called “Majorana fermions”
* Computer Science Breakthrough: New computational methods for programming the quantum computer

### Page 182 — Formula for Trust

Formula for trust: E + SV + SR = T/t (Empathy + Shared Values + Safety and Reliability = Trust over time)

> Note: Of course this is not possible, but rather an estimation if it could be written as a formula

### Page 197 — Conversational AI

Conversational AI needs to be able to create and understand dialog to deliver a personal, social and emotional experience

### Page 212 — Accelerants for innovations

Ultimately, we need technological breakthroughs to drive growth beyond what we’re seeing, and I believe mixed reality, artificial intelligence and quantum are the type of innovations that will serve as accelerants

### Page 215 — Leadership opportunities that no single community/region has seized yet

* Desert farming in Australia
* Local banking in Dubai
* Innovations in IoT
* Ambient Intelligence
* Mobile Payment Systems
* Virtual Reality
* Silicon Photonics
* 3D printing
* Wearables
* Lightweight, low altitude satellites
* Drones
* Native advertising
* Driverless cars
* Robotics and industrial automation
* Adaptive, gamified education
* Nano-machines
* Genomics
* Economical Solar, Wind , and tidal power


My Key Take-aways from reading Satya Nadella’s Book “Hit Refresh”



September last year was one of the most influential times of my life. Being a newly graduated student at the Karel De Grote College in Antwerp I had several choices. Start a company from the project that I had been building, continue my educations and go for the bridge year so that I could do the master year afterwards or start working. Seeing that I was 20 back then I chose for continuing my education and go for my master of science with a major in Computer Science at the University Of Ghent. I believed that this was key to evolving my theoretical thinking skills, and to be able to solve bigger problems than the ones we were taught in college. It would also provide me more opportunities with the ability to get promoted faster later on.

This all sounded like an easy task but there was just one more obstacle that I had to overcome, the bridge year. In Belgium we are able to upgrade our “professional bachelor” to an “academic bachelor” (professional being more practical oriented than the academic one). This program however has been known to be one of the most difficult years that we would encounter when studying (when looking back, I can say you that this is the truth). It was a year full of frustrations and studying without getting any satisfaction because the grades kept on sucking even with this much time being put into them.

The year started, and so did the first semester (we got 2 semester each being 12 weeks) with physics (2 semesters merged into 1), math A (also 2 semesters merged into 1), databases, C/C++ Programming, Discrete Math and Digital Electronics. The first 3 courses were a hell (to put it lightly), the speed was a killer and the amount of information to process was even worse. I remember the first test of math (which was an intro test to grade the initial knowledge) where I only scored 1 out of 20. Databases was one of the most underestimated courses, even while we saw this in College this course was a killer. We had to learn recursive queries and solve the most daunting tasks that you can think of. (Check my blog for more information, example: http://xaviergeerinck.com/recursion-with-sql/).

The semester ended and I finished my exams, here I passed Discrete math (I was amazed), C/C++ and Digital Electronics. Which was not all that great but it was well enough for where I came from.

Then we got the second semester with Math B, The Bachelor Project, Programming of hardware (mostly asm), Perl, Computer Networking, Computer Systems and Algorithms/Data Structures. The semester had no merged courses but was heavy of different courses. At the end I passed 3 exams again.

When august approached the daunting task came, passing my resit exams (I had 7 of them, Physics, Math A & B, Algorithms/Data Structures, Networking, Computer Systems and Databases). At the end I eventually passed 3 exams again so I was left with 4 courses.

We are now at the end of my year and I passed 9 courses of the 13 which is a wonder seeing that I came from a practical education and was going to a more theoretical oriented one. Especially algorithms surprised me, it was one of the hardest courses where I studied days and nights to pass it. Seeing that a lot of the students that we started with left through the year, or at the end because they passed almost no exams, I can say that I myself am happy with this result. The result also reflects how well I understood everything and I think that the teachers did their best to give an objective gradation on their courses.

Because of my good result I am now able to start my master's year. The plan is to get a decent to follow first semester (42 study points instead of 48) by moving 2 easier courses towards the next year (seeing that I still have to do my thesis anyway in that year) and start the initial fundamentals of my thesis in 2016’s second semester under the course “internship” where I am able to work for my thesis and let it count next year towards the hours worked. (I did this because the second semester is just 16 study points).

For other students reading this, if you plan to do a bridge year, then prepare yourself. You will not have an easy year and you will lose most of your social contacts through the year. However if you keep your head up and try to stay ahead of your courses then you will manage. (Always prepare before the lesson starts! that way you will be able to understand more and learn more from the lessons).
 


Bridge Year Experience - University Ghent


This summer, just after finishing my exams for my bridge year, I decided to do something else this summer. After thinking about it for a long time, I thought, why not instead of working at an already established company, work for a startup instead? This is when I started looking out for startups that were in need of a developer to create their Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

Luckily for me, the search process got simplified. Near me there is an initiative called Start it @kbc. This is a program that allows startups to build out their idea, by having access to free work-spaces, events, networking, education in the startup world, 1to1 coaching, ... while still having fun. I got in contact with someone from this initiative through a friend of mine, together with this contact I set-up a small ad in the newsletter that they send to startups in the initiative every week.

This ad appeared to be the "golden ticket" towards landing a job at a startup. Shortly after the newsletter was sent to the startups I started receiving tons of emails, with startups in need for a developer to build their MVP. Of course I was curious to every startup on it's own (remember that every idea is unique and tries to solve a specific problem), so I went through all the emails and contacted every startup that seemed interesting to me, stating that I wanted more information to see what their vision was. This (for me personally) was the first round of shifting through all the emails, and selecting the ones that I thought would be a perfect fit for me. I then set-up a meeting (mostly through Skype at this point) to talk with the founders and see what they had already, how they wanted to continue, what they had in mind for me, future plans, business model, .... On average, these meetings took 10 - 30 minutes depending on how interesting it was and how the founders their first impression was.

You would think that having a conversations with so many startups is a boring and long process, but I myself got a different view of this. It was fun meeting new people, hearing new ideas and seeing how passionate the founders were. I also got the chance of getting the perfect impression of the founders and to select the founders that I thought would be the perfect fit for me (if you can't stand the founders, then you will be having a bad time at the job).

In the end I picked a startup called KumulAid to be the "chosen one" where I wanted to spend my summer at. KumulAid wanted (and still wants) to be the donation platform that brings companies, donors and charities together, to help NGO’s to raise more funds at a lower cost.

They had worked out their idea in such a depth that I had never experienced before. Everything was perfectly documented and explained so that their vision was instantly reflected upon me. My main task was to translate their written documentation into a working experience in the form of a website.

From my experiences from other small jobs we decided it would be best to write a backlog (=every task that should be done) containing the Category, As a/an, I want to..., so that..., Notes, Priority, Status and Assignee ( all for me of course ;) ). After tuning this backlog for a proper fit for both parties we got to an agreement that would suit us both. I also created an ERD (counted in my work hours afterwards) showing how their database was going to look and if they agreed with it (ERD = Entity Relation Diagram). Now all that was left to do was to get the papers stating the work agreement, the "company rules" (required in Belgium) and the "NDA" signed. Signing these is something we did in person, since it was the chance for us to meet each other and see again if we would be a great fit to work together.

Then my work started, I started setting up the frameworks to use (On the back-end Hapi.js together with a MySQL database and for the front-end AngularJS). The designs were delivered by a third-party. Because of their perfect documentation and our perfect planning with the backlog and such, work progressed almost flawlessly. I was free to work anywhere and anytime I wanted as long as the work got done within the discussed time frame. So within 2 - 3 weeks I was done with the complete MVP (after doing some crazy hours ;) of course).

This is when the testing phase came, I let the KumulAid founders play around for a while and got them to note down everything that was not to their wishes / things that I might have forgotten. After which I got to work with this feedback and iterate the MVP to get the bugs out of it and get it in shape for a first release. We also did this in person to sit together and see exactly what they mean and how I was going to solve it.

I now launched their MVP onto a staging server (using Amazon AWS for the server and Deploybot for deploying the code to the staging server automatically so that they could see the progress) which marked the end of my work at KumulAid. (Or at least the expected end of my work ;) ).

Looking back I think I have made some excellent choices for handling this kind of job:

    Arranging the contract with the use of a Backlog and an ERD made me understand the job perfectly and also helped the founders to see exactly what was going to be done.
    Meeting in person for the last bug fixes was a perfect choice, we went over every point and got to an understanding of how it should look like, this also made the bond between me and the company stronger.
    Being able to get the courage to look for a job at a startup and applying through the startup initiative, this was something new and I did not regret this choice once.

Now we are more than 1 month further after the work has finished. Seeing at where I came from and where I am now, I have to say the road was crazy. After finishing the work at KumulAid we saw together and discussed what we would do further. We eventually came up with me joining the team as a co-founder to help KumulAid on their endeavor to success. Together we just recently came to pitch for a startup incubator called Telenet Kickstart were we now hope to get accepted to continue building our product.

You may also wonder in how far we are with releasing the first MVP? Well currently our deadline for release is October 2015. We will start in Belgium and The Netherlands but hope to expand one day to conquer the international market and also enable donors and companies  in developing countries to use the KumulAid platform.

This marks the end of my blog post and I would like to take these last few lines to thank everyone that helped me to achieve this awesome summer experience. First my friend Adri for getting me in contact with the Startup Initiative Start it @kbc whom I also would like to thank for all the help. Then the startups who have all sent me an email with a job offer to help them (specifically Salesflare, Rialto, ... for having a meeting with me :) ) and last but not least the biggest thanks goes to the founders of KumulAid who believed in me and trusted me to help them build their product.


 


Spending the summer at a Startup

## Why did we use this development environment?

![Feedient setup](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/rqhNZ3cSvwBui8n7mCnhuK8vWcFo-D2vrWqRJ-7JFgw=s600 "docker-17-36-51-1.jpg")
One of the tasks when hiring a new developer is to get this developer completely set-up on his new development environment. Most of the time this task takes a lot of time resulting in a lost workday for the newly hired employee.

That is why we at Feedient are using a development environment that consists out of the following:

- [CoreOS](https://coreos.com) (A stripped Linux distribution that has the unneeded software removed that other Linux distributions have)
- [Docker](https://www.docker.com) (Container management tool that uses Linux LVM)
- [Vagrant](https://www.vagrantup.com/) (Virtual Machine manager, mostly used for development environments).

>*Other alternatives too this setup are possible by switching out the Linux distribution for a more popular one such as Ubuntu, CentOS, ... And changing the container management tool for a provisioner such as Chef, Puppet, Ansible, ...*

The advantages of using this development environment are

- Small initial setup time allowing the newly hired development too start developing within 10 minutes.
- Almost an exact clone of the production environment, this allows the developer too test changes that are not dependent on the OS.
- Docker has the advantage over Chef / Puppet / Ansible / ... that it is way faster and smaller.
- Separation of concerns, we keep the complete development environment on a VM so that the developer does not need to install unneeded software on their own machine.
- CoreOS ships Docker by default, which is one package less to install.

## Setting up the environment

### Installing the prerequisites for the developer

Every environment has prerequisites that have to be installed, we can not avoid this but we can keep it to a minimum. This is why a new developer only has to install the following when they come in:

- [VirtualBox](https://www.virtualbox.org/) (Virtualization Software)
- [Vagrant](https://www.vagrantup.com/)
- [Git](http://git-scm.com/) (Version Control System)

A way to remove these initial prerequisites is by pre-installing the software on the computer of the developer before they receive it.

### Preparing Vagrant to boot for the first time

As soon as we have downloaded the prerequisites we have to start vagrant. Vagrant uses a `Vagrantfile` which contains the specification of the Virtual Machine that is going to be created when we enter `vagrant up`.

We have created our own repository that a new developer has to clone with the use of git and then they can instantly start their vagrant machine which does the rest of the configuration.

For a basic Vagrantfile that will install CoreOS you can clone this repository: [https://github.com/coreos/coreos-vagrant](https://github.com/coreos/coreos-vagrant). We however used our own Folder structure described below.

### Our Vagrant Folder structure

We have created our own directory structure that will allow us to reuse most of the files that were used during installation.

```bash
Vagrant_CoreOS_Docker
│ README.md
│ Vagrantfile
│ install.sh
│
└───docker
├───ghost_demo
│ │ Dockerfile
│ │ start.bash
```

This folder structure shows that we hold the Vagrantfile and install.sh in our root directory. This Vagrantfile will be used when we enter `vagrant up` and will then setup the Virtual Machine with CoreOS. After this is done it will then run install.sh which in turn is going to install the ghost_demo Dockerfile.

The reason we chose for this setup is because this allows a couple of things:

- We can add more projects under the docker folder
- install.sh accepts 2 parameters __DockerfilePath__ and __ImageName__ allowing us to change the Dockerfile that is being installed.

#### Vagrantfile

```ruby
# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# # vi: set ft=ruby :

require 'fileutils'

Vagrant.require_version ">= 1.6.0"

CLOUD_CONFIG_PATH = File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), "user-data")
CONFIG = File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), "config.rb")

$update_channel = "alpha"
nodes = [
 {
 :name => 'ghostdemo',
 :config => 'ghostdemo',
 :ip => '172.17.8.2',
 :box => "coreos-%s" % $update_channel,
 :url => "http://%s.release.core-os.net/amd64-usr/current/coreos_production_vagrant.json" % $update_channel,
 :version => ">= 308.0.1",
 :ram => 1024,
 :cpus => 1,
 :gui => false
 }
]
```

# Defaults for config options defined in CONFIG

```ruby
$update_channel = "alpha"
$enable_serial_logging = false

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
 nodes.each do |node|
 config.vm.define node[:name] do |node_config|
 nfs_setting = RUBY_PLATFORM =~ /darwin/ || RUBY_PLATFORM =~ /linux/

 # IF NO NFS: node_config.vm.synced_folder "www", "/var/www"
 #node_config.vm.synced_folder "www", "/var/www", :nfs => true, :mount_options => ['nolock,vers=3,udp']
 node_config.vm.synced_folder ".", "/home/core/share", id: "core", :nfs => true, :mount_options => ['nolock,vers=3,udp']

 # Configure Machine details
 node_config.vm.box = node[:box]
 node_config.vm.box_url = node[:url]
 node_config.vm.box_version = node[:version]
 node_config.vm.hostname = node[:name]

 # Private network
 config.ssh.forward_agent = true
 node_config.vm.network :private_network, ip: node[:ip]

 # Forwards ports 60000 - 60010
 (60000..6010).each do |port|
 config.vm.network :forwarded_port, :host => port, :guest => port
 end

 # User data
 if File.exist?(CLOUD_CONFIG_PATH)
 config.vm.provision :file, :source => "#{CLOUD_CONFIG_PATH}", :destination => "/tmp/vagrantfile-user-data"
 config.vm.provision :shell, :inline => "mv /tmp/vagrantfile-user-data /var/lib/coreos-vagrant/", :privileged => true
 end

 config.vm.provider :virtualbox do |v|
 # On VirtualBox, we don't have guest additions or a functional vboxsf
 # in CoreOS, so tell Vagrant that so it can be smarter.
 v.check_guest_additions = false
 v.functional_vboxsf = false
 end

 # plugin conflict
 if Vagrant.has_plugin?("vagrant-vbguest") then
 config.vbguest.auto_update = false
 end

 # Serial logging
 if $enable_serial_logging
 logdir = File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), "log")
 FileUtils.mkdir_p(logdir)

 serialFile = File.join(logdir, "%s-serial.txt" % vm_name)
 FileUtils.touch(serialFile)

 config.vm.provider :vmware_fusion do |v, override|
 v.vmx["serial0.present"] = "TRUE"
 v.vmx["serial0.fileType"] = "file"
 v.vmx["serial0.fileName"] = serialFile
 v.vmx["serial0.tryNoRxLoss"] = "FALSE"
 end

 config.vm.provider :virtualbox do |vb, override|
 vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--uart1", "0x3F8", "4"]
 vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--uartmode1", serialFile]
 end
 end

 # Forward docker tcp
 if $expose_docker_tcp
 config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 2375, host: ($expose_docker_tcp + i - 1), auto_correct: true
 end

 # Run our ghost container and mount it on port 4000 + sync folders.
 node_config.vm.provision :shell, :inline => "sh /vagrant/install.sh docker/ghost_demo/ ghost_demo 60000:2368"
 end
 end
end
```

#### install.sh

```bash
#!/bin/bash
#============================================================
# FILE: install.sh
# USAGE: ./install.sh sitename
# DESCRIPTION: This script will install the site with the given configuration
#
# OPTIONS: $1 The path to the Dockerfile (Using this project as root)
# OPTIONS: $2 The Imagename for the installed DockerContainer
# OPTIONS: $3 The Ports to be forwarded afterwards
# REQUIREMENTS: /
# AUTHOR: Xavier Geerinck (thebillkidy@gmail.com)
# COMPANY: Feedient
# VERSION: 1.1.0
# CREATED: 18/08/13 20:12:38 CET
# REVISION: ---
#============================================================
# Config parameters
docker_binary=/usr/bin/docker

# Check parameters (We need the dockerpath too install + name for the image)
if [ -z "$1" -o -z "$2" -o -z "$3" ]; then
 echo "Usage: `basename $0` "
 echo "Example: `basename $0` docker/ghost_demo/ ghost_demo"
 echo "Info: The DockerfilePath is the path from this as root to the directory where the Dockerfile is located"

 exit 0
fi

# If chef is not installed then install it
echo "Checking if Docker is installed..."
if ! test -f "$docker_binary"; then
 echo "Downloading and installing docker"

 # Update binaries
 sudo apt-get update

 # Install wget & ca-certificates
 sudo apt-get install -y wget ca-certificates docker.io

 # Link and fix paths
 ln -sf /usr/bin/docker.io /usr/local/bin/docker
 sed -i '$acomplete -F _docker docker' /etc/bash_completion.d/docker.io

 # Start Docker on server boot
 update-rc.d docker.io defaults
else
 echo "Docker is already installed"
fi

echo "Running docker"
cd /home/core/share/$1 && \
echo "Building the docker image from the dockerfile located at: /home/core/share/"$1 && \
docker build -t "$2" . && \
echo "Starting up the docker container: $2" && \
docker run -d -p $3 "ghost_demo"

echo "Done"
exit 0
```

#### Dockerfile

```bash
#
# Ghost Dockerfile
#
# https://github.com/dockerfile/ghost
#

# Pull base image.
FROM dockerfile/nodejs

# Install Ghost
RUN \
cd /tmp && \
wget https://ghost.org/zip/ghost-latest.zip && \
unzip ghost-latest.zip -d /ghost && \
rm -f ghost-latest.zip && \
cd /ghost && \
npm install --production && \
sed 's/127.0.0.1/0.0.0.0/' /ghost/config.example.js > /ghost/config.js && \
useradd ghost --home /ghost

# Add files.
ADD start.bash /ghost-start

# Set environment variables.
ENV NODE_ENV production

# Define mountable directories.
VOLUME ["/data", "/ghost-override"]

# Define working directory.
WORKDIR /ghost

# Define default command.
CMD ["bash", "/ghost-start"]

# Expose ports.
EXPOSE 2368
```

#### start.bash

```bash
#!/bin/bash

GHOST="/ghost"
OVERRIDE="/ghost-override"

CONFIG="config.js"
DATA="content/data"
IMAGES="content/images"
THEMES="content/themes"

cd "$GHOST"

# Symlink data directory.
mkdir -p "$OVERRIDE/$DATA"
rm -fr "$DATA"
ln -s "$OVERRIDE/$DATA" "content"

# Symlink images directory
mkdir -p "$OVERRIDE/$IMAGES"
rm -fr "$IMAGES"
ln -s "$OVERRIDE/$IMAGES" "$IMAGES"

# Symlink config file.
if [[ -f "$OVERRIDE/$CONFIG" ]]; then
 rm -f "$CONFIG"
 ln -s "$OVERRIDE/$CONFIG" "$CONFIG"
fi

# Symlink themes.
if [[ -d "$OVERRIDE/$THEMES" ]]; then
 for theme in $(find "$OVERRIDE/$THEMES" -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec basename {} \;)
 do
 rm -fr "$THEMES/$theme"
 ln -s "$OVERRIDE/$THEMES/$theme" "$THEMES/$theme"
 done
fi

# Start Ghost
chown -R ghost:ghost /data /ghost /ghost-override
su ghost << EOF cd "$GHOST" NODE_ENV=${NODE_ENV:-production} npm start EOF 
``` 

### Booting Vagrant 
After you have created your Vagrantfile and the other files. (or used the one of the repository above) you can then start your vagrant machine which will create the VirtualMachine and start it. This can be done by navigating to the directory that holds the Vagrantfile and then entering the command: `vagrant up`. This will now show something as shown below: 

> *__Note:__ This will not work on Windows since NFS is not supported on Windows. We however heard of a workaround called `cygwin rsync` but have not specific details about this.*
>
> *__Note2:__ When you used the repository above you will have a different output then shown below. You also will not have the ghost blog installed automatically.*

```bash
$ vagrant up
Bringing machine 'core-01' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
==> core-01: Box 'coreos-alpha' could not be found. Attempting to find and install...
core-01: Box Provider: virtualbox
core-01: Box Version: >= 308.0.1
==> core-01: Loading metadata for box 'http://alpha.release.core-os.net/amd64-usr/current/coreos_production_vagrant.json'
core-01: URL: http://alpha.release.core-os.net/amd64-usr/current/coreos_production_vagrant.json
==> core-01: Adding box 'coreos-alpha' (v431.0.0) for provider: virtualbox
core-01: Downloading: http://alpha.release.core-os.net/amd64-usr/431.0.0/coreos_production_vagrant.box
core-01: Calculating and comparing box checksum...
==> core-01: Successfully added box 'coreos-alpha' (v431.0.0) for 'virtualbox'!
==> ghostdemo: Importing base box 'coreos-alpha'...
==> ghostdemo: Matching MAC address for NAT networking...
==> ghostdemo: Checking if box 'coreos-alpha' is up to date...
==> ghostdemo: Setting the name of the VM: Vagrant_CoreOS_Docker_ghostdemo_1410250017479_38606
==> ghostdemo: Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
==> ghostdemo: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
ghostdemo: Adapter 1: nat
ghostdemo: Adapter 2: hostonly
==> ghostdemo: Forwarding ports...
ghostdemo: 22 => 2222 (adapter 1)
==> ghostdemo: Running 'pre-boot' VM customizations...
==> ghostdemo: Booting VM...
==> ghostdemo: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
ghostdemo: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2222
ghostdemo: SSH username: core
ghostdemo: SSH auth method: private key
ghostdemo: Warning: Connection timeout. Retrying...
==> ghostdemo: Machine booted and ready!
==> ghostdemo: Setting hostname...
==> ghostdemo: Configuring and enabling network interfaces...
==> ghostdemo: Exporting NFS shared folders...
==> ghostdemo: Preparing to edit /etc/exports. Administrator privileges will be required...
==> ghostdemo: Mounting NFS shared folders...
==> ghostdemo: Running provisioner: shell...
ghostdemo: Running: inline script
==> ghostdemo: Checking if Docker is installed...
==> ghostdemo: Docker is already installed
==> ghostdemo: Running docker
==> ghostdemo: Building the docker image from the dockerfile located at: /home/core/share/docker/ghost_demo/
==> ghostdemo: Sending build context to Docker daemon 4.608 kB
==> ghostdemo: Sending build context to Docker daemon
==> ghostdemo: Step 0 : FROM dockerfile/nodejs
==> ghostdemo: Pulling repository dockerfile/nodejs
==> ghostdemo: ---> 42558db32e73
==> ghostdemo: Step 1 : RUN cd /tmp && wget https://ghost.org/zip/ghost-latest.zip && unzip ghost-latest.zip -d /ghost && rm -f ghost-latest.zip && cd /ghost && npm install --production && sed 's/127.0.0.1/0.0.0.0/' /ghost/config.example.js > /ghost/config.js && useradd ghost --home /ghost
==> ghostdemo: ---> Running in 8dc4b656ac97
******************************** OUTPUT STRIPPED ********************************
==> ghostdemo: Removing intermediate container 8dc4b656ac97
==> ghostdemo: Step 2 : ADD start.bash /ghost-start
==> ghostdemo: ---> dd80e21aeb25
==> ghostdemo: Removing intermediate container ffc3f4127ca7
==> ghostdemo: Step 3 : ENV NODE_ENV production
==> ghostdemo: ---> Running in 785e2484b64f
==> ghostdemo: ---> 85043cda1ff3
==> ghostdemo: Removing intermediate container 785e2484b64f
==> ghostdemo: Step 4 : VOLUME ["/data", "/ghost-override"]
==> ghostdemo: ---> Running in 64cfe35fda23
==> ghostdemo: ---> fda26d5e7d2c
==> ghostdemo: Removing intermediate container 64cfe35fda23
==> ghostdemo: Step 5 : WORKDIR /ghost
==> ghostdemo: ---> Running in 588c6a347797
==> ghostdemo: ---> 105882ff6ed5
==> ghostdemo: Removing intermediate container 588c6a347797
==> ghostdemo: Step 6 : CMD ["bash", "/ghost-start"]
==> ghostdemo: ---> Running in 31b4e4d77f43
==> ghostdemo: ---> 48cdcfec4b71
==> ghostdemo: Removing intermediate container 31b4e4d77f43
==> ghostdemo: Step 7 : EXPOSE 2368
==> ghostdemo: ---> Running in b0bd604e832f
==> ghostdemo: ---> fd0825542e80
==> ghostdemo: Removing intermediate container b0bd604e832f
==> ghostdemo: Successfully built fd0825542e80
==> ghostdemo: Starting up the docker container: ghost_demo
==> ghostdemo: 6cfa46c230d4ffe2c9edf0aa6b21e1cb151e505fea6e5eab279cbbf9d3d0a6b9
==> ghostdemo: Done
```

After it echoed 'done' you will be able to ssh to the machine by entering the command: `vagrant ssh`. Which will greet you with the home directory and the nice welcoming message.

> *__Note:__ If you have multiple vagrant machines running you need to enter the command `vagrant ssh `. You can view the machines running by entering `vagrant status`.*

```bash
CoreOS (alpha)
core@core-01 ~ $
```

You will also be able to go to your newly created Ghost blog by navigating too: `172.17.8.2:60000`

## Conclusion

Setting up Vagrant, CoreOS and Docker is a lot of initial work that has to be done by the System Admin. However once it has been done you can store it on a central Git repository, allowing every other developer to set up it's development environment in less then 20 minutes.