Taking a break from office life

As we know, it’s been 6 months when this pandemic started. And it’s been a challenging situation for all of us. For me, it’s hard to get productive at home, not because I’m not used to working at home, but mostly because we can’t get outside and have fun out there.

Work from home has been my root since I started my career as a web developer. My first professional web developer career was as a freelancer at my hometown Sorowako. I worked at the night for my clients those mostly in opposite timezone, with 56kbps GPRS modem on my cellphone. And I did it for three years before I started my own physical office, a hackerspace together with other freelancers and remote workers in Bandung at 2010.

But this pandemic situation, especially with Jakarta situation that is not getting better, makes me think if this is a time to take another career decision in life. And after a couple of months of considering it, I decided to take a break from work for other companies and thinking to build anything I want to feed me with fun feeling again on building something.

So this month, August 2020 is my last month work with Google Chrome Developer Relations team. Next step will be having a break for a month, and then I will start to build whatever product that comes to my mind. The plan is to get away from office life for one year, so won’t looking for any job. But we never know if things get bored and I might decide to change the plan. Will see.

It was a fantastic journey work with a global team in Chrome Developer Relation. Learned a lot how to work in autonomous and asynchronous even our team spread around the globe in multiple timezones—also learned how to work in ecosystem strategically, especially in an emerging market like Indonesia and India. Amazing team members who are well known by the web community

And the best thing, I learned about how to be a good manager, because my manager Robert Nyman, is someone who able to help and support me to be performed and deliver the works. How a good manager is not about micro-manage, but more about helping you to set and focus on your goals, also help you to clear any obstacles and connect you with the right persons or references. He’s the person who able to help me survive in this big company.

Final word, thank you Google for this opportunity and learnings for the last three years, I hope we can cross our path again in the future.