Lev Lazinskiy

Looking Back on 2015

2015 was the best year of my life. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on it and share some of the highlights.

I spent the first part of the year working at Linode on the operations team. We got two Data centers (Singapore and Frankfurt) up and running and I learned more about operations, Linux, networking, and servers in the first few months of this year than any other part of my life. I got to work on an awesome team with some truly wonderful people and I am grateful for that experience. I also got a chance to go to a lot of hackathons with Linode. I spent many weekends up all night helping young hackers learn about Linux, databases, python, and a bunch of random other things. I met so many awesome people and I can’t wait to do more hackathons in 2016.

In June I turned 27, felt sad that I was getting old, and then quickly got over it. :) In addition to getting older I finished the requirements for my Masters Degree in Computer Science and had an awesome graduation ceremony at my school in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Finishing my masters gets me much closer to the goal of teaching part time at the college level and significantly helps me with the periodic impostor syndrome that I get working in the tech field sometimes.

In July, I started a new job leading the success team at CircleCI. By far, this is the best job that I have ever had and I am so happy to be a part of such an amazing team. I have learned so much about CI, CD, Testing, and various Languages in the last six months at CircleCI and I look forward to learning much much more in the coming year. I also was able to launch a thriving CI community and am looking forward to watching it grow over the next few months.

At the end of October, after spending a cumulative total of 8 weeks in San Francisco, I decided to take the leap and finally move there. I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to live in my favorite city in the world and I could not be happier with my decision to move here.

I started a ton of side projects this year. But in early November I finally shipped braindump and the response has been absolutely mind blowing. It was the #4 python project on GitHub for several weeks, has over 500 stars on GitHub, a couple hundred active users, and a bunch of contributions from other hackers on GitHub. I can’t wait to watch braindump continue to grow in the coming months.

The last few weeks of 2015 have been hectic and exciting. I started a new company called Bitkumo and I can’t wait to watch it grow. I spent some quality time with my best friends in the entire world in New Jersey, and I am now back at home in Ohio to spend time with my family for new years.

Some of my goals for 2016 are:

1. Continue to work on Braindump aiming for a 1.0 release, and keep writing more code and starting more projects.
2. Become a python expert.
3. Continue to build a CI/CD Community at CircleCI and continue to help developers succeed.
4. Get more involved in the local SF community. I am talking to groups like Larkin Street Youth Services and Code 2040, I want to get involved and give back.
5. Keep growing Bitkumo.
6. Explore more of city. I spend a lot of time walking up and down Market St. I need to see more of SF.
7. Cook more, should be easy now that I have someone to cook for ;) <3
8. Blog more.
9. Continue working on my PhD. I took a semester off, but I want to slowly but surely crack away at this seemingly endless pursuit.
10. Go to more Hackathons. I fell in love with Hackathons in 2015 and I want to go to as many as possible.