Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment of 2017?

Apart from finishing my last internship (graduating in 2018), my greatest accomplishment would be finding the secret to make connections fast. There was a post here several months ago on how to make friends and in that post, the author details that the fastest way to get social with someone is through self-disclosure. Just talk about your latest adventure, or talk about stuff you're passionate in. Next time you meet them, chances are that they'll ask you about your latest venture. Bam, that's a connection in the making. It was a big leap as I used to always kept my thoughts to myself, thinking that they're nobody's business until I heard that I'm labeled as that "mysterious guy" at the office, that I should talk more. It was perplexing as I knew that I was more social than usual at work: we talk about their day, we talk about the projects extensively, I talk about the latest news in tech, we have lunch together, etc.

Yet through all of these, I forgot to show a piece of myself to them. It was more of a professional relationship. Upon reading that think piece in HN, the next week I began sharing a few details about myself. Things like my plans for vacation, some hobbies I do on weekends, and some tech that excites me. Pretty soon, these folks are messaging me on facebook. We suddenly have a relationship outside of work. Fast forward to now, even though I've finished my internship at the company, my previous boss messages me from time to time about that vacation I'm planning.

Surviving it. I know that sounds dramatic, but it's the best I can do (I almost kicked the bucket in 2016).

I went through a lot of personal changes over the past 2 years, and I'm still too close to absorb it all.

If there is one lesson I did learn, it's that I really need to stop being a lone wolf. This isn't to say I don't have friends, but it's accepting that I'm only one person, and it's trying to understand who "my people" are, and that's hard to figure out when there are so many wild transitions in location, social, and financial positions.

I've made a lot of tough and firm decisions over the past several months, and it's up to me to hold myself responsible to those commitments. The toughest step will be acting on the knowledge that I can't do it all alone, balanced with the fact that I have to do 90% first, and hand off the final 10% to someone else. In an ideal world, it would be an even split.

Learning how to be more social.

It may sound simple, but I constantly avoided social situations because I was worried about being judged and people disliking me. I realized by not even trying I already made people's judgements for them about me.

People are actually pretty friendly when you take a genuine interest in them. This in turn helped me to go on more dates and meet a nice woman whom I've been seeing for a couple months.

Someone told me that everyone wants to be loved, everyone wants to be liked and everyone wants to feel appreciated. I really took this to heart when interacting with strangers.

Left a job that was sucking my soul dry. It was at one of the big tech companies, in a high-visibility, very popular project (lots of people here on HN follow it), but I just couldn't stand working there anymore, in part because of there being too many "rock stars"/"celebrities" in the team that though too highly of themselves. I was hired at a higher position, with significantly higher compensation, at a company that I actually care about waking up in the morning and going to work to give my best. And with way friendlier and humbler co-workers.

Accomplishment: Getting back into housing.

What I learned: The laid back, people friendly hippie culture for which California is famous didn't actually die. It just moved to the Pacific Northwest.

I Increased my conscientiousness.

I feel like it moved a full standard deviation, but with no real way to measure it, no controls and no documentation it's all guesswork. Still, I can point to certain behavioral changes that haven't regressed in the last 6 months (and a couple surprising ones at that) when I made the change.

Figured out a solid business plan and a proper direction after a key pivot. 2018 here we come!

Cheesy, but I kissed a girl I had liked for two years and hadn't seen since we met for the first time. What did I learn? Sometimes things happen as you envision them.

Launched my side project Alias, a Slack bot that let's users define custom aliases and use them to type less. [0]

I managed to build it and launch it while finishing my Masters in CS, then working full time, while also being in a relationship. So I had to use any spare time I had to work on the app.

I learned a lot about time management and how to get into a flow state, fast. I tried doing a little bit of work every day. No matter how little, every day I tried doing some work on the app.

This quote stuck with me as I was working on the app: “It gets easier… Every day it gets a little easier… But you gotta do it every day — that’s the hard part. But it does get easier.”

Goal for 2018: Focus on marketing and bizdev to keep growing. I don't have much experience in this area so it'll be a challenge but I'm sure I'll learn a ton!

[0]: www.aliasbot.com

I will go left of curve which I like with responses to questions like this and say my greatest accomplishment in 2017 is I've made more friends this year than I've had in the last 25 years. I moved city and became very ingrained in the local music scene purely by appreciating what other artists produce. This has reaffirmed my thoughts on work, you can be extraordinary by just showing up when others can't be bothered. Some people have commented that these relationships aren't "real" friendships (friends are there when you need them not just there to party) but it feels great to belong to a community.

I failed to get a remote job on one of those famous remote first oriented kind of startups/companies and realized how much difficult that market is. It's sexy and It would certainly advance me in terms of knowledge and on my carreer path.

Though, that failure led me to my current venture where I validated that I am able to stand as a senior developer in a small dev team(3-4 ppl) that builds a robust and maintainable SaaS product and sometimes lead it.

I'm not giving up the idea of the famous remote company but left it aside for now.

I've also been reminded how much difficult for me is to decide to leave my hometown(for various reasons). I have to get on that too at some point.

I got a new job with much better pay and benefits. In the process I learned how much I'm worth in the jobs market. I also learned how to write good cover letters and cvs and how to sell myself in interviews.

Building an own course platform [0] for teaching React :) Everything I learned during this process is written down in this long read article [1]. It was a long journey, but definitely worth it considering all the learnings (not only implementation wise) along the way.

- [0] https://roadtoreact.com/

- [1] https://www.robinwieruch.de/how-to-build-your-own-course-pla...

I lost 22lbs since Thanksgiving day. If considered one act, that's probably the thing I'm most proud of in 2017.

I learned that my willpower is still there, I've just been failing to exercise it.

Lucky enough to live another progression from the alpha to the beta to the commercial stage of an eng & services startup from within. Lesson learnt: being a cog in a well oiled machine can be more rewarding than knowing it all.

Won 8 hackathons. Made really good connections during the process.

Realized that client works sucks and quit my consulting gigs.

4x:ed SaaS revenue.

My greatest achievement was I started reading books again. It was years since the last time I bought and finish a book.

Up more than 120% with my stock trading robots, my best year by far...

Read 24 books. 2016 was only 6. :)

2016