I was fortunate to be able to attend JSConf EU in 2011. This turned out to be a life altering event. Going there I expected to see some nice talks and get drunk in the awesome city of Berlin. While I did both of those things, what happened in the can going to Berlin airport was not expected. I got on board to organise a JSconf-style conference in Oslo: The Web Rebels Conference.

I am fast approaching 40 years old which is pretty fucking scary in general, but even more so when you work in software. No more am I allegeable for jobs, as I’m no longer in a place where I am viewed as something for the future. These amazing and brilliant young people coming through are just so much better than I ever was. It’s a young people’s game, programming. I have many friends who are of similar age and we share a common scare.

I was sitting on the floor playing with my son after coming home from work when my wife said: “it’s great to have you back". I was puzzled, what did she mean by that? Back from work? I hadn’t been away or anything so it had to be that, right? After putting our son to sleep I asked her what she meant. She said it was nice to see me present and participating when returning from work.

This has probably always been the case to some degree, but I think it gets even more apparent with the Internet and the rise of social media. What exactly? The culture where everyone is a parrot, merely repeating what some idol said in a post / interview / talk without really thinking things through and asking questions. Who said that? # I was asked this in a meeting when I presented an idea of how to structure web applications in a way which gave focus on the end user’s and not the technology.

The last five years I have had the privilege of having jobs with awesome titles like “Front end architect” and I was even at one point a CTO. Being in such positions enables you to have the impact to see ideas materialize. You also have impact on how others do their job. About two years ago I became the leader of the front-end core team at Finn.no after having been the front-end architect (the company decided to remove the architect role).