Actually, the anniversary date was over a month ago already. So it has been more than a year of self-employment in Australia for me by now. It all went by very fast. Right now, I am head above water and doing fine like this eastern short-necked turtle. I do appreciate that very much! Looking back, I am honestly a little bit surprised that it has worked out so far. I was and am still just testing the waters. The amount of flexibility I have with Strophurus Solutions is great for the time being. Gives me time to discover Australia, learn a language or try a different hobby or craft.
On the other hand, I miss an office and being part of a team as well as the opportunity to hone leadership skills.
One way to get that back would be starting an actual company and growing it instead of sticking with the one-person business. But the amount of insecurity that brings about and the amount of dedication it requires is a definite barrier. No idea if that one will ever fall for me. There might be other ways. A safe job as an employee also sounds fairly decent though.
In the past year, I have taken my software development skills to the next level and am now comfortable doing full-stack development of web applications. Finding a way to integrate LLMs into my workflow was also part of the learning curve. I’m probably still nowhere near exhausting the potential of these tools, but it’s hard to keep up. I guess the same goes for everyone else. Maybe software development is a dead end these days. Or at least the way you do it is fundamentally changing at a scary pace. I still believe you can’t build complex, robust and secure systems with LLMs yet, without having a fairly good understanding of what you are doing. However, they accelerate your learning process and boost productivity quite a bit. It’s not something you’d want to miss once you get comfortable with it.
Next year, I will try to shift away from doing primarily software development. I’ll aim for more technical, engineering-related task or seize opportunities to work as a consultant or in a more managerial role. Another goal is to have at least one Australian client by the end of 2026. Let’s see how that goes. The Australians are apparently all about networking. But I had no prior ties to the continent, so here’s a little challenge for myself.
As a reward for actually reading this to the end, you get a link to my personal blog where I post pictures of the hundreds of different animals I encountered in Australia so far -> oedura.wordpress.org. Enjoy!