Like 2020, the year 2021 was also eclipsed by COVID-19. Still there are some things I have achieved and smashed through a couple of goals. This will be the third installemnt of me writing a recap of the year that was, after 2019 and 2020. In this post, I am going to detail some professional and technical things I have done this year, let’s get rolling!
Table of contents #
Highlights #
Below are the highlights of the year 2021 from a technical and professional point of view:
- I was interviewed for the TechKraft podcast in Jul by Ravi Mandal.
- Successfully published 24+1 (this review) post on this blog. The traffic of this blog was 2.5x higher in terms of page views and it got 3 times more users this year compared to 2020, thanks to my ruthless focus on SEO.
- My blog posts were published in multiple other publications like Logrokcet blog, Honey Badger blog, Flagsmith and one in App Signal too.
- Finally I started a tech newsletter from Nov and recently crossposted on Linkedin newsletter
- This year I did at least 2 virtual talks one about crafting your tech resume and other about podcast episodes to listen to as a software engineer.
In the next section we can revisit how my interview went.
Featured - Interview for a podcast #
This year I was interviewed exactly once, ok there were other podcast invites but I didn’t do it for some reasons. I was approached by Ravi Mandal from TechKraft for the TechKraft podcast.
It was a fun interview to be honest and Ravi did a great job as an interviewer.
We discussed various thing related to software engineering, from code reviews, microservices, feature flags to manager is a career change and mentoring.
Below is the video form of it:
If you want to listen to the audio version of this podcast it is available as follows:
Next up, we will discuss the blogging and writing I did this year.
Blogging and writing in 2021 #
This year I have hit the target I set for the number of blog posts I would like to write for my blog.
I have written 24 blog posts and with this review post it makes it 25 :).
I have written things about JavaScript, Node.js, Kubernetes, Rabbit MQ, tech career advice, deployment tools, logging, etc. Next up let’s see how many posts did I actually publish each month this year.
Breakdown by month #
Below is a breakdown of posts on this blog by each month of 2021:
- Jan - 5
- Feb - 3
- Mar - 2
- Apr - 2
- May - 2
- Jun - 1
- Jul - 2
- Aug - 0
- Sep - 1
- Oct - 2
- Nov - 2
- Dec - 2
It would have been good to be consistent with 2 blog posts each month and possible one every 2 weeks. Stll 24 blog posts is not an easy feat, next up we will look at the most popular posts of 2021 written and published in 2021.
Most viewed blog posts of 2021 #
We can see the list of top 5 blog posts in terms of page views in 2021 as follows:
- 3 free Node.js hosting services you should be using today (with step-by-step deployment examples) - Jan 2021
- 5 Node.js Logging libraries compared for you to make the optimal choice - Jan 2021
- Node.js Postgresql tutorial: Build a simple REST API with Express step-by-step - Jan 2021
- How to use RabbitMQ and Node.js with Docker and Docker-compose - Jul 2021
- Kubernetes cron jobs: a hands-on guide to optimally configured crons - Feb 2021
Looks like the posts in Jan-2021 have worked pretty well in terms of popularity. Consequently, we will discuss a bit about how the traffic of this blog increased by 2.5x in 2021.
Blog traffic goes up #
From Oct 2020 I focused ruthlessly on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for this blog. Basically the main switch was to write for things people searched for than things I wanted to write about.
This changed the course of how traffic landed on this blog, in 2021 my blog witnessed a 531% increment in search engine traffic which made the audience size 3x compared to 2020.
Below is a quick comparison of traffic acquisition for 2020 and 2021.
From a page view point of view, in 2021 the blog had 2.5 times more page views compared to 2020 for the same number of 24 posts for both years. This is already hitting a cealing in my opinion.
Compared to last year, the blog climbed from position 725,243 in Dec-2020 to 205,041 in Dec-2021 on Alexa.
It can be seen below.
Sadly, Alexa is shutting down in May 2022 so I will need to look at similar web rankings from this year. It is at 515,013 now in Dec-2021 on Similar web:
In the following section we will discuss what other publications and blogs I have written posts for this year.
Other publications #
In addition to writing for my own blog, I have also written posts for other publications this year. All of these pieced have been original work than crossposts of my personal blog’s posts. Below is a quick view of the publications and blogs I have written for in 2021:
- LogRocket Blog - 12 posts on various topics like Node.js, Kubernetes, React, etc. 1 more coming in 2022.
- Flagsmith - 6 posts mainly about feature flags and git branching.
- Honey badger - 2 posts both on running Ruby on Rails on Kubernetes in 2 parts.
- App signal - 1 post on Node.js and Prisma ORM with PostgreSQL database.
I was cross posting till Mar 2021 on Medium publications like on better programming I posted about Javascript memoization. For Javascript in plain english I cross posted about software resilience amongst other things. For DailyJS I wrote about Docker and Node.js. I cross posted on Dev.to too.
All in all I have written a total of 50+ blog posts this year. Basically I have been a content machine producing almost 1 post each week thanks to work from home and lockdowns.
Next up, we will discuss about a couple of talk I could do this year.
Talks #
I did not do any in-person talks this year too. But, I carried out at least 2 talks one of them was for the learning day at the place I work for Podcast Episodes to listen to. The other one was for the students of Dented Code to help them craft a great tech resume.
Podcast episodes #
These were my podcast episodes recommendations for every software engineer packaged as a talk:
The slides can be viewed on Google Slides too where all the links will work :).
Craft your tech resume #
Below are the slides from my talk about “how to craft your tech resume”:
Thanks to Prem for the invite to do this talk. You can view the slides on Google Slides too. The image of the zoom meeting for the talk which also had a QnA after the talk is seen as follows:
In the following section we will look into miscellaneous things I did this year.
Misc #
All other things I did this year which are worth mentioned are as follows in no particular order:
- This year too I completed Hacktoberfest in October
- It has been one year plus of the social meda break I took and it is going good.
- AU Tech Jobs, our side project from last year is still alive and going generally Ok. The mini startup that changed some lives for sure.
- Geshan’s Blog newsletter was started on Nov 2021 and already has some followers. Please do subscribe it will be cross-posted to Linkedin Newsletter too (has 1K+ followers there)
Conclusion #
Possibly I have missed some things. I hope 2022 will be a better year for all of us. Keep supporting me and this blog, cheers!