Four years at Red Hat
A few days ago, at the end of October 2023, I celebrated my fourth year at Red Hat. This is my fourth work anniversary post which has now become a tradition of sorts. These posts help me reflect on my journey, accomplishments, and aspirations for the future. If you're interested, you can catch up on my previous years as a Red Hatter in these posts:
As time goes by, I grow increasingly appreciative of my role at Red Hat and the privilege of working with open source and free software every day. Here's to many more years of exciting challenges and achievements!
A bittersweet year
This past year was marked by challenges, not only for Red Hat but the industry as a whole. In late 2022, numerous companies started to let people go. It all started with hiring freezes, but it quickly escalated to widespread layoffs across the industry.
A few months later, by April 2023, Red Hat followed the same path and announced a reduction in force (RIF) of around 4% of its workforce (~700 employees).
The turmoil is still underway, there are wars and conflicts everywhere, and the situation doesn't seem to be improving. Despite the tough times, I remain grateful for the opportunity to continue working with free software. Let's hope for a brighter future, where we can return to a sense of normalcy.
This year's highlights
Now, let me share some of the highlights from my fourth year at Red Hat.
Projects
Eclipse JKube
This year we released 7 new versions of Eclipse JKube. While we didn't introduce any groundbreaking features, we kept ourselves busy by expanding support for new libraries and frameworks and ensuring overall stability.
Our community flourished with increased participation, more contributors, and a growing number of project forks. It's heartening to see the project thrive through community involvement.
We also took part in this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC) by mentoring a student who each completed a project. I wasn't a mentor on this occasion, but my colleague Sun was and did a great job.
I'm exceptionally proud of what we've achieved this year as a team and as a community, and I'm eager to see what the next year will bring.
Fabric8 Kubernetes Client
The Fabric8 Kubernetes Client saw 16 releases this year. We introduced numerous new features and improvements. One notable achievement was the implementation of a Vert.x-based HTTP client, released in version 6.4.0. This shift allowed Quarkus to transition from OkHTTP and reuse its Vert.x client, significantly enhancing performance and reducing memory consumption.
The high level of community contributions to the project continues to be a source of pride for me. I'm profoundly grateful to everyone involved and eagerly await the opportunities and challenges the next year will bring.
Public speaking
This year I had more time for speaking and gave a few talks.
These are some of the events I took part in:
- Red Hat EMEA Tech meetups 2023-01-27: Boosting the inner-loop developer experience with Eclipse JKube (Red Hat internal talk)
- Madrid JUG 2023-03-07: Desarrollo local de aplicaciones Java en Kubernetes
- Virtuelle Tech Konferenz 2023-03-08: Putting Java to K8s with Eclipse JKube and Helm (Commerzbank AG internal conference)
- Open Tour Valencia 2023-04-26: Modernización y Transformación de Aplicaciones (Red Hat + Intel Open Tour)
- EclipseCon 2023-10-18: Helm for Java developers with Eclipse JKube
- EclipseCon 2023-10-19: Deploy and update microservices on the fly with Eclipse Cloud DevTools
Full Stack Quarkus and React
I spent most of my free time in 2022 writing the book "Full Stack Quarkus and React" with Packt. However, the book wasn't published until late November. The book is doing pretty well and has many positive reviews. If you're interested, please don't hesitate to get your copy and check it out.
In conclusion, my fourth year at Red Hat has been a mix of challenges and accomplishments, but my commitment to open source remains unwavering. I look forward to what the future holds and am excited to continue contributing to the world of free software.
