Choose your battles

This is the third part of the series: How to survive and thrive – a series for new developers to become better at their jobs. You can read the first two parts here and here.

In military, there is a term of “uphill battle”. That when you have to fight your way up a hill, when you enemy controls the top. It’s a very difficult fight and your chance of success is low. Any experienced military leader knows uphill battles are something you should avoid until there are no other options.

That also applies with any jobs. Including programming.

The truth is, you shouldn’t fight the battles you can’t win.
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Why did I leave HBO (Nordics). Spoiler: it sucks!

As most of us, I spend a fair chunk amount of my free time to watch movies and TV series, and as most of us, on Netflix. While Netflix has some very good content, and they have been adding great original TV series (House of Cards, Daredevil, Stranger Things, Narcos, just to name a few), those have not been enough for me. I want to watch Games of Throne, The Wire, The Sopranos, Silicon Valley etc, but sadly, they are pretty HBO-exclusive, so to watch them, I have two options: either buy the discs (Very expensive), or subscribe to HBO (much cheaper).

Fine, I decided to suspend my Netflix for a month a resume my HBO Nordics subscription. At least for one month to watch the good content there. Last year I did try HBO one month, for free, but I cancelled it – which I have no clear memory why I did. May be it will work this time.

Unfortunately it does not.

Right after I tried HBO again, it’s clear to me why I left HBO at the first place – and sadly, there are several reasons for that.

Continue reading “Why did I leave HBO (Nordics). Spoiler: it sucks!”