Year 2020: New Beginnings

The time is 2357hrs on Jan 1, 2020 when I started writing this entry and by the time I post it, it will be the 2nd day of the new year.

I don’t have any new year resolution, nor will I define one for the rest of the year.

But there will be a few things that I want to focus on.

I will be a better writer than I was in 2019.

I will be a better software developer than I was in 2019

I will work on my confidence and self-esteem issues and be a better version of me in 2020.

And I have no doubt there will be a ton of setbacks and growing pains.

But I will keep fighting on, to live a life that I want and be able to tell my 80 year old self I have no regrets.

The house by the sea

Just imagine this.

You live in a house, built out of bamboo and wood, out by the sea. It sat on top of wooden pillars that served as the house’s foundation. They were hammered into the sea bed with the top of the pillars jutting above the sea as though they are struggling for air. But all is good. You got a house to live in and you are out here by the sea, enjoying what nature’s got to offer you.

Then, environment effects attacked the house and its foundation, eating away pieces of wood and bamboo. Years went by. Decades went by. Holes began to appear along the house walls and sections started falling apart. Simultaneously, the house is wobbly and sinking centimetres every year due to weakened foundation. The sea bed in which the pillars stood had grown soft and unable to support the weight of the house.

But it’s your house and you can’t move. You refuse to let it fall apart. And so, you went to work to patch up the house. Every day without fail, you are fixing something. You knew it’s going to be a life long work.

Sadly, that’s not the only thing you have to deal with. You live with bad neighbours. Every time you patch up a section of your house, your neighbours come along and throw rocks at your house causing further damage. And you just keep patching.

And one day, you slipped and hurt yourself so badly that you almost couldn’t move. The pain was unbearable. Yet, you still keep going. You don’t really have a choice. Your house is falling apart, allowing the elements in. You are either wet, cold or too hot. The house can’t keep you in a goldilocks state.

So you work even though the world is against you.

Reflecting on my first pair programming interview

For those who don’t know what is pair programming, it is basically a software development technique where two developers/software engineers work together on the same machine. At any one time, one would be doing the actual programming and the other would be reviewing the written code. In both cases, communication between the two developers/engineers is very important.

Pair programming is usually done at some companies who want shipped codes or software that has fewer defects. After all, defects on shipped code could mean higher cost in terms of quality checks and troubleshooting.

And for some companies pair programming is also done as one of the interview stages. One of the purpose is the interviewer to figure out if you are suitable for the position. Interviewees are judged on their soft skills such as communication, ability to problem solve, plan and think critically, and technical capabilities. Another purpose would be to determine if the interviewee is able to work with other developers in the company.

Pair programming interviews are also there for the interviewees to understand who they are working with and how they may have to work in the company. It’s a good chance to find out if he or she is suitable for the applied role.

For me, despite working as a software engineer for five years now, I have never done pair programming. Most of the time, I work alone or in a team. And when it comes to interviews, the toughest kind I get are those where you have to do technical quizzes, solve programming challenges or do whiteboard problem solving.

So having to do a pair programming interview for the first time is both exciting and scary. And sad to say, I didn’t pass the interview.

Towards the end of the interview, the interviewer gave some really honest and constructive feedbacks that are helpful for my personal growth. I thank him for that and for the time he spent on me.

At the same time, I feel really shitty about the interview failure, which is expected. But my mood is now about to fall off the cliff. For some context, I have been struggling with burnout for months, depression and forms of anxiety for the last four. My mood was only just stabilising after three weeks of anti-depressants.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking for any sympathy nor trying to guilt trip anyone. I’m just sharing what I am feeling and have been through.

So what went wrong and could be better?

Low to average technical skills

My JavaScript fundamentals are weak. I was having issues with lambda and anonymous functions as well as some other fundamentals like passing of data. It prevented me from figuring out the solutions to some of the problems I encountered. The last time I did any decent amount of JavaScript was two years ago and even then, I only used the surface of what the language is capable of.

Making matters worse, I had to work with ReactJS, which is a JavaScript framework for developing UI. I also have to work with Redux, which is another JavaScript framework for state management. And it was no fault of the interviewer. I indicated that I want to do frontend development with ReactJS during the previous interview with one of the company’s employee.

At the end, a couple of hours spent every night for the past four days to learn ReactJS and Redux simply isn’t going to cut it.

But it doesn’t change anything. If I still want to be a frontend developer and be good with ReactJS/Redux, I have to keep learning and practice. And develop some apps using those frameworks along the way.

Failure to comprehend actual requirements

This is really on me. I was given the chance to read about the requirements and end goal of the exercise. The key focus areas were listed down in the document. But for some reason, I didn’t realise that I hadn’t really read and understand the whole thing before jumping in to come up with a solution. I could only attribute it to stress and anxiety.

Due to that, the solution I came up with was half-baked and caused major problems further down the development process.

Therefore, I really have to work on improving my resilience to stress and directing the brain to focus better. This is the only way for me to be able to understand future situations more clearly and come up with a better solution.

Overengineering

In software development, there are three principles that all developers should follow for higher productivity. They are:

DRY => “Don’t repeat yourself”
YAGNI => “You aren’t going to need it”
KISS => “Keep it stupid simple or “keep it simple, stupid”

And because of my failure to comprehend the actual problem, my half-baked solutions caused me to violate principle 2 and 3. There were additional React components that I created that weren’t necessary and made the codebase more complex.

I’ll admit that I violated those two principles a lot of time during my five years of software development experience. It is because I like to provision for future uses. Breaking those principles served me well so far because I have experienced scope creep that requires components or functionalities that I thought of in advance and had implemented. That means, I didn’t need to spend extra effort to develop and refactor my code later.

Going forward, I really need to train myself on going for the simplest and fastest solution to any problem.

Took too long and prevented successful gauge of my skills

Because of overengineering, it took me more than twenty minutes to develop the application foundation. After which, I had to redo some of my codes in order to support certain functionalities that I have overlooked because of my failure to read and comprehend the requirements. More time was wasted.

Therefore, I was unable to implement the other features of the application that would have allowed the interviewer to determine my understanding of ReactJS and Redux.

Final thoughts

Self-awareness is actually a very important skill to have. With it, you might be able to determine if you are suitable for a given role or job.

In my case, the combination of my highly-sensitive nature, under-developed stress resilience, highly self-critical and low self-esteem meant that I hadn’t really been able to function at the level required for a so-called experienced software engineer who’s been at this job for at least five years. I’m simply not ready yet to take on roles that require me to be a consultant or a quick thinker.

The other thing that I figured out was that the number of years of experience isn’t really a good gauge of your skills. The interviewer did point out that despite my years of experience, I still wasn’t able to grasp ReactJS even after 24 hours (spread over four days) of reading and practice. He implied that he was able to pick up the framework within two days instead of four.

With that, it could mean that either my fundamentals are very weak or that I’m simply not smart enough to pick up something fast. Or maybe both. For the former, I could work on it by going to read and study the fundamentals again. For the latter, well, I can only work harder than most to achieve the same skill level.

Either way, I’m just glad that I’ve been through it and knows what’s out there. There are valuable lessons to be learnt here, which is all that matters.

The well has dried up but it’s okay

You have just finished work and arrived home. In a bid to make yourself healthier again, you decided to reset your workout routine. And you thought, Monday is a good day to mark the start of your new workout routine. A quick run around your neighbourhood seemed to be the right choice.

After you’re home, had your shower and dinner, you realised you are doing everything else but the one thing you should be doing. Maybe you have to paint a piece of art. Maybe you have to prepare a new set of musical beats for your upcoming song. Or maybe you have to write an essay.

Not wanting to feel like a failure, you tried to get yourself to do that one thing. Seconds went by. Then minutes. Then hours. As midnight draws closer, you recognised the futility of the effort. There was simply nothing you can draw on from inside of you to do it.

And you know what? It’s ok.

Maybe you are really mentally exhausted and couldn’t do it. Or maybe you are really out of ideas. Whatever the situation or issue maybe, it’s important not to blame yourself for this failure. Trust yourself to deliver. After all, you have been doing it for a long time, right? The skills are there. You need to be kind to yourself and catch yourself before you go deep into that “I hate myself” speech.

And what you probably need also is a change up in the environment to put yourself in the right frame of mind to continue. In my case, it was as simple as going out of my room to get a cup of cold water, switched on the air-conditioning in my room and sit back down.

That’s how I break free from my initial writer’s block and write this. It may not seem much but I hope this help anyone who’s suffering some kind of creative block.

Be fearless about who you are

People who have an outward personality may not have the issue of showing the whole world who they are. They may come across as loud spoken, confident and sometimes just plain irritating. And there will be people who doesn’t mind having them as friends. For some of us, the more reserved, quiet and highly sensitive people, you can’t help but want to run away from these kind of people.

And it’s perfectly all right to do that.

What is not all right is when these reserved, quiet and highly sensitive people keep to themselves even when other people are insulting them, making snide remarks, or step all over them metaphorically.

It’s also understandable because these kind and nice souls didn’t want to hurt another person’s feeling or simply want to keep the peace. Another reason could be they are lacking the confidence or are just too self-conscious.

I’m like that too. Always hated bringing attention to myself. And didn’t quite like challenging people more senior than me. I’m highly sensitive and is an INFP.

But I’ve learnt that it’s important to stand up for yourself and speak up.

It’s only by speaking up and setting expectations, other people will know where you stand. If they respect you as a person, they will accept those expectations and leave you be. If they don’t, then it’s not your problem if they choose to keep picking a fight with you. You can either make your stance even firmer or find someone who can help you resolve the issue.

Admittedly, there are times when I utterly failed to set expectations or make my stances clear because of my fear of disappointing people.

And I remember quite vividly about how I actually ignore how another person saw me and make my stances clear. It was with my first two jobs that I actually made it clear about what I will do when it comes to my job and I don’t work weekends or late. I didn’t know why I said those things but somehow those words just came out. But of course the end result was pretty different. One respects it while the other kind of use it as a weapon against you.

Looking back now, I think I did good then.

But when it came my third job, I didn’t quite assert myself because I felt like I should be like my new colleagues. More proactive, hardworking, etc. And after having encounter people using what you said as a weapon against you, well, I didn’t want to feel the same way again.

But what happened was my boss then got very confused as to who I am because I stop asserting and being myself. Hell, even I became confused as to who I am. That time of my life was a complete mess.

And now at my fourth full-time job, I went at it differently. I sprinkled a little of what I will do and what I will not do every now and then. And there is no holding hold back when it comes to showing my emotions or attitude to certain things. So much so, I can come across as an asshole.

But you know what?

It actually made me happier overall. People also know where I stand on certain things as well as my strengths and weakness. This meant that when tasks are assigned to me, it fits me. Not only that, I’m perfectly fine with people pointing out my weakness or certain things I don’t do right. For example, if someone is upset that I don’t give a shit about certain things, I really don’t care. After all, if it’s something I don’t give a shit about, why should I give a shit about what you think or feel about me. But it doesn’t mean I don’t respect you as a person.

And by being fearless about who I am, I have come to acknowledge my strengths and weaknesses. I know that certain aspect of my personality give me certain strengths that others don’t have. And it’s far more effective to be doubling and tripling down on my strengths than attempting to fix my weakness. My strengths are what give me the ability to do the kind of work others can’t do.

With that being said, I’d also prefer my colleagues tell me they don’t do certain things too. The reason is simple. It’s so that everyone knows where everyone stands. And now I come to see for myself how it allows all of us to find ways to workaround the limitations and still deliver the end product.

So don’t be ashamed of who you are even amongst your friends and family. They may be mad at you for certain things you do but if they have truly accepted your flaws and can focus on your strengths, they will still be around. If they aren’t, then obviously they aren’t supposed to be part of your life.