Category: Essays

Twenty-Two

Another grand year has gone by since my last birthday. Here’s my look back on the year as I turn 22 today. I’m on the edge of finishing my Computer Science degree (yay!), had a blast spending time vacationing with my family, and succeeded at completing a few personal goals, to name a few.

The view from above! – At Champlain Point Lookout in Gatineau Park

I have accomplished my goal of biking to Gatineau’s Champlain Lookout – a hefty 60km ride on a franken-road bike that safely got me there. Getting hooked on the Strava app has helped gamify my cycling fitness. When my Grandmother passed away this summer we spent five days in Owen Sound, a quiet town on Georgian Bay. I had the itch to go biking one day and ended up renting a proper road bike compared to what I have. Two hours later and I’ve cycled 42km, swam in the water and enjoyed the scenery pass by, completely satisfied.

This time last year ZDirect, the previous name of the company I work at, got acquired by TravelClick. Over the year we’ve hit home run after home run at delivering on making changes, namely a successful datacentre migration, rebranding of the UI, new profile screen and plenty of features to boot. We’re expanding rapidly: acquiring new office space, hiring more developers, account managers and support people. An incremental integration into TravelClick has been happening, involving processes, infrastructure and software. The sales figures show we’re doing something right. Not a few weeks from now I’ll be in New York for a short vacation. During this time I’ll stop by TravelClick headquarters in Times Square to say Hi and see if I can grab some swag.

Celebrating our hard work with a barbeque
Celebrating our hard work with a barbeque

My main achievement during this summer of working at TravelClick has been implementing a weekly Continuous Improvement meeting for my team where we improve our processes and software by discussing and planning items of action. Seeing the entire team engage and drive the discussion, including planning on what should be done is the truest sign of having succeeded, not to mention the improvements that are being made.

I have started listening to a lot more software-related podcasts. Learning FTW! It’s crazy the amount of information you can learn just by listening when you’re not doing any brain-intensive tasks.

Continuing to experiment with new recipes, I have begun making sourdough bread as it’s much healthier than your regular white loaf. Vegetables and fruits have become more prominent in my meals, as well as Thai coconut soups every once in a while. I’ve reduced the number of unhealthy foods I eat such as bucket-loads of homemade pizza and frozen foods like perogies.

christmas-vacation
No better way to surprise my aunt than with a diorama

On the topic of health, I was disciplined for the first half of the year when it came to performing workouts five to six nights a week. Freeletics is an excellent social exercise app that only requires your body, a pull-up bar and a small amount of space to do short but intense exercises. Besides the pre-programmed workouts, performing 250 sit-ups a night definitely helped get that six-pack ready for the February trip to the Dominican Republic. (On a related note, Long Island Iced Teas became my new favourite drink).

When the summer started it was an abrupt transition from school-life to work-life. I eventually stopped using the Freeletics workout app and instead went for hour-plus bike rides a couple of times a week, using Strava to track my distance. I miss the disciplined workout. I want to get back into the routine again when my joints aren’t complaining.

Having a second (but small) source of income as well as keeping my other skills sharp was prominent this past year. I performed some freelance logo design and web development with a great friend of mine. At the moment I feel like the work I’m doing is valued at less than what it should be. I plan on being actionable for future jobs by valuing my time more.

Here’s some raw metrics that represent part of what I have been up to over the past year:

A bad practice that I want to take control over is the number of hours of YouTube videos that I consume per week. I could easily spend that time reading, sleeping or getting things done. I feel that if I visualize my video consumption and set a goal of reducing the hours watched per week I will gain back valuable time.

Posing in the Dominican
Posing in the Dominican

Some good practices that I want to continue with this year is getting good sleep, writing every day, practicing mindfulness, taking notes while reading books, being fit and listening to podcasts and conference talks.

 

Reading about and using the Getting Things Done method is another goal of mine that I think would help me perform better and achieve more given all my work and personal tasks. Being able to organize better and be disciplined about getting things done will enable me to feel more fulfilled day-to-day.

Well time to publish this and pack it up for the night as it’s just past midnight. Today my friends and I are attending the Panda Games, an annual football game with a decades-old rivalry between Ottawa’s two big universities: Carleton and Ottawa U. It’s a big party and it’ll be a write-off for all of us.

Old Habits Die Hard: Copy and Paste

Copy and paste is bad.

Every single person who uses a computer learns how to copy and paste.

Copy and paste is necessary to perform many tasks.

Old habits die hard.

 

 

Email and Word documents and illegally downloaded movies all expect you to use copy and paste because it’s how you’re supposed to do things: copy this email into that folder, move that paragraph of text into the next chapter, copy those illegally downloaded movies to the external hard drive for safekeeping.

There’s a time and place for copy and paste, but why resort to it when you do the same task multiple times every day? It’s passable when the situation can’t be made better, or can it?

Sounds like old habits die hard.

 

 

Sure, copy and paste is quick when you’re good at it, but the time adds up. For example, take the process of navigating into a bunch of files and folders to copy the same five files to a different place. Let’s be earnest here and say it takes a minute of this theoretical person’s time. Based on the work they do, they repeat the same copy and paste job ten more times that day. This time adds up.

Yes, old habits die hard.

 

 

Humans are excellent at copy and paste. Guess what else is excellent at copy and paste as well? Computers!!! Computers are better than humans in every way possible when it comes to performing repetitive copy and paste tasks. Speed. Accuracy. Longevity. It’s a combination which doesn’t disappoint.

Luckily where my soliloquy is headed involves people who program computers for a profession: Programmers. Programmers write programs to make computers do things for humans. Copy and paste is one of them. So why are Programmers still using copy and paste to do things themselves repetitively instead of programming a computer to do it for them?

Old habits die hard…

 

 

Let this sink in for a moment…

 

 

Programmers are proficient in telling the computer what to do, namely copy and paste. But they’re still using copy and paste things themselves because they’re really good at it. It’s been a habit since they started using a computer however many decades ago.

This shocks me, especially in the sense where programmers are paid very well to program computers, but instead they’re spending a chunk of their time performing repetitive copy and paste tasks, not to mention they’re fully qualified to program the computer to do it for them.

It’s a bad habit of programmers to repetitively copy and paste. Knowing so and continuing to do must involve masochism. Be a better programmer and get the computer to copy and paste for you!

My Top Tech, Software and Comedy Podcast List

Podcasts are an excellent source of entertainment and learning new things. I find that when I’m doing a mindless task like working out or commuting I can actively focus on something more interesting. Being a student at the moment, I have a lot of time going to and from classes, making food, and procrastinating. I fill up as much of that time listening to podcasts since I enjoy keeping up with the latest tech news, learning new skills and having a laugh.

Click here to jump to the list if you can’t wait.

My Podcast Listening History

I’ve been a huge listener to podcasts shortly before I got my first iPod (iPod nano 3rd generation, 8GB, turquoise) which was sometime during 2006, I think. Back then I started listening to a lot of the podcasts from the TWiT and Revision3 networks. Here I am now, just over 10 years later and I’m still addicted.

Having had a twice a week paper route gave me a lot of mindless time that I soon took over by listening to podcasts. I prominently remember delivering papers in my neighbourhood during a cold, Canadian winter night listening to an excellent holiday episode of Major Nelson Radio. I also remember laughing my ass off to Diggnation, hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, where they share the greatest posts from Digg that week.

Security Now! was a momentous podcast for me. I started listening to it around 2006 when they were at episode 60. Ever since then I’ve been a listener. I can’t thank Steve and Leo enough for their excellent discussion on current security issues and in-depth episodes on various technologies, like their how the internet works series and explanation of the Stuxnet virus. Because I’ve been listening to Security Now! for so long I’ve learned so much about security and the web that I’m practically acing the fourth year computer security class at my University. The valuable knowledge learned will stick around with me forever, already a great asset for my professional career.

The List

Here’s my list of favourite podcasts over the years, all categorized by genre.

Technology

Keeping up with the latest in tech is a given when you’re heavily immersed in the ecosystem, less being a computer scientist.

Security Now!

Security Now Logo

One of the reasons why I’m studying computer science is because of the Security Now! podcast. Every week, Steve and Leo discuss the most interesting and current topics in security. Whether that’s huge corporate hacking, the latest ransomware, IoT security or even various health topics, it’s a polymath of useful information for anyone who’s interested in security.

This Week in Tech

TWiT LogoThe best source for tech news, This Week in Tech is hosted by Leo Laporte, a hero of mine for creating the TWiT network, and continually educating me. I wouldn’t know half of what I know now if it wasn’t for Leo’s work. Each week the latest and greatest tech news is dissected with a representative panel of tech journalists. It’s very informative to hear experts in the area give their opinion.

I remember when Twitter was getting big, it was all that TWiT would talk about for weeks on end. It was even expected: “What Twitter news do we have this week?” was saild by Leo almost every episode when Twitter was growing. Those were the days, when Leo was the #1 user on Twitter. Then the masses came and it went to shit. Okay, I still love Twitter. Rant over.

Hak5

Hak5 LogoBasically a technology hacker/DIY/hardware/software show with a lot of original content. I really got interested in Linux and hacking because of it. Just recently I saw that they’re working on quadrocopters. So cool! One of my favourite segments was the usb multibooting using grub. No need to burn multiple CDs for all of your live-boot isos and images, just put them all on one USB stick and give it a shiny menu to choose which one to use. The show has a kick-ass soundtrack and it looks like they’ve expanded to a new studio and are now producing multiple shows. These guys have grown a lot!

Maximum PC No BS Podcast

Almost forgotten, I remembered this one as I was building the Runners Up section. The Maximum PC No BS Podcast could also go under the Comedy section, but Technology suits it better. On that same paper route I had when I was young I listened to this podcast religiously as soon as each episode came out. Gordon Mah Ung and Will Smith were a perfect pair when talking shop about computer hardware, tech news and building computers for the Maximum PC magazine.

Besides being overly frustrated about certain things, Gordon had a segment called Gordon’s Rant of the Week where he would vent about anything and everything from Star Wars to breaking motherboards to shitty software. Every new year there’s usually a best of Gordon’s rants episode, which is a must listen if you find Gordon’s rants funny.

Comedy

These podcasts are timeless. You can go back and listen to all of them like I’ve done.

Rooster Teeth Podcast

One of the funniest podcasts, various members of the Rooster Teeth company talk about ridiculous stories, gaming, current news and Science. They really don’t know much about Science, but the cast always tries to argue it out until someone say’s something so illogical, the cast and crew burst out into laughter. Moments like these are animated into short videos and posted to their YouTube channel as Rooster Teeth Animated Adventures.

It was the summer of 2013, between my first and second years of university, I was living back home trying to find work. I landed this landscaping job, being paid directly by the owners of a large Caledon estate, to fix up their property. That landscaping was fun but hard work. I discovered the Rooster Teeth Podcast early into the summer. Each day, I would be listening to maybe five or six episodes in an eight hour day. I blew through the backlog of episodes really fast and ended up listening to them all before the end of the summer.

Diggnation

What’s the latest crap from Digg, you might ask? Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht answered this tough question for 340 episodes from 2005 to 2012. The two would discuss the most interesting news bits on whichever sofa they landed on. Often very entertaining, Diggnation had me dying of laughter.

Software Development

Most, if not all of these Software Development podcasts are timeless. A lot of the topics discussed are still useful today. The only real difference is the adoption of the tools and methodologies. I usually look through the list of earlier episodes and listen to the ones that catch my eye. Once you’re hooked on a podcast, it’s not hard to find yourself downloading and listening to everything they have available.

The Ship Show

Sadly, this podcast just announced they’re ending the show a few days ago, so I’m still in my mourning stage at the moment, but The Ship Show has been a fun and informative source of everything release engineering, DevOps, and build engineering in big and small companies. The panel discusses new tools, methods and philosophies for improving parts of your tech company, often from firsthand experience. What makes this podcast special is that they delve into more of the technical and implementation details, which is great if you’re into that.

Arrested DevOps

The ADO podcast is made for people who don’t exactly know what this whole DevOps thing is about but would like to know. Matt Straton, the creator of the podcast makes this point often as he has learned DevOps from scratch. Each episode goes into depth on a DevOps related subject, often having guests from the industry who are knowledgeable in the topic to add more value to the discussion. A lot of the topics discussed are higher level than what is offered in The Ship Show, but Arrested DevOps is still as valuable since its important to understand the big picture and ask the big questions. Both Arrested DevOps and The Ship Show are complimentary to each other.

Software Engineering Radio

Sponsored by the IEEE, this podcast offers excellent interviews on a variety of Software Engineering topics. The episodes mainly consist of two or three people discussing a specific topic, whether it’s a technology or methodology. The time is taken to give listeners a good idea about the purpose and it’s usefulness. The interviewer often does their homework before performing the interview and therefore asks well thought out questions. Because the episodes cover such a wide breadth of topics, surfing through the past episodes is a must!

Software Engineering Daily

If Software Engineering Radio wasn’t good enough, Software Engineering Daily applies the same format and content to a daily schedule. The amazing producer and interviewer Jeff, also a current host on Software Engineering Radio, has amassed hundreds of episodes covering everything from technology, to business, to soft skills – all pertinent to any software engineer. Dozens of hours of content can be queued up for listening just by skimming through the history of episodes.

I wrote a post on marketing yourself from episode 243 with John Sonmez.

Runners up

Here’s a few podcasts that I’ve listened to for a long time, but didn’t make the list:

Floss Weekly – Randal Schwartz and other hosts interview open source software projects to share what the project is about. Generally pretty interesting, it’s cool to hear what people are doing in subjects that you’re usually not interested in or didn’t know existed.

Tekzilla – Great segments! Veronica Belmont and Patrick Norton were a killer team and shared great tips and tricks to do with technology.

Windows Weekly – Paul Thurott had the perfect level of satire as he talked about Windows products that no one uses, like Windows Home Server (I used it, so I can bash it), and things that people use, like Xbox and new Windows operating systems.

This Week in Google – Gina Trapani and Jeff Jarvais have excellent discussions about the cloud and everything Google.

Mahalo Daily – Veronica Belmont was the best in this short daily podcast format!

Update 2017-01-19: Added Software Engineering Daily

Market Yourself

Want to score your dream job and go work for Google, Netflix, Amazon, Github, and the like? The big question: “How do I do it?”

Market yourself, of course!

What do these companies want?

These companies only hire the best of the  best. But what does that really mean? You may see some of the following traits on job postings or you may pick them up from the people who already work at these companies:

  • Continuous improvement
  • Feedback/data driven
  • Solve the toughest/biggest problems
  • Extremely collaborative
  • Intuitive

“I’ve got all of those traits! I should have no problem getting hired”.

Sure, you may be qualified, but how do you stand out from the person beside you who’s as qualified as you are? There are plenty of methods that can make you stand out in the minds of recruiters, hiring managers, and even high level employees of the company.

Market Yourself

Marketing is the action of promoting and selling products or services

Marketing yourself is therefore promoting and selling your skills and providing value to a company.

Standing out from the crowd involves work! I listened to an excellent podcast from Software Engineering Radio titled SE Radio Episode 245: John Sonmez on Marketing Yourself and Managing Your Career. John provided some helpful methods on standing out from the crowd, getting noticed by the people who can help you get your dream job, and useful tips on managing your career to make it the best it can be.

A few of the methods mentioned in the podcast are listed below:

  • Get a blog and write a post every week
  • Specializing your career
  • Attending/presenting at meetups
  • Interact with the blogs/social media of developers at the target companies
  • Contribute to open-source projects

The bottom line is to be passionate about everything you do. When you’re giving off that vibe, others can’t help but notice the energy and detail put into everything: blog posts, conversations, presentations… the list is endless. More people remember an enthusiastic person than someone who’s not interested in what they’re talking about. Being detailed in your work is the bare minimum. Expression is key.

Blogging

Writing is one of the best mediums for sharing information. Blogging has the lowest barrier of entry. There is a huge and rich amount of content out there on anything and everything, especially in tech. Ideas are thrown back and forth, constantly iterated, all the while being kept around for others to read years later. One person’s blog post today is another person’s learning opportunity later. Read Why You Should Write Blogs by Steve Yegge for a deeper understanding of this powerful medium.

WordPress.com or Blogger are great services to get going. If you’re more technical, you can use GitHub Pages or even host your own. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter where it’s hosted or that you have a fancy domain name; all that matters is the content and what the readers get out of it.

Your blog can be about anything. I like writing about topics surrounding software development, both involving hard and soft skills. Having a prospective company see you go into depth on various topics gives them more confidence that you’re the right person for the job. Blogging also hones in your understanding of the topic you’re writing about and, over time, improves your communication skills.

There’s only so many people you can talk to. Writing allows you and your ideas to spread without limits.

Specializing

It’s best to be a specialist. Who’s going to receive a larger salary and gain more attention: a Fault-tolerant Docker Microservices Engineer or a Software Developer? Definitely the Fault-tolerant Docker Microservices Engineer.

Lets say I write a lot about fault-tolerant Docker microservices. To visitors of my website they can see that I know a lot about fault-tolerant Docker microservices. From now on they’ll associate me with being very informative and skilled in things fault-tolerant Docker microservices. Once the viewers have an understanding that I’m skilled in fault-tolerant Docker microservices I can expand to writing a lot about Docker microservices in general. I can then be known by others as the guy who knows a lot about Docker microservices. As time goes on and I become more popular I can expand to all of Docker and be known as the Docker guy.

Start small and specialize in a certain area. Its easier to stand out that way since you’re up against less and less people. Once people notice that you’re a specialist for subject X, the association will stick. From then on you can use this to your advantage. Say the company you’re wanting to work at is hiring for the job you’re specializing in. If people from the company know that you’re skilled in this subject they can recommend you to the hiring managers. You can use this tactic with some of the others listed here to get recommended by the employees of the company.

Attending Meetups

Going to a meetup and striking up a conversation with other attendees leaves a (hopefully) positive view of you on them. This is pretty much networking. In the podcast, John Sonmez stated that it is important to have a conversation with the individual without bugging them to help you get a job when you first meet. Meeting these people months before actually asking for their help to get a job improves your chances greatly since you’ve already met the person. It’s even better if you offer to help them. Then they’re more than likely to help you out and do whatever to pay you back.

Performing a talk at a meetup or conference is a great way to get noticed. The meetup or conference does a lot of the marketing for you already! Your name and title of the talk is advertised both at the venue and online. After the event a lot of references to you and the talk are put on the event’s website, YouTube recordings of your talk and news blogs. The viewers are trying to get as much useful information out of your talk. You have to prove that you have useful information. You’ll want to hook your viewers into wanting more information. At the beginning and end of the presentation you can mention your contact information (email, Twitter, GitHub, website..) and even offer a link where the viewer can go to get more information.

In the presentation, including links to extra materials can send those viewers to your blog, GitHub, or wherever else. Mentioning that you do consulting or are looking for an employer (only if you don’t have one!) puts the word out there since it can’t hurt.

Other Blogs and Social Media

Following and having useful conversations on the blogs of employees at the company you’re trying to get into, as well as the blogs of others in the same tech community gets you noticed over time. When a company is in the process of hiring, the employees can vouch for your skills, immediately putting you ahead of other candidates. If things go really well, the company can straight out offer you a position, bypassing the interview, giving you the upper hand at negotiating your salary, benefits and anything else.

Contribute to Open Source

Working on open source projects is one of the new contenders of things that tech companies are looking for in a developer. Its been proven by some companies already that they hire based on your GitHub profile. Contributing to an open source project or two shows that you’re capable of remotely working and good at collaborating with others. It also allows the hiring managers and recruiters to look at the code you write (eg. code style, design), something not shown on a resumé.

Even better, contributing to an open source project belonging to the company that you’re trying to get a job with looks very impressive when they start looking for candidates. If they can see all the contributions that you’ve made to their open source projects, it’ll look amazing since your skills have already shown business value. The company can more easily see the value you would bring to the software that they develop.

Working on your own side projects is always beneficial. It shows that you are creative and intuitive at solving your own problems and have the drive to make things better where you see fit.

Hacking the Interview

A few tricks were mentioned around hacking the interview. One of them mentioned earlier, is for the company to want to hire you right off the spot, bypassing the interview entirely. This could mean that you’ve received a recommendation from someone or your personal marketing has worked! This situation is pretty hard to get so the next tip is one we can all use to positively affect our interview outcome.

Another smart trick involves requesting “just five minutes to chat” sometime before the interview. Either over the phone or in person, this conversation allows you to talk freely with the interviewer to find out more about them and the company, including talking about yourself. Once your interview time comes along, the edge is already off since you’ve talked with the hiring manager already. Humans can be biased when it comes to mostly objective tasks such as finding the best candidate for a job. Once you get the interviewer to like you, they work in your favour, often weighing the candidates they like over others.

The Book

soft-skills-the-software-developers-life-manualMentioned in the podcast, John Sonmez has published a book titled Soft Skills: The software developer’s life manual which sounds like a must read. He raises the point that the chapters are short, allowing for ~5 minute start-to-finish reads. There are 71 chapters in total, organized into seven sections. The section list is as follows:

  1. Career
  2. Marketing Yourself
  3. Learning
  4. Productivity
  5. Financial
  6. Fitness
  7. Spirit

I haven’t read the book yet, but I definitely will soon. I’m happy that I’m on the right track so far for my personal marketing based on the sections of this book. Besides the book sounding very helpful, you can’t knock the five stars and 178 reviews on Amazon.com!

Conclusion

It’s not an effortless path. Putting in the time and effort over months or years to market yourself gives big returns in the form of giving you more potential, allowing you to make the most of your career.

Take charge of your career. Follow your aspirations and make it count! I certainly will.

Twenty

Goodbye teenage years, hello twenties!

Gone are the years of figuring out what this whole life thing is about, time to finally take that knowledge and have the time of my life shaping my future into whatever I please.

Looking back over the year, I’ve accomplished a lot. I’ve landed an awesome co-op job working at a small company solving issues in the hospitality industry, a much busier freelance web design job on the side, and started cooking healthier meals. Not to mention, its been at least a year having moved out of my parents house into my current Ottawa residence with all of my roommates 🙂

Here’s a few other miscellaneous achievements:

  • Made and barbecued the perfect homemade burger
  • Read more fiction, non-fiction and computer science books and articles
  • Found my love for Cherry MX blue keyboards
  • Commute to work every day via bike
  • Expanded my music tastes

Some things that I’m looking forward to this year are going back to school after my co-op term to take some advanced third year courses, work on some personal programming projects, and cook more delicious food. But who knows? Much more notable events will definitely occur in the next year. Those unknown events are the ones I’m most looking forward to!

Just like what Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress has been doing, I like the idea of writing a post on your birthday for reflecting on the past and future year. Here is it’s first form on my blog.