Mentoring

One of the common patterns in my life is to surround myself with people with whom I allow to abuse me. And one of the popular refrains of these people is to tell me this phrase: You need to stop taking things so personally. And I find that phrase interesting because it is really difficult not to take things personally when they are targeting me with their abusive words. But, as I said, this is a common refrain of abusers in my life. In fact, most of the people that have mistreated me in various ways have also found a way to abdicate any responsibility for their actions by using this phrase to place the blame squarely on me. ...

A person dear to me, who is new to the tech world, asked me a simple question: “What is a static website?” It was asked in response to me saaying that I have a static website–this website you are reading. Tech Jargon and Shibboleths Once again it dawns on me how often jargon slips into normal conversation and acts like a shibboleth. It’s hard to place one’s self squarely back into the shoes of someone that has no frame of reference. If you want to get a feeling for what this is like, try to remember that at some point in your life, you would not have understood the words on this page. Even worse, you wouldn’t even be learned enough determine what is a word and what is not. This is hard for you to remember because you don’t–or barely–remember being illiterate. If you want a sense of that, go look at a book written in a completely different language. For example, if your first language is English, go look at a book in Hindi. I always find it fascinating, scary and humbling that I cannot tell what is a word, what is punctuation, or anything when I look at a completely different language; these new languages appear to me as tally marks as I’m certain English appears this way to a North American child. ...

2020 has been quite a tough year for human relationships. I’m naturally inclined towards recharging my batteries alone, but even I have been feeling the effects of a lack of human relationships. One area that has surprisingly benefited from our physical distancing measures is during mentoring. I have been mentoring UBC Computer Science undergraduates for about 15 years now. My role in the relationship is to help students understand what the tech industry is like once they graduate, what types of jobs are available, and what life is really life. This year, 2020, was the first time it was brought online. ...

Recently, I was speaking with a company about opportunities they have. It’s a regular, casual affair that I do every so often. It keeps me grounded about what the job market is like, and allows me to see if there are other opportunities out there (because if you never look, opportunities never exist). At the end of the day, I like to help people solve problems because it makes me feel valued. ...

I was talking with one of my mentees last week and we happened upon the topic of money and wages. I mentioned to him that, in order to talk about money properly, you have to define the word “expensive.” Naturally, people think the word “expensive” means that the price of something is too high, but the problem with this definition is that it lacks context. I explained it to my mentee in this way. ...

…at least, not in the traditional, hands-on-keyboard sense. This is one of the things that a lot of CompSci graduates don’t realize when they head out into the workforce. When I look back at all my jobs and put on my PHB’s hat, I would say that I spend less than 25% of time coding. Another 25% of the time is reading code, yak-shaving or searching for solutions. The rest of the time is spent talking with people; this is a skill that neither CompSci, nor most university courses teach. These numbers always fluctuate (some days, I put my head down and code almost 100%), but it says a lot about how much “coding” I do. Also note that I wrote “talking with people”, not “talking to people” because there is a big difference. ...

Tracking down Ansible bugs becomes difficult when you are playing with issues between local and remote systems. For the last couple days I was racking my brains why my database import script, written in Ansible, was not importing the data into the database. I had 3 separate imports, and only 1 was working. I looked at everything, but it wasn’t until I walked away, came back, and realized that I had mistyped one character in the path to the dump. ...

The phrase “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” is an old saying that stems from the theatre industry in regard to auditioners facing rejection. I’m going to co-opt this phrase and twist it a bit into how companies that interview candidates hold all the cards and act in a manner consistent with information asymmetry. I recently interviewed for a senior managerial position doing something akin to DevOps for a startup. I asked a number of questions about the type of work and such, very technical and job-specific in nature. I then asked about some things that appeared in the job description (see section “Job Description”). The interviewer (who was new to the company herself) said that she didn’t know the answer and that I should forward the questions to the in-house recruiter with whom I spoke with earlier. It seemed like a totally reasonable response, so I whipped up an email later that night and sent it off the recruiter. ...

I mentor Computer Science students at my alma mater and one of them recently asked me if I could provide some tips about interviewing. It is a question that comes up repeatedly, so I finally wrote it all down and I’m sharing it here so that others can learn. I gathered these tips from interviewing on both sides of the table (or phone connection) numerous times, some ending well and others not so much. Enjoy! ...

This year I decided to collect and bundle all of the questions I am asked on a regular basis, whether it is through mentoring or conversations with other developers. What is your favourite IDE? I don’t have a favourite IDE because I don’t use one (caveat below). I develop code in Vi/Vim, which is a terminal-based text editor that has a lot of features hidden away that could turn it into a full-fledged IDE if one chose to use it that way. The reason I stuck with this editor is that I found myself helping numerous clients who had remote servers that I needed to login and perform work. If one only has experience using a GUI text editor or IDE, then being confined to a terminal environment will feel like a prison and work performance will slow to a crawl. Regardless, I stuck with the practice of using Vim even after the engagements ended and I have been quite happy ever since because it means that I can code anywhere that has an SSH terminal application. It also means that I can make changes to any text file quickly and with less keystrokes. ...