On Your Mark

I bet you thought I'm already involving myself with the software development process of the company, with sweaty hands, sleep-deprived eyes, and over-caffeinated blood — but no, I'm not there yet. My first week in my new job was focused only on my training, on getting me familiarized with their workflow process and in their environment. Since I'm new, no one in their right mind would allow me to tinker with their high-quality product. They must first evaluate where my skills stand and whether I'm really ready to be assigned those work-related tasks. But that's not saying I'm just sitting there idling in front of my laptop. The complete silence and shame of doing nothing would surely kill me. So I immersed myself in intensive training in order to catch up to them. On my first day, our team lead programmer tasked me to read a few books. Some of which were about cleaning codes and effective java programming. I was actually hoping that I would only get to r...

Choosing the programming career was one of the huge steps I made—since I came from the academe world. So when the software company called to invite me for an on-site exam, it racked me, I wasn’t able to sleep well for straight days as the idea of me coding in front of them terrified me. What if I wouldn’t be able to answer it? What if it’s something I am completely unaware of? And then that day came and I was right. It was totally something I wasn’t expecting. Please note that I am only trying to get an entry-level kind of java programming job, so when they asked me to write a REST API documentation for the scenario they made, I was like, “Shit, I’m in danger.” Nail-biting was never included in my mannerisms, but in that moment, you could imagine me doing that. I was expecting more of coding problems involved in hackerrank.com, where it mostly tests your logical thinking skills, utilizing the basic java utilities existing, such as rotating the contents of an array or recur...

I mostly refer to myself here. Pero kung unemployed ka rin, aba'y welcome to the club! Tayo ang bumubuo ng kasalukuyang 5.1% unemployment rate ng Pinas! Charot. I know, I know, it's nothing to be proud of. But hey, let me tell you this: It's not the end of the world! Kanina lang, sinimulan ko nang kumilos para sa next career ko. Pumunta ako ng Alabang upang i-scout ang mga kumpanyang target kong applyan. Balak ko kasing mag-change career na. I plan on pursuing the appropriate job for the course I graduated in. Magja-java programmer na ako. ( Yay!) Almost two months na rin akong tambay. I allotted one month to finish writing the first draft of my novel ( writing, by the way, is my real passion ), two weeks on self-editing it, and another two weeks refreshing my programming skills. Ilang taon na rin kasi mula nang huli akong nakagawa ng system. Noong fourth year college ko pa. E simula nang maging teacher ako, na-limitado lang ang pag-poprogram ko sa kung ano lang ang...