October 20, 2016 at 13:48Customer Support Operator, Manager, Programmer
Good day, dear readers! This post is a story of a small, but in my opinion the most remarkable, segment of my life. Actually, the article is the path from the unemployed to the programmer.
It happened in the early fall a few years earlier. I decided to become an adult and find a job. I myself was reluctant to search, and I decided to first interview all my friends. And acquaintances of their acquaintances. Further recursively. After several weeks of polls, a friend of a friend of my friend informed me that his son was working on client support for a large bank; having told me everything that he knew, including his son’s number, I began to dial and ask him. Hearing huge salary figures and counting when I buy the long-awaited Mercedes Benz, I skipped for an interview. At the interview, a nice girl with an unforgettable guy was asked to fill out an adequacy questionnaire containing questions such as “the capital of Japan,” “what month is 28 days old,” “2 + 2 * 2,” etc. Scrolling through the results of the questionnaire and nodding satisfactorily, they invited me to a personal conversation. Having told about myself and answered their simple questions, I was promised a call “tomorrow” and I cheerfully rode home, counting the unearned money. But the call did not follow either in a day, or after 2, or even after a month. Well, okay, I didn’t really want to.
One fine day, at the winter session of the 4th year of the technological university, a few days before the new year, a bell rang and a female voice explained to me that I had an interview at the bank for a customer support operator. And they called me so late because I ended up in the personnel reserve. A long night of reflection and here it is, the first day of training at the long-awaited work. The conditions were as follows - a week of training, for her a month of internship for a nominal fee, and after passing all the exams you can take on a contract. They promised to pay even more than the son of a friend on the phone, though they promised great difficulties at the training stage. Oh, are you a student? We have the opportunity to work 5 days a week from 17.00 to 1.00. Super.
The internship week ended on December 31. Seeing the passing grade in the decisive test, I realized that I passed it. It was not easy at all, because in banking, I’ve neither the ear nor the snout, but it was necessary not only to understand all this, but also to be ready to explain to customers! A card and an account is not the same thing? CVV, sorry about what? International payment system when withdrawing money from an ATM? How complicated it is! Also, email registration, blogging and google documents - I don’t know how much I learned in just 5 days.
Ahead of January was vacations and half a February of quarantine, so that there was enough time to go through a month of internship and by the beginning of the second half of the fourth year go to a fully paid job from 5 to 1. New Year's Eve flew by unnoticed, like the welter of all New Year's holidays in early January I was brought into a customer support chat, introduced to my future supervisor and left to delve into all the details of customer service. A bunch of software systems, each with its own nuances of work, parallel exams and tests, it was all very difficult at first, but you can get used to everything, so I'm used to it. In February, having passed the control exam, they allowed me to my first dialogues with real clients, forgive me for the nonsense that I carried to them in the first weeks of my work! Time passed quickly and surprisingly bearable the schedule was simple - the first tapes at 8-10 in the morning, study, by the way this is not an empty phrase, I really studied by scribbling several tapes in a row, summaries about all the basics of automation of production processes. My studies ended at 2-3 o'clock in the afternoon, and depending on the subjects I went to either the library, preparing for checkpoints, or going to the place where I could sleep. At 5 pm, the most crucial part of the day began - the work shift. 8 hours of listening to the whole truth of life about the reasons for overdue loans and explaining what are the deposit programs, why the money went wrong and of course why I and such “my bank” are such idiots and everything is wrong with me, at 2 o’clock in the morning I was at home . And so cyclically. It was difficult for the first 2 months, then the diploma began and it was possible to study less often, and I began to feel better clients, went normal earnings and confidence in work. But something was still wrong. I felt that it was not for this that I studied assembler in the 3rd year and sold solutions of differential equations to fellow students. It suddenly seemed to me at one moment that I was doing a dumb job that everyone can do and there is nothing special in that I understand how the international payment system works with acquiring banks.
Accidentally learning about the open vacancy of the senior shift monitoring electronic operations, I gladly left the annoying chat, after 8 months of working in it, and went for a month of internship in the department dealing with electronic fraud. I was trained by a girl named T, whom I married a year later. She told me all the ins and outs of monitoring electronic banking operations, taught me to detect fraud with the help of bank software systems and naturally prevent it. Finally, that was what we needed! Complicated analytical work, investigation of traces of fraud by IP addresses, monitoring of skimming, farming, breathtaking! The work was 2 through 2 per night, while I had a team, at the head of which I was put. After 5 months, when I achieved, as it seemed to me, good success in monitoring, I stopped straining at work, all monitoring was reduced to checking elementary rules, filling out reports and other routine, which I already got pretty bad. And how it all began!
Unexpectedly, having defended my diploma in the last 5th year, I received an offer from the management to upgrade to the head of Internet banking security, transfer to a day and work like a white man. Responsibilities included managing operators, analyzing fraud and inventing new rules for monitoring payments in the Internet bank. The analysis was quite commonplace - at that time, monitoring of Internet banking was just beginning, so it was enough to identify common features with the eyes of a sample of payments and develop an algorithm “so that this would not happen anymore”. As it turned out in the process, I had to not only develop monitoring algorithms, but also communicate with programmers and persuade them to implement them. After 2 months of fascinating and painstaking work, by chance, I was fired. This was a strong blow, as not once in 1.
Once at home, I discovered Google and went on the Internet for several days to look for work in my specialty, because I was an engineer for automation of production processes! Calling a dozen vacancies in my specialty, I realized that life is a pain, and it’s not fun to switch to a salary of $ 150 after what was in the bank. In the end, desperate, I returned to my long-standing fetish - when, when programming in assembler, I dreamed of becoming a programmer! But I didn’t go online in search of job opportunities for assembler programmer, because already knew that this was a disastrous business. It was necessary to find a more popular programming language. Google at the request of “the most popular programming language” returned “Java”, I did not argue with him or ask again and eagerly set to study. What's so complicated? Did I already know the assembler to some extent?
So, let's start, the first throw to a better life were 2 books downloaded, some of Bruce Eckel and Horstman. Having spent a week on them, I realized how much I was mistaken ... Objects? Polymorphism? What is this all about? Where to start? Why go? Having suffered a complete failure in reading, I received an epiphany that if you watch the video, everything will be more understandable, because at the university, at the lectures, everything was clear! My choice fell on the first site from Google - javabegin.ru, on it a certain Timur Batyrshinnov posted 7 introductory lessons on java, which I looked at and repeated with great pleasure and slight understanding. After them two books went in parallel - Herbert Schildt “The Complete Java Guide” and Vyazovik N. A. “Java Programming”. After the video, the situation cleared up and the books went much clearer. After several chapters, I again reviewed these same videos and opened up new details in them. There was one significant drawback in all this training - it was completely incomprehensible to what extent it was necessary to study in order for knowledge to be enough to get a job. This went on throughout August, and at the beginning of September I found out that my companion was pregnant and it would be nice to call her married.
Not a second, walking through grandparents and other caring relatives, having collected the necessary amount and having played the wedding, I woke up and realized that I still have neither work nor sufficient skills to get a good job, I decided to catch pneumonia and lie down month in the hospital. The month passed quite productively - I continued intensive training in the hospital. The combination of “video + reading + again video + performing simple tasks” on a certain topic gave a much greater understanding than individually. Having understood the basics of syntax, abstract classes, inheritance, polymorphism, and finally installing the SQL server, I checked out and headed for my previous job hoping for understanding and forgiveness. To my surprise, no one was found and my new leader was not opposed to my reinstatement.
After recovering from my previous position and promising decent automation of the existing algorithms for monitoring electronic banking operations of Internet banking, I set about analyzing, but not the analysis that I was doing before — I identified, drew a diagram, came up with an algorithm that covers the current diagram — here I had to get a few millionth a selection of payments, find fraudulent among them from statistics, identify the general scheme and come up with an algorithm. In general, it became clear that select * is small and I had to learn the syntax of SQL queries. After a few months, understanding how the subqueries work, left join and respecting the test database several times, I completely abandoned the programming study and felt firmly on my feet - after all, I was not just a fraud manager, I was also good at SQL!
One day everything changed. The bank has many systems that verify the loyalty of employees to the bank and one of them is printing testing. Having gone there, I received a sentence - recommended for dismissal. All dreams and a feeling of complete stability and confidence in tomorrow collapsed in an instant. The bitterness was added by the pregnant wife, who was already on maternity leave and who I had to contemplate every day in a wretched one-room apartment, for the rent of which a good half of the salary was spent. Reappraisal of all values and knowledge took place in a couple of evenings and I again took up programming. Knowing that I would be fired soon, the process went much more intensively.
N weeks after the failed test, after a serious conversation with the Supreme Chief, I was left with 100 honest words until the next test, which was supposed to happen suddenly, it is not clear when. Upon learning this news, I wanted to relax, but the inner feeling of slippery soil under my feet was no longer fooled.
Several months passed, remembering the well-forgotten old and learning a lot of new things, I still could not understand what enterprise is and where to put methods and classes. There was a feeling that I understand well, but how to use and where to develop further was completely incomprehensible. Having accidentally stumbled on the network for the vacancy “free Java training on a competitive basis”, I realized that this is a chance that comes up once in a lifetime. A certain company L claimed that if you pass 3 test tasks, 5 months of free training, pass an exam, then the best students will get a job. It was impossible to procrastinate - the first test task - online puzzles in Java were on the shoulder and took an hour by force. Soon they contacted me and invited me to take a written exam. On the exam, there was neither Google nor ctrl + space after each point, they gave empty pieces of paper, 5 tasks and 2 to think about. There were difficulties with the tasks of what pseudo code I did not know then and piled everything I knew, including JFrame and other heresies. I was lucky with two tasks to think about, the solution of which played a key role in my opinion. After biting my nails for a week, I still waited for a call and an invitation to a third, personal interview. Jumping into the office, answering a number of general questions and reading a piece of documentation in English, they promised to call back in 3 days. The call came only after 3 weeks, when I had forgotten to think about training and was offended by them for a long time. personal interview. Jumping into the office, answering a number of general questions and reading a piece of documentation in English, they promised to call back in 3 days. The call came only after 3 weeks, when I had forgotten to think about training and was offended by them for a long time. personal interview. Jumping into the office, answering a number of general questions and reading a piece of documentation in English, they promised to call back in 3 days. The call came only after 3 weeks, when I had forgotten to think about training and was offended by them for a long time.
The call was not very pleased, as the courses were 3 times a week, starting from 2 pm. Super, but what about work? The office rat was supposed to sit on the spot from 8 to 18. The Highest Supervisors also helped out, to whom I cried in my shirt, how much I want to be a programmer, and that I really need it. They gave the green light, but with the condition that I will produce the same 8.30 hours. After a simple arithmetic, I realized that 3 times a week I need to come to work at 6 in the morning, then go to four-hour courses, and then do homework. The volume of the homework was supposed to be 4-8 hours, it should have been set after each lesson. Not afraid of a drop, I froze in anticipation of the start of the courses.
The long-awaited courses began, the first rise at 4.30 in the morning, work, the first lecture on Java from a real professional! It was a gloomy Monday evening and I had to do my homework before Wednesday, that is, until the next lesson. It took 12 hours to complete it - six hours every day in the evenings. Having slept for 3 days in a row for 4 hours, I realized that I needed to change something, otherwise you could just die.
The solutions were as follows - if you want to squeeze the maximum out of your body, then you need to keep the whole body in good shape. Thinking carefully, mixing several techniques of advanced gurus (or just charlatans) I came to the next program. Rise at 4-5 in the morning, no breakfast, only a few granules of bee pollen. In the morning, when the body is sleeping, shoving the stomach with food, the body spends too much energy to start the stomach itself and all digestive systems. The bee bread contains all the necessary vitamins for the whole day and practically does not require the body's cost of digestion - that is, it is easily digested. To wake up properly - a contrast shower is required, it helps to wake the body and gives a boost of energy for several hours. Then a glass of boiled water every hour - so that the blood was always diluted and it was easier for the heart to pump it. The easier it is to swing it, the better the brain eats and the clearer the thought. You need to have dinner tightly - just all the digestive systems function to the fullest, so that the body will spend the minimum amount of energy on digestion. After work, there was a real brainstorm for the brain in the courses, after - a good dinner of hours at 7-8 pm and until 10-11 study. By 10-11 hours the brains are usually fogged up decently and it becomes almost impossible to learn, as it is poorly understood. There were always 2 options - either to go to bed, which you couldn’t do, otherwise you won’t have time to do your homework, or go for an evening run - 2-3 km with a light jog and thoughts would clear up immediately. After - 2-3 hours of study and sleep at 1-2 nights. At this pace, you can withstand 5 days a week, but on weekends you need to relax and it is advisable to forget about programming at least for a day. Alcohol helped well on Friday on Saturday - a gym. Be sure to have to finish up everything that wasn’t enough on weekdays. If this is not done, the next week could simply not stand it. By “not withstand,” I mean either significantly losing productivity, or scoring for studies. 2 weeks he was drawn into a new rhythm, and after that he felt that I could sleep even less, but did not check.
4 months of study flew by like plywood over Moscow. Having lost 10 kg of weight, having pumped up the press from running and building up a very strong theoretical base, who were one of the first students in the ranking, I went to my first interview at Company L. I passed the technical interview successfully, it was easy to answer all questions about OOP, and bubble sorting was not difficult. But I successfully failed the second - in English. Not much upset, I found out that in our bank, you can also go to the programming department, especially since I already knew some programmers as a manager.
After an oral interview, I got my first job. Behind there was a good theoretical base on Java and absolute ignorance of how to apply this in a real project.
From the first day on, everything went very well on the project - it was possible to come to work at 10-11 in the morning, and free fruit and afternoon tea provided a quick recovery of the energy spent in six months. Every day, every week I received a tremendous amount of experience that was so lacking during the training period - how the application is assembled, how it interacts with the database, where it starts, how it is deployed, etc. Training went smoothly, efficiently and measuredly. A team! What a team was! All calm, measured, patiently answering stupid questions of a colleague. This was incomparable with managerial turmoil. Oh don't you understand? So let me explain to you! Super.
Over 9 months of work, my colleague and I suddenly realized that we needed to move somewhere urgently, as everything was fine, except for one - there was no spoken English. Absolutely. Having stumbled upon 2 vacancies of middle & senior java developer, we went for an interview. As a pretender to a simpler job, I was put up for a good 2 hours, but my colleague managed 3-4 questions. Having come out humiliated and insulted after a 2-hour interview, I thought that it would not be so bad and nice to get knowledge and experience in my native bank a couple of years before going somewhere.
Unexpectedly, in 2-3 days they sent us both offers, which was a complete shock for me and after a week of deliberation we left our native land and went on new trials. On the new project, in the new company, it turned out to be not that hard, but just incredibly hard. It turns out that we could only dream of a smiling Russian-speaking product manager, who was in our bank! Indeed, on this project, the customer communicated with the programmers himself and personally distributed tasks. And in English.
We knew and could read the basics of English, but it was very difficult to hear by ear. I don’t know how he put up with us, but for the first 2-3 months we understood about 20 percent of what he said, and when we showed the implementation, it turned out that even less. It saved that this was a startup and there were no deadlines or production. After 4-5 months, by chance, most of the team left us, including my colleague, and I was proudly appointed team leader, forgive me all real team leaders! I was sure that I would not last long, but it turned out that I had been fulfilling this duty for a year and a half. At the moment, 30 percent of the time is taken up by design, 20 - administration (deployment, CI, and the entire server part I am completely engaged in), 20 - parsing tasks with the team (we mow under scrum and try to make planning meetings) and 30 more on coding.
It has been a year and a half in a new role and two and a half in the role of programmer. Now I look forward to a trip to the bastion of World Democracy to personally work with the customer.
At this stage, I highlight for myself several main points *, the understanding and awareness of which, it seems to me, is even more important than the knowledge of a programming language:
* - everything is subjective and each has its own path to success and its own principles.
Am I a programmer or an opportunist? You probably will know better, but I know one thing for sure - I, a person who loves his job and always goes to his goal.
It happened in the early fall a few years earlier. I decided to become an adult and find a job. I myself was reluctant to search, and I decided to first interview all my friends. And acquaintances of their acquaintances. Further recursively. After several weeks of polls, a friend of a friend of my friend informed me that his son was working on client support for a large bank; having told me everything that he knew, including his son’s number, I began to dial and ask him. Hearing huge salary figures and counting when I buy the long-awaited Mercedes Benz, I skipped for an interview. At the interview, a nice girl with an unforgettable guy was asked to fill out an adequacy questionnaire containing questions such as “the capital of Japan,” “what month is 28 days old,” “2 + 2 * 2,” etc. Scrolling through the results of the questionnaire and nodding satisfactorily, they invited me to a personal conversation. Having told about myself and answered their simple questions, I was promised a call “tomorrow” and I cheerfully rode home, counting the unearned money. But the call did not follow either in a day, or after 2, or even after a month. Well, okay, I didn’t really want to.
One fine day, at the winter session of the 4th year of the technological university, a few days before the new year, a bell rang and a female voice explained to me that I had an interview at the bank for a customer support operator. And they called me so late because I ended up in the personnel reserve. A long night of reflection and here it is, the first day of training at the long-awaited work. The conditions were as follows - a week of training, for her a month of internship for a nominal fee, and after passing all the exams you can take on a contract. They promised to pay even more than the son of a friend on the phone, though they promised great difficulties at the training stage. Oh, are you a student? We have the opportunity to work 5 days a week from 17.00 to 1.00. Super.
The internship week ended on December 31. Seeing the passing grade in the decisive test, I realized that I passed it. It was not easy at all, because in banking, I’ve neither the ear nor the snout, but it was necessary not only to understand all this, but also to be ready to explain to customers! A card and an account is not the same thing? CVV, sorry about what? International payment system when withdrawing money from an ATM? How complicated it is! Also, email registration, blogging and google documents - I don’t know how much I learned in just 5 days.
Ahead of January was vacations and half a February of quarantine, so that there was enough time to go through a month of internship and by the beginning of the second half of the fourth year go to a fully paid job from 5 to 1. New Year's Eve flew by unnoticed, like the welter of all New Year's holidays in early January I was brought into a customer support chat, introduced to my future supervisor and left to delve into all the details of customer service. A bunch of software systems, each with its own nuances of work, parallel exams and tests, it was all very difficult at first, but you can get used to everything, so I'm used to it. In February, having passed the control exam, they allowed me to my first dialogues with real clients, forgive me for the nonsense that I carried to them in the first weeks of my work! Time passed quickly and surprisingly bearable the schedule was simple - the first tapes at 8-10 in the morning, study, by the way this is not an empty phrase, I really studied by scribbling several tapes in a row, summaries about all the basics of automation of production processes. My studies ended at 2-3 o'clock in the afternoon, and depending on the subjects I went to either the library, preparing for checkpoints, or going to the place where I could sleep. At 5 pm, the most crucial part of the day began - the work shift. 8 hours of listening to the whole truth of life about the reasons for overdue loans and explaining what are the deposit programs, why the money went wrong and of course why I and such “my bank” are such idiots and everything is wrong with me, at 2 o’clock in the morning I was at home . And so cyclically. It was difficult for the first 2 months, then the diploma began and it was possible to study less often, and I began to feel better clients, went normal earnings and confidence in work. But something was still wrong. I felt that it was not for this that I studied assembler in the 3rd year and sold solutions of differential equations to fellow students. It suddenly seemed to me at one moment that I was doing a dumb job that everyone can do and there is nothing special in that I understand how the international payment system works with acquiring banks.
Accidentally learning about the open vacancy of the senior shift monitoring electronic operations, I gladly left the annoying chat, after 8 months of working in it, and went for a month of internship in the department dealing with electronic fraud. I was trained by a girl named T, whom I married a year later. She told me all the ins and outs of monitoring electronic banking operations, taught me to detect fraud with the help of bank software systems and naturally prevent it. Finally, that was what we needed! Complicated analytical work, investigation of traces of fraud by IP addresses, monitoring of skimming, farming, breathtaking! The work was 2 through 2 per night, while I had a team, at the head of which I was put. After 5 months, when I achieved, as it seemed to me, good success in monitoring, I stopped straining at work, all monitoring was reduced to checking elementary rules, filling out reports and other routine, which I already got pretty bad. And how it all began!
Unexpectedly, having defended my diploma in the last 5th year, I received an offer from the management to upgrade to the head of Internet banking security, transfer to a day and work like a white man. Responsibilities included managing operators, analyzing fraud and inventing new rules for monitoring payments in the Internet bank. The analysis was quite commonplace - at that time, monitoring of Internet banking was just beginning, so it was enough to identify common features with the eyes of a sample of payments and develop an algorithm “so that this would not happen anymore”. As it turned out in the process, I had to not only develop monitoring algorithms, but also communicate with programmers and persuade them to implement them. After 2 months of fascinating and painstaking work, by chance, I was fired. This was a strong blow, as not once in 1.
Once at home, I discovered Google and went on the Internet for several days to look for work in my specialty, because I was an engineer for automation of production processes! Calling a dozen vacancies in my specialty, I realized that life is a pain, and it’s not fun to switch to a salary of $ 150 after what was in the bank. In the end, desperate, I returned to my long-standing fetish - when, when programming in assembler, I dreamed of becoming a programmer! But I didn’t go online in search of job opportunities for assembler programmer, because already knew that this was a disastrous business. It was necessary to find a more popular programming language. Google at the request of “the most popular programming language” returned “Java”, I did not argue with him or ask again and eagerly set to study. What's so complicated? Did I already know the assembler to some extent?
So, let's start, the first throw to a better life were 2 books downloaded, some of Bruce Eckel and Horstman. Having spent a week on them, I realized how much I was mistaken ... Objects? Polymorphism? What is this all about? Where to start? Why go? Having suffered a complete failure in reading, I received an epiphany that if you watch the video, everything will be more understandable, because at the university, at the lectures, everything was clear! My choice fell on the first site from Google - javabegin.ru, on it a certain Timur Batyrshinnov posted 7 introductory lessons on java, which I looked at and repeated with great pleasure and slight understanding. After them two books went in parallel - Herbert Schildt “The Complete Java Guide” and Vyazovik N. A. “Java Programming”. After the video, the situation cleared up and the books went much clearer. After several chapters, I again reviewed these same videos and opened up new details in them. There was one significant drawback in all this training - it was completely incomprehensible to what extent it was necessary to study in order for knowledge to be enough to get a job. This went on throughout August, and at the beginning of September I found out that my companion was pregnant and it would be nice to call her married.
Not a second, walking through grandparents and other caring relatives, having collected the necessary amount and having played the wedding, I woke up and realized that I still have neither work nor sufficient skills to get a good job, I decided to catch pneumonia and lie down month in the hospital. The month passed quite productively - I continued intensive training in the hospital. The combination of “video + reading + again video + performing simple tasks” on a certain topic gave a much greater understanding than individually. Having understood the basics of syntax, abstract classes, inheritance, polymorphism, and finally installing the SQL server, I checked out and headed for my previous job hoping for understanding and forgiveness. To my surprise, no one was found and my new leader was not opposed to my reinstatement.
After recovering from my previous position and promising decent automation of the existing algorithms for monitoring electronic banking operations of Internet banking, I set about analyzing, but not the analysis that I was doing before — I identified, drew a diagram, came up with an algorithm that covers the current diagram — here I had to get a few millionth a selection of payments, find fraudulent among them from statistics, identify the general scheme and come up with an algorithm. In general, it became clear that select * is small and I had to learn the syntax of SQL queries. After a few months, understanding how the subqueries work, left join and respecting the test database several times, I completely abandoned the programming study and felt firmly on my feet - after all, I was not just a fraud manager, I was also good at SQL!
One day everything changed. The bank has many systems that verify the loyalty of employees to the bank and one of them is printing testing. Having gone there, I received a sentence - recommended for dismissal. All dreams and a feeling of complete stability and confidence in tomorrow collapsed in an instant. The bitterness was added by the pregnant wife, who was already on maternity leave and who I had to contemplate every day in a wretched one-room apartment, for the rent of which a good half of the salary was spent. Reappraisal of all values and knowledge took place in a couple of evenings and I again took up programming. Knowing that I would be fired soon, the process went much more intensively.
N weeks after the failed test, after a serious conversation with the Supreme Chief, I was left with 100 honest words until the next test, which was supposed to happen suddenly, it is not clear when. Upon learning this news, I wanted to relax, but the inner feeling of slippery soil under my feet was no longer fooled.
Several months passed, remembering the well-forgotten old and learning a lot of new things, I still could not understand what enterprise is and where to put methods and classes. There was a feeling that I understand well, but how to use and where to develop further was completely incomprehensible. Having accidentally stumbled on the network for the vacancy “free Java training on a competitive basis”, I realized that this is a chance that comes up once in a lifetime. A certain company L claimed that if you pass 3 test tasks, 5 months of free training, pass an exam, then the best students will get a job. It was impossible to procrastinate - the first test task - online puzzles in Java were on the shoulder and took an hour by force. Soon they contacted me and invited me to take a written exam. On the exam, there was neither Google nor ctrl + space after each point, they gave empty pieces of paper, 5 tasks and 2 to think about. There were difficulties with the tasks of what pseudo code I did not know then and piled everything I knew, including JFrame and other heresies. I was lucky with two tasks to think about, the solution of which played a key role in my opinion. After biting my nails for a week, I still waited for a call and an invitation to a third, personal interview. Jumping into the office, answering a number of general questions and reading a piece of documentation in English, they promised to call back in 3 days. The call came only after 3 weeks, when I had forgotten to think about training and was offended by them for a long time. personal interview. Jumping into the office, answering a number of general questions and reading a piece of documentation in English, they promised to call back in 3 days. The call came only after 3 weeks, when I had forgotten to think about training and was offended by them for a long time. personal interview. Jumping into the office, answering a number of general questions and reading a piece of documentation in English, they promised to call back in 3 days. The call came only after 3 weeks, when I had forgotten to think about training and was offended by them for a long time.
The call was not very pleased, as the courses were 3 times a week, starting from 2 pm. Super, but what about work? The office rat was supposed to sit on the spot from 8 to 18. The Highest Supervisors also helped out, to whom I cried in my shirt, how much I want to be a programmer, and that I really need it. They gave the green light, but with the condition that I will produce the same 8.30 hours. After a simple arithmetic, I realized that 3 times a week I need to come to work at 6 in the morning, then go to four-hour courses, and then do homework. The volume of the homework was supposed to be 4-8 hours, it should have been set after each lesson. Not afraid of a drop, I froze in anticipation of the start of the courses.
The long-awaited courses began, the first rise at 4.30 in the morning, work, the first lecture on Java from a real professional! It was a gloomy Monday evening and I had to do my homework before Wednesday, that is, until the next lesson. It took 12 hours to complete it - six hours every day in the evenings. Having slept for 3 days in a row for 4 hours, I realized that I needed to change something, otherwise you could just die.
The solutions were as follows - if you want to squeeze the maximum out of your body, then you need to keep the whole body in good shape. Thinking carefully, mixing several techniques of advanced gurus (or just charlatans) I came to the next program. Rise at 4-5 in the morning, no breakfast, only a few granules of bee pollen. In the morning, when the body is sleeping, shoving the stomach with food, the body spends too much energy to start the stomach itself and all digestive systems. The bee bread contains all the necessary vitamins for the whole day and practically does not require the body's cost of digestion - that is, it is easily digested. To wake up properly - a contrast shower is required, it helps to wake the body and gives a boost of energy for several hours. Then a glass of boiled water every hour - so that the blood was always diluted and it was easier for the heart to pump it. The easier it is to swing it, the better the brain eats and the clearer the thought. You need to have dinner tightly - just all the digestive systems function to the fullest, so that the body will spend the minimum amount of energy on digestion. After work, there was a real brainstorm for the brain in the courses, after - a good dinner of hours at 7-8 pm and until 10-11 study. By 10-11 hours the brains are usually fogged up decently and it becomes almost impossible to learn, as it is poorly understood. There were always 2 options - either to go to bed, which you couldn’t do, otherwise you won’t have time to do your homework, or go for an evening run - 2-3 km with a light jog and thoughts would clear up immediately. After - 2-3 hours of study and sleep at 1-2 nights. At this pace, you can withstand 5 days a week, but on weekends you need to relax and it is advisable to forget about programming at least for a day. Alcohol helped well on Friday on Saturday - a gym. Be sure to have to finish up everything that wasn’t enough on weekdays. If this is not done, the next week could simply not stand it. By “not withstand,” I mean either significantly losing productivity, or scoring for studies. 2 weeks he was drawn into a new rhythm, and after that he felt that I could sleep even less, but did not check.
4 months of study flew by like plywood over Moscow. Having lost 10 kg of weight, having pumped up the press from running and building up a very strong theoretical base, who were one of the first students in the ranking, I went to my first interview at Company L. I passed the technical interview successfully, it was easy to answer all questions about OOP, and bubble sorting was not difficult. But I successfully failed the second - in English. Not much upset, I found out that in our bank, you can also go to the programming department, especially since I already knew some programmers as a manager.
After an oral interview, I got my first job. Behind there was a good theoretical base on Java and absolute ignorance of how to apply this in a real project.
From the first day on, everything went very well on the project - it was possible to come to work at 10-11 in the morning, and free fruit and afternoon tea provided a quick recovery of the energy spent in six months. Every day, every week I received a tremendous amount of experience that was so lacking during the training period - how the application is assembled, how it interacts with the database, where it starts, how it is deployed, etc. Training went smoothly, efficiently and measuredly. A team! What a team was! All calm, measured, patiently answering stupid questions of a colleague. This was incomparable with managerial turmoil. Oh don't you understand? So let me explain to you! Super.
Over 9 months of work, my colleague and I suddenly realized that we needed to move somewhere urgently, as everything was fine, except for one - there was no spoken English. Absolutely. Having stumbled upon 2 vacancies of middle & senior java developer, we went for an interview. As a pretender to a simpler job, I was put up for a good 2 hours, but my colleague managed 3-4 questions. Having come out humiliated and insulted after a 2-hour interview, I thought that it would not be so bad and nice to get knowledge and experience in my native bank a couple of years before going somewhere.
Unexpectedly, in 2-3 days they sent us both offers, which was a complete shock for me and after a week of deliberation we left our native land and went on new trials. On the new project, in the new company, it turned out to be not that hard, but just incredibly hard. It turns out that we could only dream of a smiling Russian-speaking product manager, who was in our bank! Indeed, on this project, the customer communicated with the programmers himself and personally distributed tasks. And in English.
We knew and could read the basics of English, but it was very difficult to hear by ear. I don’t know how he put up with us, but for the first 2-3 months we understood about 20 percent of what he said, and when we showed the implementation, it turned out that even less. It saved that this was a startup and there were no deadlines or production. After 4-5 months, by chance, most of the team left us, including my colleague, and I was proudly appointed team leader, forgive me all real team leaders! I was sure that I would not last long, but it turned out that I had been fulfilling this duty for a year and a half. At the moment, 30 percent of the time is taken up by design, 20 - administration (deployment, CI, and the entire server part I am completely engaged in), 20 - parsing tasks with the team (we mow under scrum and try to make planning meetings) and 30 more on coding.
It has been a year and a half in a new role and two and a half in the role of programmer. Now I look forward to a trip to the bastion of World Democracy to personally work with the customer.
At this stage, I highlight for myself several main points *, the understanding and awareness of which, it seems to me, is even more important than the knowledge of a programming language:
- Moving up, whether it is expanding or broadening one’s horizons, it is important for a person to unwind his life a year ago and compare what has changed from that moment to now. If nothing, then consider why. As one wonderful English proverb says, “Rolling stones do not overgrow with moss.”
- Exit the comfort zone. There should be constant difficulties and questions all the way from the junior to the senior. As soon as it became comfortable and routine for n months, you have to leave. Each n has his own value , but the closer the specialist is to the junior, the smaller it should be.
- If you beat at one point in the wall for a long time, then it is much easier to break than by striking in different places. The same is with knowledge - much more knowledge can be gained during time t in one field of knowledge than in several.
* - everything is subjective and each has its own path to success and its own principles.
Am I a programmer or an opportunist? You probably will know better, but I know one thing for sure - I, a person who loves his job and always goes to his goal.