Forem: Patience Daur

My First Job Interview: The Power Of Friendship

Patience Daur — Sun, 02 Jun 2019 12:43:59 +0000

I am a career changer, and someone on Twitter said that career changers play on hard mode.

A Large Preamble

I've been self-employed as a translator for almost a dozen years, getting commissions from a wide network of social scientists that passed my contact to each other by word of mouth.

However, I don't see my place in social sciences. I want to be less involved with people's hardships. With my mental health, I cannot constantly read about human suffering. It brings my productivity to a halt.

But if a machine breaks, I will be happy to fix it.

Since I was a kid, I was fascinated with system administrators and programmers. In school, we had C++ classes plus I learned some web programming on my own. Later, I learned some Linux administration skills from my boyfriend. I looked up to my college friend who had Arch Linux with no GUI on her laptop. She boasted that she browsed the web using only the command line! Indeed, sysadminship had a magical glow for me.

At that time, I thought IT was something "complicated", "tricky" – not a "boys' club" though, as I was lucky to have a couple of girls around me interested in computers.

I finished my BA in Musicology, worked as a music columnist, played drums and sang in various bands, and continued translating scholarly texts for a living.

What Next?

Years later, in 2018, I attended the Django Girls workshop for women who want to try their hands at programming. This year, I was already mentoring there. I got acquainted with the St. Petersburg branch of PyLadies, a community of women Pythonistas, and went to Python-related meetups.

I also developed an interest in DevOps. I went to an offline course, but ran away from there since I wasn't getting much assistance/respect from the teacher who mostly retold us googlable stuff. I copied the course curriculum on a sheet of paper and decided to finish it myself, with the help of a friend who agreed to be my mentor.

I even won a small game development grant, but I still didn't feel like part of the industry.

It's been eleven months since I started. So what do I do now?

It Happened By Accident

I decided to look for a job in October 2019. Indeed, I had to master all the algorithms, explore all the DevOps technologies, do a couple more pet projects, and go on vacation with my husband. But suddenly, the mentor friend suggested that I hand him my resume so he would show it to his colleagues. The company is a cloud provider, and they were looking for interns. I figured that if I accidentaly moved a bit faster than planned, it's for the better. So I sent him my resume – reviewed by my other friend who works as an HR manager.

The hiring process took a lot longer than I expected. They've been reviewing my resume for a week and a half. But luckily, I had an insider agent at the company – my friend regularly reported to me about all the developments, and it seems like his involvement accelerated the process.

Besides, a Python meetup was coming up, and that time, it was hosted by the company I sent my resume to. I went to the meetup not only to listen to the talks, but to get to know just anyone from the company and to ask what working there was like. Another friend of mine was organizing the meetup. I walked up to him and immediately asked to introduce me to someone from the company. He introduced me to someone who happened to be the chief HR manager. She had already heard of me (which is not a surprise, I bet that my mentor friend asked A LOT about how my resume was doing). She, in turn, introduced me to the lead Python developer and the HR manager who was hiring DevOps engineers.

The thing is, I didn't (and don't) really know what EXACT kind of IT job I would most enjoy. I like writing code, but I also like configuring stuff. So I was interested in two intern positions, developer and DevOps. Then, a magic sysadmin unicorn flies in front of my eyes, and whoosh – I opt for the DevOps position, although I have much less experience.

I figured the most important thing is being perseverant and chatty. Luckily, this is what I find fun lately. After making sure everyone remembered me, I went home and continued about my daily translating job and my unfinished DevOps course. It will be nice if I am hired, and nothing will happen if I'm not, right?

The Invitation

Two days later, I was invited to the interview. This would be the first interview in my life. (I am not counting the one for a translator position, where they said goodbye to me after I finished my second sentence.)

I've been reading a lot of articles (including those on DEV) about finding your first job, what they look for in candidates, etc. My HR friend also gave me some tips. So I felt pretty ready for the battle.

I was contacted by a different HR manager, who I didn't know, via Telegram. She sent me the intern position description. It was "strongly recommended" that I "knew" more than a dozen different technologies. If that's for an intern position, what are they looking for in seniors, then?

Luckily, my mentor friend explained that "knowing" means "having tinkered with it a little". So I decided to brush up on what I already knew and learn about as many unfamiliar words from the job description as possible. I read about load balancing techniques and disk storage, watched videos about container technologies, and did tutorials. All of that on the day before the I-day. I was full of determination and did twice as much yoga to calm my nerves.

The Interview

I came to the office well in advance because I thought I would get lost in the neighborhood. One hour commute by metro and by foot – and I am there. I bump into my acquaintance from the meetup right at the entrance. After I get registered at the security desk, he shows me the coffee space.

While I'm waiting, I take a walk around the office (or at least the part where I am allowed). People look friendly and quite diverse for a Russian IT company. My mentor friend is sitting nearby, discussing something with a colleague. There is workout equipment mounted against a wall. Everything looks fine from the first glance. I am sipping tea.

Eventually, the HR comes and takes me to the room. There are four more people interviewing me, as I applied to two positions – two Python developers, a DevOps engineer, and a big boss (didn't remember the exact position) who looks like a guitarist I played in a band with, but thinner and with a small beard.

I think what helped me is my chatty muscle – I turned on my "radio mode" and talked without stopping. I told them about my pet projects and what I learned at my DevOps course. I also asked a lot of questions myself. The "big boss" pointed out some improvements I could make to the deployment of my game project.

The conversation sounded like a nice chat, except that I felt a weird vibe from the HR. She talked me through the employment conditions way too quickly. I was nervous, so I was dropping in and out of what she was telling me. I also didn't forget to mention than the atmosphere of the team is very important to me. She jotted something on the piece of paper. OK, if and when I sign the contract, I will have to read very carefully.

The interview lasted about an hour. The HR told they would contact me next week, since it was Friday already. Again, the decisions in this company are made very slowly.

The Aftermath

After the interview, I couldn't really get what happened. I was supposed to be happy about the start of my journey. After all, wasn't it what I wanted most – to get into the IT industry? I read about a lot of Americans who got their first job in software development only on the 59th time and spent years before they got accepted. So it didn't seem like a big deal. However, I was completely drained.

I was also worried that I named a far too small amount when they asked me about the salary. I had read that the person who first says the number loses, but the conversation was built in such a way that it was inevitable. My friend, who I consider an example for all Russian female developers, calmed me down by telling me that it's most important to get on that train, not look for more money while I'm at the very start. That was true, and besides, the company promised a lot of social benefits once I finish my trial period.

The next day, I woke up emotionally exhausted. My husband cooked and took care of me while I was just lying on the sofa, crying and playing a sea world simulator. Later on, the exhaustion became physical, and I had to call the ambulance because I was in a lot of pain. Obviously, I had to skip my self-defense class, which didn't exactly help my mental state. It helped, however, that almost all of my friends who I texted supported me. I understood that I am normal and things like this happen. I took care of myself and was in shape again in a couple of days.

And Finally

By Wednesday, I still had no answer. So I contacted the HR who interviewed me. She was on vacation, so I had to wait until someone else contacted me. Again, I texted my mentor friend and complained a bit...

Finally, on Friday, I got an offer. And I accepted it.

I was assigned tasks associated with documentation translation system. Funny how it connects to my previous job. Now I can take revenge on the buggy translation software I had used by repairing something else...

I couldn't rejoice, though. I was too tired of the whole process. Plus I still feel like if I am too happy, something would break.

But that's how my journey starts. June 10 will be my first workday. We'll see how it goes.

If it wasn't for my friends, I wouldn't be there.

My Experience of Building a Game Without Even Knowing How

Patience Daur — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 07:12:25 +0000

Last week, the Russian NGO Komanda 29 hosted a 3-day hackathon in St. Petersburg to make more socially-oriented, so-called "serious" games that would help solve civic problems. They invited civic activists and NGO employees, artists, storytellers, and, of course, us coders.

I responded to the call for participants reposted to our PyLadies Telegram chat. Creating games was not the thing I was planning to do. I am currently transitioning careers, know a fair share of Python, and recently took up a DevOps course. But it turned out that the project was run by my childhood friend, so I went without hesitation. :)

I racked my brains a little on how to make a game with Python (since this is what I know best), watched a couple videos on the pygame module, and went off to the event even more puzzled.

I would describe the event not as a hackathon but rather as a workshop. Two professional game designers were invited to give a talk on how to create a game from scratch, be it a video, tabletop, or LARP game. They mentored us during the process, overseeing the creation of our prototypes. There was also free pizza :)

There were four activists, each of whom proposed their game idea. One of the ideas dealt with increased loss of hearing, and it ultimately transformed into a prototype of a tactical RPG with an evil ear as the main character. Another project was an pixel art urban activism simulator where you attempt to save a park from housing development - and one of the endings is lethal. There was also a game to teach activists about new technologies. It involved decision-making in the style of Reigns and had really funny texts.

I joined a project for the prevention of domestic violence, proposed by a psychotherapist. We decided to base the game on the questions in the chat bot that she had developed and used in her work. We were joined by an artist with a style that reminded me a bit of Soviet posters. We had to deliver the prototype in three days, and so we began working!

We decided that our game would be a visual novel. The aim was to help the player connect verbal and emotional abuse with the physical abuse to come. Since we had little time, our prototype only featured a heterosexual relationship where you play for the female character.

First, we re-created three relationship scenes in which the character may understand that she is to face physical violence next. Here, she can choose answering options (like in your regular Witcher 3 dialogues) and see the consequences of her actions. We also decided to add the buttons "Help" and "Exit," but with unusual functions. Pressing "Help" would trigger a call from the protagonist's best friend, and "Exit" would mean "exit the relationship." Not every player would guess that!

Second, we had to draw the block diagram of dialogues so as not to get confused in all the options. This was a major step that quickened our work and helped us achieve victory. Our game had three endings.

Finally, to the most relevant part - the coding! In fact, our target audience required that we would make a phone app, because the computers of domestic violence victims are often supervised by their abusive partners (or get broken if they have passwords). But we only had to deliver a playable prototype to show to the jury. So I decided to use Twine.

Twine is convenient for creating mindmaps. It seems to be a wrapper around Javascript. One of the markdown languages Twine uses is called Harlowe. Harlowe also allows adding HTML, CSS, and basic logic (I think I found a couple of bugs here). Twine can be also used with two other markdown languages, but they rely heavily on Javascript, and I know nothing of Javascript.

Twine/Harlowe is not very convenient for a large project. But, again, I have never really been interested in frontend web programming, knowing only a couple of tricks with HTML and CSS from my earlier years. And since we had to deliver something quick, we were kinda stuck with Twine. I had considered using RenPy, which is employed by some really nice visual novel games, and also looked at the library pyjsdl. However, after a discussion with the mentors and a sober estimate of our time and my knowledge, I decided that we threw together a simple prototype using Twine.

In the end, we presented our projects. The jury played our prototypes and reached their verdict. I am happy to say that our game won the grant from the organizers! In the next half year, we will have to revamp everything so the game would be playable on mobile phones and actually help people. We will expand on the story, too. And I will have to expand on my frontend skills. I view this as a great incentive to learn a lot of new stuff, and I am incredibly thankful for this opportunity to hang out with nice and thoughtful people!

Here's a funny picture how something is not working. I think we saw a bug:

Nevertheless, Patience Coded

Patience Daur — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 09:19:36 +0000

I started/continued to code in 2019 because...

...coding is one of the coolest things one can do nowadays. Remember Arthur Clarke's saying that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"? So I definitely deserve the title of Robot Witch Who Wields The Power Of Computers. :) Coding is also fairly complicated, which means it makes me feel smart and intelligent (it is important to note because it's really good for my mental health).

This year, I would like to:

finish this awesome Udacity course on algorithms
learn more about DevOps and system administration, which has fascinated me since my childhood
dive deeper into Python
hopefully find my first job in IT after 10 years of working as a freelance translator and music teacher...taking it slow!

I deserve credit for...

...taking part in Django Girls as one of the trainees last year. Since I was a kid, I have had an interest in programming and computer science, but until 2018, I believed it was "not my thing." I knew some HTML and CSS (even had work experience with it), tried my hand at C and Arduino (finally understood physics!), but something was still telling me it was not "real"... After finding a community of supportive women and genderqueer folks, I had courage to really engage in coding:

I learned Python and some Java
I made a website for a rare comic I translated into Russian: http://deathbunnies.pythonanywhere.com
I made a tool to pick board games from my collection for a nice evening with friends: http://igolka.pythonanywhere.com
I made a lightning talk about the latter at the PyLadies meetup in St. Petersburg
My career in computer science is merely at its starting point, and I am not planning to give up.

I hope to see my school/work/developer/tech community...

...definitely less biased towards women and nonbinary people. As I'm writing this post, I feel hesitant to send it, as I often come across devaluation of beginners' efforts, and do not want to face this again and again.
In particular, I would like to see more appreciation for initiatives like Django Girls and PyLadies. Some say that these initiatives have no value because they "help people justify their stupidity." But as a person with experience in teaching, I claim they're doing just the opposite – even if someone is stupid, it becomes easy to fix if you're in an accepting community without condescending attitude.

Tomorrow, on March 8, I will be one of the mentors at Django Girls. What a cool way to celebrate International Women's Day! If what they usually wish to women in my country on this holiday is "being nice and attractive," I will work towards making women and genderqueer people feel smart and intelligent, so they can believe in themselves. This will eventually help them solve their problems on their own, without engaging in harmful relationships out of sheer need or insecurity. I will be very proud if I can contribute to that through doing what I like.