Reddit Interview

I was recently engage by a reddit user after posting a on a post on Bloc. I was asked a lot of thought provoking questions where some actually made me rethink why I am doing this whole journey. It helped reaffirm my efforts and actually encouraged me even more. Take a read and ask yourself similar questions if you are also onthe same path as myself. What are you  using to learn? Are you finding the community helpful?

[–] from reddituser sent 17 days ago

I read your comments about joining bloc.io. I'm curious to know why you choose to pay for this course vs going the free route and using things like IRC, stackoverflow, and forums for support. How were you able to pay for the course too?

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[–] to reddituser sent 15 days ago

Honestly it was for the motivation and support of a mentor. I tried this previously 2 years ago with java. Now after completing bloc I feel better equipped and motivated by learning the best practices. I have even since pick up learning python.

I have been working with the Odin project as late and recommend them as a free option, comparable to bloc with mentors. Though I have noticed a considerable amount of people not follow through on it.

Stack overflow and irc are great but I find some people on there to be condescending not helpful to the average noob. It took me a month before I had the courage to ask a question on there and it still got voted down initially without an answer.

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[–] to reddituser sent 15 days ago

I am not sure if my reply was submitted initially from my ipad, but here it goes again.

I chose to go with bloc because of the motivation factor. I had tried Android development 2 years ago but never followed through after making my first tutorial app. Now deciding on ruby, I wanted to make sure I started on the right foot. I looked in the moving to another city for a bootcamp but then found bloc. I found having access to a mentor 24/7 (via email) and available by skype worth every penny.

I tried S/O and forums but found most to be condescending and even hard to explain my issues. I did not have a CS background, so even explaining basic concepts had a learning curve.

I was able to pay for Bloc using the monthly payment method. I was justifying the payments because I am also currently getting my MBA at a local university and 2 online classes equal the price of 12 weeks in bloc. I am also am employed full-time and have a sales job with a bonus that covered every month of bloc.

I have some more details on my impression of bloc on my blog. First blog post

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[–] from reddituser sent 13 days ago

I know what you mean. People on IRC and stackoverflow can really be sarcastic and jerks, not really helpful when you're just learning. What motivated you to take the course? Are you a budding entrepreneur?

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[–] to curiousonomy sent 13 days ago

I dont know about budding but I have been in talks on taking my capstone project to next level. I am on the fence but it might be a viable business.

My background is in business and I am currently a few days from completing my semester semester, so eventually I would like to be an entrepreneur.

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[–] from reddituser sent 13 days ago

Was your MBA a motivator for learning web application development?

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[–] to reddituser sent 12 days ago

sort of, I wrote a 15 page paper on the google story and it sparked me to look into it. I very briefly started learning C, but later found out about Ruby.

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[–] from reddituser sent 11 days ago

You mention "sort of". Could you elaborate on that? Is there something else that pushed you to learn web application development?

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[–] to reddituser sent 11 days ago

There was definitely a few different things but rather than re-write all of them, check out my blog on it First Blog Post

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[–] from reddituser sent 11 days ago

I see you wrote some new posts from the ones I read when I went to your website. Congrats on the 3rd job interview! Hopefully that works out well. I didn't previously see the photo of you and your child. The caption says that if it wasn't for him you wouldn't have started the journey. You also mentioned that you look at developers that have learned quickly and started working in the field and that impressed you, just as you had no prior sales experience and climbed the ladder rapidly. You say you "want to be somebody" and that you previously loved finance, but your new love became programming. What is the motivator for all of this? I'm curious to know why you didn't stick to sales even though you've progressed and still have plenty of potential.

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[–] to reddituser sent 10 days ago

Sales is not really career path for me but just a way to move in my current employer and gain a skill I did not have previously. I actually never thought I would do sales, but liked the idea of challenging myself, so I went for this. I am very much a person who likes a challenge and is why I have been so aggressive in gaining a career in programming.

I have indeed moved up the ladder rather quickly but definitely hit the plateau. I am currently selling a product I have no interest in (networking switches) and my next promotion would be either to field sales or management, Both of which would still be promotions in technologies I have no interest in and be less time with my family. I have considered gaining employment in software sales but have received little response, because there are plenty of sales people in the market, but there is not enough software engineers. I tweeted about it, 150k jobs made available a year but only 40k CS graduates a year.

At the end of the day I just want to do something great, so one day my son can look up to me and say, "wow my dad made that." Programming gives me the avenue to start an idea and grow it into the viable business. I can even gain the opportunity to be apart of something bigger, like another social network or even a new google glass.

The company I am talking to monday is working a new wearable technology for fitness, that will be less obtrusive than fitbit. *I will be keep my blog updated with my meeting which on Monday.

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[–] to reddituser sent 10 days ago

You have asked some thought provoking questions, which I do appreciate. I hope you do not mind but I will be collecting this Q & A and writing a blog post on my answers

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[–] from reddituser sent 9 days ago

Not a problem. I appreciate that you answered them. Go right ahead. :)

If you have any questions that weren't address, please share?

This is getting ridiculous

I was told today that with much surprise, I have been promoted once again. Literally 4 months later and 7 months into my journey towards developing.

So what is going on?

7 months ago I spent 72 days in the hospital with my son, due to him being born 2 months prematurely. The initial 2 weeks I took off work and only living out the trunk of my car diving 25 miles back and forth every other day. When I walked into work I had a new perspective on life and my career path.

1. I wanted to be home with my son more
2. I really did not want to do sales the rest of my life
3. I want to be part of something great and design my own career path

I have experienced tragedies in my life, but having my son being born prematurely after having no issues in pregnancy was extremely scary, but it also put my life in perspective. I spent most of my college career knowing that I was going to be a financial adviser and sell investments. Well, I came across many obstacles in that plan including being unable to secure entry level employment in the Finance field....not even in a bank!

There could be many reasons why I never got to where I wanted to be, it was mainly due Financial Crisis, but that is in the past and as of last summer I gave up on that dream. I instead gained employment doing entry level work at a local IT distributor, which happens to be one of largest corporations based in Central Florida. I literally spent my days(actually nights since I worked second shift) doing a job I could do with my eyes closed. I was extremely over qualified, but I used the time work on my skills, those skills are what I used to get where I am today.

Fast forward 4 years later, today I was told I am once again being promoted. Promoted into a consultant role where I will have less stress and more freedom. There is a pay increase with this position but it still leaves me less than the start of a Jr. PHP developer at my employer. My drive and determination has gotten me to the place where I am today and I look forward to where it will be taking me.

If you have been reading my blog for a while then you know I was focused on gaining a Ruby position when I got my last promotion. This promotion actually makes things very interesting since now I am making a very comfortable salary, and really can't make the jump into a bootcamp or a non-paid apprenticeship (granted that my wife would kill me). I am still in talks with 3 of the 5 companies I have applied myself and still considering moving out of state if necessary, but have to make sure the jump will need to be worthwhile.

With all that being said I will still be pursuing my ultimate goal which is a dev position, but with more of the focus on the opportunity. The experience is worth more than the money I will be paid, and I look forward to receiving responses from the applications I have.

For those still keeping score, I will write a post summarizing this and next interview's scheduled for next week.

Company #1: 2nd interview concluded
Company #2: No response after 1st interview, I will reach out next week (sort of busy interviewing)
Company #3: 2nd interview is next Tues
Company #4: DENIED, it was a great talk, but I was not a great fit.
Company #5: No interview yet, but I have submitted my code test in Ruby.

Have you applied to any Jr dev jobs? What responses have you been getting? Do you have any advice for me?

My updated resume

Well I got an interview request in my email from company #4. I will write my experience with this interview on Monday but for now I would like to share what I did to get this interview unannounced.

About 1 month into Bloc I felt I needed to start looking outwards at different jobs in Ruby development to have a better idea on what sort of questions and material I should cover with my mentor. I decided to get job alerts sent to my phone from twitter as well as signed up for glassdoor alerts. I eventually stumbled upon Angel.co which is a job site specifically for startups to raise funding and hire employees. I signed up for that site and did nothing with it. I then found another site similar call whitetruffle, where you post your resume and companies find you. Thinking this was a great idea I posted as much info as possible about myself and shared links to my work at the time, but got no response.

Fast forward to 3 months later and post Bloc.io and Ancient City Ruby; I realized I never completed a resume that included all my efforts. I had previously been sharing my current sales resume with some mention of I am actually looking to be a developer. Now that I look back at this I realize how stupid I was to send a resume with a sales focused resume to a company looking for a software developer, regardless I updated the resume by taking out all the stuff prior to my current position and even cut that in half. I then replaced that info with my experience at Bloc and a special section called "Personal Ruby Development" where I outlined the courses, books,tutorials I used. I also added a Github repo section so they could easily find my work.

My resume is nothing special, just a word document with a limited amount info. Just enough info to get an idea of what I have done. When I applied to job #1 I barely wrote to 3 sentences about who I was and why I wanted the job. I just shared links to my blog, it was lot easier than applying for a sales job.

I have applied to a lot of jobs outside of the developer world and I have never received as much response from any resume before as I did this one, ever. Most people in my current industry get jobs because of who they know or their extensive experience in sales. The fact that I received 4 responses with less than 7 months of personal experience and not professional experience gives prove that there is some truth in my tweet. My goal was just to get an idea of what an actual dev interview is like and the experience has been overwhelming positive, so much that I might actually have a job in had at the end of this. Even if nothing works out I have gained more experience by trying, than by wondering "What if?"

I am pretty fired up and excited to see what happens this coming week; I have a first interview on Monday with #4 and a second interview with #1 on Tuesday. I also have a second interview with #3 the following week.

If you are also looking for some encouragement on getting an interview. Check out the latest Ruby Rogues podcast. Listen to the whole thing but starting at 21:45 begins the discussion on where to find the Junior Dev Jobs. I probably rewinded the podcast six times for that segment.

If you are interested in getting a dev job don't delay, get a document open and write down what you have done and keep track of it.

Below is a copy of what my resume looks like as of today:

Brian L Douglas
Palm Harbor, FL
Phone ###-###-####
mail@briandouglas.me
Twitter: @brianllamar

Blog: Bit.ly/c000000de

Education

University of South Florida; B.S. in Finance

Bloc.io Apprenticeship

Github Repos

Chuych, Taskoff, Bloccit32, and Postmarks

Work History

Personal Ruby Web Development October 2013 – Current Created rails application learning TDD and Agile development methods. Learned Rspec, Capybara, and various Ruby gems to build web applications; start to finish. Bloc.io Apprentice Dec 2013 - March 2014 12-week apprenticeship learning the fundamentals of web development. Specializing in Ruby on Rails and Javascript. Working closely with a seasoned mentor on programming concepts like TDD and Agile Development. TD; Sr. Account Manager February 2010 – Current -Conducted sales training and presentations for TD Inside Sales Managers and select resellers to increase mindshare within the IT distribution market.  -Serves as Tech Data's expert on the Business Partner's product line.  -Executes business plans to uncover new opportunities, increase sales and profits for Vendor Partner product lines and Tech Data.  -Performs outbound sales calls to identified target customers/leads in order to quote, provide product information, and build relationships within the Emerson product lines.

CS Skills

Knowledgeable and proficient in  Ruby, Rails, Python, Html, Git, and CSS

3rd time's a charm (Another interview)

I wanted let you all know I had an interview with a third company, which reaches my goal of 3 companies by April. I do have to say ho awesome it has been interviewing with companies and gaining valuable insight from how companies work in the development world. These interviews have confirmed my choice of taking CS169, which I have yet to set up  my VM.

The company I interview with is similar to company #2, where they do not work customer projects, but actually work a few services they sell to their customers. The company that  I have been familiar with for the past 6 months. I originally met 2 individuals from the company at a meetup and then again at the Ancient Rubyconf. They mentioned in passing that I should apply, so I did. I saw a promoted tweet for the job on Twitter and reached out via DM to the CEO. He asked for me to email my resume which I originally submitted on their website but heard no response, so I emailed the CEO directly and got a response late Monday Night (I am glad I emailed the CEO).

The interview very well and I had a great conversation with the head of Engineering, who shared the same name. I learned more about the company, which I will not reveal as of yet, but I will say I do have a second interview coming up in 2 weeks. The company is within driving distance, but it would require me to move to a new city since the commute is entirely too far.

Thank you for reading and thank you for 6 months of support through various means.

Reflections after my first 2 interviews

I have interviewed numerous times for my current employer to move up into better positions as well as companies outside, but all within the IT or Finance field. I spent 2 years in a data entry job and had a lot of time to practice my basic interview skills. One interview that I remember completely failing at when I was 23 which helped me to realize that I needed to practice and how to go into an interview prepared. That interview was for Financial Analyst position and I completely failed by not having questions prepared and even brought up salary after the discussion was not going well.

"Why are manhole covers round?" That was asked during the interview. I googled that right when I got to my desk.

I now do not go into an interview without doing extensive research on the company and position. I did the same when interviewing recently.

I complete two interview for 2 separate companies and wanted to share my experiences. I prefer not to share the names in order to not sway any decisions. I am not sure if this is a good practice or not, but my experience is that the hiring managers are pretty down to earth and would be surprise if they read this post. Despite if I get the job or not, I would never do anything to tarnish the name of either company. Just in case you guys are reading.

Company 1:

This company is actually out of state for me and is Agile Web Dev Shop where they work on applications for other medium to large businesses (side note: one of the companies they work with is a company I work with in my current sales role. Well, I thought that was cool ). My initial interview was with the Director of HR/Recruiting, I applied via Glassdoor.com, which I have done numerous times for sales position and have never heard back. This application however receive a response within less than a day.

I am currently in sales and have learned how to read individuals during a sale, and I can do a fare job reading people in person. On the phone is little more difficult, but once I connected with the recruiter on the phone we had a great conversation about the company in general. Everything she explained about it, excited me about the moving to the new city and working/living downtown next to a major MLB stadium, during baseball season. The conversation was great and from what I read into this process was definitely moving forward, but not quite the hard part.

She left me an exercise to complete Conway's Game of Life, which I unfortunately did not complete, well I completed but not on my own and it seemed to be a mess. While trying to use TDD start to finish it took me initially 5 hours just to make the game board. I did not reach out for help after a couple days of realizing I could figure out how to count the live cells and test it. I chose to submit what I had with an explanation on what I did and where my shortfalls are. Working sales you tend to fake it till you make it, but I felt faking it in this instance was not the right option. I did however submit links to my Rails projects, the irony that a of Rails Dev learn is that we know Rails well but hardly know Ruby. I realize this is a shortfall and will be working harder on this.

The recruiter is off on vacation this week, so I will not learn if they would like to proceed until next week. The next step will be interview with the head of developers.

Company 2:

This company is actually in state but about 3.5 hours away from where I live. So it will require me to move if the decision is made to go with me as a candidate. This interview was also over the phone and was with an individual I met at the Ancient City Ruby Conference. The company is smaller and subsidiary of another. All together I was old that they have 12 employees and are working on a sole Rails project. The legacy product was made in .NET and now being restructure into Rails. I had a long conversation about my background and my desire to switch to development. Most of the questions were the same I got while networking at the Ruby conf.

1. Why are looking to switch from Sales to Developing?
2. What interested you in Ruby over other languages to start?
3. Any experience with TDD and Agile development?

I left the phone call confident that I had chance at the second stage, which is Google Hangout with the team. I look forward to the experience it will allow me.

What now:

The easy answer would be wait, but not me. I have already reached out via email keeping them informed of my presence. I have also begun researching the topics I was unsure of with attempting Conways Game of Life and will be following a tutorial this weekend on how to build it to catch the steps I missed.

In another effort to gain more practical Ruby experience I am planning leading the Ruby Newbies group through the Odin Curriculum. The curriculum will help me get to where I need to be, which is a better understanding of Ruby without Rails.

Please join me if you are interest in a weekly study group. It will be a deep dive into Ruby.

Conway's Game of Life problem

After having a nice phone call with a recruiter on Wednesday I was given the assignment to write a program using the rules for Conway's Game of Life. I looked forward to completing this assignment was nervous and excited to start. I previously worked on this problem during the Code Retreat in November. During that that day I approached the problem in a pair with 5 different partners. This definitely helped me in approaching the problem.

The excited got to me and I spent 6 hours on Thursday working through the problem using TDD. This first project using TDD outside of Rails and not following a tutorial, which is why it took me 6 hours to build a board and functionality. I have yet to start the first rule of the game:

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by under-population.
2. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
3. Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.

I plan to spend another 6-10 hours on it this weekend. I hope that it does not take that long but am enjoying the experience I am gaining from this. After this I hope to finish my Tic Tac Toe app using TDD, but I might need to give myself a week.

I am currently stuck on check each cell for live cells and adding them to the array called live_neightbors_around. The test is not passing as of yet, but will hopefully will today, now that my brain has rested for a day.

So I applied to a job this week

So I applied to a Ruby job. Though I only have 6 months of experience, I feel I have enough knowledge to keep up in an organization. I sent a tweet out yesterday that was pretty encouraging and help me realize now is the time to apply. Its better to know whether or not I am qualified now after 6 months, that way I can adjust my learning towards where its needed. I am using Joshua Kemp's as my guide on this and he got to about 8 months before he acquired employment as a web dev... getting exciting.

My focus now has been on front end since I feel like I might need to know at least a little in that field. I amplanning on running through a Angular or Ember tutorial soon, as soon as I finish the Hartl or Jumpstart Labs Blogger 2 tutorials.

I just got promoted...but I still want to be a web developer

This week I was informed at my day job that I was promoted. This was some some pretty surprising news to hear. For those who have not read any previous post, I currently work in Sales/Product Marketing and sell data center equipment. I am coming up on the completion of 4 years at this company, but this was not my first choice in careers. I currently hold a B.S. in finance and dream of a career as a Financial Advisor. I unfortunately graduated at the most inopportune time in 2008 while no firms were taking on new advisors or if they were not looking for average students in Tampa.

To speed this up, I worked really hard the last 4 years to obtain a sales job without any sales experience. I always found it interesting how most entry level jobs require significant experience. This is something I find very similar with Web Developing and chronicled in Joshua Kemp's book while he interviewed. My original goal was to get enough "sales" experience to be able to walk in a Financial Firm as a trainee. Most banks or firms now require the experience despite the fact that most have intensive 6-12 months training programs. After applying to multiple firms I became disheartened and gave up on that dream 2 months ago with I discovered a new desire to learn how to program.

What I did to get promoted:
My current role has the benefit of being a semi-technical role where I am technical sales questions. Knowing this I pursued some non-required sales certifications. Even though I didn't need to do that it showed that I had the ability to take initiative. I also did things that were outside the box to recruit new partners, by using Google Alerts on when new data center projects were being announce and followed up customers in the area (full disclosure: This method has not successfully recruit any customers but it has open great discussions).

So what about my developing journey?:
I worked pretty hard climbing through ranks at my current employer but desire to learn to program is still very much there. My promotion will not hinder my learning and will actually help to fund it.

My concern initially was what to do in 3 months once Bloc is complete:

The plan is to immediately begin applying for my future position as a Jr. Developer. I will also hopefully finish the work on my capstone project to make that into a viable business. To further my portfolio I will continue to push out projects from tutorials and build my github repo.

Ideally one can be expected to be promoted in 2-5 years as a entry level sales professional within my current employer. I did it in 18 months with no prior sales experience. My hope is go into web developing the same way with only 3-6 months of experience. I sold myself pretty hard to my management to get a promotion and hope to sell myself pretty hard in the web developing field.

I might of been promoted today but my loyalty lies with learning to program. That is a career I can continue to grow in and not worry of reaching a plateau for quite some time. Also the icing on all of this is that a position as a PHP developer starts 20k higher than my promoted salary. I have no desire to learn PHP at this point but the posting encourages me to continue to push towards the career as a Ruby Developer.

I appreciate you reading this and I look forward to the post where I announce my career change.

If you haven't already done it. Follow me on Twitter to get updates on the rest of my journey.

Never stop learning

First Rails App is Live and Ready To Go

I have finally figured out how to implement comments (sort of) on to my app, which was the reason for the delay in sharing with my friends. I later found out it was an error in my code, I am on Rails 4 and the code attr_accessor with my comment.rb does not work in 4.

I originally wanted to add native comments that live within the app, but I had a lot of trouble implementing them properly, so I just went with Disqus.

Disqus is great platform and actually very easy to implement the Javasrcipt. Just paste the code and you are good.

If you get a chance please check out my app and post a picture. bit.ly/robotapp1

Bloc.io

Day 28:

*If you are interested in joining the Bloc mentorship, use my link to receive $100 bucks off. Bloc Referral

So I took the plunge 2 nights ago and got onboard with a Ruby mentor. While surfing around Ruby jobs I saw Bloc.io was hiring a mentor, I then went to Bloc.io to see what they were about. After 12 hours of researching and reading every review out there, I signed up.


My mentor's name is Adam and we start 12/16. I picked that date to start because 12/15 marks the end of this semester for my MBA. I plan to take off the next term since I am one class ahead in the program and will dedicate the rest of my time to learning web developing.

I will keep you all informed on the process. In the meantime I have been given pre-mentor homework to complete.

Assignments:

1 Tryruby.org - Already completed a few weeks ago, but did it again in 15mins (it didnt take 4+ hours this time).
2 Ruby Manifesto - 7 page book, sort of a condensed, sarcastic version of Ruby-doc.org
3 TryGit.io  - Made by same company that did Try Ruby. Finished in 15mins
4 Learn Ruby the Hard Way Book - Saving this for this weekend
5 Javascript Codecademy Lesson