My journey to being nomad

PRELUDE :

nomad :

a member of a people or tribe who move from place to place to find pasture and food
a person who continually moves from place to place; wanderer

My thoughts about journey during summer break has begun at the early October when I decided that it will be fun and great experience to work abroad during my summer break, in the meantime I was participant at DevDay and I have met Martin Mazur from Tretton37 (I have already know tretton37 and how fantastic they are, I always wondering about getting there). Also I got somehow influenced by Rob Ashton and his talk

ACT ONE – Tretton37

(During DevDay) At two minutes talk I asked him about t-shirt of tretton37 and then I decided to ask him about internship, he answered me that unfortunately they don’t have such thing like internship but “drop me a email” and we will try figure out something.

After few days ago, I did this! I have written email and Martin answered me : “Please write down you plans for this internship and how it should looks like, and why are you doing this and why tretton37?”, so many whys and hows but finally answer was simple, “You are the best and I want to learn from the best, you know I wanna be a ninja”

Then after several email we agreed together that I should contact with them at the beginning of next year (2014) because we were talking about summer internship so it’s a while till summer.

New year has come and end of the January seems to be perfect to contact with tretton37 and refresh them about myself (*ping* email). Then the reply arrived, “Can we have skype call to sum up all of those earlier words”, I was happy as hell it supposed to be my first English interview, but I had knowledge after earlier interviews and I said that I need more time to prepare myself. Finally I have done those steps during my preparations.

Short review of gramma – it’s optimal, but not necessarily to speak fluent.
Review of vocabulary, in my opinion to master fluent speaking you have to have large knowledge of vocabulary. (not only at technical field)
A lot of talking and listening, try to talk in English every day till interview, let your ears and brain to get used to it.
If it’s technical interview make preparation on that field too.

Finally friday has come (21.02.2014), Martin had called to me, and…mostly everything went well, yes of course…I got few stuck, mainly due to lacking vocabulary (damn it!), but it wasn’t something serious I was able to explain in other words, so it’s OK. We agree almost everything about my needs and expectations, so now I had to wait till technical interview.

Bad news arrived, unfortunately Martin said that they couldn’t manage with right projects for me and time for me (it’s logic because Martin has taken this internship very seriously as me, we came up with idea that I will get some kind of “mentor” through my whole internship, you know code review that kind of stuff).

If you think that my relationship with tretton37 has ended you are wrong! I offered myself for being a volunteer at leetspeak so see ya soon guys!

ACT TWO – JustGiving

Everything was happening so quickly that I almost didn’t notice that I have signed off contract, but let’s back at the beginning of this story.

It was sunny morning when Michal sent me a offer from JustGiving, they were looking for Junior ASP.NET & API Product Developer, main responsibilities are : maintenance existing API and develop new features. Moreover I supposed to represent a JG at meetups and conferences, you know – fancy word “Evangelist”. When I saw this offer, I thought that it’s a great opportunity for my summer break plans.

Preparation started imminently, at the first fire went my curriculum vitae, there wasn’t so much thing to correct, mostly some quick fixes. The hardest part was a cover of letter, so many iterations…it took me a lot of time to make it perfect ;). Additionally for my application process I had to create something that is using JustGiving API, I made quick decision and I started creating Windows Phone 8 application (repository).

When everything was finished, I sent my candidate for this application, one day later Jamie replied, and we made a appointment at skype with informal interview at the next week (I had my university and work, so there was highly probability that without time I may not prepare myself).

dayofjugment Day of judgment has come, due to my shity internet connection at home I had to visit my friend and make skype call at her home. This talk lasted about 40 minutes and I had great chat with Jamie. After that talk I feel that it went well.

At the beginning of the second week of June, it was in the middle of my classes, Michal send me a message at skype “congratz” and then I received an email from Jamie and he congratulated for getting this job.

Ending

Those two stories gave me a lot of experience in field of English interviews, making a proper preparations, and I would like to thank all of you that were involved at my recruitment process. My journey with JG will begin at 30.06 so please keep finger crossed because I would like to give them a lot of ideas, and my skills! What’s is important to mention here, that people who surround us, are amazing just keep eye open and create a opportunity for them and yourself

Resources :

http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definition/nomad

git diff pawelsawicz-cv

I am back! with brand new blog post! Too much time I have been waiting for releasing my new CV but now after few reviews done by mine friends I am ready to write about it, maybe it will help you 🙂

As you remember at the beginning of march 2013 I was looking for a job as .NET Developer, that was very enlightening time and had showed my weakness and fields to improve myself, CV was one of that thing.

Header

header_old

In this section I had made changes by resize big title of my name to smaller one, next step was to create a title of document and add date of releasing this document. Date of releasing of the document is very important because, it shows you how new, or updated document is.

Personal information

I had deleted some information from this section, like who cares where I live ? I am ready to re-locate anywhere! Birthday information is deleted too, because age don’t define my skills, probably it can define domains wisdom, especially, on how many fields I had worked.

What’s new ? github account. Like I said before I wanna expand my OSS activity, so I think it’s good idea to show my code blocks, furthermore within few months I became github junky

Work experience

workexperiance_old

I rebuilt this section by changing description listing, to sentence, that are formed up as infinitive. moreover current job position is updated.

Education

Without changes, still undergraduate – just 2 semester left and checkpoint! (I will get my BSc)

Skills

Yeah, most rebuilt section at all, first of all I’ve deleted this weird gradation (basic, intermediate and expert) and have replaced with content that actually tells you on what technologies I am working at. Moreover I have added fundamental knowledge. To change this section I was forced by one of the interview, and actually they had right, because what tells you if someone has got C# at expert mode ? that he’s a f**ing awesome as Jon Skeet ?

Activities

activities_new

Few new activities that I have made, like dotNetConfPL. Furthermore have added projects for Imagine Cup.

Projects

New section for my commercial and non-commercial projects, as you know lately I was involved in projects for conferences, at this year I will do more and better.

Conclusion:

My CV is available at : github.com/pawelsawicz/CurriculumVitae so everything is versioned and you can watch my progress 🙂 About things I learnt today, first of all, font on your CV should be a sans-serif, because generally people reads CV on computer, so this font looks better on screen. Second of all, your senescence should be in infinitive form. I want to thanks everyone who have reviewed my CV and gave me a feedback (especially @francmichal, and @JakubJedryszek).

My 2013 and goals for 2014

2013 for my was year full of changes and new things.

it was my first time when I was at DevDay, unfortunately due to lack of time I didn’t wrote blogpost. However at this conference I had opportunity to met *almost* everyone from twitter and polish .NET blogosphere. It was fantastic two days in Krakow thanks @rafek and @mihcall for invitation, and see ya at 2014 🙂
Next event where I have been – was BuildStuff (this blog post is still in progress), but nevertheless I would like to thank to Nereinga and Greg for a fantastic event that was buildstuff, and for all people I had pleasure to met! After-parties were fantastic I can’t wait till next time. What I have learnt during buildstuff, that sessions are not important thing in conference, but after-parties and socializing are important, because here you meet awesome people, you can talk with them and share experience, idea between you.
Yea and the most important achievement is that since 7th July I am developer at @Neuro_Sys, thanks for everyone! Especially for my co-workers, I had learnt many things from you 🙂
I participated at Imagine Cup 2013 and what I had learnt is that the idea could has got killing feature but if you don’t have good guy for video presentation you just fail. (marketing, marketing and once more time marketing).
dotnetconfPL – First virtual conference base on original idea from @shanselman and @jglozano (dotNetConf) it was first event that I was co-organizer, and again so much wisdom influenced to me it’s priceless, so lesson for today estimate your time carefully. Why ? as Jakub said we started thinking about this event something around May for some of you it could be a very long time to create such like this, but four months were just perfect! (there was too many thing to handle, like speakers, website, sponsors, financial issue) we even had idea to establish organisation. Probably we continue this event at 2014 as well, so keep cross fingers for us. If you have any ideas that you want to share with us please keep free to contact with us dotnetconfpl@gmail.com.

There are almost all Goals for next year (2014) :

Update my CV, yes it’s time to remove some section and add new ones, after 6 months of my employment, my skills has been validated, so it’s time to clean up my CV.
I have to move my blog from wordpress to Ghost (already installed, but still need customization). Time to make minimalist blog-site. Next step to refreshing my site will be custom website – “placeholder” for my projects it’s time to reveal my activity for other people.
Create application in Xamarin for DevDay and Buildstuff (finally three platform will be supported!). I hope that first commit will be pushed up at the begining of February. Moreover I will try describe my progress at blogpost.
Next goal, I want to get involved to OSS contributions, more commits and public repos in github. It helps my with recruiting process, and I always wanted to do something pro publico bono.
At this year I want to try make a session at wroc.net or .NET EKA (student .net group). I think it’s good time to start sharing my knowledge and experience with others folks.
Last goal but very important, it’s time for node.js and improve my js skill. Yea unfortunately my js skill isn’t so good that I want, so practise time!!!

After all Happy new year everyone!

Interviews – How to be not rejected ?

This post is about my experience with job interviews. Two months ago I have started looking for a job. As you know there is plenty of job offers for .NET Developer, but in the beginning I decided to reject working in big corporation, and focus at small / medium companies. I have participated in six interviews till this moment (15 May 2013).

Ardua prima via est!

My first interview was quite good and it was leaded by owner. My friend has recommended this company. There is 10+ developers. First minutes was terrible because I had been a little nervous but after few minutes I was relaxed. There wasn’t any test.

The first meeting where I had to pass test was a small company with department in other city. This time, before we met I had invested my time to prepare, unfortunately even with preparation I had got stressed Damn it! After presentation I had to pass a skill exam, but what was great we just had discussion about problem described on paper. There wasn’t need of writing code in a paper.

The worst interview was few days ago, I got call and immediately I decided to meet up in same day. I wanted to check how it goes without any preparations, and it went wrong! Don’t do it! Always schedule your interviews at least one week ahead.

In six meetings I had to do three skills exams, so if HR or recruiter will call to you. Remember to ask him/her if there will be skill exam, because it’s the most important case! Prepare properly your knowledge
For basic and some intermediate issues try : C# 5.0 in a Nutshell, 5th Edition. Moreover you should know answer to this questions. Now I will list me skills question that I got.

Interfaces of LINQ.
Basic usage of LINQ.
Basic SQL queries (PL/SQL, T/SQL).
Difference between abstract class and interface.
What is interface.
Difference between ref and out.
What new technologies came up in .NET 3.5.
What is order of calling virtual methods.
Write a method that reverse string backwards.
Enum
Factory Pattern
How works MVC

In conclusion, here I am a little wiser than two months ago, so to the next interview I will focused on this next things :

More preparation in basic aspects of language
Practise with someone, it’s a great opportunity because it shows you “if I understand what I’m talking about? ” Let’s assume that you are talking about some kind of project, and your partner asks you what is mean that you use “abstract class”, or tell me what is “ORM”. Moreover it’s potential questions that you can get in interview
no more interview on the front of white board!! and writing the code on it. I get stressed and I forget about everything…
Schedule meeting at least one week ahead.

Codeguru and .NET community

For few days I’m official member of codeguru redaction. I hope the cooperation will be delightful. I would like to make some changes, if headmaster will agree with me, as many of you know, present codeguru died, and I think all of us can help to rebirth like a phoenix.

I think the .NET Poland community is still small if we compare to other countries . Thanks for procent blogpost I can seen how he has got power of influence to people after his blogpost I got 10 more followers at twitter and I think there was more “coming out” due to his blogpost.

We need someone like Scott Hanselman here in Poland, someone who give kick, and it could be a starter for someone, also I think the cure for this cancer is better commitment of Microsoft PL. Because we all know that there is a plenty of .NET Group (Academical) and for once of a year Imagine Cup – it’s a very great event, well done! MS especially people from department in Poland!. Since 2012 they ran a “SNT” where young people (from high schools) learn about .NET technology. But it’s still not enough because after graduate when you go to company MS forgets about you, no events, no fun from coding just poor stagnation like a Chinese factory worker. In conclusion if MS give a example and commitment, I think we can change other companies or corporations, here in Poland, big companies, they need a lifeless worker and they get this because people agree with it.

So let’s change it TOGETHER! Let’s start rebellion against stagnation in our community let’s help weaker coder to come out and encourage them to participate in colourful life of coder 🙂

As a student of second year of BSc, with help of my friends, we want to start frequently hackatons here in Wroclaw for every one, for every technology! More info about event will be in end of April or start of May.

This blogpost doesn’t recommend aggression 🙂 it’s just mine interpretation.

Make your own GTD!

GTD – Getting Things Done. Let me make mod for it ;). CGTD – (clear getting things done)
When I was starting with GTD, and managing my time methods. I have read full of articles about it.
After using these all principals, in a few weeks I came across a problem. Wasting too much time to planning everything, and small amount of tasks was done. (too massive applications, and too many options) – lot of doing, done nothing. Then I decided to simplify everything.

Define you plan TODO list once a week, then just update your progress.
Do it quick! dont use enormous application that just make trash from your plan
USE monotasking! throw away multitasking!
Finally, don’t leave problems/ tasks at the last moment.

First of all, you have to plan your TODO list. You have to know where are you and what you have to do in the next order (it’s very important because you don’t forget about anything). Pick one day in week to create TODO list (for me its Sunday evening) When I am sure that I accomplish everything. (If not just move to next week with the most importance level, but try to don’t have arrears).

Next, you have to use only one app if it’s possible – it can’t take too much time. I am using Microsoft One Note 2013.

It’s very simple TODO list but I just know what I have to do, without description, if you need, make long title. Last but not least, focus on one thing, finish it properly. If your head is messed up by ten thing, you fail quickly.

How my TODO list works ? Simple!.Write and DO IT! Without sorting to a categories, marking and all of this s*it. If something goes wrong(it’s understandable), cross it and write to next weekend and your work start over from doing this. I’m using it for three months and I can say that I feel my productivity has increased. It’s mine mod for GTD – CGTD 🙂

Pawel Sawicz .NET Blog

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