Some Realizations for a Beginner in the Philippine IT Industry

For the first time, I was invited to do some tech talk and it was in Adamson University. The event was part of the course on IT Issues taken by Computer Science students. It was quite on short notice and we came there rather unprepared and clueless of things. I was able to write down what I got to say though but I had to change the medium to effectively connect to the audience. Below is the speech I prepared in it’s entirety. (I made deviations along the way.)

When a colleague mentioned to me this tech talk thing I was instantly stoked because of two things. Firstly, although I am seldom active in events like these, I’ve always loved the idea of people of the IT industry coming together in one event solely out of a common interest… I suppose. Yes, I’ve expected people to be light on biz talk today and really just have a great time with their crowd. Secondly, I find it enjoyable sharing experiences. It’s not that everybody will get to learn something new from you but just being able to identify oneself with the one doing the talk feels great right? But I didn’t know what to share. With barely three years of working experience, I’m a newbie compared to other speakers who usually get the invites to conferences. Tackling technical matters like platforms, APIs, and tools could be a safe choice for someone like me. I won’t have to go into an in-depth discussion considering the time we got anyway but let us leave those things to the experts, to training providers, to our professors; you can even learn them on your own with no real risks. So what did I choose? I figured since I’m still practically a beginner I should just give you a glimpse of what it’s like to be a beginner out there.

Who among us here have always wanted to take IT or computer science like they’ve always dreamt of hacking systems and working on large systems doing very complex calculations?

Who among us here have been dragged, maybe literally, by somebody to take the course they are now taking?

Who among us here chose this path for practical reasons?

I did. We are Filipinos, we adapt to survive. With bad economy and high rate of underemployment it’s no longer uncommon for people nowadays to let go of certain things to survive in the real world.

To tell you the truth I’m not really here to talk to people who are a hundred percent sure of themselves in taking this path. I’m here to talk to people who are rather unsure of how they are going to fare out there in the real world.

Who among you here are having a hard time with their math subjects? Calculus, differential equations, discrete mathematics? Who among you here feel like they’re just average programmers, like sure they can produce working applications but they don’t think it is done hard-core way like how some star student does it? I’ll tell you the things I’ve learned beginning my career in the IT industry.

1. TO KEEP YOURSELF SANE, START WITH YOUR OWN STANDARDS

You know how you should respond to that situation I previously stated? You say “who cares?” It’s perfectly normal not to get things perfect the first time. Don’t feel too bad about it. It’s like feeling ugly because you are surrounded by supermodels and you are not even one of them. Don’t start with someone else’s standards ’cause you’ll get there in time. It’s really going to be just you against yourself out there. There are no real competitions against anybody. It’s not very healthy chasing someone or some organization’s standards. What I suggest is to give yourself a good challenge and before you know it you will already qualify in the positions you never thought you could fill.

For more than a year I was the acting project lead on one of the projects in our company. Due to certain circumstances, I was assigned the position. I was pretty hesitant to take it for I knew I didn’t have the technical background to assume such a role. But come to think of it, it’s not all technical stuff in there. If you know how to actually work with your team, you know you won’t be the one to do all the heavy lifting. You are all technically equally capable of producing a good solution. You are simply there to stir the wheel when everybody knows their destination. So I took it as a good challenge and it taught me a lot of things. I may not be the best; It is not for me to say. But I know that I’ve gained something and now I can take on harder challenges in leadership.

2. FOCUS ON YOUR IMPROVEMENT, NOT JUST THE END RESULTS

Being new to the industry, you will most likely be into training and stuff and need to learn new technologies. And do you know the key to an enjoyable learning experience? That is starting by accepting your weaknesses and building your plan from there. Don’t go like “I must learn mobile applications development because it’s gonna get me paid forty thousand pesos a month at the least!” What if you didn’t get the position because somebody else with more experience took it? Will you be dispirited and say “hell, now I have to learn another platform. I heard money is good there and it’s possibly within my league.”

They always say that the journey is more valuable than the destination and that’s true. Won’t it be nice to hear from yourself “yeah, I didn’t get the job but I realized I really love developing UIs providing awesome user experience so I guess I’ll just work more on it”? Don’t just focus on the digits for you’ll surely be surprised how much of your salary you will be willing to trade for work satisfaction. Focus on the non-monetary things you’ll gain. After all, at the end of the day, you’d definitely want to be more valuable than the numbers written on your paycheck.

Quite in relation to that…

3. YOU CANNOT BE THE MASTER OF ALL TRADES YET. APPRECIATE THE VALUE OF MASTERING A SINGLE THING FIRST [and just familiarize yourself with the others for the meantime]

Having great knowledge on a handful of technologies can be very very valuable. And do you know when it is most valuable? It is when you are a one-man team. But the thing is, it will most certainly be not like that in the real world. With time constraints, one person can only do so much despite of what s/he knows. Sure you know some database administration, some web applications development, and some mobile applications development. But having you against three people focused on each of the mentioned field, what can be your value? Given a very short time, it is very much possible for three focused average programmers to beat one expert in delivering a solution unless the expert is willing to trade his physical, mental, and emotional health. And even then such a feat won’t be impressive.

In our team, I’m currently the go-to person for developing supporting web services for mobile applications. Yes I study other frameworks and languages on my free time like python, nodejs, backbonejs, html5, but I’m most valuable in developing web services in PHP and .Net the same way my teammates are most valuable in developing android and iOS applications despite of the other things they know. And needless to say, that expertise will dictate a great part if not a hundred percent of your salary. What I suggest is for you to look into the trends and select one technology of a great value that you will actually enjoy, again emphasizing on enjoyment, then focus on it for now.

4. PUTTING YOUR HARD EARNED KNOWLEDGE TO USE IS UP TO YOU

A lot of us would frown on a complex statistical formula and ask “am I really going to use this after I graduated?” I say you may and you may not. To be honest, application of the things we’ve learned in school is not at all times present unless you chose the right job. Unlike game development that immerses a programmer into some hard-core computing, developing simple information systems won’t ask too much of your expertise in differential equations. BUT there are opportunities for it if you stay watchful especially when we are talking about optimizations and data mining and analytics which may sound rather too grand for you right now but actually serve as foundations for valuable systems.

To share things with you, about a month or two ago we’ve spent a good four hours or so discussing an algorithm that could enhance the response time of the application we were working on. There was even a time that I’ve resorted into using binary trees to lessen the time complexity of a function I was working on ’cause the application was time critical and we were only given five seconds to respond in a transaction that involves scanning the database and going through a handful of records in a legacy system. Yes, powerful machines nowadays can already solve some problems on speed but then it is not always like that.

So what I’m trying to say is you are the ones who are going to put value on what you’ve learned. But I must say that there’s a limit for it because…

5. DOCTRINAIRE SOLUTIONS SELDOM APPLY

Doctrinaire, stiffly adherent to academic standards, very imposing of academic standards as to disregard practical considerations. Apply, be applicable or relevant. So these solutions actually work. These solutions hit all the requirements. It’s just that they’ve disregarded quite a lot of practical considerations that they no longer perfectly apply to the situation.

While going through the technical report for CMMI 1.3 I’ve encountered a very attention capturing term called “operational concept” which describes how an entity or a system actually operates in production. Surprisingly, it’s one thing quite a lot of solution providers tend to overlook ’cause they either overanalyze or are over their heads. Hence they come up with solutions too sophisticated for their customers needs that the customers could not appreciate it.

I’m not even speaking for myself right now, I’m simply relaying what’s in the CMMI technical report. We encounter certain limitations when providing solutions; there’s cost, time, effort, and technology at the very least. Out there, we are not going to develop solutions in an environment very favorable for us so we should always come up with alternatives and be aware of tradeoffs. Even consultants who have earned the authority to tell which technology will be most beneficial also have to consider the operational concept to suggest a solution.

Now what I want to say is, while you ought to learn as much as you can in the IT industry don’t be so envious of somebody who knows the latest frameworks and standards ’cause you are not always going to work on applications running on these latest frameworks capable of supporting the newest standards. It’s not really always about technical knowledge if your goal is to address your customer’s needs and cost is of great consideration. You cannot always impose what you know when circumstances make it impractical and/or costly. You should also develop one thing which is your analytical skill.

Because…

6. YOUR ANALYTICAL SKILL IS EQUALLY VALUABLE WITH YOUR TECHNICAL SKILL AND KNOWLEDGE

I appreciate the value of exams that ask you to perform rather hard-core computations and create an application written in a particular language in detail but I’m not very fond of them. Why? Because they are unrealistic? On the floor, you’re not going to develop computationally intensive applications having to recall each formula straight from memory. There’s google and lots of documentations, white papers, and APIs. You got the time to prepare and it’s even included in your gantt chart. To put it simply, it’s allowed to use cheat sheets and prepare references. You only got to be ethical and ensure that you’ll learn something from your references. Producing reusable codes is a programmer’s responsibility. The ability to understand other people’s code is a valuable skill. So why do we answer exams that do not test those skills? Isn’t our diploma enough proof that we know the use of statistical formulas?

As you go along studying various platforms and frameworks, also pay close attention to the development of your analytical skills. Truth is, if you cannot analyze a situation enough to come up with a solution in which you can utilize your technical knowledge then you will most probably just implementing somebody’s design and we do not want that. We want to be software architects and consultants. So folks while I encourage you to study well, do not cry over your grades ’cause you weren’t able to commit everything to memory and therefore you failed once or twice. How you put everything into practice will matter more.

And that’s it. Now these things I’ve presented seem cliche for some. Some would say, “I’ve always known that!” and I agree that we’ve always known these things. But the surprising thing is that it takes months even years for some people to have these things sink in. Now my only hope is that you will get to ponder on these things later on and be prepared on the challenge ahead. To close things I just wanna thank everybody for this opportunity of being able to share what I know to all of you. And as early as now, let me bid you welcome to the IT industry. I hope I was able to save you some months of on-the-job experience by presenting these things today. A pleasant evening everyone.

2012 in review

Really? Well if they say so.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 5 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

The Startup Weekend Experience

Peppermint, this place here was where we stayed while developing our prototype.

So I was looking for something I could get happily busy with, the mobile applications development team to which I belong was into all this business model canvas thing, and I made it as a goal to get exposed and be active in IT events. And guess what? Startup Weekend Manila 3 was announced. The event started last Friday September 28 and ended yesterday night Sunday September 30.

I really didn’t know what to expect. I have a dream of owning my own startup but I could not say that I am already into making it come true. I got a couple of ideas for a mobile application that could potentially be profitable but it still got holes in it that I did not bother to consider pitching it. So what I planned was to just be there, observe, join a team, learn, and above all, enjoy. And enjoy the whole event I did.

Deciding to join didn’t come that easy though. Being just socially awkward, I had to constantly reassure myself that I will have a good time. And despite of it all, I still ended up posting on the wall of my college friends asking for people who are interested in joining the event and coming there with me. But nobody really gave a reply that I could consider as “Yes, count me in.” Thankfully I got someone who’s pretty geeky herself for a girlfriend and she was willing to join me.

I know what you might be thinking right now and perhaps you’re right. Being both Computer Science graduates and software developers, people who are not into software development might have a hard time catching up with some of our conversations. Well that’s part of our quality time. But I digress.

We came to MINT college Friday afternoon for the kick off, the pitches, and the forming of teams afterwards. Some of the pitches were okay and some were hilarious as was intended I suppose. But we of course got our own say on things so an entertaining pitch did not ensure anybody of a development team. Unless they came there with their own team, which is the case, I think, in some groups. Well that’s pretty natural. If you want funding for your idea, you might also consider bringing in your team for votes. Each person got three chances to vote for an idea. As long as everybody’s decent enough to not keep all three votes for their own idea, things will still remain quite fair for people who just came there with their ideas and nothing more. As for me and my girlfriend, we just came there for the experience and to offer our skills.

There were ideas that looked really great for me but pretty complicated and equally risky to invest on; applications that require quite a long time to develop and another long time to profit unless an organization is already willing to buy it as opposed to solely depending on a marketing team. The rest were a lot simpler but the biggest question was how it will differ from the other applications in the market and that was a tough one to pin down. Even the idea that captured me and my girlfriend’s interest could not give a good answer to that I must say.

After the pitching, my girlfriend approached Luigi and stated our intention to join his team. Only to find out that we would form the team ourselves as although his idea made it to the top 18, no one else approached him to work on the application. The application was named Bahala Na (Come What May) after a phrase very common among Filpinos taking chances. It was basically a randomization and recommendation mobile application which on the outside may not look very different to other applications in the market. Yet we gave it a try.

It would seem ridiculous that I joined in creating it, but the thing is I believed that it would actually sell. The features may not be very unique but it was supposed to be fun and considered the culture of its market among all the applications proposed. It has a high tendency to be addictive to Filipinos capitalizing on the people’s bahala na attitude, love of funny things, and preference to quickly come up with decisions. It could potentially influence people’s choices on where to hang out and many establishments would pay either to be recommended more often or for the information on users’ behavior collectively.

Saturday, my girlfriend, being the mobile applications developer in the team, did most of the work for the prototype of the application while I worked on the backend web service that was supposed to consolidate information on places from different data sources and make it available for the application. We came up with decent prototypes but finally decided to have the application run disconnected from the web service and use built-in test data for ease of demonstration.

Sunday, I don’t know of the judges’ ranking but we placed 5th on people’s ranking without partaking on the anomalies that happened during the casting of votes (a common scenario during Startup Weekends they say and part of the fun to which I agree). Something that I could take as a proof that the application indeed appealed to the people.

The whole experience was fun. I experienced headache once in a while for lack of sleep but I had a great time. It was a great opportunity to meet other people in the IT industry outside one’s office and be surrounded with ideas and learn the things surrounding creating a startup. The atmosphere was light and devoid of any of the seriousness of work; super cool to make it short. The food and the coffee was great and there were a lot of freebies. The event was worth my weekend. If I have any regret, that would be missing that chance to actually just sit and listen to a mentor for I was quite too busy coding. Well we got another Startup Weekend for that. -aB

Obsessive-Compulsiveness Attack

A favorite author and blogger’s mention of cheap fountain pens available at National Bookstore made me look instantaneously to my newly bought journal and want one. Hadn’t it been midnight, I would’ve gotten up and gone to the nearest shopping mall to buy myself one. That’s me with another obsessive-compulsiveness attack. Yes, it is self-diagnosed like the case in most of us. The disorder’s no longer seen as dreadful these days but rather normal among young professionals at least in a shallow sense. And so this afternoon I went out to accomplish what I planned the night before, buy myself a fountain pen.

My new journal has a loop in its spine to hold a pen. Currently, I’m using a 0.2 technical pen but the barrel’s too thick to fit in. Yes, the perfect excuse to buy yourself a costly fountain pen. So I went out in my Sunday’s worst to go to the nearest mall, a Robinson’s, to buy one. I kept my thick hair unkempt. My apartment is just a stone’s throw away to bother styling. Also, I was wearing my worn out shorts, an old shirt, and equally disheveled pair of flip-flops. Living somewhere near is a valid explanation if somebody’s going  to insist the unwritten dress code inside a shopping mall in any way.

Unfortunately, there’s no National Bookstore branch at Robinson’s. Well, there used to be one until the mall’s patrons moved their whereabouts in another newer mall nearby. I had to settle with Office Warehouse that endorses Schneider pens. I found the quality of the ink and writing point of Schneider pens good, maybe excellent, but unfortunately they come with thick barrels. Not satisfied, I decided to check out the pens in the other mall, an SM by the way.

Read more…

We All Got Special Talents

I pay the rent and cable service and my sister takes care of the electric and water bills. We give extras to our mom for the groceries. That’s our agreement at home. It’s the first of September; another month has passed. I went to the nearby mall this afternoon to withdraw some cash for the rent.

We live close to the mall you can literally get there in less than 200 cartwheels. I cannot assure you though that you will still have everyone’s respect after doing it. Anyway, I got there carrying this blue umbrella that neither has that hook like handle nor that loop you can use to hang it. For a second or two I thought of how I could set my hands free of that umbrella to use the ATM. There was no place to put it and it was wet. Finally I decided to fasten it to the ATM’s body using my right knee and do my business. Problem solved.

Then while I was walking back home I realized I did it again. Getting out of a situation that challenges your ability to maximize the use of your limbs and the available resources within your reach. I actually thought I was getting so good at it I could write a book entitled “Doing So Much With Only Two Hands”. It would of course have my face in its cover flashing my stupidest smile. I wonder how much it would sell. I wonder if my readers could follow my tips and totally ignore people staring at them with  what-kind-of-alien-is-this looks.

Read more…

My only Plan to Happiness

It’s 15:52 – I find it a lot more convenient nowadays to tell time in that format – and the apartment looks all sort of homely for a writer. I don’t really mean it in a very nice way. I mean it like how you appreciate going home to your dirty room. But referring to the current situation, everything’s fine. It’s a quiet afternoon, rather lazy; the apartment is clean; no radios; and the television is turned off. Everything appears yellowish and warm because of the yellow curtains covering the window; I always keep them down. With the apartment always closed when I’m alone and my habit of going out at sundown, my neighbors have all the reason to suspect that I’m a vampire. But no, we don’t have vampires here in the Philippines. The closest equivalent for one will be the aswang. If you are by any chance unfamiliar with it, I’m leaving the research work to you. But still I’m not one. But I will allow you to call me weird. It’s a truth I’ve learned to accept.

I’ve just gone back to reading after a stressful month of bidding for this certain contract from a bank. No we still haven’t got any news on the winner of the contract but things are a lot better now. I could go back to sleeping six to seven hours before getting up for work. Yes, sleeping is a luxury when you’re living an hour and a half to two hours away from your office. I’ve also returned to watching some shows on the television and quite started to watch whatever routine I have to keep myself happy and satisfied. No I’m not going to sell the healthy living and good life drama but you can say that I’m changing my lifestyle for the better.

I cannot be perfectly organized, that’s what I have learned. I could be a really good planner when I have to and that is undeniably good in the workplace but I just could not and should not plan my life the same way. I could only plan events to a certain detail else I’d get tied up to my own plans; I’d be keeping watch of a list every single day; executing the plan will be a must; failure to accomplish everything listed will be painful; and there will be a great chance of missing the side treats. In short, planning getting a life to the tiniest detail will be like not getting a life at all but merely following a series of steps or worse a routine, which is ironic ’cause that’s the thing you tried to avoid in the first place.

Okay, having a detailed plan could work for some of us. I could understand that. But since my goal is to make myself happy with my life, I’d like to start with things I really like to do. And having a detailed plan of action is definitely not part of it. So what’s my high level plan?

My plan can be simply stated as do whatever it is that will make you happy but always be aware of consequences. Yes, that could be a real problem to some if happiness for them comes with robbing a bank. But I’m a simple man who finds happiness in simple things so I think there will be less thinking of awful consequences. Corny as it may seem, that could help me embrace what life has to offer and enjoy it. That’s a lot better than choosing to be an expert on things and quite forcing myself to work hard thinking that’s where I’d get the satisfaction. That’s what I used to do.

I’m not saying that I’m setting my career aside. What I’m saying is you could always try to achieve something good but there’s a thin line between working hard and working too hard for something that will surely come in time. Work can get me well, working, but it surely should not dictate the things I should do with the rest of my life. Let’s say that I’m planning to enjoy the view from the side line for now as opposed to being in the ring with the other fighters competing to be the best. I’ll just do whatever I can, whenever I can if that’s what pleases me. Maybe then I could listen to Billy Joel’s Vienna without getting too depressed. So what is it that I want to do in the days to come?

I want to explore places and things. I want to go out more at daytime – yes, “daytime” should eliminate the idea that I’m planning party-rocking. I want to be more active in things that don’t necessarily involve the industry I’m working on; things that are really enjoyable where you can choose not to be dead serious. And on top of it all, I want to do it without a list and without forcing myself. Happiness is freedom and freedom certainly has nothing to do with forcing oneself. I just want to be open to all the opportunities that will come. Opportunities that I used to turn down before for being overly practical or too worried of how things will turn out or just being me whose life revolves around work and doing it great.

So now I’m going out for a short walk and maybe treat myself with a cup of coffee afterwards; maybe continue reading a book tonight or plan a painting so that canvas I bought won’t stay blank any longer.

Train the Trainers Program

I’ve been quite busy lately. Working on a maintenance project with a pretty passive client, that’s something new. Most of the time it’s me who find ways to keep myself busy in the office. That involves sending emails to my client inquiring about certain things they need to get fixed; and also to my superiors inquiring about audit findings or anything in the company’s standard operating procedures that the project could be missing, so I can work on it. I also do some self studying on new technologies partly to satisfy my want for knowledge and partly to have more choices in future projects. But in the past week I didn’t have to do that.

The week before last, our practice manager came to my workstation and ask a simple question, “Do you want to be a trainer?” I answered “yes” right away. Truth is I always wanted to teach/train people. I really don’t know why, but I just love that feeling that you get to share what you know to other people and they would look up to you saying inside their heads that “I learned these from this guy.” But it was not a simple yes. I also mentioned that I may not qualify. In reply he told me that there will be a qualification for the position so I shouldn’t worry. And that I did. In my head all was very simple. If I know the topic I’ll get the job. If I don’t, they will surely find someone else.

But when Friday came, one of the employees under the learning and development group came to my workstation and informed me that there will be a meeting in thirty minutes. I said “okay” cooly. I was thinking that we were only going to be advised on how to properly conduct a training and all that guidelines. I didn’t know it was going to be far beyond that. In the meeting we were told that we would undergo a special training not just to learn the effective training approach but also to ultimately pass the accreditation by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA). My jaw almost dropped. I didn’t know it would be as serious as that.

Still I didn’t back out. It was daunting at first but when it finally sank in to me, I realized it was a great opportunity to hone my training skills. Perhaps it would be a great plus too considering the fact that I was already contemplating on applying for a lecturer’s position in the university on weekends.

We were told that training days will be on Tuesdays for the next two months. But normally, the training for the accreditation takes seventeen weeks, eight hours a day. Apparently we’re going to cram things because being full time workers, we couldn’t afford that much time. It would be a dead serious cramming I must say with a reading material reaching more than two hundred and fifty pages for just one of the five areas we got to learn. That is already not mentioning that the reading materials voluminous as they are, are already pretty straight forward on discussing things.

Monday came and another surprise came just as I thought I was done with all of it when I agreed to take the challenge in the previous week. I checked my company email and found out about an email sent late the previous Friday telling all trainers to prepare a five-minute discussion of a simple topic for the audition to be done that day, Monday. Again, I was shocked. I was not prepared in any way. We were advised to prepare a powerpoint presentation and dress up. It was also mentioned that we should be able to finish the discussion of our chosen topics within the allotted time. As trainers we should be able to do that.

For a minute or two, I didn’t know what to do. Unlike other participants in the program, I never handled a training before. I don’t have any material in mind from which I could get a good topic I could squeeze into a five-minute discussion. I totally had nothing related to our practice (the Microsoft practice) to discuss. But then I reread the email and notice that there were no instructions telling that the topic should be related to our practice. That was when I got a brilliant idea. I decided to discuss something I worked on during the weekend, the sprite animation tutorial which I even posted here.

I was nervous about the audition almost the whole day but everything went well when I finally got to present my topic. In fact, I got a good feedback which made me happy and proud inside.

The following day I attended the first day of training where we talked about competency based training and learned how to prepare information gathering sheets, training needs analysis forms, and session plans. It was totally enjoyable and helpful. I could already visualize how effective the training will be following that approach. But all the topics just won’t fit in a day no matter how hard they try to simplify things just emphasizing on the most important portions of our extremely voluminous references. As much as we don’t want it, we have to read and study some of the details on our own. Seriously, it could eat a great amount of time from company hours. But I’m usually not that busy like what I said earlier so it was fine for me. I just do not know of the others.

Next week will be day two. I’m looking forward to learning more. But for now, I’m done with surprises. No more surprises this time please. -aB

The last time I thought of what I want, I ended up working for what I need.

Originally posted here.

No, I’m not here to re-sell the career choosing drama. I’m here to talk about the situation that the statement suggests. Well this may be partly because I’ve nothing to do at the moment, partly because I (or perhaps we) seem to always encounter the same thing, and partly because I’m experiencing a severe bout of verbal diarrhea that I better put in here so I could be a little creative with it.

So when was the last time? I guess the last time, the serious one, was when I was on my way home after taking a series of exams and a short interview in a (forgive me) small time IT company. For someone like me who has his own share of being “choosy” it could have been easy to say that I’m never gonna go back to that company. I don’t like it there. The place was just not fit for any business concerning technology. It reminded me of this lousy office that I visit at least twice or thrice a year in the past four years where everybody talks more and works less in a room brimming with papers and bulky file jackets that I certainly do not want to work at.

A more pleasant office, that’s what I want. A place where you can breathe without worrying about taking in a lung-ful of dust. One that has a perfectly working air conditioning unit that has no pails under it to catch the dripping water. One that you will at least appreciate seeing after waking up early in the morning (your house being far from work) and traveling the distance trying for hours to get a good seat in loaded jeepneys and buses. One with decent looking workstations. One you cannot call perfect but at least okay.

But considering the country’s economy… whoops let’s not dig too deep into that.

But considering the current situation in the country where a lot of businesses, even in the IT industry which are supposed to be in good status right now with all the demands, struggle for stability, I guess it is understandable that providing the employees’ every desire is not that easy. After all, what I was talking about in the last paragraphs was just WHAT I WANT. Obviously, although you can suggest such things to your employer, they might find it quite selfish. Why? For a starting company like the case of that one where I took the exams, they will surely prioritize what they need. Legalities, clients, and good software developers. They would rather work for WHAT THEY NEED.

How about you?

That afternoon while I was on my way home I was thinking. I don’t like the place but as always said, beggars can’t be choosers. I needed a job to pay for everything I cost people when I was still studying so I gave the exams my best. My college fees barely reached a thousand in those four years of stay and people will surely call me lucky but come on, that’s not all you pay for when you try to earn a degree. Just the stress will cost you platefuls of a good meal. How much more is your daily fare, emergency expenses, personal things, clothes to keep you decent, and the other stuffs? Mahal!

Truth is, sometimes the things we want are too grand for us, for our current state. Sometimes we’re too in a hurry for the things we want and we don’t attend first to the things we need, when in fact it should be a step-by-step process. At home, when one of us thinks of something grand that they want, they will surely hear this from another saying it in a loose sense. You don’t have the right to dream of that. Not yet. And it is not suppose to discourage people of dreaming big. It’s suppose to keep people sane that there are still stuffs they got to deal with on their way there to that big dream, not to mention to make them laugh as well for the seemingly unfortunate situation. I know I sound like your father now, but hey this is reality at least for people living a barely average life.

How about that company I was talking about?

I assume we know that any starting company wishes they can offer something good to applicants they really want. Perhaps a good paycheck, plus a little more than the basic benefits, and a good work environment. But they need something to work on. They need clients and projects and equipments and certainly they cannot afford to lose everything to demanding applicants no matter how excellent those applicants may be. And I think that’s just the right way of viewing things. Unless your goals are too low, I guess it’s always a struggle to achieve them anyway.

Just a quick evaluation, how many of your long term goals are things you need? All? Long term goals sweety, I doubt it.

Reality check, how many small time companies NEED excellent professionals who do not WANT them?

This is not to condemn these professionals for turning down these companies. After all, they have every right for it. We just want to expose both sides of the story. It’s not always them offering you a small salary, but also them offering you a small salary for a good reason, and we always want to be reasonable.

That afternoon I prayed. I said I don’t want to work for that company but if they will offer me a job I guess I have no right to decline it. I’m jobless, I’m not a Suma Cum Laude, maarte lang ako. I asked for a sign. Since I knew I didn’t have the right to be choosy I asked God to choose for me. I said “Since I don’t feel I have the right to decline an offer, give me just one offer and let it be it, for I’m afraid that my judgement is clouded by the things I desire.”

Well I guess He listened and recognized my effort stressing myself thinking of stuffs like this. I didn’t get a call from the company, I didn’t have to bear that place. And I can say I got to learn a few things from it.

So for now, I’m keeping my “wants” achievable. I want a life-size cow paper mache in our living room and I don’t care if it will fit there. I want that one they call Holstein. I know the breed, I searched the net for it. Give one for this poor soul please.

when a program throws an exception, the problem is not always in the code

it has been quite awhile since i last posted something. well although i could say that a number of things came up, i cannot say that they ate most of my time so as to prevent me from posting anything. truth is i could have posted a few lines but held myself back at the last moment for behind all the wordplay there was really nothing much to glean from them. well i’m no writer really but i’m writing here and i believe that if you want to be a good one, take it as a responsibility to feed your readers something sensible. surely there could be some sense in everybody’s life.

anyway, just last week i began testing this web service i created for our client. it was supposed to be utilized by the online banking system for the activation of various requests. this web service should run in the frontend and should call another web service from the backend (the mainframe specifically) for backend side request processing. during the development i had to work with stubs because i was working in our office. one can argue that i should’ve done it in the client’s development environment if permitted but i actually prefer working with stubs until i got most of the requirements done since the solution is easier to test that way.

so the time for testing the code came and i had to deploy the web service in our client’s development environment. it was pretty easy since i basically only had to change connection strings and a few more values in the web configuration file. i was informed that it was okay to input any value for the parameters of the web service method since there was no validation at the moment but when i did BAM! i received the error “Conversion from SOAP failed” when my code tried to invoke the exposed method of the mainframe web service and the mainframe’s transaction counter did not increment. i was cool at first thinking that surely i just got a line or two wrong. but when i found out that the exception was thrown by .Net’s wsdl.exe generated proxy when it called invoke, my expression was like “what the hell happened? what’s wrong?” i’ve used it before and i knew that the generated proxy is supposed to work with very little or no modification. still i tried to think of things that could’ve caused it like maybe i used the wrong wsdl file or i could not connect to the backend web service, etc. i tried applying the fixes i could think of but to no avail.

when i got back to the office, i was like “okay we’re unsuccessful but surely a lot of people could be encountering the same problem. if i could solve this, it will be something good to blog about” so i spent the remaining office hours researching on ways to connect to a mainframe web service and the common problems but surprisingly none of the google hits helped or even enlightened me. i thought i was doomed. i thought the best source would be the ones who previously worked with the web service but they are all not connected to our client now. another testing day passed and the problem remained unsolved until just last monday i tried inputting nothing in the parameters and the mainframe web service returned a different error code that was more expected. it was talking of invalid inputs. that gave me the idea that my problem was just a matter of giving the right inputs from the very beginning since there was very minimal modification done to my code. i went to the person in charge with the mainframe side of the project and asked for sample inputs and everything worked fine. well we’re not done yet testing the web service until the end of the defined transaction flow but it put end to the problem with the mainframe side of requests.

now this post was supposed to offer some sort of fix in a form of codes or instructions like i mentioned earlier. but since the problem was somewhere between the keyboard and the chair let me just leave an advice.

do not overanalyze.

we got as far as thinking of capturing packets exchanged between servers to check for discrepancies. it was a good thing that we had to postpone it because of the absence of the needed tools in the service. it would have been another failed fix in the list.

take time to consider all possible sources of the problem no matter how little or ridiculous they are.

in my case i completely ignored the possibility that the problem was caused by the wrong inputs. hadn’t i thought of giving the web service blank inputs, i wouldn’t have found out the answer to my problem.

lastly, use valid inputs whenever possible.

seriously, there’s no harm trying the right inputs especially when someone who knows them is just around.

hope you learned something from my experience. have a nice day!

On Being a Poor Host

i love get-togethers. i love seeing my friends after long uneventful months at work. i have quite a small circle of friends and i don’t get to go out a lot, that’s probably one of the greatest reasons why. i want to stay in touch and know what’s happening in their lives. not that i need to know or they need me to be there for them but i just want to know what’s up with them. because of that, i always try to push dinners and day-outs be it my treat or other people’s. you could assume that i’d be “in” to whatever event there is that could get us to meet each other. i’m just like that. but i got a problem about being the pushy one. people will naturally expect me to have a good plan for the event and i always haven’t any.

i’m a poor host. i myself have no doubt about it. my friends are kind enough not to let out any remark about me trying to push get-togethers but having nothing in mind for us to do. but just the look on their faces tells me they are bored. whenever i see that look i always get to questioning myself what has gone to my head again.

i’m like a child when it comes to events and surprises. i’m very easy to please. quite embarrassing to admit, the phrase “it’s the thought that counts” must be so deeply ingrained in me that i live by it. my friends don’t really need to try to come up with something extraordinary to make me enjoy being with them. they could simply come over and laugh with me about random stuffs and that could be it. that is probably because it takes time for me to really consider someone a close friend and being my close friend means i’m totally comfortable having you around that you don’t have to do anything fancy or impressive.

the problem lies with having things the other way around. people aren’t the same even when they are friends. what’s pleasing to me may not be as much as pleasing to others. that makes me a poor host. i could settle with just about anything and i couldn’t get it out of my head that they could enjoy things just like i do but it doesn’t always work that way.

last time we had an all-nighter almost like for nothing. one of my friends adel, invited us out for dinner and we knew we couldn’t make it early enough for a good chat, ‘cause most of us would have to travel quite far to get to the place. there were eight of us in the dinner. i was one of the three people who got to the place too late for the buffet that we only had iced teas. that was pretty expected because it was almost ten in the evening. i, adel, and my girlfriend eunice planned the all-nighter before just so the opportunity of having everybody gathered won’t be wasted. the other five were hesitant. they all got other plans for the following day and we understood although we really want them to join us. one more decided to join us even though she had no clothes with her to change to and we thought that would be it. there would be four of us for the night and two more pulling the graveyard shift in ortigas will be joining three o’clock the next morning.

it was a pleasant surprise when the three people we just said goodbye to before we waited for our ride showed up again and said they decided to join us. i was already anxious then of what to do by the time we get to the house where we will be having the all-nighter. when they showed up, i knew things will be okay. like the overused phrase, the more the merrier.

not so much sensible talk happened that night but there definitely was a lot of laughing going on because of this movie title which meaning was changing as we were rearranging the words. they also decided to watch 28 days later on a laptop’s small screen but were too sleepy to finish the film.

the following morning three of us had to go early and i felt a little anxious once again if they enjoyed the night. not satisfied with my brain’s answer i decided to treat what’s left of us to the movies. we watched the devil inside. it was not shocking at all for me because of my high tolerance to thriller films having watched a lot of violent horror/thriller/slasher films at my early teens. but i guess they enjoyed it. that was what mattered most. on the way home my girlfriend asked me why i suddenly decided to treat them to the movies. i said i was supposed to treat everybody anyway because that was part of the original plan. but to be a little more honest, i’m practicing to be a better host i guess.

Took this when I got home around 8pm. I was alone in the house.