Author: SK

I am almost ready to leave my current place. It’s almost 4PM now on Wed, Feb 7th. It’s sad to leave a place which I considered the best place I had worked for. Nonetheless, there were also a lot of negatives. Plus, I did not see myself become a manager here, so in a way it’s a career move. But most of all, it’s a job-content move. Over time, I just could not take working on search any more. It’s not an innovative project. Nothing really happens there. So would I want to work on something which does not do anything to improve my skills? Not really. It’s not exciting.
I went out with some of the guys for lunch today. The lunch was actually paid by the company. Chris told John to pay for it. That was nice. I am moving to a company down the street. It will be weird initially when I will see people from the company. But I don’t have anything to hide, so I look forward to that.

Tomorrow is my last day here at Ask. Oh, man. I spent a little over year and a half here. It started out great. I remember I was so happy to get this job. It was mainly because I could not wait to leave Hertz soon enough. Only after spending 7 months at hertz. 🙂 But right away, I have seen bad things here at Ask. Nonetheles, I wanted to spend 2 years here. Did not work. I could not take the periods of inactivity any more. I just took the opportunity to leave and I’m leaving. I’m going to Markit. My goal is to spend 3 years over there. Will I last 3 years? I should. But if traffic is going to kill me, I will have to think about it. We’ll see, maybe I’ll start at 10 as I do here now. We’ll see. But either way, I’m moving on!!!

It was a very good day yesterday, and today.
Yesterday, Marta’s family came from Poland. I went to JFK alone to get them. Getting there was a piece of cake. It’s good that I took a magazine to read as I had to wait approx 1 hour till they got out. Getting back, we started looking for planes in the sky and I missed the exit for 95 from 678. I had to move on the road and finally move on to 95N and take a U-turn on 95. 15 minutes wasted…
Today, during my exit interview, I found out that I will receive a bonus for last year! Hey, that’s great! It’s really great.

My last day here at Ask is next Wednesday. I only have a few days to go! It’s good because I don’t have much going on so I can actually study the things I like. And that means studying for my next job!
It’s funny because I sent my thank you for letting me join yesterday and Vladimir came back and asked me whether I can prepare ahead of time. I told him why not. So he then asked Vadim and Vadim forwarded me a list of things to work on: jBoss, Hibernate, Spring, and distributed caches.
I wonder what my situation will be like in the new company. I think it’s going to be a very good learning experience for me. Let’s hope so. But guys like it there so I think I will like it too.

[moved from the Drafts folder — never sent this email]
Chris,
I have been thinking about my status here, about my goals, and about the future. (FYI, I just submitted my Objectives.)
As you might have noticed in the objectives, one of my longer term goals is to become a manager. I know you’ve been managing for some time now and you are doing a good job, but I’d like to try it as well. This might be possible here or might not, but I’m convinced that it is something I would like to do. I’m not saying right away. Actually, I’m not going to push hard on this, but if something opens up, I would like to be considered. I would like to have a clear indication, though, that it is something that is possible for me. I am setting a personal goal to achieve this by the end of my 3rd year here, middle of 2008.
Why do I want to be a manager and what makes me think that I can do a good job? In my Toastmasters club, I have had a officer role for the second year now. I am the president now. I discovered that I like to help people. I discovered that people respond well to me and like to cooperate with me. I am enthusiastic when I lead people. I like to teach them and motivate them. I even told them that my ideal job would entail being a manager, to lead people. Several of them said that I will be a very good manager. They said that I could do it now — that I’m ready. I think I am.
The second thing. As you know, I’ve been on the search project for a couple of months now. I have noticed one thing. My energy level and enthusiasm for work has gone down the longer I’m on the project. I think there are several reasons for that. I think there is not enough innovation on the search project. I did a lot of refactoring when I started working on the project, which made the project a little easier to maintain. But those were minor refactorings. I have recently played around with browser testing, which is cool and I plan to check it in when the project I’m using goes live, but once again, this good but minor stuff.
I and everybody else, I think, like to be on the cutting edge technology. I like to build stuff from scratch. I like to be in charge of things, experiment with new technologies.
Search is not there. That’s why it’s become boring for me. I know it’s a very important, the most important project this company has, but there is not enough fun for me.
Over time, in the next month or two, I would also like you to put somebody else on the project. Or at least rotate me with different projects. Like I said, building things from scratch is the best part in this job.
We can talk about this one on one. I like this company. I want to do my best, but I realize that I can only do so if I’m happy.Stanley

Hmm… did I miss my chance of becoming a manager? Possibly. I am moving on just amidst a change. I’m just wondering if this is happening because of people leaving, including myself. I’ll never find out, I guess.
Chris approached Sam, who’s also leaving and asked him whether he wants to be a manager. He has no intentions of becoming a manager so he said that he does not want it. Chris did not approach me, and I had told him before that I want to become a manager. Will he get in touch with me in the next couple of days? I don’t think so.
Should I take action? Should I ask him or Eric, his manager, that I can stay if I become a manager?
The question remains, do I want to be a manager here? Now, having a different position somewhere else, this decision is tougher. I don’t like the products being build over here. Though they are technologically advanced, I have to say that. That’s good in here. We get to use a lot of the latest technologies here.
The way it stands, I think I’m going to wait on this and if I don’t hear anything from anyone I think I’m going to go to my new place. The good thing about that is that the company is growing as well, so I might get a chance there. But I’m starting from scratch. 🙂
I learned a new word today, oblique. Chis is not honest, and he talks in an oblique way.

BuyTheBestOnly the BestThe best consumer products.

What am I going to do with my store initiative? My wife thinks she’s gonna go to Poland for vacation. For 2 or 3 months. I will only go for 2 or 3 weeks. She’s going to stay longer. In the remaining month that I will be alone I think I should concentrate on create my Amazon store. I should be able to finish it. Or at least have a good start.
Next Wednesday is my last day here at IAC. I have mostly enjoyed my time here. But after a year of being here I was put on the search projects. Things went downhill since then. I lost all of my energy and as a result I started looking. I found the position at Markit and I took the opportunity. I think I’m going to learn a lot there and enjoy it there. I am hoping it will be the best place I’ve worked. We’ll see.
My wife took my son to the pediatrician. She called me after that. She was very happy. The doctor was very happy with Fabian’s progress. She said he’s advance. He’s doing things that some 8 or 9 month old babies are doing. That’s great. He’s my boy. He is very strong. If I could train him to walk, I think he could be walking within a month or two. i don’t want to push it, though. His support is still weak so bad things can happen if I push it too hard.

My chapter here at Ask, or IAC Search & Media is ending. I gave my resignation letter yesterday. I had a few talks today but they not resulted in me staying here, not that I would have anyway.
Yesterday was a very stressful day for me. I got the e version of the offer letter. I decided that it is best for me to resign yesterday since I wanted to take some days off. I waited till 5:30 and I sent him an email that I want to talk to him in private. He came to me around 6PM. We went into the room. I had hard time talking. So I gave him my letter and told him I resign. He looked at the letter and said OK. He then asked me to email this letter to Tricia. I expected that he is at least going to ask me why. He did not. So I said, thanks and I walked out of the room. Weird.
In the morning, I got a call from Eric. He asked me where I’m going. Then he asked me why? You don’t like the work here? You don’t like the environment. I let it all out. I told him that I lost a lot of energy by being on the search project. I told him that the environment is not great. He pulled on my tongue a little. But he was relaxed and I was relaxed as well. I was just saying what I think. I told him there is no bound in the group. A lunch suggestion, where Chris had indicated that they have no money in the budget, he said “that’s bull shit.” I also told him that Etienne would be a better manager. He said, oh really. I told him how we don’t have a voice, etc. It was a very productive talk. I should not have said everything, but on the other hand, I did lie. I cannot lie, actually, and I don’t want to lie. I had a sense that he wanted to keep me there. Would that be a good move, no?
In the afternoon, Chris invited me for a chat. He asked me where I’m going. He asked me why I’m leaving. I told him that my energy level has gone down way down. He said that I did not assert myself on one of the previous project. I said that I had my piece and it’s a team work. He agreed. I explained how he shut down several of my ideas.
There was one thing that he said is interesting and I might want to modify the way I do it in the future (hopefully not too soon). He said that he had been through a lot of resignations (not a good sign) and that my was a little different. I asked him why. He said that usually people say more things before they actually hand him the letter. I told him that it’s not easy for me to do it and I’m sure it’s not easy for him. But I expected at least that he’s going to ask why. I guess, in the future, I should first talk about it verbally and only at the end hand the manager the letter. Yes, that seems like more respect (though I don’t really see how).
In any case, MY TIME WITH ASK (yeah, right) IS OVER.

I just finished my phone interview with Google. It lasted 50 minutes. How did I do? I think I did OK. There were some things that I did not know and a lot of things that I did OK, in my opinion at least.
I stepped out of the office at lunchtime and went into my car to talk. It was not the most comfortable place but it was OK. I did not have to start my car since it was sunny so it was fairly quiet. I could not understand the guy, though. He was African descent and had a heavy accent. At time, I had to ask him to repeat what he said. But I wanted to make sure I understand what he wanted.
It started out as a “introduce yourself” type of questions. He asked me about my work. What types of projects I’m doing. What I’m doing now. Do I know any language? Did I work with other languages? I told him PHP. He asked me what I liked about Java? I told him that I like its type safety (vs PHP), maturity, and higher level of abstraction than C/C++. What do I don’t like about it? I could not say for sure. But I said Web services support, XML support, as compared to C#.
He then asked me to list sorting algorithms, explain what they were and their running time. I told him about Bubble Sort, where you go down the list and find values that are lower and swap them (order of O(n^2). I told him about Insertion Sort, where you also start at the beginning and keep a sorted list that grows at the beginning of the list and as you traverse it, you keep adding to it (also O(n^2)). I also told him about the Merge Sort (keep dividing recursively halfs of the list until you have one item and then you combine them (O (n log(n)). He asked me about Quick Sort, I told him it’s similar to Merge Sort, same runtime, but the difference is how you pick the middle — the breaking point.
We moved ahead into problems. He gave me a problem and how would I solve it.
You are given a number 1 to 100, how do you find out which number it is? I told him you can use Merge Sort algorithm, divide it in half, and one more time, so on, until you find it. He said whether there is another way? I could not really think about one. Then he asked me how many times it would take to divide. I was not sure how to answer it. I guessed. He said whether maybe there is a way to optimize it how you divide, and I agreed.
A burglar comes into your apartment and steals your dog. He wants to leave a ransom note but does not want to write it. So sees a lot of magazines so he figures he will use the letters from it to compse the message. The message he wants to compose is n characters, and the magazine has m characters. How can you check m has all of the characters. It took me some time to do this. I finally thought of a solution. You have a two maps, mapN, which has a key of letter and a value of number of times it occurs, and a second map, mapM which also contains the same setup. You iterate over mapN and make sure mapM has enough characters, if it does, you remove it from mapN. If map N is empty, you have enough characters. If not, you don’t.
He asked me whether there is another way. Could not really think of one. He said what if space is an issue and you have an array. I told him that you could asci representation of the characters and have a number of occurences. He inquired about whether you start at the 24th space. I told him you can have a simple conversion when you look it up to substract 24. He then asked how it would work. I told him that you can iterate over the list n, and each time, you decrement the number of occurences in the array n. If you have a negative you can stop.
He then asked me another problem. He asked me to write a function to that takes a list and the list can contain a string or another list. The objective is to take the list and flatten it. I wrote it out like this
public combine List(List list) {for (Object item : list) {if (item instance of List)list.addAll(combine(list));}return list;}
He said that he does not want the original list returned. So I modified it to the following.
public combine List(List list) {for (Object item : list) {if (item instance of List)List copy = (List) item;list.remove(item);list.addAll(combine(list));}return list;}
He said whether you can remove an item in recursion. I said yes, that might be a problem. So I said that you can make a new list and just keep adding to it. He said, OK.
He then asked me whether I have any questions. I asked him how long he’s been there (3 years). Does he like it? (yes, he gets to work on different projects, though not everyone is doing that). I aked him how I did? He said he cannot tell me. 🙂
Overall, I think I did OK and I am hoping to get called back; though I would not be surprised if they don’t call me for onsite interview.

I hate to wait. I have a lot of things on my mind now and I feel stressed. It’s not really a good situation but I think it is a temporary situation.
The first thing is Markit. I accepted a verbal offer. I know the benefits. Everything is almost settled. I am almost one leg in the door. But… I still have not received my offer letter. Until I receive it, I cannot resign from my current position at IAC. And this creates the stressful situation. Resigning is not fun. It’s a stressful situation and the sooner I do it the better.
On top of that, I have a phone interview with Google on Wednesday at 1PM. Now I think I’m not going to get into Google. They’re heavy into algorithms and I’m not too strong with them. I am learning, but I cannot learn that much that soon. Hopefully the guy either tells me that I am not a good match or does not ask me the questions about algorithms. But what if I go onsite and fail there? Is that better? Yes and no. But we’ll see.
Fabian is crying in the middle of the night for two nights in a row. He wakes up and cries really loud for a minute or two. My wife then calms him but still, not sure what’s happening. He is almost five months, tomorrow, and he still eats a lot during the night. He’s just as hungry as his father. 🙂