Think big

A few weeks ago, I'm not sure why, one of my daughters proposed to create a system to find cars inside garages at the shopping center. The car would locate itself using a GPS and then it would emit via radio. I told her that GPS waves don't go through the walls, and I tried to convince her to look for different approaches (like generating a wifi hotspot and using a mobile app, locate the car). 
The truth is I told her it wasn't possible. I just asked her about that and she has confirmed it.

In retrospect, I think my idea is a good one. But hers is bigger. Because it doesn't work only when you know the area but you can't find the car. It works always.

Thinking about "it's not possible", I was listening today a podcast (by the way if you're into technology and entrepeneurship, Techzing is really good). The episode is a bit old but they were talking about emulating Elon Musk, a guy who has several great successes proving wrong "that's not possible" from the rest of the world.

And when I've got home, reading an article, I've discovered that in the list of crazy ideas that led to Google Glass, there is a place for... GPS inside buildings.

What recruiters taught me about looking for a job

There are good recruiters. And there are bad recruiters. The good ones help you to find a job. The bad ones teach you how to look for a job.

If you are looking for a job, be sure to do just the opposite of what the bad ones do.

Almost every other day I receive an email offering me a position.

"Good for you". 

No, bad for me.

Most of the emails come from people I haven't spoken to. They don't know if I'm looking for a new job. They got my email and an old version of my CV somewhere. They match keywords on the profile with my CV and if there is something in common they send the email. They send the same message to dozens, (or hundreds) of recipients. They mix profiles in London with other roles in Manchester (or even Australia). They mix graduates/junior roles with senior. The profile include the typical keywords "competitive salary" "agile" "cutting edge"

I try to reply to them, sometimes with a canned response.

But 95% of those contacts are not relevant. It's time reading and time replying (even a canned response). They are OK when in search mode (last March I was going to be made redundant and I wanted maximum exposure). But when not in active search, my skills are in demand, and I won't usually consider those contacts even with pretty high salaries.

So for me what are the really tempting contacts? The ones that try to establish a relationship, that try to understand who am I, what can I provide, why I'm interesting. Sometimes they invite for coffee to understand what I'm looking for. Sometimes you see accesses to the LinkedIn profile and then a carefully crafted email. Sometimes they connect through my Stackoverflow profile and then a contact explaining what they like. And the better response rate is when it's a friend the one who try to convince you to go to her company.

So what does teach me about looking for a job/applying?

Now, when I really want a job, I put myself on the recipient's role. What if it receives dozens of emails? How is she going to know that I'm the perfect fit?

Some obvious tips:

1. You can contact a company with a cold email (as in without role/offer), but with nothing else you won't get any reply. Even if you send to thousands recipients, you probably won't get any response. The typical "I've sent dozens of CVs" is bogus.
2. Either when cold email OR when replying to a specific role, research the company and try to understand what you can provide to that company, what is the company's culture, and carefully craft either the letter or the CV (or both)
3. Try to understand profiles, not if you match some/all of the requirements. Once you've understood the profile, apply with a cover letter matching your profile to the requirements.
4. If in search mode, the previous apply when contacting final companies. When contacting recruiters, put in your CV as much keywords/technologies as you've used (even if obvious to your profile or if the contact with that technology was minimal).
5. The better jobs are the ones your friends look for you. LinkedIn connections are not friends.

Yeah, it's lots of work. But I think it really pays off.

Future

More than six years ago I started this blog. I wanted to practice my English so that I would improve it.

Four years later I came to London and sort of abandoned it, thinking that working in an English speaking environment would be enough to practice.

But it is not. I really think blogging is a good way to improve your written expression, to clarify your thoughts. And sometimes what you tell is worthwhile for others. It is not specifically related to speaking a different language (but it also helps that).

So my New Year's resolution is to write more often. Just to practice. And hoping this could be of use for somebody.

Happy New Year.

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas and a wonderful 2015 to all of my readers.

Good examples

I was made redundant at the end of March. It was a very stressful process but it ended up very well, as I've been in my new job for almost a month and I'm very happy.

During process, I had to work with lots of recruiters. Both from inside and outside my former company. One thing many people in the recruiting industry fail to understand is that every interaction counts. For better or for worse.

There were also people who just do their jobs. And that's OK.

There were also bad apples. I think it would be useless to point them.

But there were some very few absolutely brilliant. I remember one specific case. When each and every interaction is memorable, you know who you are going to recommend if asked.

Tipping point

I'm happy. 

I was developing a feature that allows to export from my showcase project Whendoigo to TripIt. 

I was using a gem from TripIt. A gem is kind of a library for Ruby (sort of jar for Java). The gem simply encapsulated the API from TripIt. But it was failing and apparently everything on my project was correct. So this time it didn't took me too long to start debugging the actual gem's code.

The exception had traces with ActiveRecord references. ActiveRecord is an ORM, (think Hibernate or iBatis for Java). It's part of Rails. And the gem shouldn't have any dealing with ActiveRecord

The code that was failing was a bit difficult to understand. It uses one of the more powerful features in Ruby called meta-programming, but not with the more typical ways. Trying to put into words, it was creating a class with a dynamic name on the fly, and then instantiating an object of that class. 

What happens when the name it is trying to use is already being used in a different part of the application? To avoid that issue, the gem was creating the names with a namespace. 

And that should have been all.

But it wasn't. Lots of debugging and some restructuring later I found the problem. 

The names were being cached and when asking for the names it was asking for the names with the namespace... or without it. 

Two lines of code. A pull request. It took me a while. 

Not many people would appreciate the reason. 

But I'm really happy.

Community managers: The day after

Yesterday I followed on Twitter a case where the community manager for a -well known and with very good reputation- Spanish moving company literally screwed up their reputation.

He/she threatened to sue a customer that was expressing a complaint on Twitter, because the client had used the hash tag "vergonzoso" (shameful). IMO, the customer was not insulting and she was not threatening. Just complaining.

Initially I thought about yet another tactic to be viral. But the reputation of Gil-Stauffer in Spain is completely different. It's the kind of company you would like for a good, incident-free, priced, removal. Sort of a Zappos for Spanish removals. Or that was my impression, at least. After a bit of researching, it seems the incident is not something new. But this time the backslash is going to be very tough.

So you're a CEO of a big company and you discover that the technology everybody told you it would help interacting with your clients, has literally destroy your reputation. I'm sure the CEO did know about the tactics, but now he/she knows this time is different. What to do?

Some possibilities comes to mind:

• Ignore as if nothing had happened. It has worked in the past. And it's tempting. But it's flawed, because social networks are about communicating. And because this time is different. Next tweet on that account is going to be replied by hundreds of people.
• Hide it (deleting the tweets). No worth even considering. Everybody has now a capture of the tweets.
• Rebuild trust.

In my opinion, the only real option in a social networked environment is to rebuild trust.

• You need to act quickly. Rebuilding trust takes time. But you must start as soon as possible. I imagine the management did know yesterday about the major screw up. But today there is no answer. Which means they don't know how to act. And they're obviously considering the options. But if you don't act quickly, you'll be forced to act later on, but losing the benefits.
• Apologize. Clearly. Not only for the specific series of comments but also for not understanding the whole social-network issue. Explain you have learnt -where "you" means the CEO- that social networks are a different thing you didn't understand. And that you personally are going to learn.
• Start listening. There is a customer that has not get a good experience. Change it. Solve her problem. I remember having a bad experience with IKEA that was completely reversed to a great experience thanks to their Customer Relationship department.

Social networks are about interacting with your customers and getting feedback. It's about listening.

It is not a new channel to fill with Press Releases or (worse) to threaten clients.

Update: They finally manage to apologize (and also on the general issue). Late.

Companies, developers and recruitment

A few months ago I reported my business unit was offered for sale. Not much to report about it (I know very little and I can write even less)

Obviously, most of us in the business unit, decided to brush up our Linkedin pages and get into the job market, just in case.

I remember in particular one interview. It didn't start well when I replied "Sí, I mean, yes" after listening my name with a perfect Spanish z sound (as it turned out, one of the interviewers was Spanish too). It didn't continue well due to my inability to reply to the typical Java interview questions (such as Big-Oh notation complexity for a java hashlist look up or differences between Spring container and JEE container). I didn't pass the test.

But for me as an experience, the interview finished wonderfully when the Spanish guy asked "What are you looking for? What's your ideal job?"

I think it is very difficult to match companies and people.

Companies would really like people that could commit to the project and I certainly prefer a company where I feel my work makes a difference. However, companies tend to look for people that can hit the ground running at the lower cost. And developers tend to look for companies with better conditions and more buzzwords.

One could think that model is flawed. But the fact is that the alternative is not always better. In a past life I had to do some recruitment. And the worst selection was a guy I thought he was going to fit perfectly in the culture. And as an interviewee I've never asked if I would be able to fully manage my own machine or if I would personally know the people managing the servers.

So back again to the interview "What are you looking for? What's your ideal job?". Putting in words, I want a place challenging, where I can learn new things and do different tasks day in day out. I want a place where I can commit and where my job makes a difference. I won't talk about my current job except to say people are wonderful. I don't know about the future in my current job. And I'm really proud that people still remember me from my previous job. I do remember them too. So people are very important too.

But, the fact is that suddenly, I realized how difficult matching companies with people is. Because I certainly could have answered all those questions, and that wouldn't have made me more suitable for the job (in fact I aced the concurrency ones which I have a more solid knowledge background but less experience). I remember selecting people we used to ask for digital signature experience and hitting the ground running didn't have anything to do with that.

But even if I were an incredibly valued employee, I wouldn't have a clue if the job I was being offered is the one was looking for or if that's my ideal job.

One year

A year ago I was in a plane flying into London. I was in whirl, nearly panicking. My life about to change.

I'm somebody who loves being in his comfort zone. And then leaving your wife and daughters for 6 months. Leaving your country for who knows how much time.

It has been hard. There have been difficult times. In lots of different levels. Renting in London (well worth a million pages book). Eating in London (a shorter book :D). Weekend trips back to Spain waking up at 4am on a Saturday and back to London at 3pm on a gloomy Sunday. Talking to your family via Skype. Missing lots of things. Closing down the family home in Madrid and moving to London. Missing the light.

But I don't regret it at all. It is being a wonderful experience. My daughters are happy. My wife is happy. There are lots of great people all around.

And so far, it is working well. There's a new comfort zone around (sort of).

I don't know about the future.

But so far, so good.

Changes

A few days ago my company sent out this press release. It seems to be rather unimportant, but for me it means changes.

I work for that specific business unit. I cannot write too much. Because I don't know too much, but also because I don't want to tell too much. But there are some topics I would like to raise.

1. In Spain, if your work is good and the company is doing great, whatever happens in between, has little importance. In the UK, it doesn't mind if your company is doing well and your job is fine. Your business unit is not going as it is expected and you can be transferred to a different company, relocated inside the company or most probably made redundant. Maybe it is not the country, but the kind of business. Obviously that behavior makes easier for companies to react to the market (hiring when they need and firing when they don't). We'll see how it ends, but it does not help people to feel part of a company.
2. I haven't been in this situation in Spain. But when something like this is announced to the employees, I wouldn't discard uncomfortable scenes, bad temper, crying and shouting. Here, the only bad reply was from one of the people announcing the news. Sad faces, good questions and nothing more.Again, maybe is not the country but the kind of business.
3. After almost 9 months alone, my family finally came to London. My connections in London are minimal. My salary is the only income. I expected my English fluency would be better after 9 months here. And I'm the last in (so I might be the first out). My situation is not stellar, but others had difficult situations too (to name one example, one colleague was told a couple of days before getting married). Despite that, people have been surprisingly friendly and supportive.
4. I managed to learn a new expression: retention package. And apparently, when there is not going to be one, it is obvious you should be brushing up your Linkedin profile.

What will happen? I don't know. Most probably, the business unit will be closed. And me?  I'm concerned, but not terrified. At this moment there are several options. It doesn't seem immediate. And apparently there are lots of jobs for IT people in London. 

Let's wait and see.

Driving in the UK

Today I rented a car for a few hours. I used to drive in Spain, but I hadn't driven since I came to London. I wanted to practice in not too stressful conditions before my family comes to visit me. Also I needed to buy some furniture.

There are two problems for a Spanish driver in the UK (actually for most drivers from outside of the UK). 

First. Cars have the steering wheel on the right hand side of the car, while outside the UK(overseas as they say) the steering wheel is on the left. 

Second, people drive on the left of the road while in many other countries is on the right.

You probably knew that.

Now, my experience.

On one hand, things a knew I had to pay attention, and have not been too problematic: Remember to go clockwise when you enter a roundabout. Remember to go to the left hand side when you turn to and enter in a new street.

On the other, things that I knew, but that have been more difficult to manage. I know the gear stick is on the left, but my 20 years of manual car driving experience kept telling me the stick is on the right. No, no, no. On the right is only the door. No tips on that, but I guess it is a matter of practice. Another thing quite difficult is to not be too close to the left side of the road. My tip is to be aware of this problem and force oneself to be close to the right side of your path.

Anyway, no big issues (and the ones were more because of driving a diesel car). Safe at home at 2pm. Siesta (one day I'll write about it), and evening assembling a new table and chair.

Relocating to London

In two weeks I will be working in London. I know I was expecting to continue my last post about Spring persistence. I have lots of things to write about the incredible experience of finding a job abroad and relocating.

But as you'll imagine, I'm quite busy. I'll try to post before starting in my new job, but I don't promise anything. Thank you. Each and every one of you.

Techzing wives

I tend to listen Techzing podcast. It's a podcast about very different topics, recorded by two geeks, (or developers, and entrepeneurs). I don't remember when I started listening them. I do remember I started because I wanted to practice English and it was great (Justin is an Englishman and Jason is American). Soon I forgot why: they were great by themselves. The topics are very diverse from Technology, Entrepenurship, Politics (Loom and Gloom Report), Education, Genetics...

I listen them while commuting, and I was a couple of months behind. However, I just listened episode 200: techzing wives.

And it's simply the best. I couldn't help but laugh in many different parts of the episode.

I guess that episode is not very interesting for a newcomer. But I'm sure that for most of their regular listeners it has been a great experience to listen to our own wives in the voices of three complete estrangers.

Civil service: Why me?

A few days ago I promised to explain why I chose to become a civil servant, and why I keep being one.

I was going to write about the challenge of a competitive examination, how challenges motivates me, and how my job keeps being interesting even though sometimes is a bit tough.

But then I came to "Reasons to work". Seth Godin. No more words needed.

Spring course

I'm attending this week to a Spring Framework course. It's a very small class: the teacher, my boss and me.

I don't consider myself slow, and neither is my boss. No, he doesn't read this blog. But we two were trying to keep up the frenetic pace the teacher is imposing. I had already used Spring, but up to now I didn't suppose who little did I know about Spring, about TDD, or even about Eclipse. Watching the teacher coding, and trying to understand what he was doing, and trying to type as fast as him is a rewarding but extremely demanding experience.

Regarding Spring Framework, I do think it's a very powerful tool, and we probably are going to use it at one of my teams (the architecture group). But I don't think it's something it can be used in other teams. We'll see.

Copyright protection

You know something is broken with copyright when:

• You buy a "Barbie and three Musqueteers" DVD and you can't play in your DVD player because it's piracy protected. But...
  
  You download the same film from a P2P network, save to a CD and you can play it everywhere.


• You can't install the Windows Vista that came with your computer, on a VirtualBox over a Linux box, because it refuses to activate. But...
  
  You can download a file from a P2P network that contains 4 versions of Windows 7 (from starter to ultimate) that will happily install on VirtualBox, will activate and will update flawlessly.

I'm sick of this.

Lots of old friends

Yes. I know I was supposed to write about Civil service in Spain. But I've promised myself to write a blog post Monday through Thursday. Nobody reads this, my head is full of memories, and I'm not able to write about the planned topic. I could struggle with the it, but I prefer to write about my memories.

In the last couple of days there's a lot of activity in my mailbox. Agus, one of my friends (more about that later), send me an email. It was a mail with lots of names I knew. They were classmates from the school. I met some of them more than 10 years ago. But last time I saw many of them is more 20 years ago. Reading about them, brings back a lot of images. We are going to have dinner in a couple of weeks. No discussion about the date. While writing this text, another classmate is in the list.

I said that Agus is one of my friends. He is obviously another classmate. But he is also a colleague. We work 10 meters one of each other. We studied from 6 to 16 years old (in fact from 5 to 15 because we both celebrate our birthday in December). Then we took different routes. And then again we found one each other working in the same company... for the same client. I still remember that day. It was January 2001.

I love this frenzy of mails and images, and memories.

Scrum for myself

Yesterday I explained I have attended recently a couple of courses. One of them was about Scrum.
The course was very interesting, although, as I explained in the evaluation, there were times when I wished there were only one teacher instead of three.
At the end of the course, I took a test, and now I'm Scrum Manager certified. I must say that the exam was quite difficult, but I don't consider myself a Scrum manager. Not even a Scrum practitioner.
Anyway, as I wrote yesterday I'm trying to define my future as a professional, and I have planned some topics in which I would like to improve, and some things I would like to do. So I decided to create a list of stories, with tasks, and planned short sprints in order to complete those stories. I even started to use Scrum Ninja. I'm the team, the product owner and the Scrum Manager. Yes, I know that isn't Scrum. Maybe "Scrum in name only".
But it has been very interesting to read Borja Prieto writing about Scrum in a company.

The passionate programmer

The last few weeks have been really intense with respect to my career. I've attended two courses, given some presentations, launched a few projects at work, and read some books. Sometimes I've been under a lot of self-imposed pressure, but overall I've learned a lot of things.

One of the books I've read has been really enlightening. It has been The passionate Programmer. It's a book I wish I'd read years ago, and I'm tempted to buy a few copies and give them to some of my coworkers.

Initially I thought it was to late for me, but as times passes, I'm more and more convinced that it's not too late. I don't know what future will bring but I hope I'm still able to influence it.

Starting over

6 months since last post. These have been amazing ones. Lots of work to do. Lots of challenges. We left Mantis, now working with Redmine. Learning Ruby on Rails. And learning Grails for fun and for the job.

I've been studying for another competitive examination for a civil servant positon, but I wasn't motivated. Exam is next Saturday but I don't expect to pass

I haven't had too much time to post. And I've discovered I have things to write about. Not only to practice my English. So I'm planning new posts. Stay tuned