I don't want to do Devops anymore.

Dave MG — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 22:52:09 +0000

No really. I don't. Money be damned.

Full-disclosure: the first draft of this was a long meandering rant fueled by mental-exhaustion and a few cans of Izzie pop. Nine paragraphs in, I had somehow written myself into a corner with a forced allegory, some stunted alliteration and something about "regressing to the mean" and why Pete Rose deserves to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. My editor Mike made me start over and rub his belly. Mike is a cat. He says hello.

See it all started for me making websites. Ugly ones. Terrible websites. You'd be ashamed at some of those early websites, I wouldn't blame you and in fact, I'd probably try to pay you to surgically remove them from my memory. But I had a lot of fun doing it. Got hired at one point to be a "webmaster" for a small publishing house.

That tells you how long ago this was. My job title was "webmaster". People still put that on their resumes and CVs. I even got a nametag. "Dave. Webmaster". Ooo-wee I felt like hot stuff.

Because I knew enough about making a pleasant enough homepage and despite what my father would say, playing video games did in fact pay the bills: Armed with enough knowledge to write server-side mods for Quake, I was able to get my first tech job.

14 years later and I'm bored out of my ever loving mind. I don't want to do this anymore. Don't ask me why, other than to say it's not fun I can't give you a simplified, abridged reason for it. I've tried writing about it and ended up with 10 paragraphs and a thoroughly annoyed editor as I continue drifting off-topic and making Star Trek references.

In case you were wondering, it involved Myles O'Brien

Anyway.

I was reading a post here on dev.to from a young woman who realized she wasn't doing what she wanted either, and did something about it. Got me wondering, why not me?

No really, why not?

I went and signed up to Skillshare. Searched for "Responsive web design".

A day and some change later, I have a website. It's.....got a few problems. I'm working on them.

It's not great. But it's mine.

And it was fun.

This probably wont be the final version. Leave your critiques below? Opening myself up here and it feels strange, but it feels...necessary at the same time. I'm going to work on it more. And then after that I think I might try making a simple static site theme using Eleventy. Might port my site over to it. I'll run it over with Mike.

I don't want to do DevOps anymore. I want to go back to making websites. So I think I will.

....

Oh snap. Right. Almost forgot. The whole reason I started writing this:

Anyone else ever just stopped cold what they were doing and did something else? How'd it work? Are you still doing it?

Coding assessment before interview, too soon?

Dave MG — Sun, 01 Sep 2019 20:32:46 +0000

I was recently submitted to an SRE role for a company by a recruiting agency. The agency provided me with a very high-level overview of what they're looking for, but nothing by way of a detailed job description. Furthermore, the role wasn't advertised on the organization's homepage, or on any job ad. It was apparently 'unlisted'.

Nonetheless, I consented to being submitted with the aims of having a discussion, even potentially an introductory phone call where I would speak with their hiring manager, an individual functioning as a team-lead, or even an HR staffer to learn more about the role, the team, and the challenges that gave rise to the need for hiring a new Site Reliability Engineer.

Let me state that I'm not unfamiliar with technical assessments or the challenges of hiring capable technical talent as valued contributors-having hired, and fired, built and groomed engineering teams over my career.

What did come as a surprise to me, one that has me arching an eyebrow was the first interaction with this organization. There wasn't a phone call where a polite voice introduced themselves, there wasn't an email thanking me for my application for consideration, there wasn't even an acknowledgement of the CV submitted.

What came was an automated email from a no-reply@ address to take a coding challenge on a domain that doesn't even belong to the organization I plan to interview with.

This was my very first interaction with the company.

The automated email did include an address direct to the recruiting department of this organization, in the event that one would not be able to complete the assessment on time. I emailed this address, thanked them for considering my application, but requested an opportunity to first speak with a representative of the company or an individual who would be willing to speak more about the job specifics, the organization, and their challenges that I would be expected to contribute solutions to. I followed this up with the assurance that once that opportunity came about, and only after having the opportunity to learn more about the role and the team I would prospectively be joining, I would be glad to take part in helping the company assess my raw technical ability as an SRE.

Here's my question to you, Dev.to community: was this the right reaction? How would you have responded, and how do you feel about coding assessments being used so early in the interviewing process before even being contacted by your future cohorts?

DEV Community: Dave MG

I don't want to do Devops anymore.

Coding assessment before interview, too soon?