DEV Community: Yokim Pillay

How did you decide on what you wanted to do?

Yokim Pillay — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 11:02:52 +0000

Hello!

I've been trying to decide on what path to take in the industry, but have been running into a couple self-made brick walls.

I'm curious to find out, from those who have found their path, and also from those who are still finding their way around, I'd like to know:

How did you decide on what path/field you wanted to pursue within the tech industry, and if you are still trying to decide, what are you trying to do in order to find out what interests you the most?

For the past couple of months, I've been learning a lot in the Machine Learning/A.I./Deep Learning ocean, and while I've been enjoying it a ton, I'm not sure I'm ready to go even deeper. I've been trying to see what courses are on offer to help build the foundation to get a good grasp, but I've yet to pick a route to go.

CS Graduates (and not): A Question

Yokim Pillay — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 05:07:49 +0000

As someone who's gone through the years of learning formally and getting a CS (or CS related) degree, what kind of skills would you think the general self-taught developer lacks?

On the flip side, self-taught developers, what kind of skills would you think the general formally taught developer lacks?

I'd really love to hear both sides of this!

How would you go about resigning as a Junior Developer?

Yokim Pillay — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 11:57:48 +0000

Preface

So this isn't necessarily a topic that I'm in desperate need of help with, I just thought it would be an interesting thing to discuss!

Scenario

You are a Junior Developer, and you've been going for some interviews, and one of the companies you applied for has just sent you an offer that outweighs anything you've gotten thus far. You accept.

Your initial reactions of excitement and joy are quickly overcome by the thoughts of having to break the news to your boss, as well as having to remain at work for another 4 weeks or so, since that's what is stipulated in your contract.

Being the developer, how would you approach this situation from a written and verbal standpoint?

My thoughts

I think being direct and straight to the point will alleviate any kind of hesitation I might have about handing in my resignation, but the one thing that keeps me held up is the thought of having to openly and honestly tell your boss why you're leaving, telling them why you were so unhappy as to look for another job etc.

The thought of having to open that up for my boss to listen to I feel could hurt the relationship and could come back to bite me in the future, for example:

If you took the offer from the new workplace and they contacted my boss to see what kind of an employee I was, I'm afraid that either the previous boss tells my soon-to-be employer qualities that aren't true or straight up defamation of character.

These are just a small collection of thoughts.

What are yours?

How do you deal with difficult team members?

Yokim Pillay — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 18:50:57 +0000

I'd really like to discuss how you guys deal with team members in your workplace who are extremely difficult to deal with and are very unpredictable in their ways.

Currently, I'm faced with the same issues on a daily basis with regards to team chemistry and individual attitudes, and it's wearing me down a fair amount.

While it may seem like I'm talking smack about my teammates, this is just an open discussion on how you can help you and your teammates build a better bond and work through the issues that you and your team face on a personal basis.

Right now, my main issue is that my team is working in a reactive manner as opposed to a proactive one.

I'll give you an example;

Person 1 is working on Project A and is the Lead Developer & Manager of 2, 3, and 4
Person 2 is working on Project B
Person 3 is working on Project C
Person 4 is working on Project D

Now, Person 1 is in charge of bringing in work and distributing it amongst Persons 2, 3, and 4.

Projects A to D are all due between 4-6 weeks from now.

Everyone is working on their projects really hard and are getting some good progress in, when 3 days into the new project workloads, a client comes in and makes a request to Person 1 to make a tweak to a website, we'll call this Project E.

Person 1 delegates this to Person 4, and needs to get this request done 3-5 hours from the brief, which in and of itself is vague and uninformative.

Person 4 is very new to the industry and this request made for Project E needs a little more time to be completed, so Person 4 works on the request made for Project E as hard as they can.

Another request comes in from another client to Person 1, they need some changes/fixes on their website, Project F. Person 1 then pushes this request to Person 2 with the same urgency and poor briefing as they provided to Person 4.

Now Person 2 is a bit more experienced, but the task required is a hefty one for them as well, and the brief wasn't any better than the brief that was handed to Person 4 for Project E.

The exact same happens to Person 3, they receive another task that needs to get bumped to the front of the workload queue.

This cycle repeats for each of the people on the team, and everyone is inundated with new requests from clients demanding tweaks and changes done to their websites/apps.

Everyone on the team is affected by the

4 working days later, the workload looks like this:

Person 1 is working on Project A, H
Person 2 is working on Project B, F, J, M, P
Person 3 is working on Project C, G, K, N, Q
Person 4 is working on Project D, E, I, L, O

When Persons 2, 3, and 4 are behind on their deadlines for their respective projects that were originally assigned to them, Person 1 becomes extremely hostile and harsh towards their team, trying to put pressure and be very negative in energy and demeanour to the team.

So this is just the tip of the iceberg that I'm dealing with at work right now, and people on my team are struggling to bring this up with the head of our team, as he is not very receptive to criticism outside of web development.

I'm at a loss for a solution here, as the moment of action arises, I'm paralyzed with fear of hurting my career or relationship with my team.

How do you guys deal with these kinds of obstacles in your team?

EDIT: Toxic was the wrong choice of wording to use, I've changed it to something a little more appropriate. (Thanks, edA-qa mort-ora-y & Chris!)

Explain Abstractions like I'm five

Yokim Pillay — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 08:32:43 +0000