📣 Career Talk at Yildiz Technical University

Few months ago, I had the chance to talk as a former student at Yildiz Technical University about how I built my career after graduation and a few things I wish to learn a few years ago. Huge thanks to Prof.Dr.Banu Diri and Skylab team to organize this fantastic event!

I really enjoyed to be there and try to answer people´s questions as much as I can ✌️ I hope, we can do these kinds of organizations more often. It seems that we should, after all those great feedbacks.

Few things to emphasize from talk

It would be great to share a record of the talk instead of giving a really short summary but we could not arrange a camera.

Experience is what we get from life, not the what we expect

There is no guarantee that your dream will be always come true. You need to work hard to make them real but sometimes, it is not enough. Also, you should not forget that decisions are not good or bad on its own. We, as decision makers, make them good or bad, depending on our actions after the decision. Whatever you do or you decide, do it wholeheartedly, and it will be a good decision.

Have a plan

Having a plan will keep you oriented and focused to reach your end goals. Do not let having a plan to create pressure on you. You cannot have a plan for everything but thinking on your career or your health is a good thing to worry about.

Work on things that you enjoy

I know It sounds like a cliche and I agree that. It is nearly impossible to enjoy all the time from the things that we are working on. Everything that we do has positive or negative sides. The important thing here is that how do you feel the end of the day. Are you happy? If yes, go ahead and if not, it might be a good idea to think about it.

FAQ

• Which blogs do you follow?
  • Most of the time, discussions happening on Twitter. However, I believe that blog is still a thing and there are good authors/companies to follow. I cannot list all of them but those are at least my favourite ones.
  • http://blog.codinghorror.com/ by Jeff Atwood
  • https://martinfowler.com/ by Martin Fowler
  • https://medium.com/netflix-techblog by Netflix
  • https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering by Airbnb
  • https://www.tedinski.com/ by Ted Kaminski
  • https://www.hanselman.com/ by Scott Hanselman
  • https://ahmet.im/blog/ by Ahmet Alp Balkan
• Which talks do you suggest?
  • Please have a look at this repo: https://github.com/hellerve/programming-talks
• Which resources we should look to improve our technical skills?
  • There are different ways to solve the same issues. It is good to look for If someone already invented the wheel. So, I strongly suggest looking for design patterns which are "simply a generalized, reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem."
  • Design patterns for humans
  • Try to understand how large scale systems work:
  • The System Design Primer
  • What I cannot create, I do not understand - Richard Feynman
  • Build your own x
• What was your English level when you join Amazon and what is now?
  • When I joined Amazon, I believe that it was B1. I was able to understand people easily. But my problem was to talk fluently. So, I was too afraid to go into the conversation with people. I still make quite a lot of grammar mistakes but at least now, I can communicate without much difficulty.
• Do you suggest to live abroad?
  • Definitely. I am so happy to meet and work with the people all around the world, listen their stories and learn from them.

Conclusion

I am really grateful for the invite and I really enjoyed to be there! Thank you so much everyone!