After a crazy three weeks, my new bride and I have finally made it back home. We had a blast in the Bahamas and it was great to get away and decompress a little. After two weeks in another country, I definitely understand the old saying of needing a vacation from your vacation. The trip was wonderful, yet stressful at the same time. We had a lot of planning that had to be done during our trip and itineraries to follow, so while it was a good relaxing getaway, it had its own set of stresses. We arrived back home late Friday night after about 15 hours of travel and spent the better part of yesterday getting my wife moved into what is now our house. Therefore, as is likely no surprise yet again, I haven’t had much time at all this past week to consider or do much of anything tech related.
I did get some decent news this past week. I received an email saying I made it past the first screening wave for a potential job. This doesn’t even mean I’ll get an interview, but it’s pretty much the first correspondence I’ve had in the past four months that wasn’t an immediate no, so that’s been encouraging.
I’ve also had a few friends tell me about prospective non-tech jobs they feel I would be well suited for. While that really isn’t what I was hoping for, it feels to good to know people are looking out for me.
The next step for me in my journey is to better prepare for technical interviews. It doesn’t really even seem to be on the horizon, but I’d much rather be overprepared than under. Additionally with all the hustle and bustle of the past month, I feel kind of rusty and I’d really like to nip that in the bud.
I did have one coding challenge that I did for a company from HackerRank. I noticed on there that they had several different challenges available in multiple different languages. If one company using them for testing, I’m sure others do as well. Continuing to expose myself to multiple areas and topics that I am less familar with is going to be one of the best ways to become a better developer. Typically anything easy has little to teach you, its facing adversity that makes you stronger.
I have quite a lot of catching up to do to get back up to speed for the days ahead. Staying fresh with Ruby and Javascript are both huge priorities for me considering that’s the strongest skills I have to offer potential employers. I also am passionate about continuing to learn the basics of new languages, its both interesting to me and I feel proves that I can learn new skills so I don’t have to master a tech stack to find a home somewhere. I’ll also be spending a lot of time in the coming weeks with HackerRank as I think it has a lot of skill building and preparation for the job market to offer.
Next week. I’ll certainly have a more substainable more tech inspired blog, but until then I have a ton of catching up to do.