All posts by Fernando Carrillo Castro

Huge comic book fan, geek by choice
University

Late whatsapp

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Years ago I joined a company and after a couple of weeks, I was requested to fill up some paperwork, it took me a couple of days to get everything and sent it.

Couple of weeks later, I received a whatsapp call at 10:30 PM, I answered because I didn’t know the number and it had a code that I didn’t know. It was my manager or project lead or solution delivery, the same guy who requested the papers, he told me that one of the papers I signed it was wrong and that I need it to do it again ASAP. I told him yes and he told me to do it at the moment.

I checked the papers and the big problem was that the format was on english and not spanish, guess who passed me the format? yeah the same guy who called me, guess who didn’t apologize for passing me the wrong documentation?

I printed like 15 pages again, scan them and send it by whatsapp, since he requested and follow up on whatsapp; it was already 11 PM, I delivered outside my business hours for a late paperwork that it wasn’t my fault, guess what I received on return? “Please send it by email”, I didn’t open the whatsapp just saw the notification and went to sleep, it wasn’t the ways or tha manner to ask for such things. Next day I sent the papers by email, at business hours.

CS

MO 3/4

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2 years ago after attempt 1 and 2 with this company, I was approached again by the same recruiter who left me hanging previously.

The job was about java support to the entire company, we will be the last line of defense, with on-call and top only 1 ticket per day but at maximum severity.

Attempt 2 was for a previous line of defense, I was offered 2x my previous salary, so I thought well now I earn 2x what I did before, this is for a higher level, so I might as well ask for more.

I did, I was told they were going to check, I didn’t heard back in 1 week so I contacted them and they told me they were going to offer the same, I said no thanks.

3 weeks after that, I applied to an outsourcing company that posted a job about java L4 support, which was very odd. When I received the call they told me that the job was for MO and we couldn’t  continue the process due to that.

I contacted MO again and they offered me about 6k more per year and the opportunity to work with new technologies.I said yes and we continue with the recruiting process.

I was finally invited to an on-site interview and they gave me the details for the position:

  1. Spring
  2. Docker
  3. Kubernetes
  4. Microservices
  5. Java OOP

Of course I mastered 5 but the other things weren’t related at all with the java L4 support last line of defense and bla bla bla.

When I got to the interview, I was asked about that I told them I had no hands-on experience with 1-4 but I knew what each one of them does.

They told me that 85% of their time is spend developing new stuff and the rest is supporting.

At that moment I knew I wasn’t going to get the job, not because I lacked some skills but because the recruiting process was bad.

I sent an email 1 week after the interview just to check if I was still in the race or not, I didn’t want to know if I got the position because I knew that wasn’t possible but knowing if I got kicked out or not was possible.

University

Crónica de una muerte anunciada

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A Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Years ago, I joined a new job and finally got a call with my remote leader, he was a nice guy in the overall and I don’t blame him for any mistake he might have done but at the end of the call I knew that wasn’t the place for me.

I will enumerate each of the things I didn’t like:

  1. First call in 3 months since I joined.
    1. There is no excuse for this, the first manager I had was pretty bad but he cleared his schedule to have a long call with each of the new joins.
  2. He couldn’t call me before because the team was overloaded.
    1. Not in any way the way to set up expectations
  3. He became a manager the day I joined.
    1. I was already a seasoned employees, why should I put my career future on a brand new manager?
  4. For the past 3 months he has been working 14 hours from Monday-Friday
    1. I was hired to work 8 hours per day dude, not 75% more than that.
  5. For the past 3 months he has been working 8 hours on Saturdays and 8 hours on Sundays
    1. In MX is illegal to work more than 6 days in a row.
    2. You cannot work more than 60  hours a week.
    3. He didn’t even mention overtime pay
  6. He didn’t know what my skillset is.
    1. So why was I hired?
  7. He was so excited (maybe even jealous, idk) from the place I used to work, he even said that he has been trying to move there.
    1. It was a a bigger company with a better branding, asking why I moved was OK, saying you want to work there, not so much.
    2. I even joked about referring him to my previous position.

That day I started job-hunting, again.

CS

MO 2/4

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It had passed 4 years since attempt 1 and I had been 5.5 years at Oracle at the moment and decided to change the scenery.

I applied to every company that had something related with Java or Weblogic.

I ended up applying here again.

I was approached by a recruiter who used to work on Crossover, very nice person.

I had 1 tech interview( aced it) and 1 interview with the hiring manager (aced it again) but they took too long to make me an offer, they made me one like 5 weeks after the last contact, at that time I was already on another company and didn’t feel good accepting the offer.

Other reasons for not taking the offer were:

  1. WFH wasn’t allowed on a regular basis.
  2. I had to go to US 1 week per Q…which could potentially mess up my classes.
  3. The offer $$$ was the same. At the initial time I was making X and now I was making 2.5X, why will I accept and continue to earn 2.5X?

There was a back and forth on increasing my salary since I knew those extra 5 weeks they were looking for candidates.

In the second to last call, they maintained the offer in 2.5X and I hesitated, asked them to give me a day or 2 to think about it, since I was already pushing for 3-4X of my previous salary for the embarrassment of leaving my new company so quick.

I thought about it and the technology was better and with more future than the current one I was working, so I sent an email after 2 hours the same day.

2 days later still no reply, I send another email.

Next day the recruiter called me and told me that there was a salary adjustment and they could offer me only 2.1X now even when I already accepted.

I told the recruiter hey I accepted the same day and the recruiter just told me that the offer wasn’t written so it wasn’t official ( WTF?).

After some days I thought well what the hell, I will be making more money anyway and the things I could learn there will make me jump to a better job in a couple of years, so I send another mail saying yes.

I’m still waiting for a reply from that….worst recruiting ever.

University

Whatsapp@work

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Normalmente las empresas evitan que las redes sociales se usen en su horario laboral, aunque normalmente las de IT no son asi y si son asi, no suelen ser de las buenas.

En las empresas donde si se permite usar las redes sociales, normalmente se tiende a separar las redes oficiales de las no oficiales, como separar slack y el correo del trabajo de whatsapp o facebook; las cosas que importan estan en el oficial, no en las cosas personales.

En un trabajo que tuve, me agregaron a un grupo de whatsapp a mi telefono personal y esperaban que lo respondiera como si ellos me estuvieran pagando el celular.

Aqui un pequeño extracto

[12:10 P1]  Alguien que pueda decirle a *P3* que me contacte por favor.
[12:20 P1] Estimados,
Agradeceré que tengamos la amabilidad de “dar por enterado” (acknowledge) las solicitudes que su servidor hace en este chat, al igual que todas, y que se de seguimiento a lo solicitado.
Gracias!
[12:23 P2] Ack
[12:26 P1] Gracias  muy amable de tu parte.
[12:26 P1] Pero hay 15 personas en este chat….

 

Aqui se puede ver el bad management en varios sitios:

  1. Esta usando un medio de comunicacion personal para algo oficial.
  2. Solo han pasado 10 minutos y ya esta enojado
  3. 3 minutos despues que el escribe q es muy amable, alguien le responde y 3 minutos despues se queja que nadie de los otros miembros le respondio(como si necesitara mas ACK)
CS

Wipro interview 1/1

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This must be the quickest process I ever had.

One Wednesday I received an email from an outside recruiter, I replied, got a call the same day and the very next day I got videoconference interview; There were couple of things I didn’t like about the interview, I was required to show my video but the interview didn’t and it started about 15 minutes after time.

Next Monday I got the job offer, took me some days to finally accepted…getting out of the confort zone takes some work =).

CS

MO 1/4

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Some years ago I went to an open house to one of the big IT companies in the city.

First thing of course was the sales pitch of the company itself, the benefits of working there and the impact you will be making.

After that there was the job interview, I applied to Weblogic position and Java.

All the persons that applied to Java were moved to a room to play something like kahoot, by some reason I wasn’t moved with them, so I was kind of like of just hanging in there.

I asked about the WLS position and they redirected me to the General Director of the company on Guadalajara.

The general director seemed convinced enough with my credentials and he invited another guy to interview.

I had a cold and a sore throat that didn’t allowed to raise my voice a lot, so I had to clear my throat every time I spoke, the guy interviewing didn’t seem to happy about that because he was pressuring me to answer louder and faster, which I found rude because it was noticeable that I wasn’t OK nor my voice. I answered almost all of the questions correctly but one stuck to my mind

I: How much memory can you have if you are using a 32 bit system?

M: Little less than 4 GB.

I: How much exactly?

M: If I remember correctly you can use 2 power 28.

I: Why?

M: Because 4 bits are used for the instruction and 28 are used for memory address.

I:So, what does that mean?

M: That even if you have 8 GB of RAM, you will only be able to address memories up to 2 power 28.

I: So exactly how many bits will be addressable?

M: 2 power 28

I: Can you tell me the exact number?

M: If you give me a calculator I can, I just know is 2 power 28, which is less than 4 GB.

I don’t know what the hell did he want me to do, multiply 1024x1024x256 in my mind and tell him the number?

Anyways even with that seems like the general director wanted me there, so he told me that I will be trained on some legacy systems which would incur the company into some costs , so I will have to sign a voucher in case I quit before 3 years I will have to reimburse the company the training provided to me. I told him that I wasn’t OK with that because my family just moved to MX and I wasn’t sure I was going to stay on the same city for that long.

I can’t believe that they wanted me to sign a voucher for a legacy training.

 

 

 

 

 

Personal

LACS goodbye

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My last day @ CUCEI was also the last time I saw LACS alive.

There was a meeting scheduled the day before vacations and I decided to go, to share a last time with my professors who became my friends and then my co-workers/peers.

Once the meeting was over, we went to receive our payslip, I got mine pretty early but stayed talking with my “mother from CUCEI” on sideline.

Another friend came and we were all talking and then LACS turned up, so I went to say Hi as always, so we started talking until he was about to receive his payslip or after that, I don’t remember exactly.

The things we discussed:

  1. Me learning python, how I considered to be a weird language, slow and highly disappointed of its PVM. He told me that Python was a great language for learning and teaching, that he liked it and I should give it some slack…so I decided to do it; I don’t think I would have respected the language I’m using right now if other person have told me something like this.
  2. My goodbye from CUCEI, I told him I was quitting my last class @CUCEI(Compilers) because of the distance from home and that I will continue teaching on grad school@ CUCEA. He told me to not be an stranger, that we will keep in touch by whatsapp/email but that I should and visit from time to time, he gave me a big hug and told me that he hoped to collaborate with me again in the future.

Obviously @ the moment none of us thought that will be the last time we will see each other but it was, and it was the closest to a real goodbye with closure I will ever have from him.

I miss you big brother.

University

How did I end up teaching in CUCEI?

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I finished my 1st bachelors, graduated immediately, took a semester not enrolled to classes( but I attended) and then started my second bachelors.

In that semester off, I worked along some friends and all the directives of my campus(division) to create a festival with two branches: science and cultural.  We had weekly meetings where we presented advances and discuss the progress of it; on one of those meetings the then head of the CS department told me that there was a sick teacher and she needed to fill the vacancy, so she asked me if I could do it, at first I was reluctant since I wasn’t attracted to teach but I accepted because it was her that asked; I ended up loving the job.