Twenty One

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I never got around to talking about Atlassian, did I? When you start you're encouraged to write an introductory blog, visible to the entire company (but not all of the company will be bothered to read it because there are always many introductory blog posts from new people starting). I never got around to writing mine, and I'm glad I didn't. I think writing about my experiences from day 1 would have been interesting and in some cases valuable because when you've already known something for a long time, you see things differently to someone who is seeing it for the first time. A new perspective could lead to more discussion and improvements, however I'm not one who would create discussion or share perspectives uninvited.

For me a dream job could be many occupations. I don't want specific occupations such as being a professional gamer, an astronaut or a lawyer. I'm not too concerned about status or climbing some ladder. My dream job would pay reasonably well. It would be sustainable - no negative stress, reasonable hours, secure. Hours would be flexible, work / life balance would be good. It wouldn't be boring all the time. I wouldn't dislike anyone I had to work with. It would be something I did for income, somewhat enjoyable and not meaningless.

You can view a job as trading time for money, except a dream job wouldn't be like that, you aren't throwing away your time, you're using it. It wouldn't define me like being an actor or athlete defines them. It's just my job.

Maybe there's more, but that's the general idea. Atlassian fits it. When I started some things were outstanding. Things I was proud of, that I could tell my parents about them, your workplaces weren't anything like this, were they? Things like being able to bring your dog to the office, having foundation leave (taking time off work for a charity, while still getting paid your normal hours). Values that are a breath of fresh air compared to your standard corporation (open company, no bullshit / don't fuck the customer). ShipIt, a quarterly event where you may stop your normal work to work on whatever you want - a new feature, some internal tool to help people find things, a card game, etc. But mostly new features, that are often unused. Still a very useful event to break the monotony of work and allow people to innovate. Even if many things aren't used, the things that are make a big difference. An example is a ShipIt project becoming an entirely new product. These haven't been big events for me because I haven't had any ideas of things to work on, and I don't feel like joining a group of strangers, even though it's encouraged and a good opportunity to do so.

Maybe the best thing was that one of the founder's birthday coincided with the release date of Star Wars, so the entire Sydney office was invited to take the afternoon off to watch it. They booked out an entire theatre, and the line of people went from the entrance all the way to the junction of the next street. My manager noticed I didn't put these hours on my timesheet and told me to add them - it was a company function.

I did an okay job. There's a lot I don't know. I still find it difficult to explain what my team even does. But I do a reasonable amount of work for what I am paid. After the 3 months I was allowed to stay part time (2 days) for the rest of the 2016. In 2017 I'll start full time with the other graduates, some of which were part of the same intern cohort.

This was lucky because I don't have to apply for jobs again, which I believe is especially unfun for graduates. I should still update my resume sometime. I considered applying for one other place, Google, and I think I would have had a decent chance of making it through their technical interviews. The main reason for applying was that a friend would be interning there, but then that a weak reason unless they are going to have a permanent job there.
Other pros were: Probably higher pay, probably more room to learn and improve skills (not very important to me), better perks and better free food.
Cons: longer commute, have to do job application, already bird in hand. By that I mean, at Atlassian I know I would like my team, have a good dota community, have lunchtime magic (the card game) and tournaments, not be stressed, not feel pressured. None of those are guaranteed elsewhere. I think most important is the magic tournaments. They are very fun, and I doubt there are enough players to do that elsewhere.

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In semester 1 this year I did 2 courses - Programming Challenges (COMP4128) and Distributed Systems (9243). They are both advanced courses and very time consuming. My goal was to do my best and no more, which I was sure would be enough to pass the course.

It's hard to explain what I mean by doing my best. It doesn't mean studying all of the time. It means doing as well as I can while still having the leisure time I want. This isn't a solid definition because the effort varies depending on how much leisure time I want. I'm trusting myself to know how much leisure time I should have to still get work done. Over the last 16 years I've become really good at hitting the range where additional effort is not worth it.

Many times during exam periods I would think "Okay, this is fine, just endure for 2 more weeks and we're done". "Just one more week". "Just 4 more days". And that worked, I would stop playing games and just study. If I felt like I wasn't too pushed for time I could be lazier while studying.

Another way of defining trying my best would to be maximise my leisure time while minimising this endurance time. Starting the assignment at just the right time so I won't be stressed while doing it. Unfortunately this didn't work for two of my Distributed Systems assignments that were done in groups of two because my group partner didn't put in as much effort I did. Those were both late by a day, which means 3-4 days before the due date I was working in endurance mode because I knew we would miss the deadline.

The final exam for Programming Challenges didn't require much preparation, because it was open book and the problems would be similar to ones we had already practised as homework. That being said, last year the top mark was something like 6 questions finished out of 12, of the 5 hour exam. It was similar this year. During the exam you could see how everyone else was doing. Like a live scoreboard, as you would have in a real programming contest. You don't want to look at it too much (but to be honest looking at it is fine because you have 5 hours). I think there were 3 students with similar top scores, a small gap, and then I was fourth. I was disappointed because if things were done differently I could have been jumped ahead of those scores by the same gap (like in chinese checkers).

I wasted a lot of time on an easy question because I forgot a really easy algorithm, and the code I wrote was too slow compared to that algorithm, which was in my notes. The questions weren't worded clearly, so even though I knew what algorithms to use in one of the them, I didn't understand what the question was even asking. They give you sample input and output for your program. That means given this input, your program should output this text. For example, sample input is 3 + 4, sample output is 7. This question's sample input and output made no sense to me. I think with the extra time from not forgetting to use the obvious algorithm, and asking for clarification on what the other question meant, I would have been able to get that question.

There was another question that I got partially correct. Each question had 2 parts. One is small input, which most algorithms will solve. The other is large input, which only fast algorithms will be able to solve. I got the small input for that question and assumed it would need more work to solve the large input, and decided to move on to a different question instead. I assumed that code I wrote for part of the question would be too slow, and there was a faster way to do what I was doing. After the exam I realised there wasn't a faster way. So the same code I submitted for the small input might have passed the large input too, but I never submitted it to see. Of course, at the same time there's a good chance some other part of my code was too slow and it would fail anyway. But it sucks not knowing.

The exam for Distributed systems was open book. However, the stack of notes I printed (and needed to revise) was about the half the height of the long side of an A4 page, and I hadn't done any revision of the lectures during the semester, since the only assessments so far were assignments. Studying that was about a week of endurance mode, too. But at least after that, university was over. No more cramming. It felt normal. It wasn't that exciting.

During the semester I tutored two classes for COMP1911, which is pretty much an introductory computing course. One class was 3 hours (1 tutorial, 2 lab). The other was just the lab. During the tute you go through questions, revising concepts needed to answer those questions as go you along. During the lab you help students with their lab questions, and also mark them when they are done. There are 2 tutors in the lab (one tutor takes tute-lab, the other takes lab-only). Even with two tutors, the majority of the time is spent marking rather than helping. It must have been hard in previous years, with only one tutor to mark the same number of students.

I think I did an okay job. It's hard to tell because you don't receive much feedback.

One of the things to remember is that you won't have much effect on HD students. They can do the course by themselves. Your effort is best spent helping those who are on the verge of failing. That means you are frustrated that your explanations aren't understood, rather than delighted from discussing finer details of the language with HD students. It means your lessons are probably really boring for some people because they already learned this in the lecture and did their lab ahead of time.

I won't say it was very hard to teach this introductory course, but it wasn't simple either. It has challenges similar to those you would have teaching someone English from scratch.

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This semester (2) I'm taking 2 tute-labs for COMP2041, a course that covers data processing scripts and programming tools. The content is slightly more advanced, so I have to do a bit more revision. But the students are also more capable of understanding explanations (except when there are language barriers).

I would say revision and preparation is about half a day, the classes another day, and Atlassian 2 more days, so it's like a 3.5 day week. This is a good amount of work. Enough so I am not overdosing on holidays, but not too much so I can have a break before working full time.

When I transferred from Computer Science / Commerce to just Computer Science, one of my courses wasn't meant to count. I did 8 first year commerce courses, and you're only allowed 5 first year electives and 2 general education units. I emailed student services about that and they said that they did a check and I would be okay to graduate provided I passed my semester 1 courses.
However, I got an email this semester saying that I failed the graduate check, because one of those electives shouldn't count. I went to talk to them in person, explained why I didn't enroll in any courses this semester and showed them the email. Thankfully they decided to honour that email, so I didn't have to do another course.

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I've noticed that I have become very introverted. I'm not sure, maybe I have always been like this, but I think before there was also shyness mixed in, but not so much anymore. I am just not interested in people, especially strangers. Sometimes there are people who are friends of friends. If we are introduced I will greet them and forget their name. If we are not introduced, I will probably ignore them, hopefully in a way that doesn't make them uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, not being interested in people makes it easier to be lonely.

I read something about how small talk has an actual purpose, it reaffirms social bonds. Things like showing interest (how are you) and positivity (i'm good, thanks) let you both explicitly acknowledge your bond.

Because of above, I might say less to people I know better because I feel less awkward, and in turn less pressured to affirm these bonds.

I think I am ok at talking. I can speak confidently in front of a class and be helpful and friendly-but-not-friends. I can tell people about things when they ask me how things are. I don't dislike talking either. It can be fun.

But I don't talk in groups. And you can only do so much when you are not interested in people. But you know what, that's actually only for strangers. I'm interested in how my friends are doing, sometimes.

I think Pokemon GO as a social activity is good. I don't like how it (and in turn games in general) are sometimes brushed off as a pathetic way of socialising. For people like me, they give purpose to interaction, so now I will interact more and be healthier. It also makes it easier to interact, because it gives a topic to talk about, which would otherwise be difficult or pointless for someone who finds the others uninteresting.

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I think I would like to go back to listening to music more often. One of the things I did when upgrading from Windows 7 to 10 was not keep all of my old music. It wasn't too much of a hassle because I have my legal music on CDs, and I should buy music that I like. I haven't bought electronic copies of music - ones attached to a Google or Apple account, for instance. I think the main reason is because I would end up with 2 music collections, when I would rather have everything in one place. I would buy electronic copies of music if Steam started doing it, since I already use that for games. However, they don't yet. Some songs aren't available physically, which means I haven't bought some of the music that I would have liked to buy.

I wanted to listen to some songs that I used to have. For some reason I decided it would be easier to buy the albums from Amazon than to download a torrenting client and use that. Maybe I felt like I should already own it anyway. I think I didn't buy it because it was either more expensive than I would have liked in Australian stores, or not on the shelves at all.