I had three hours to write a JavaScript single page application that implemented a very simple Reddit client in the browser. I was assured I would likely not need more than one hour. At the end of the first hour, the interviewer checked back in with me to see how I was progressing. I had been struggling just to get the basic scaffolding of the application put together. I had used a lot of the hour on looking up libraries and tools as well as refreshing myself on my JavaScript syntax.
I managed to complete the assignment in a little over two hours. I felt not only frustrated but embarrassed at how long it took me as compared to when I was in my top programming form. The interviewer assured me it was fine but I knew it was far from my best possible effort. As it turns out, the interviewer was right. For that particular prospect in my recent job search, I progressed to the next round of interviews.
I wrote an Inner Chapter years ago about brushing up programming skills after a period of not using them. I wrote that chapter for a listener who had gone through some hardship and was looking for help adjusting. Partly it was coping with changes in physical ability specific to that listener, partly it was more general advice on sharpening skills. I’ve been thinking a lot again on the subject of getting back up to speed at programming having just left a full time management job to go back to a full time programming one.
Even in the first year at the job I just left, when I was still in more of an engineering role, I didn’t feel like I got a lot of practice at programming. They had some technology projects but the pace of and pressures on them were very different, being a non-profit, than what I had experienced up to that point. Even when I was promoted, a lot of my skills as a technical manager didn’t apply very well. The kinds of stakeholders we had didn’t really know much about the standard software life-cycle. I ended up spending far more time managing personnel, managing budgets, and fund raising rather than implementing and supporting processes for creating software in a regular and consistent way. It was a rare day when I got to work with technology directly.
As I’ve written about recently, a large part of my decision to leave that job was realizing how unhappy the lack of opportunity to code was making me. To make matters more stressful, during my job search I had to explain over and over again why I was leaving an upper management role and looking for work as a programmer.
“You are currently director of technology?” “Yes.” “You know this is not a management job, right?” “Yes.” “You’ve been a manager before. You truly understand this is just a programming job?”
I got very practiced at telling the story of my multiple runs at management. I would tell them that I never started as a manager. Working at a small organization, it would become clear, usually due to growth, that more leadership was needed. Foolishly, perhaps, I would volunteer, at least until they found someone better at managing. They never did. Eventually the strain and the desire to get back to programming would become overwhelming. Taking a demotion was never a practical option so three times, now, I have found myself in this same juncture.
I have only been on my new job three weeks but I’ve been thinking about a few experiences that could be helpful to someone else looking to get up to speed. I already shared the first one but I had several other experiences just as part of the job search process that I think are relevant. Just going through several successive coding assignments, especially in a very reflective state of mind, revealed insights I continue to ponder.
In that very first coding assignment, I mostly felt frustration. I had to look everything up, even the basic tools and libraries I was using. I had lost the equivalent of muscle tone. I couldn’t reflexively just spin up the bare minimum set up and configuration to get some arbitrary bit of new code working. I was struggling with my tools rather than feeling that they were smoothing and accelerating my efforts. The silver lining to that frustration was the immense sense of accomplishment on mastering it. As long as I remember this frustration, I am less likely to take my tools for granted. When I have felt that frustration again at the new job, even with more time and resources to get something done, I am able to see it in context, as a very normal part of the experience, trusting that if I persevere, I will be rewarded.
In a good environment, getting tools and configurations right will be a shared burden. My new gig is very much like this, though the work to keep the tooling up to snuff is a little bit of a guerilla priority. Engineers have to squeeze time in around things other people find more pressing. A lower priority on process and tools compared to more obvious business value is actually common in my experience. Regardless, I was grateful, as a consequence of the frustrations I felt during the coding assignments throughout my search. My new colleagues apologized for the roughness of the code and documentation, I was just glad to not have to do all the necessary grunt work on my own. I was motivated to contribute what I could out of that appreciation. I felt that contributing to improving the basic set up in this way paid forward the kindness done to me, lessening the frustration of the next new hire. Jumping in was also good practice to help with my overall brushing up and gave me an opportunity to understand the set up a bit better, always a good thing when the need to troubleshoot it arises.
I didn’t even have to get to the new job to realize some improvements in my disused coding skills. In the subsequent coding assignments, I was able to make better progress more quickly. I had to do a second assignment for the same prospect as that very first, super frustrating assignment. On that second attempt I was better able to focus on the challenge at hand and the quality of my code. I found that trend continued through a few other coding projects I did as part of my search. By the end, I was spending as much time on the code comments and the commit history, to really show off my thought process and how well I understand the problem I had been presented.
The last coding assignment I did, I completed in less than an hour. I got to show off a little, too. The problem definition included some hints that could easily be missed. It asked to include some comments on the code’s performance. I was given the maximum expected input size. Once I had the code provably working, as demonstrated by some unit tests I turned in with the assignment, I thought about that maximum input size. I didn’t think it was included for no reason so added a unit test that run a random input sample that matched the stated max. Not surprisingly, my code slowed to a crawl.
I was able to recall not just my core programming skills but also some troubleshooting. I didn’t fire up a full on interactive debugger but did add some logging. I worked from very broad to increasingly narrow sections of code until I had isolated the problem. I figured out and made some changes that my tests now revealed improved the performance to be acceptable. I even left some code comments suggesting how the performance could be improved further.
I think that just the opportunity to practice with some clear goals can do a lot to help knock off the rust. You may not always have coding assignments like in a job search but there are online resources that can serve a similar purpose. As part of my orientation packet at my new job, I was turned on to Code School. The topics are limited, focusing on web development with just a few technologies but I like the approach. The courses combine short instructional videos and interactive exercises.
Whatever resources you find to use, I think the practical aspect is important. I am still relying on books a lot, even if I am loading them on my tablet rather than accumulating heavy stacks of paper as I did far earlier in my career. The best books, just like the online courses, include exercises that give the reader a chance to work with the material covered. Application is key to cementing a new skill or reviving a disused one.
I suppose there is a role for trivia, accumulating simple facts about programming or tools, but it is less helpful when learning for the first time or getting back into the swing of things. When working through an exercise, I will often have one of two very gratifying experiences. I will either laugh out loud or nod and smile as some bit of skill or knowledge comes flooding back to me. I laugh when feeling the visceral joy of either getting something to work or even more powerfully, of feeling come concept really snap into place in my mind.
The next challenge for me is getting back into good daily habits for coding. I think I will save my thoughts on that subject for another post. Hopefully, my early experiences getting back up to speed make sense and are useful to at least some of you.