My Life As A HouseWife - Part 1

Becoming a housewife is something I never thought of ... or dreamt of ... Destiny forced it upon me when "lay-off" happened and there were lack of jobs ... In the US ... I was at home and Hiren was working ... In the initial few days, I applied for the job ... as usual, I need to prepare a lot for the interview ... I had to prepare "what have I worked on the job ?" and "how I have done it ?", "any challenges ?" etc ... most importantly I had to work on choosing the right statements and right words to describe my work ... whereas in the office environment generally there is "no need to talk while working" ... so "interview" is the only place where you need to talk "technologically" ... and also work on the "confidence" after lay-off ...


Generally, it is assumed that if a person has worked on a given task a lot, then he/she will have no hurdles in the interview ... but I do not know why (the reason might be "interview" is the only place to talk about technology), I never used to remember the exact work I have done ... there used to be expectations of knowing the work at the "logic level" and "syntax level", which I could never remember ... there can be another level where we could ask questions which is the "domain level" ... I could remember that ... but I think "domain" level comes at very high level of software engineering ... or probably it is altogether different work, "analysis work" ... In one hour of interview, I used to struggle with deriving an algorithm, given a "high level problem statement"  ... I generally need a lot of time to derive logic and consequent algorithm ... for sufficiently complex algorithms, I need 4 to 5 hours or so or even a day when I work ... another level of work could be the "system level" ... where we need to put the architecture in place ... need to derive its inputs and outputs ... and consequent state changes of the system on receiving the input or sending the output ... this level requires high level understanding of the system which I could try to gather ... and found it worth a challenge !


For any interview at any software engineering level, the algorithms which are asked in the interview, are pretty generic (not related to work) ... like generate Fibonacci Series, Reverse the String etc. ... there are participants who remember the exact algorithm ... probably, they work on it quite often ... but I do not remember it unless I practice it during "preparation", just before the interview ... and I wonder if we can derive the "Fibonacci Series" algorithm at the 11th hour ... first of all people who are NOT in mathematics, won't remember "The Fibonacci series" even though it is taught at school... if so, there are no ways to derive the programming logic at 11th hour ...  unless we answer the basic programming questions, we can not go at higher level of software engineering job ... 


My opinion 1 - If I describe the "domain/system" in the interview, the next questions of "building logic" and "building syntax", should be asked around the domain/system. The generic algorithms should be avoided.

My opinion 2 - Why I could never remember my work ? I did not write each statement on my own. I have the habit of copying the basic examples from the "internet" or from a code block already done by someone else, and then put my logic around it. For me, it should have been a matter of explaining only MY logic and NOT the entire logic (which involves copying the basic) in the interview process. 

My opinion 3 - Practice speaking about "technical work" in the office environment.




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