Empathy before all
This week has been quite challenging since I had my first interview in the technology area in the role of interviewer.
Although it’s true that presenting yourself to an interview where there will be a technical challenge (solving an algorithm) as an interviewee is an extremely complicated challenge, it seems to me that it is more difficult to be an interviewer since, to do it in the right way, you must study and understand depth not only the problem but also the language with which it is intended to solve it.
I would like to say that I am very used to working with python, so I had to catch up on JavaScript (JS) since it was the language in which the interview was developed.
A peculiarity that I would like to highlight about JS is its way of duplicating objects, mention this because in python it’s enough that you equal a new variable to a previously established one so that this language understands that you want to create an independent variable from the one that was taken as a base, in JS this does not happen like this, here what will happen is that you will have the same value in memory to which two variables point, that is to say, if you modify one variable, you will also modify the other because, at essence, they aren’t two variables, it’s only one which you can refer to by two different names (variables).
Although I had fun doing the interview, I can also say that it was quite a challenge for me, since I had to study at least two ways to solve the proposed algorithm, in order to be able to help my interviewee if he needed help or if I saw that he was taking a new path, being able to understand what he was thinking, in general, knowing both the problem (algorithm) and the programming language (JS) would help me to have greater empathy with the interviewee.
Speaking of empathy I would also like to add two things that I learned, one was the 4–7–8 breathing technique which helps you empathize with yourself since it is designed to be used in times of stress, I think it is very important to have the ability to regain control of yourself when you find yourself in a difficult situation and this technique helps you do that.
On the other hand, I saw Kenny Werner talk about how to master a specific topic and be considered an expert. His idea is that you can stop being so hard on yourself and allow yourself to explore, play with what you are trying to master. In this way, you can explore all the edges of the subject since once you lose the fear of making mistakes, you manage to go to places that you wouldn’t enter because of the fear. I loved this way of seeing life since it teaches that the one who makes a mistake doesn’t lose, but the one who does not even try loses indeed.
This last idea is the one with which I stayed, with that of always trying to do things the best possible way, without fear of making mistakes and with the firm belief that when we make mistakes, we must learn from this experience in order to be better every time we get up.
