For myself, there were some people with unique jobs I could have talked to, but I decided to interview a Software developer named Ivan from the HSBC Bank in Toronto. He’s essentially responsible for knowing how to code in a certain language that most people in his company don’t know well and I chose this individual out of all the other opportunities because I hope to learn about Software Engineering and programming in the future. Furthermore, there were limited options to choose from, because most of my contacts did not reply back, so I saw him as the most viable opportunity. I was able to connect to this person through my father who suggested him to me to interview which I had gratefully accepted. He seemed really passionate about coding and I thought it would be significant and helpful to learn from him. I was able to get most of the answers from him by recording his voice through my phone, while I was able to interview him online on WhatsApp and seeing each others’ faces. Here were some questions that I asked him, and it was nice to have a well thought out responses from him, as I gave him time to prepare the day before of this interview.
- Why are you passionate about your job?
“Umm, well I thin
k I like to be a programmer. So, I enjoy coding, it’s a lot of fun to do coding so that’s why my job brings me to do this developing even though sometimes we do production support. We will be working a lot on debugging diagnostic, so then that would be the programming structure, it’s a lot of fun.”
2. What obstacles have you faced to get you where you are today?
“Right now on my job, HSBC, they don’t have too many people to do coding right. For me, it’s a lot of work to be one person to do coding, even though I have two or three members, they don’t know how to code in my language. So it’s only me to do that. So, whenever I got a project with minor changing, it would be a lot of time that relies on me. I worked a long time to complete my job.”
3. What advice would you pass on to someone interested in what you are doing?
“Well I think that programming is a 
really wide topic, so you got the most university or college students, they will be going to learn a lot of language even though they are not in the Computer Science programming, it could be possible they could get into business, or be a lawyer, or become an accountant. They are still learning the programming in the university or college because they need to understand the programming stuff and that will be helpful for that job. If someone wants to do computer programming, you may work on new technology language, like Java or C++, so you may not learn a lot, just knowing how to use the library, how to do the Graphics Gui, so it’s a nice language. But to understand the fundamental of the programming, you need to work more on low level languages. So, an example is if HSBC is going to hire a programmer, you need to spend a lot of time to get into that, so you need to understand what is the basic language and what’s the procedure of what to do. So, that way it will help you to building up more and more experience. What I will say is you need to work hard and also work on an area rather than to focus on one ‘pond’.”
4. Would yo
u be open to further contact from Riverside students and if so, how can someone contact you?
“Well, HSBC isn’t that open. I will say that if you go to your work of your parents, then you can go to your company to learn and getting more content of the people so you can understand what they are doing. That will be very important, so that will be a content pond for you to get it. If you do get to college or university, I’ll say most of them to program right now, they are co-op programming. So if you are co-op programming, you will be tied to be working on that company. In Hong Kong bank are open for students to cooperate in programming, so you could apply by reaching out, or asking your parents to get recognized to, or you can call me also. So that’s the only thing that I could think about.”
5. If you did not discover this job as your passion, what other career would you have pursued?
“Well, I think when you are doing the programming or the experience, I’ve been working for 30-40 years of programming. So, you will get into they are organizing people, you will do a lot of structure stuff. Like if I’m not doing programming, I would likely be going to looking for project management so that would be another area I can be looking on because project manager is looking into the basic of computers and to organize people. The reason for that is because when you program, you would have to be organized, like going in important steps, and the next step and the next step. You can’t just code that and come back to that one, so you have to have a linking of going to a ‘pond’ and then another ‘pond’. So being a project manager would have to be how would you organize the project, how you organize the people, and how you would arrange the jobs to the people. So, project manager would be a good opportunity instead of doing programming.”
6. When did you found out that you wanted to pursue this job?”
“My first job after university was working in a company with old technology like using the pager system. So that was my first job in Hong Kong. So in that time, I was allowed to leave that job and work in this environment or company.”
After discussing and interviewing Ivan about his job I learned a considerable amount of interesting info, not just about him but about coding itself. This has definitely had me more intrigued and what type of challenges could occur for me if I decided to pursue programming. Some of what I learned is the advice that he gave me to focus on the easier languages to focus and building up my experience to take on even more challenges. Moreover, I learned that working with other people in groups in programming is common, so I hope to strive to be collaborative in the future. In the end, it was a pleasure to interview him and it has given me a better insight of what it’s like to be a software developer.
Cited Sources:
Programming in Macbook with a cup. Digital Image. Pixabay. Sept. 5,2015. https://pixabay.com/photos/coding-programming-working-macbook-924920/.
Programming on a screen. Digital Image. Pixabay. Nov. 19, 2016. https://pixabay.com/photos/code-code-editor-coding-computer-1839406/.
Dahlström, Håkan. HSBC building in London, Flickr. August 12, 2015, www.flickr.com/photos/dahlstroms/20431761439/in/photostream/.
Dahlström, Håkan. HSBC building in London from an angle, Flickr. August 12,2015, www.flickr.com/photos/dahlstroms/20430506570/in/photostream/.