If you enter IT line u better forget about "more time with my loved ones, my kids and my wife."

A lot of IT projects have lousy PM who will over promise with their customers and push the work load to the programmers. Then the programmers have to work over the weekends and public holidays.

Hi everyone,

I was working as a Quality Engineer previously in 3 different companies within the Aerospace, Furniture and Solar industry. I am 37 years old now, with total of 13 years experience in manufacturing industry.

Even though this past journey was both enjoyable and challenging, I felt I was not doing enough to satisfy myself. I thought I have to do something that makes me keep learning new things in my life and adapt with new technology.

I resigned from my last post as senior QA engineer back in Feb 2021 with last drawn salary of RM 6,600. I was not looking to find a new job whatsoever. Just to take a break from the boring, toxic and stressful environment that I had. Just to have more time with my loved ones, my kids and my wife. I never intended to go back to the same field and since then I have been looking to equip myself with what I have passion with, blockchain and crypto.

Currently I am equipping myself by enrolling in Advanced Diploma in Blockchain Engineering. This is a 1 year program and expected to finish in Nov'22. Other than this, I am learning all the basics and necessary course in Software Development.

My questions:

1. Since my past experiences are irrelevant, what is the possible/expected salary should I aim?
2. Will the future employer consider me as a junior role or senior role?
3. What do you think about blockchain technology? In your opinion, is it the future or just a hype?
4. Any recommendation? What would you do if you were me? (going back to manufacturing is not an option).
Many thanks 

Regards
Khairi

So how is your luck with IT, TS?

Hi everyone,

I was working as a Quality Engineer previously in 3 different companies within the Aerospace, Furniture and Solar industry. I am 37 years old now, with total of 13 years experience in manufacturing industry.

Even though this past journey was both enjoyable and challenging, I felt I was not doing enough to satisfy myself. I thought I have to do something that makes me keep learning new things in my life and adapt with new technology.

I resigned from my last post as senior QA engineer back in Feb 2021 with last drawn salary of RM 6,600. I was not looking to find a new job whatsoever. Just to take a break from the boring, toxic and stressful environment that I had. Just to have more time with my loved ones, my kids and my wife. I never intended to go back to the same field and since then I have been looking to equip myself with what I have passion with, blockchain and crypto.

Currently I am equipping myself by enrolling in Advanced Diploma in Blockchain Engineering. This is a 1 year program and expected to finish in Nov'22. Other than this, I am learning all the basics and necessary course in Software Development.

My questions:

1. Since my past experiences are irrelevant, what is the possible/expected salary should I aim?
2. Will the future employer consider me as a junior role or senior role?
3. What do you think about blockchain technology? In your opinion, is it the future or just a hype?
4. Any recommendation? What would you do if you were me? (going back to manufacturing is not an option).
Many thanks 

Regards
Khairi

This "blockchain technology" keyword is wide you know.....

As if like i'm saying , i have experiences in IT. IT is a broad word too.

So far, I had attended 2 front-end developer interviews. The first one back in Sep'22 and the second one is Today.

I just want to share what I have gone through. Maybe you guys can advise or take this as a guide if you are about to be interviewed as well.

1st Interview:

This is my 1st awkward experience interview process. The first stage, the interviewer call ALL candidates (around 15 pax) into a zoom meeting, at 7am in the morning, he introduced himself as the owner of the company (puchong). This is an app provider for medical practitioner in malaysia. And after that everyone of us has to introduce ourself and let us know our biggest accomplishment. It lasted around 2 hours.

Right after it, everyone has to provide below information through email. I guess he wanted to test whether we remember the discussion or not.

1. Summary of each candidate and interviewer, their name and role.
2. Why we should hire you?
3. Give your reference contacts.
4. Provide any evidence of your work/project such as website or github.
5. Payslip

I was able to passed the 1st stage and The 2nd stage is where they invite me for an online test. The Online test session duration is 2 hours and 45 minutes and will be done in zoom.
After enter the zoom, the instructor explain around 5 minutes, said that this is recorded and need to show video until end. Just after that she left.

Q1. SQL Test, jQuery, JS,
Q2. Problem Solving Question (this is where I wasted most of the time) 
Q3. Backend and Front End Assessment Test (C# was asked )
Q4. IQ test
Q5. Personalities test
Q6. Typing test

I can't even finish all of these after 3 hours !   Because I was not expecting they will ask about backend and database as well since the JD only stated HTML, CSS, JS and React.
Also, Q2, Q4, Q5 and Q6 are not related to programming all. What is the intention here? Is this normal for front-end job?

2nd Interview

So today I just finished my 1st stage interview (I think), for around 2 hours. I got a call from a recruiter just after 1 day updated my jobstreet profile. I did not apply any jobs yet though.

The first half interview question is more on technical/theory part of the web dev such as react, css, html or even next.js (I can list down here if needed) plus with some behavorial question.

The second half part is the live coding, they give me CodeSandbox file with a boilerplate then I need to build a simple app calling an api from external server. I did some mistakes since there were some error on the post method. But I did ask question and provide explanation as to why I did what I did. And after 1 hour I was able to finish it properly.

The interview were very nice to me and really helpful, I really like this kind of team with good mindset. 

IQ test and Personalities test are quite common, but first time i heard about typing test.
And usually the test I received during interview were usually require more than the time they given to complete, I usually just pick the hardest the question to prove my capability since it's quite impossible to complete.

I was also shocked there was a typing test. Maybe they require their dev to be a fast typing one. Anyway I did not get the offer, even they offer me I will have to think many times lol.