Before I started as a consultant at Red Hat I knew little beyond the title of the role what I would be doing on a day to day basis. People ask "... tech consultant? What is that?" And I've seen it described as a career path that is "less traditional" for those going to work in the software industry. Today I thought I'd dispel some of the mystery around the role of a software consultant and talk about key goals, roles, and terminology related to successful technical consulting.
It's dark out already. I'm I'm walking back to my hotel from the convention center after a long day of work, it's super humid. I take my bag off my shoulder because the weight is a pain. I feel a stretch in my neck as I start swinging my bag in my hand. We're talking about work-life. I explain that I don't have much to complain about after a long list of accomplishments I've gathered throughout the year. I likened it to this idea that I had of myself when I first started my job. I'd credit every chance I got to do an excellent job as just wind to the sails of my sailboat. The accomplishments and recognition would be the waves that I would ride until I would inevitably hit a lull. There's a crescent moon out, and I think of how scenic the sky looks, just like it would if I were in the middle of the ocean. Despite any extra paddling I have to do, I feel happiness and joy thinking about my progress over the past year. I mention that I feel like no one else knows how far I've come and that it almost seems like anyone else has seen me despite my efforts. I note that I can't complain because I had the waves. I lag as I look up, my peer is quick to respond, "don't say that." And we talk about life at their company. I feel a tinge of perspective coming on, but I swallow it down while breathing in the hot Florida air and hoping for a breeze.
I believe that in knowing your strengths and being brave, you may find yourself taking risks and committing to tasks you believe in more readily. I was doing this for some time throughout the summer, thinking maybe I could gain more air if I pushed myself to grow outside of myself even if this meant putting in extra hours to work on the most critical tasks and projects. I submitted a few conference abstracts, signed up to do much more than I needed, and I pushed on all my deliverables right up until the date for a significant event where we would be presenting our team's work. Sure enough, I did not have the energy to be present at the moment. I felt glad that I had something tangible completed, but I wasn't there to enjoy the event, and I found myself feeling used up at every "great work!" that came my way. I had worked past my stress without ever acknowledging it, and I felt ashamed. What did I do to myself?
I participated in the week's worth of activities, retreating to my hotel room every night exhausted and wanting nothing else to do except lay or go back home to Maryland. On the last day of the week, I was ending a conversation with someone when I stopped myself short of the end, quietly sank into my neck, and called myself a loser. I felt like one. I repeated it when I felt the weight of my own words, and I was saying, "I'm such a loser." "I feel like a loser." Loud enough to be heard. I felt ashamed because I felt trapped and stuck in my rut. I had been trying to own my rejections, failures, stress, forgotten. I was doing this for months.
Some days you know those emotions aren't for you to hold onto for you to keep bottled up. Some days you don't, you refuse to disengage and let go.
I didn't want to be the person who's not "good enough" to speak at an event, someone who is falling short on their goals. I chalk it up to not being able to make an impact. But this is like running till your lungs hurt, chasing down the closest thing to you. Maybe once you've caught up, it'll mean nothing to you, or you'll keep chasing down the next thing.
Sometimes I don't know how else to reach my own goals than to keep chasing what's immediately in front of me. I clutch my skills and strength and play to them like a tempo. My legs are the hands that sign myself up for the next challenge. It takes time and perspective to do it any better than that. For the rest of this year, though, I'm hoping not to kill myself blindly chasing. But that's not to say I won't run.
My first summer job was at a battery company assembling and testing various battery designs. It was at the startup on a college campus where my brother had been interning. I don’t think I’ll ever forget about how unaware and lost I felt: feeling my way through my nerves and the logistics of how to behave, where to be, and even how to dress.
I quickly understood that there would be no horse playing and keeping the bench areas clear and clean would be a priority. But I hadn’t prepared for any confrontations with my coworkers…
One day it was a scientist who came into the room to tell the interns to clean up after themselves. Someone had left the scale dirty and turned on. This person had continued for a week or two and it was getting to the point of negligence and sloppiness. The scientist continued with his reminders. Maybe an assumption due to being the youngest and maybe most inexperienced in the group, I was scolded for the first time on the job. I was told to clean up and never do it again. I felt awful as I ended the day cleaning up after someone else. I was ashamed because I did not say anything, I wished that someone else could or would have vouched for me.
I sat dejected as my brother drove us back home that evening. Not being able to hide how I felt I explained what happened.
"You should've said something. You need to learn to stand up for yourself because he'll keep thinking it's your fault otherwise." Those words from my brother were so simple, and I found myself in them. No one will know the truth if you don't say anything, and no one will know if you don't try to communicate your intentions.
Being brave is stepping out of your comfort zone, it also means realizing what needs to be done and doing it.
I spoke when I was addressed for the same issue again the following week: "That isn't me, I always clean up the scale and turn it off when I am done."
"Oh. OK." was the response I received.
While this person had ever little impact in my time at the company I found that I wanted to continue on with being brave. I knew that at the end of the day the people that worked at the startup trusted and respected me more for being honest and direct. The world could be a little more understanding when we find it within ourselves to be brave.
I reaped the benefits of trust and respect for simply speaking clearly. However, I definitely think that this isn’t the only example of bravery… Feel free to share something in the comments about how you were brave.
The end of 2018 had a good amount of chaos which happened to coincide with other plans to enjoy my PTO. It almost feels surreal that the month of December 2018 came to a close and ever so peacefully. It also seems like a blessing that, naturally, I could put away the books, some work and the planning to just… relax. Here’s some highlights on what I did during my week off.
TV time:
AquaMan in theaters, there is not much to say here, I did not watch it in 3D or IMAX, but if you get the chance, you should do it. The effort that was put into the movie really showed through. Also, who doesn’t love a killer exposition?
Hi Score Girl, this Netflix original rom-con anime will give you so much nostalgia. The story starts off with Haruro, an elementary school boy who’s one skill is playing video games. The time is set in the late nineties when gamers frequented arcades. One day, after school Haruro loses to Ono, a rich girl from his class and their lives get entangled from then on. It’s interesting to see Haruro’s character weave in and out of gamer troupes to interact and grow with Ono, who is also a very unique character herself, not having spoken a single word during the first season.
Games:
Every winter I pick a game on a console and binge. I usually have an inkling on the game and platform ahead of time, but I was not prepared by any means this season. Because it was already on my PC I put a few days into ‘Don’t Starve’. An indie survival game. It had been a few years since I picked it up and I have got to say I really like how the game has grown. You are transported into a strange world and you have to explore it to stay alive. I also picked it up on the Nintendo Switch for $9.99 and found the handheld gameplay very natural. You may need to finagle with the buttons to get used to them, but I find myself switching between items and attacking a lot faster playing on the switch.
I also couldn’t own a switch without recommending some other Nintendo games so here goes:
Super Mario Odessy:
I was a little slow to start the game prior to seeing the in-game content. Shameless insert of my favorite screen captures of my game play so far:
Lovers in a dangerous spacetime: Cute and challenge coop game.
Ittle Dew 2: If you like Zelda and puzzle this is a great game.
Dragon Quest Builders: I actually just played a demo of this game. If you’re into minecraft or other world building games this one is very enjoyable.
These are just some things I have been enjoying. Share below, what games have you been playing?
EDIT: Hi, Tiffany from 2019 here, I wrote this a year ago and never published it. Here is my experience interviewing at Red Hat while I was a computer engineering student at the University of Maryland in 2017. It was surreal getting to go to GHC with other Red Hatters so soon after joining, (and once again to do technical screenings in 2019). I wanted to write about my experiences not as a full-time associate at Red Hat but in the shoes of myself when I still figuring out where I wanted to work coming out of college. So without further ado…
During the 2018 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC), 22,000 attendees flooded the George Brown Convention Center in Houston Texas to network, learn and share information in celebration of women technologists. Students had the opportunity to pack their schedules with conversations, sessions, interviews, and a large list of companies to visit at the expo hall. For students at GHC, the expo hall also doubled as a career fair. Recruiters, engineers, scientists, and technologists were stationed in company booths to talk about their workplace. They screened resumes, interviewed candidates and shared their experiences. This year for the first time, I was able to attend GHC, not as a student seeking a position, but as an employee of Red Hat.
There’s no mistaking the Red Hat booth, even on the crowded expo floor. The first thing you notice is the bright Red Hat red and logo with the famous Shadowman. Best of all, smiling Red Hatters eager to tell you what life at Red Hat is like and, most importantly, learn more about you.
In my last year attending GHC as a student, I was drawn to the Red Hat booth with a number of attendees gathered around bins filled with packets of flower seeds, and booth walls decorated in Post-It notes spelling “innovation.”
I knew about Red Hat Enterprise Linux already but was more excited to hear about the day-to-day life of a Red Hatter when the recruiter approached me. It hadn't been as easy conversing with people at other booths, often the booths would be too crowded to stand and talk to anyone from the company, or the recruiters would be faced inward with conversations between each other.
At the time I had been interviewing for software engineering roles at other companies, but I wasn't quite sure if software engineering was what I wanted to do. It was definitely the most common path coming from university, where most graduating students I knew were aiming to become a software engineer. I also knew coming out of a few internships that no reasonable starting salary would pay enough for me to agree to work for a company where I would not be happy.
So I told the recruiter I had been seeking out alternatives to software engineering work to get insight into what I would enjoy most. “Great," was the recruiters’ ecstatic reply. She proceeded to ask if I had an interest in consulting after looking at my resume which stated an interest in full-time opportunities. Funny enough, consulting was an alternative to software engineering I was considering at the time. I knew that I had a knack for technology and sharing what I knew in order to solve problems. Next thing I know she's texting another recruiter to schedule an interview slot to learn more about the position. Luckily they had a single slot left for me on the last day of the conference.
At Red Hat we do many things differently, interviewing at GHC was one of those things. I came into the interview thinking I could predict the flow, I would talk about my resume and my experiences before asking my prepared questions related to culture, process, and organization.
Instead, we had a conversational interview with an introduction to the company, and questions that dove into my interests and passions related to technology. Red Hat cares not only about how much you know, but also about your talents and your passions. We believe that associates at Red Hat should be at the intersection of all three, enabling talent and passion with the necessary domain knowledge to succeed. The interview was around 25 minutes, not enough time to make a decision or compare prospects yet, but enough to pique my interest.
Friday after GHC Red Hat sent me a HackerRank invite. HackerRanks are timed (typically anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours) quizzes measuring technical aptitude used to screen candidates. A good score may move you forward, a bad one may end the process. Some comprise generic questions that can be practiced through Leetcode.com or studied through in the book Cracking The Coding Interview.
Red Hat’s HackerRank quiz was one of many that had been sent to me from my time interviewing during the hiring season. In typical Red Hat fashion, I was blown away by how different the coding challenge was compared to other HankerRanks. It was actually fun. At the end of the challenge was a bonus challenge that involved completing a task after SSH-ing into a VM with RHEL installed.
More than two weeks later, after completing the HackerRank submission, Red Hat invited me onsite to the headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina. Due to a busy semester, I decided that this would be the last visit I would do to a company before making a decision on what offer to accept. As part of the visit to Raleigh, Red Hat hosted a casual networking dinner the night before the interviews so that candidates could meet people from the consulting organization. This was another chance to find out what consulting at Red Hat was like and to see Red Hatters interact with one another.
I learned that fellow Red Hatters cared about making a difference and that part of Red Hat's culture is to embrace "open collaboration." Being an open organization means that ideas can come from anywhere. Red Hat thrives on the ideas of others, and individuals have the willingness to adopt feedback and new ideas. After the final visit to Raleigh, I returned to classes eagerly awaiting the final decision. Red Hat was my choice during the flood of opportunities that came with that hiring season.
