Gilbert L 梁敬暉

This is a multi-part series summarizing my college life. Before this, there was Prelude and Mountaintop.

The term starting in May 2008 was supposed to be an amazing term.

My title at IBM was “Coop Java Software Developer.” The “developer” part was important: unlike most other first year students designated to “quality assurance” positions, I was actually going to “write code.”

The team I worked for was actually a company called DataMirror, an entity that IBM had bought the year before. At that time, they still haven’t moved to IBM’s main campus, so the office felt more DataMirror than IBM.

Regardless, eighteen year old Gilbert went to work all “Gung Ho” on day 1. My manager was thirty minutes late and my workstation was area in the hallway isolated from my team members. “That’s fine,” I thought, “I am just a coop.”

Soon enough, a colleague slapped a 300 page manual on my desk and gave me my first assignment: read fifty pages of the manual and get a hold on what the whole company was doing. So, I did.

The entire first week and a half was spent setting up databases on my machine; don’t ask me why it took that long. My coworkers were “busy.” After that though, I got my first “real” assignment: develop the new test suite for the next build!

I hope that sounded technically challenging to you, because it sure sounded technically challenging to me. Of course, no sooner did my mentor sit me down did I realize my misplaced excitement. My task, actually, was to “copy” 50+ existing tests into a new directory. The “challenge” was to filter out those tests that aren’t compatible with the new build. That is,

1. Read and understand the SQL statements in the existing test case.
2. Dig through a database manual to see if those SQL statements are supported in the new target database.
3. If not, throw away the test case.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 for rest of the test cases.

For three weeks I dug through database manuals and copied and pasted code. When all was said and done, I went over to my mentor excitedly expecting critical feedback or more exciting work. Instead, I received a nonchalant reply, “Oh, you’re done, already? Hmm… uhhh… I’ll see if I can find anything else for you…”

That was when I realized that people on my team couldn’t have cared less about my work. I probably could’ve spent the entire term working on those tests and nobody would have said anything. I was there not because they needed me, but because the company as a whole had hired a coop, and my manager was “suckered” into taking the kid. I really should’ve just worked for MacDonald’s: at least my manager there would’ve cared whether I was doing work.

Life was hardly better outside of the office. Back in March 2008, I had spent a full day near Datamirror looking for a place to stay. Since I had only a room at UWaterloo, I figured I would only need a room in Markham as well. I ended up renting one five minutes away from Pacific Mall. Since I didn’t know how to cook, didn’t want to cook, and didn’t have a kitchen to cook, my plan was to buy dinner from Pacific Mall every night. By the end of the term, I had eaten about eighty percent PMall’s food court menu.

Recall from my last post that I was deep in a shell at Waterloo; not much changed in Toronto, where I had absolutely no outlets to meet like minded people. Most nights were spent watching standup comedy (George Carlin!), reading Computer Science books, and developing little toy projects on my laptop.

This was my life, but I didn’t know how to convey it. Everyone at work (mostly 30+ year olds) talked about their kids, their cottage, or their surround sound system. How was I suppose to tell them about my nifty little Firefox Extension without getting this look?

The traditional office environment conduced nothing but smalltalk and I hated it. It felt like everyone had their own lives except me. I couldn’t connect with anyone at work.

Things hit rock bottom three weeks into the term: my girlfriend broke up with me.

Friends were nowhere; family was faraway; job was lame. Life sucked.

Not everything was uninteresting, of course. Take the house in which I lived, for example. It turned out I was living in a Chinese ghetto house with nine people. One epic event in June entailed four Canadian immigration officers raiding our house and handcuffing a guy away. Another day in the same month saw my neighbour’s cat piss all over my mini-couch. Then there was my landlady’s daughter. With bright red cheeks, the seven year old confronted me and told me, “I love you.” Next, she pulled out her fake cellphone, called her imaginary friend, and told her how she had found a boyfriend. I was speechless.

Work life improved in late June thanks to a new hire who joined me in the hallway. Sympathetic of my situation, she allowed me to help her with some of her decryption work. It was fun while it lasted, but within three weeks, I was back to staring at the clock. Although I certainly had much more to say with this new hire than the rest of the team, I still felt out of place in the office. There was a time when I brought to office the book “Godel, Escher, and Bach” to kill time; said colleague saw the book, picked it up, and said, “Oh my god… you read books like that?”

That my team didn’t trust me with anything important made me wonder if it was due to my incompetence. Were they not trusting me because I had done something stupid? Was software development more difficult than I had thought?

When the topic of “actual coding” came up during a discussion in July, my mentor revealed his thoughts. “You’re not ready,” he said. I was disappointed.

Conflicting with his verdict was my growing disdain for the work practices on my team. For example, because the Quality Assurance team was behind in schedule for several weeks, my team had to keep track of its own bugs for a little little while. So the five of us shared a single spreadsheet via e-mail. When I suggested that we could use a wiki, our tech lead shot down the idea because “it’s hard to make tables in wikis.” When I suggested that we could use Google Spreadsheet, my mentor replied, “This is confidential material.”

On a bright note, the complete lack of productivity at work gave way to high level of concentration on weekends. That term saw me finish two side projects and several books that furthered my technical skills significantly. I also knew there were only four months to the term and that things would pass sooner or later.

Sadly, things got even worse before it got better.

One morning in August, I began feeling severe pain in my left toe. Twenty minutes of limping and 1.5 hours of waiting later, the clinic’s doctor diagnosed me with “gout” - a form of arthritis. An imbalanced diet could have been the cause, but the doctor said genetics could be a factor as well. “The pain,” he lamented, “could be chronic.”

For a week, I limped around understanding why old people always had grimaces on their faces. It would be an understatement to say that I did not look forward to possibly suffering such pains for the rest of my life. Today, I know that the pain hasn’t returned for years. At that time, however, I spent nights wondering what it would be like to live life with a cane.

I left the hellhole that was Markham brimming with hope. “Surely, the worst was over!” Waterloo, as boring as a town could be, at least had people to which I could relate. My friends were there; my life was going to get better…

Seven months before that, I had signed a residential lease with two of my friends. One of them - then just a friend, was now my ex-girlfriend. Nevertheless, I remained optimistic. I figured there could only be two outcomes: 1. It gets kind of awkward at home or 2. We’d make up and get back together. 

A third scenario came about: she got a new boyfriend and I was tormented for four months.

Those were the four months in which I regretted having above average listening skills. If the previous four months had been depressing, these four months were distressing. I wish I knew back then how to move on (i.e find a new girl… any girl); instead, time and effort was wasted in complicating the relationships.

School kept me busy and school kept me sane: six courses - 3 math, 2 CS, and 1 PSYCH. That term made me promise never to take on such a heavy load again… (oops, broke that promise!)

Finding a job, as usual, was a main event of the term. Having completed a work term in a supposedly enviable position, I pessimistically wondered whether there were any good jobs out there. This time around, I got offers from Electronic Arts and Facebook.

The decision between the two should’ve been a no-brainer. At the time, however, Facebook as an engineering company was still relatively unknown outside of the valley. I, along with many others, felt that “web programming” wasn’t “hardcore” enough. People like me thought FB was just a silly little PHP shop.

But then FB recruiter Clifton sent me an e-mail the night before ranking outlining the salary and perks at FB. I was like:

The folks down in Palo Alto made EA’s offer look like a joke. Screw games; I was headed to California.

Four months took a long time to pass, but December did come eventually. Although my relations with my ex had “improved” over the term, I had much pent up feelings and I made sure she knew about them before I left. Even as I prepared to leave for Vancouver at Pearson, I was still deep in thoughts about the “problems” that have transpired between us.

Just then, in what was suppose to be an itinerary confirmation call with my parents, I found out that my mother was being admitted into the hospital for a major surgery. My parents had known this well before, but they thought the news would have “distracted me from my exams.” 

A nineteen year old boy collapsed onto a nearby coffee table and cried.

He cried over the prospect of never seeing my mother again. 

He cried over his helplessness upon facing a loved one’s mortality.

He cried over his immaturity: while his parents stood up to life and did everything to ease his concerns, he was sitting in his room making a fuss over a trivial relationship.

His perspective changed; he snapped out of his silly rout.

So often in life, we spend our time frustrated and angry over the tiniest matters. Perhaps we should ask ourselves, “What if I only had a month left to live?”

Would I still be throwing a tantrum over that one mark on the midterm?

Would I still be angry at my boyfriend / girlfriend for not cleaning the dishes?

Would I still be working at a job that I dislike, thinking it is better than pursuing an uncertain dream?

These eight months were rough, but they taught me a lot about myself and the world around me. Perhaps I made numerous mistakes and conducted countless errors, but I recognize them now and I think I have learned from them.