Interview: What Project Were You Most Proud Of? (Software Engineering role) (Failed)

I have had several interviews in the last couple months. This was probably one of the most popular questions for me (January - February 2020), "Describe to me about one of your proudest projects that you worked on?"

Because I was a release manager applying for a software engineering role, this question was quite tricky because I did not work on projects. I had other projects that I would like to share but they were not really programming projects or projects where I produced something. In most cases, I managed and delegated so I gave those samples.

Thinking back on those interviews, I do not feel that I gave good responses to the question. I also tried to provide a side project that I worked on as a release manager. The proof-of-concept did not get enough traction to be approved for actual use, although everyone liked the idea. Environment and management of an application was not something management wanted to handle, as they rather just purchase a third-party system or none at all.

Perhaps, I should have used a project that I worked on back when I was a programmer. I am not sure what a good response would be even after seeing what our developers do. Especially in an agile environment, the developers no longer work on projects in the same sense as a waterfall project. They are constantly just writing code per user-stories, test, and refactor. Most of them do not know the full project scope. Maybe they should, but from a procedural point-of-view, this method has been rather effective for the company.

Perhaps more effective for the company in that the developers will have trouble finding new jobs because they may also struggle with the same question. Without the experience, they will not know how to position themselves in such a way where they can also gain something that they can market.

Given that I was not able to even get a second interview with any company that asked this particular question makes me really think that I am definitely failing this question at some level. There have also been other weak parts of my interview that may have also contributed like not being the local vicinity (even though I recently moved to the area) and no in a current programming role which a couple HR managers have told me directly.

Scammish: MeetMe and XBox Email Verification Completely Useless

I do not know what is going on but I received emails from MeetMe and XBox to verify a new account which I did not even create an account for. So, I ignored the email. Yet, I continued to receive email as if my account was verified. Not only that, it appears that there are activities going on in the respective accounts that required them to flag the accounts.

What a bunch of non-sense... I cannot even address the accounts and yet they are accusing me of wrong-doing on top of the spam mail? I cannot even remove myself from their either site because I did not technically even have an account. No responses from their support, but at least I was not expecting that to happen anyways. XBox email unsubscribe does not work with a supposedly non-validated email address.

Ubuntu: Day 4 & 5 - Broke Ubuntu by Uninstalling Python

Yesterday, I installed Eclipse 3.8 and PyDev.

This morning, I was trying to create a new Django project in Eclipse but kept running into an error, "Django not found." There were several sites that fixed this issue but none fixed mine. I checked that Django was indeed installed and that it was installed in Python 2.7.1. I added the Django folder to Interpreter's PYTHONPATH. None seemed to have fixed the problem.

After a couple hours of resolving the issue, I uninstalled Python and all applications dependent on Python. Of course, I did not realize how many applications were dependent on Python. I reinstalled Python in hopes that it will at least fix the problem with Eclipse (which it did not). I noticed some apps were not working properly like the Software Center, so I rebooted Linux. After I logged in, I just had a blank screen.

I am not exactly sure how to revert back, so I am considering to reinstall Ubuntu. I could use more practice in the installing applications. There were also some questions whether Python was installed in a virtual environment which I was not sure if mine was or not. I do not believe so as I did not install any virtual machines, but perhaps Python has its own method of installing in a contained environment? This is all new so I am only speculating.

Worse comes to worse, I could just start developing a Java application.