The Chase of a Dream

Hi. I'm very happy that you are reading my post. Glad to know you. I have never written such posts before, especially in English and this is the first post of mine. I will try to express myself here and share more useful with you.

I'm from Beijing, China. My family is in Yanqing at the foot of the Great Wall. I received my Bachelor degree in computer science in 2013 from Beihang University, Beijing. After that I continued to pursue my Master degree in the same major and the same university. It is the last academic year and I will be graduated in Jan, 2016.

Since my graduation is less than a year away, I urgently need to better myself in technical skills so as to face the challenge of job hunting. It's actually about the chase a dream of mine:

To tell you the truth, I have never made a real choice, following my heart, before. The first choice I made was about the National College Entrance Examination in China. I needed to choose which university I wanted to attend and which subject I'd like to major in. I didn't know which I was interested in. Weird, but it was real. In fact I would like to do almost everything and I nearly have no preference. If you want me to do it, I can do it and maybe I can also do it very well. I chose a good university, i.e., Beihang University, according to my estimated scores and chose the best subject in that university as my major, that is computer science.

The second choice was about where to go after Bachelor graduated. At that time, I got the recommendation from the School of Computer Science and could continue to pursue my Master degree without any written examination or interview. I could continue to study or seek a job directly. At last I chose to study. But it was not something with regard to my interest or my heart. It was just because I could pursue my Master degree without any examination.

From then on, a real dream has been calling me from my deep heart. I want to go abroad. I asked myself several times and the answer has been determined. It's not something about how good the environment abroad is, how clean the air abroad is, or how much money I can earn abroad. It's about a dream in my deep heart. I would like to experience the life abroad and taste the flavor of life there. The older I am, the more constraints I have. I am young now. Why don't I have a try right now! I don't know if you ever hear about YOLO. You Only Live Once. If you have something that you really want to do, just do it and don't hesitate. I admit that I regret not to study abroad after graduation. But you cannot look behind in regret all the time. You should look forward and do some changes if you really want to. So my third choice, exactly my first real choice is coming. I want to work abroad.

It's far not enough to make a real choice. The thing that really matters is what you are going to do with regard to your choice. Since I don't have any education background abroad, it's very difficult to seek a job abroad. But it doesn't mean there is no way. Computer science has been very popular all over the world recently and the social demand for talents in cs mushrooms. FLAG (Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon and Google) have the global recruitment. That will be an open window at me. Of course these four companies are the top ones in my list. I think it's a bit early to study the companies about where to go but it’s time to prepare the interview right now. Although it’s much more difficult for me to seek a job abroad directly, I believe as long as I fully prepare for it, there will be a position left for me. The more fully prepared, the more chances there will be.

Here I should thank a friend of mine, fjc, who is a very talented man in cs and has been honored with lots of titles in programming. He has got the offer from Facebook in US. He shared a lot about the coding interview in US and gave me many useful suggestions about what to do for preparation. Since most of the top IT companies, especially the FLAG, pay much attention to the coding capability, it’s very important to be skilled at coding. The education is not my advantage but if I make full preparation for the coding, it will be a knocking brick to get me in the door.

When it comes to the intention of starting the blog, it should be in the following three aspects. The first is from fjc’s suggestion. It’s necessary to cover as many as possible coding questions that have been examined during the previous interviews. More importantly, whether you can express yourself, telling the man why your codes are like this, what is the advantage in time and space complexity, should be also taken into consideration. Sometimes your code can get through all the online judgement but you cannot express your thoughts clearly enough to the interviewer. There are something unknown left in the codes, which may be the key points you need to solve other problems. To start a blog, I want to write all I learn after I solve one coding question. I will try to finish one coding question on my own and read some reference related online or some other better codes. It will impress me and help me learn more coding skills I believe. The second is about English. I want to work abroad. English is a very basic ability that I should be good at. Through this, I can practice to express something related to the coding in English, which is very helpful not only to the interview but also to the work abroad in the future. The third is about pushing. There are many coding questions waiting for me to solve and there are a lot of skills that I need to grasp. A significant thing here is perseverance. It’s the key to determine whether you can make real progress and to distinguish competitors. You can insist on doing this for one week? You can insist on doing this for one month? You can insist on doing this for one year? The blog to some extend plays a role in pushing me. It acts as the boss of mine. I plan to write a post twice a week. If I want to write something, I need to learn something first. It motivates me to code and learn persistently. No Pain No Gain. Keep doing one thing and you will find a new world.

I want to thank another friend of mine at last, ly, who is very talented in almost everything except study. He works in an IT company called Sunbridge in Tokyo. He is the one who suggested me using “blogger” to write posts online. Although I just started to use it, I find it is really convenient and cool. If someone who is in charge of the advertising department of blogger happens to read my post, I strongly suggest that he should offer ly a big amount of money. He is a perfect advertiser for blogger. I mean it. Don’t you think so!

I have many talented friends, some in programming, some in research, some in games, some in sports...... More friends of mine will be put on the blog. More stories will be shared here. It's the pride of my life to have all of them around me. (gzc, are you here? Remember to tell me as soon as you get the offer from Google. Oh, Amazon is also okay. I'm waiting right here. :P Seriously, go go fighting. I believe you can. Find a good job and live a good life there.)

This post is like a preface in a book. The Chapter One is coming soon. The chase of a dream begins. Thank you for your reading and hopefully you can follow my blog from now on. I will try my best to share what I can with all of you and I’m looking forward to your advice or any other suggestions about the coding or the job hunting. Anything is welcome here. Have a nice day!