raw-transcript-amish.md

Okay, so welcome Amish. Could you say a little bit about? Who you are and where you're from. Yeah. So my name is Amish, I'm from Ashton which is just outside. Manchester It's where the Ike here is.

I'm just, I just, I've just finished exams now, You just finished exam So you actually had I think you've just had a break and come back from. Yeah, so I had like two or three weeks right between examples. So thanks for coming back in after your exams back to university.

Um, so I wanted to. Capture some of what's happened in the last four years. So let's go back to the very beginning. Can you where did you decided to study computer science? Where did that come from and where why did you just decide? Just an incomputing. And so for me it's actually in primary school, we had like a few weeks were We had another teacher command And she told us scratch right knife up, that's really cool because you can like make games and animations with it.

So after that, I carried on using it and then I had some other primary school teachers which are like Really supportive of it and maybe helped me. Use other stuff and shortening of this stuff as well, Right? Up and then I guess from there it was just but I liked making games on scratch.

Tutorials as well online to use programming languages as a bit of self-taught stuff, but along from that. Yeah, I guess so. And did you in with did it follow in secondary school? Did you have it as a GCSE? And that kind of thing? I think so for my year, they just added it as agency.

It's gonna took that one of my flight options right yeses And the same prayer levels. Well, do you do? Yes, I said, I think create also just that it for a levels when I got to six one, you were. So it was like first GC. Yeah. So Primary school, right?

So doing scratching primary School turned out to be something that. Yeah, it's only a few interested, got me. The interesting and okay and then so you arrived here in 2019 and you had a relatively normal first year and until the pandemic hit halfway through the first year, which must have been a bit of a shock, It was a shock, it was kind of nice because Um, i remember like being Dreadfulness of the exams are coming up.

Oh great, but we're gone. So that's what you guys. Yeah, which is nice. And I do had you. So you did that, you actually did and just for experience. You had you decided to do that before you came, or was it something you just, yeah, I think way I decided before before I came to uni, right?

But I wanted to do on But I think I was like having a bit of a wobble and second year. So I just went internship. What should I do placement? Up and that's quite that's quite interesting sort of dilemma. I think because there's advantages and disadvantages about both because we're a lot of companies offer just internships.

Yeah, placement. So it's kind of like, whichever you get yeah, what you end up. Yeah. Okay. So, You you've got through your first year, you got through the pandemic and started second year and you're looking for placements. Yeah, I think this is probably the first time I I got to know a little bit.

So remember looking at, you'll see the In the pandemic. Yeah. And one thing I remember stood out and you'll see the was. I think you've done some open source if you've done discord before, right? So I actually started difficulture. Yes, which is like JavaScript library. Used to make discord box.

So I started writing August 2015 and it was kind of just the So that was something in. So we're talking high schools. GCSE No free the year before Jesus is three white. Wow. So You would, you would do in that as a sort of Yeah, it was very bad fan.

It was kind of just let me playing around with JavaScript and that's how much time. Yeah. And then right like, thankfully carried on Until? Well, it's still coming on now. I stopped working on it in. I think October 2021, right? So these handed it over to the community, to take charge it.

I mean, I guess that lots of different discord bots. Now, where it's kind of Or is that one? There's lots of different distilled bots and discord libraries but this project is like the biggest one right to take like pride in Let me have a lot of people that use it still.

Remember that, that was That was one thing really starting you'll see though was it something that you just did, was it? Somebody encouraged you to do that or did you just think? Hey, I'll just go right. Publish it online for me, I think. So I used to be like minecraft with VSI people online.

And then, We made a discord group in life, 2015, right? Instead of using Skype, And then one of them like did a discord library in Ruby. Kind of thought that's cool. So I'll try to do in JavaScript, right? And then Yes, I started to our grand JavaScriptiment, people started to use it.

So when it's kind of oh well people using my fing and it's like motivations keep Yeah, you're getting feedback from users. Yes. Like what they really quick feedback and getting get. I mean you need to publish it on. How did you know to publish it on GitHub? I think someone say I try to use I think I'd use GitHub before, right?

I used to like other coding that project. It's about, I'd always use GitHub to like upload everything to you, But it was never. I can never bother as much of how clean it was before, Right, But now because people use like I had to learn to make you force pressure.

I have to put sensible commit messages as well, right? Yeah. Um, Yeah. So I mean that's right. That's definitely interesting. Is that I think It's a great way to get involved in software development involved in open source but not so many students. Do it. So what would you advise people if they were interested in doing that kind of thing?

How to get how to get stuck in because it can be quite intimidating. I mean making your own thing from scratch is intimidating. Yeah. And or joining another project, whereas just lots of people working on it as can be difficult to Um I'd say yes so for me I was quite looking at.

I made something around. People came to me. Yeah, less intimidating for me. Um, but I think fight. So this hack photographers, which happens every October when I think it's just loads of open source projects put out issues but a good for people who are new to program me, right?

Letting us happy project and So, you can find those on kit of And that's a good way to. They find a new projects to work on. But also just, I don't know if you use any open source. Code in any of your existing projects. But always issues and issue tracker, you can.

Yeah, look at I just I think just start, it's easier said when done but just yeah, fixing it fixing a bug sounds trivial, but it's quite a good way to start is yes. Above in the night, it's all software project And it takes, I guess, the first book, it takes a little time because you get used to vaccode base and how they do stuff.

But it's really good experience and after you've done one it's easier to move on to the project. Yeah yeah, definitely. Okay yeah. So that was the beginning second year. So you look you're looking at somewhere. We're in lockdown. Your starting a second year, it's quite stressful year. And you're also looking for a job.

How did you go about navigating that? Because you, I guess you're applying to different companies and having some interviews. And yeah. And what were the main challenges you faced? And how did you overcome? So second year first semester was like, probably for hardest part of this entire degree. It was like a very stressful time.

Um, For me, I think it was right case where I just put sometimes out each week. To apply to placement and stuff. An internship and also a lot of them have early debtlines. So, It's kind of a case of you kind of just have to prioritise that sometimes over uni.

Yeah. And then catch up on Union afterwards. To look out of your diary and say right Tuesday evenings between six and eight. Yeah, we're doing job. Yeah, or if I just get really poured review anyone days? Okay, basically it's time to apply for jobs. Um, But I'd like to me, it felt worth it because it was like, That's why I wanted to do in future anyway.

It was a motivator. Yeah it was like this is what I want to be doing. So I might as well apply for jobs, because yeah. And how did you get on with interviews and, and all that kind of stuff And there's online technical interviews. But also, Yeah, behavioural style into his as well.

So, Technical interviews, I think I prep for using I can't remember it's called now. I think cracking recording interview that was it right? And then like, hack around questions. Um, Behavioural, I hadn't really practised. It was kind of just I just turned different. The engine is like they were encouraging.

Yeah, right direction. Yeah, and then I think I also watched a few like, for systems design interviews. We hadn't done that in uni. Like, that sort of content. Yeah. Because it's a system designed into way or designing hole thing, right? Yeah. So you have to put like, loads of pieces of the whole working system together this way, right?

A database would be here and If you have load, balances and stuff. So I think I watch YouTube videos for those, right? Parent was kind of just a case of Like because those too busy with, you need to worry too much about Reviews, that interviews. I just leave them.

Yeah, and I hope it works well. And learn from your mistakes. Yeah. Because a lot of you earlier ones you do you do make mistakes. Yeah. And then when you get like towards the end of your applications, you You have a better idea of what you need to be doing.

Yeah, yeah. Actually we jumped head that because you did a, I think you show you did a summer internship at the end of yesterday. I was so that was in Margaret of a student software company. And that was, I think I saw one of the emails from you with It's just advertisingly student suffer engineering job to Right at uni.

Sidelights about, man, I worked in a team of Free of us and then Susan looked over us. It's about, we were working with a research group of summer And that was like a really nice. Um, I think it was like the purist. View of like what we've learnt at uni at least block in her.

Applied to a job. Because I was like, visit emphasis on Looking at how agile works in the workplace. Remember, it was like loads of flexibility with. What you wanted to work on, right? Okay. And I guess that helped so that the having that experience and helped in Interview, because you can talk about.

Yeah, about nine was working at, so, and so this happened. Yeah. The interviewers would ask about past experience and But I always expected from basketball, just to meet lots. Like recall this part of my season. And did they Some of them did but it was mainly just like Imagago came up at that point, right?

And that was what we focused on. And, Yeah, am I gloves like really positive experience? I love. Those are good things to say about that. So then how did you how did you go about picking somewhere in your second year? So you've got all this working second year and I'm trying to keep on top of that.

How did you decide where to apply? And so, like, since I was interested in becoming a software engineer, I had like a stream in my head where I wanted to like, Working a really big tech company, right? So that was very excited that I apply to Google Amazon, Apple, Microsoft Facebook, Event.

I didn't have that from any of those which was just happening, kind of normal as well. Yeah, it's kind of normal And I was like, oh okay, that's not worked out. So then I carried on applying and then To get to Bloomberg. Give us when Like I was aware of Bloomberg is a company, but I never thought of applying that until my friend Koscius, she had applied robes as well, Right?

And then, I was like, she told me to flowers. Oh, okay. Guess I'm as well. And then, yeah, look about one. Worked out so That's a problem. So you did. So once you've finished your second year you started at Bloomberg in London, but this was remote initially because we're still in lockdown at this point knowing.

Yes. So I It was kind of like, I could go through your face. And some of my team would come into the office as well, but it wasn't. Enforce what people have to come to the office, Like, Vatican, because, like happily just work remotely from the entire time, But I chose that go in every day, because I didn't like working remotely.

When I was there Is it was kind of, I was just signed my flat, I mean What do I do all day? And it's a nice office as well. So yeah, very nice office. Yeah. I'm not shall have an office is nice about again. But, Very incentives to go to the office because they're stuff and most people that do And people you can learn from.

I'm in a you can learn from people online. There's not quite the same as being. Sadly, No slightly. It's just having the options. Just walk up to someone on your team and just yeah, ask them. Bus. So you all whenever they offers is open, you generally went in even if you didn't need to just because that was that sure I think mostly, right.

Okay, okay. So you did your what we doing at what was your role role in responsibilities of Bloomberg? I was a suffering general worksheets team and worksheets is Bloomberg expression of Excel. So people who use Bloomberg terminal. They have like, securities are stocks. We want to keep track of, So let's backtrack a bit.

Yeah, sorry. And what's going to spend more? Bloomberg terminal is. Yeah, so Bloomberg terminal is able to Bloomberg's product for people who are interested in financial markets. So it gives them like access to like financial news and like Loads of tools to help him track security; and starts. And something like tv as well.

You get access to that. What's a huge product? It's really a huge. Any moving and yeah to access different parts. You have to remember different terminal functions. Yeah so worksheets was just w which is right Well we have a one letter acronym so it's cool product. Yeah, so we had worksheets and then Model web is to my first like task where I guess was.

To like do some green field research. Of what worksheets would look like if you could have trees of graphics of data, Right? Inside a spreadsheet, basically, What rather than or tables and yes, so they had hierarchical. Bikes, relatively flat posts already but I've been was like see what other teams wanted to see, however teams could benefit from.

Like making graphs of data available, right to worksheets and the user can Customise what they showing the worksheet, Right? Okay. Yeah. And then since I guess like we did all we could with that, we're gonna play, I think. By January of February. And then my team had also split into two at that point.

So it was like my original mentor had been moved to be the team. So then I got reassigned a new metal from But my team after split, I mean, it switched to basically just doing sprint work with the rest of the team, right? Which was fun. And seeing I'm, I guess a part of those then seeing stuff that you've built made it into the product.

Yeah, that was. So when I was doing sprint work, it was really cool to see. But I guess like the first thing I added for this big broke straight away and that was like, was terrifying thing because it's like a Friday afternoon, right? And I just in my kitchen, I was cooking and I get rid of But notification right And like what's happened.

And It only broken internally. So Any developers at Bloomberg were using. It would Right? Have it broken? But it was still like, oh, that's quite kind of bad because it's right. Yeah. Reputation at stake a little bit. I kind of you don't want to be the one news. Know.

Yeah, it was kind of embarrassing But I think it's normal. Yeah. Yeah, if you clicked anywhere on a worksheet but wasn't a salad, just crashed, right? Which was just never consider that would Been option. Yeah. Um, These things happen. Yeah. And then by the end of it, I got a feature which I was like really proud of it was hyperlinks inside.

Work sheets. So it gives like people loads of flexibility with. Making my worksheets interactive. So you could actually have I Hypings to functions in the terminal as well, right? So launch other terminal commands. I'm at got released just before I left Myers. Just yeah, it was cool for me to see.

Yeah, like get metrics for as well. Because then that the people who I don't know how many users of the Bloomberg two, I think worksheets itself has like 250,000 right and all over the world as well. Yeah so it's kind of must be quite gratifying to see something. Yeah, it's really cool because like we had I think those two weeks before I finished and we added metrics to see However, been used.

And it was those being adopted fairly quickly, I think. And then we have templates of worksheets that people curate And then we will reaching out to people to about hypings to work. Use too. Then do you have to sort of somebody in charge of the product I guess? Do they then tell people about this new feature or is, do you know this new feature exists?

So I think our product manager is left at this time and then we had a new one take over, Right. I think he came in towards Like, while selling for being worked on, right? So it's the case of If we know teams within Bloomberg ourselves, We also contribute. But otherwise, yeah, my product and owner with I reach out the teams themselves, right?

I mean, I'm assume, I'm not sure if I'm assuming this on this, but like we have a little tutorial. Um, Tutorial window whenever you open merchy right with new stuff. Right. So I'm assuming like sell hypings would have made into come up so saying yeah. Okay. Good. All right so you'd spent your 12 months at Bloomberg in London And then you come back to Manchester for your final year in 2022.

Last year. Yes. And, Can you tell us a little bit about? So what do you do as a project or you'll find new project on? Yes. So I applied. So it was actually on placement where I was like a pastoral talk about picking your supervisor and project, Right? And then one of my friends told me that reason had an early deadline and I really wanted to have resources supervisor because I remember in second year, you did of course yeah, it was on intro 3i Right and then in first semester like a lot of it was to but Like reader would always reply quickly.

And, Like give good advice. So I move I wanted to have reader as a supervisor Seven. I was like artwork on my desk and I was, okay, I'm just gonna start thinking now because I have like three days to propose some things. So, I came up with a proposal that I emailed reason, and Minusial proposal with something like Tracking the sentiment against music artists on Twitter and seeing if that impacts where like streaming performance or radio performance, right?

So if like the public hate someone in a particular day It does not lose money for them. Seven, that was accepted. And then when I got to uni, I kind of like I kind of was like, okay I can't do this because it's really hard to But Twitter language was used by people is just very confusing and like, it carries on.

Into other messages too. You can't mean you can't tell the sentiment from just a simple to just. Yeah, built on other people's tweets too. Right. And just for language they use it just even sometimes when I look at them, I'm not sure what you're even trying to say. Yeah, so I don't know how I train anything to do that.

So yeah, I transitioned reprod projects to basically picking out. Names and linking them to Wikipedia, like popcorn to entities. To be like names of people. Filmed songs award shows, right? And then let me making a little dashboard to Review faster. Um, so you can see I don't like which to entities co-worker or stuffed in.

But it's kind of not useless database, kind of just like silly interesting like like Just right thing. Yes, very neat. Yeah. But it was this little cool to me to be able to grab all that data from like yeah. 90,000 tweets. Did you we affected by all the portray API?

Oh, so turned out. So, one of the first things I did, when I started working on projects was, I'm just downloading on between us, right? I found it like as soon as you don't cover, I was kind of I'm not sure if it's my project but I have between it.

So I'm sorry, it's not that bad But I did consider it reviews and I mean, I had my two years so I was fine lose. All right. Yeah, got your data. Yeah. It doesn't matter what they do. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Good. Okay, so that was. So that was A final year.

So then You just finished exams. What comes, what comes next, what's what plans for the future? So I'm going to try parenter and September, right? As a software engineer. I do not know what my actual team will be at, but Um, So they have, I mean, they operating different markets down, so there's a kind of healthcare part of it and there's a The other stuff I do other public sector stuff.

They do. You don't know yet. What? No, that's an idea. It's kind of but I think It. But it sounded to me, but I'd be working on like their core product and not Like women, specializer products were Industries. Yeah. Pande Foundry. I think I'll be working on that. Um, so what is palliative foundry?

Um, plenty Foundry is But I think it's just a data analytics platform, So just sucks in data from. Yes. Also throw your data and then you can Basically, explore your data and It helps you make decisions from today's you've given it. Because I think they've had it in Hackathons in the past and they were they, yeah, he open up and say right, here's, here's, you can have access to the foundry products.

I think we had it in play with it. Great Union like Christmas, right? But I didn't go through that. So Yeah, I just For me it was like well I was at Bloomberg people with talking about politically let me over intense, Right? That's how I can find, okay, right.

Yeah. But how do you go back? Choosing and I think so one of the difficult things is It's quite easy to find a job. The billing thing is picking the right one for you. Yeah. So how did you go about, selecting, you know, making that choice between. Even, that even when you've got experience, it's still, it makes it a little bit easier.

But there's still the wildering array of places that you could go. So, how did you choose? For me, it was So I don't layer up Bloomberg and I was it was good but I wanted to try something new Right. So I knew that Maybe like, after I graduate, I probably want to try different company.

Um, i guess you knew location. So you were thinking like, yeah, so I'd lived in London for a year about points. I was like, okay I'm happy to live in London, right? I've been also like looking at glass door reviews of a company, right? See what other people say.

It's it's trueful. Yes. Yeah I think it's good to know what people Think. For the place. I say worker. Yeah. It's pretty better than if you look at the marketing, the marketing, sometimes doesn't always match up. Yeah, reality of what's actually but that's stories. Pretty honest. Most of the time?

Yes. I grew to the honest. Thank you. Can you can't you? If you say if you post a review, you have to It's not anonymous, Is it? You have to have somehow say I work there. I think so. So you don't have to sort of blatantly lie. I'm not that not that stops people online but I just don't think people would go about which effort, So now that she's doing mechanisms for filtering out fake reviews of companies saying yeah, this is a really great place to work.

I really love it. It's actually the PR department of yeah, it doesn't. Listen as far as I know. Yeah, it's class storm, man. Word of my from other people. You yeah important. So yeah and also like when Palin to came to Union but recoilers for right when they did their demos and stuff I was like oh that's actually really cool.

Like I'm not seen a private like that before. Um and i kind of got it more than I got Bloomberg because I I don't really have about which one interesting finance. So, a lot of this stuff happening at Bloomberg went over my head. Whereas like when I saw this is just like, oh, it's data from Different sectors.

Like that. You can understand it. Yeah. You can understand it. But I mean finance can be a bit overwhelming in this. It's a few, learn a different and entirely different. Yeah language I guess and understand what you what you're users are doing and why. Yeah. And having to understand that when you don't understand yeah it's just Not fun.

Okay, I'm a little sectors, the like that. It doesn't seem to be particularly Intense. I mean can find in. Yeah, this whole language that they talk that, yeah, like, even some of the internal stuff I've had Of business Elanguage in? Yeah. Yeah, so you did have to have some understanding everything I think so work.

You know what security is I do now? What I did not when I join. That's awesome. One of the team. Yeah. Yeah, good. Okay. So That's so well I think that's kind of everything in the degree. So that's covered. Your your journey from being a student to where you are now.

So we've got a few other questions here at the end of to round things off. We've got One tune one podcast one, but one film. So can you recommend a tune to our coders playlist? And it's important to you. I listen to on my birthday today, right? It's called back in my body by Maggie Rogers, Right?

I feel like it's nice to listen to one of rainy day, but it's kind of just I don't know when you're not feeling yourself and you get back to feeling yourself So comforting. So it's a very comforting song like okay. And back to My favourite. Podcast that you don't do podcasts.

No, I was gonna suggest this podcast because I have listened to this podcast. So preparation. It's just, no, it's kind of interesting. Some people do some people don't. So we'll skip one podcast and we'll move on to one book at one book that you'd recommend. So I'm reading it now and it's called on earth for briefly gorgeous.

Planets about This family of immigrated to America. Fiction, non-fiction. I think it's nonfiction. It's kind of like the offer has written as a letter to his mum right about basically the whole experience from moving from Vietnam to America. Um, Tonight is struggles. He's faced a family's face, right? Yeah, it's just a very emotional but right?

Yeah, good. And the last one is one film. I really struggled with this one, Okay, Something you've seen recently or something from a long time ago. So I think this is the last film I watch with my mum and it's called English fingers, and English Vingua English English. Um, so it's about An Indian family and then they moved to America.

And the mum doesn't really speaking English out. Well right and it's kind of just exploring like how she like struggles she's made fun of And then, She's kind of like takes upon herself to learn English right show, but she is Right competent, I guess and that people should respect her, right?

So I thought that's like a nice heartwoman from Lifting film. Yeah. Good. Okay, and then the last thing is, Time travel. So if you could, I've built a time travel machine for you. And if you could travel back in time to see yourself in first year, And some of your friends in first year, What advice would you give them about making the most out at their time at university?

Because it goes by, I mean, four years, a long time but it has, yes, come really quick. I think. So, don't take first, yes, seriously is you. Thinking you might have to, I guess like, when we were doing A levels, it was kind of You have to work really harder than yeah.

Yeah. You don't when you get to uni, you don't really know what pace to keep going with. Join lots of societies and first year that make lots of different friends outside of your degree,

And then, Like for firstly, just kind of play around with C, what? Yeah. Because i see, i mean, see, sometimes first years work, very hard, which is good. I'm not not decorating, I just feel like it burns you out by the time. It's a second year and yeah, and it's just not.

I feel like having more fun experience of version, It makes second year of it easier. And in terms of getting all that stuff is that first is the best time to do it. Yeah, like it's a lot harder to run second offer daily, there's not much time, there's not much time to do that.

But yeah. Good. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Well, that's good advice. So Thank you Amish for joining us. And, and And are you coming to graduation? I am so, we'll see you a graduation ceremony. Next month. Yeah, and good luck with Starting at Pine here in London. So maybe back to London.

Him able to. Yeah, it's definitely. Now Right? Instead of just like I'm coming back after so you have, you got better time off in the summer? Yes to relax. Yes, I've got July and August, right? Okay. And breath of doing but good. Well enjoy. That make the most sort of make the most the time off.

Yeah. And A good luck in the new job. Good. Thank you. Thank you.