From the course: Career Clinic: Developer Insights
Chiu-Ki Chan
From the course: Career Clinic: Developer Insights
Chiu-Ki Chan
- What brought me into this industry, the very beginning, I was eight, I think, what happened was that my mom, she works for a company that was upgrading their computers. She brought one home and then she enrolled me into a computer course in the community center. What she thought was that I was going to be learning how to use a mouse and how to type, that kind of stuff, but it was a programming course and I loved it. I absolutely loved it. As a kid, I don't really have a lot of say in how things get done. They always tell me do this, do that. But with the computer, I can tell it, print this, do this, do that, and it will obey me. I was very excited about that and of course, you know if you make a mistake, then it will just follow your instructions as well. But that kind of gave me a first taste of how it's like to program and how is it like to convert some thoughts in my head into a thing that will work as I like it to. So that was really cool. That kind of got me into interesting into computers and I started going to school. I got a degree in computer science and then got a job doing programming. The biggest challenge I would say, is that work is different from school. Now that I look back, it shouldn't be surprising, but when I first graduated, I'm used to the fact that in school, you study and then you got an exam and then people know whether you're doing a good job, depending on what grade you get. At work, it's not like that. At work, you can't just work hard and then automatically people know that you are doing a good work. You have to spend a lot of time and thinking of how do you make sure that people know what you do, how difficult it was, and then once you have a good outcome, tell everybody about it. That wasn't obvious at all. I was just hands down work, work, work, work and then maybe the performance review cycle come along and people will be like, "Oh, okay, I guess she was decent." I said what do you mean by decent? I put in so much effort in it. But it was all in my head, like, I didn't explain to people that it was a difficult problem. All I did was, I spend the extra hour to make it work, to deliver on deadline. But to an outsider, maybe they just thought that was easy and that's why I delivered on time. It was a hard lesson to learn but since then, I've been really trying to get things out of my head and communicate more. If I hit a roadblock, I will explain that look, initially we thought it will be just like this, but then this, this, this happened so I'm going to need to introduce some other libraries or things like that. Just kind of make sure that people know what I'm doing and then, therefore, can appreciate my work. I have a lot of favorite projects, but I think one of the ones I love to tell people is FitCat. FitCat is an Android Wear watch face. What that means is that it's a smartwatch, so you wear it on your wrist and then it's actually a pedometer. So FitCat, even though it's called FitCat, actually starts off a fat cat. Every day, in the beginning of the day, you have walked zero steps and the cat is fat and sleeping. Then as you walk more, it gets a little bit more active so maybe it will start working on the computer, or it will do other things as you walk even more steps. So once you walk like thousands of steps, it will start playing the guitar and then get really active and you can notice that he got slim. He'll go surfing, he'll go hiking or fencing, it's just a really fun way to get people more active. I have had people tell me that they were just like, "Just a little bit more," and they were just getting really excited about walking, really, so that has been really fun. One best thing I think, is the community. Being in a community of developers and supporting each other is very important. The way I've done that is sharing my experience. After I became a freelancer, what I did was I decided that essentially I was a planned search (mumbles). I want people, my potential clients, if they search for my name, they see that I know android and they can trust me in building their app. So I started blogging a lot, and I would speak at conferences, share what I know about android. That really propelled my career into a level that I didn't think will get me there. What happened is that people now see me as an expert, and I'm not necessarily like know everything and I can give you answers to everything, but at least people have seen me enough explaining different concepts, that they have confidence that I know how to solve a problem even if I start from very little bit. That has been a really, really helpful skill so I try to encourage others to do the same.
Contents
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Kirsten Hunter4m 55s
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Mary Ellen Bowman3m 40s
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Ray Villalobos4m 51s
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Rae Hoyt4m 25s
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Steven Lipton4m 26s
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Diversity in tech5m 23s
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Mohammad Azam4m 49s
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Chiu-Ki Chan4m 56s
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Maximiliano Firtman3m 27s
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Carrie Dils2m 40s
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Ted Neward5m 13s
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Shonna Smith3m 1s
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Janan Siam4m 3s
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Emmanuel Henri3m 28s
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Albert Lo3m 9s
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Christina Truong3m 1s
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Sasha Vodnik3m 47s
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Jen Kramer4m 25s
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Freelancing5m 14s
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Upcoming in tech3m 39s
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David Okun3m 57s
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Learning and obtaining new skills3m 43s
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Perseverance3m 59s
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Clarissa Peterson4m 27s
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Starting a business3m 27s
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Mind of a developer4m 7s
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Derek Peruo5m 26s
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Clean code practice5m
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Mentorship3m 33s
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Bear Cahill3m 4s
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Networking5m 15s
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Ketkee Aryamane3m 28s
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Conferences4m 19s
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Meetups4m 19s
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Leigh Lawhon2m 48s
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Star Wars or Star Trek1m 43s
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Unexpected opportunities4m 58s
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Acting on your ideas3m 30s
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Matt Boyd2m 31s
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Career changes3m 53s
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Business tips4m 57s
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Bonnie Brennan2m 8s
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Collaboration and open source5m 44s
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Communication skills3m 49s
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Upcoming in tech3m 46s
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Diversity in tech5m 15s
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Mind of a developer3m 48s
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Working across generations5m 35s
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Mentorship5m 33s
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Conferences4m 59s
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Collaboration on projects4m 26s
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Networking3m 30s
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Introversion5m 22s
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Raising concerns4m 19s
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Dealing with conflict5m 20s
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Work-life balance5m 25s
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Impostor syndrome5m 24s
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Learning and obtaining new skills1m 42s
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New tools learned4m 16s
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Favorite gadgets/tech3m 46s
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Communication skills5m 3s
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Diversity3m 23s
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Mentorship4m 29s
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Motivate kids/development3m 31s
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Work/life balance2m 14s
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Perseverance4m 49s
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Introversion3m 40s
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Imposter syndrome3m 39s
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Self-promotion3m 36s
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Favorite projects4m 59s
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