Farewell @ Global Relay
after almost 5 years of service
04 Mar 2017
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#farewell
#globalrelay
#new
#career
#sony
#spi
#work
I started working at Global Relay Communications on July 16th, 2012 and I resigned there on February 24th, 2017. This was by far the longest company I stayed for any job in my career history. Regardless of the reasons I had with my resignation, I have so much memories and my heart is breaking as I am leaving the company. I had my pride and joy working there. People were awesome and friendly. Most of the people would respect each other and I’ve met many smart people working in Global Relay.
Job Hunting
Looking for a new job is always a hassle to most of us. It was also a big hassle to me. Job seekers usually have their reasons for seeking a new career. I also had my reasons to look for a new career. In late 2015, I made my mind up to interview for a new job. My first in-person interview was with SAP Vancouver for the Senior Developer position in early 2016. The interview was not too long. It was only 2 hours. When I finished their 2-hour interview, I thought I aced the interview and was quite happy. The interview took even less than 2 hours, like 1 hour and 40 min. However, I did not get selected, though. That’s when I learned finishing the interview “early” is not always a good sign. I did not blame SAP for not selecting me but blamed myself for how emptyheaded I am. I basically had no good knowledge on how I should prepare for the interview. In the next few months, I started reading some of the computer science books. I basically started reading them every weekend. I have made the “Saturday” as a “reading at the UBC library” day and spent the whole day reading. When I read “Cracking the Coding Interview” again, it was totally a different book compared to when I first read the in 2010. I started to understand the points author is trying to make and why the author is applying things in the ways described. It was finally a point in time for me to stay away from language-specific programming books. I started to value and have fun writing code more efficiently and cleanly as well as learning new concepts. However, I read a few Java specific books in the list as it was inevitable for me to not to read some of the Java books starting a new position as a full-time Java Developer. I wanted to have a good and strong knowledge of Java, aka expert in Java.
Farewell
I am so sad to leave the people I enjoyed working within Global Relay. They are very friendly and caring. I felt privileged, lucky and honored to work with each and every one of them.
On September 6th, 2016, I switched to a new team (aka MC) in Global Relay after working 4 years with my old team (aka MAWA). The transition was entirely my choice since I wanted to grow my knowledge in Java as a full-time Java developer and continue developing my career. The transition wasn’t easy, though. It took almost a year for my manager to hire my replacement and the replacement to finish the probation with enough training. Anyways, after the long wait, I was finally put into the new team (MC). I was really excited, so excited that I was working at nights and on the weekends just to analyze their code and absorb their style of coding and standards.
Anyways, it has been 6 months since I joined the new them (MC). Surprisingly on my last day, MC guys made me a farewell binder and bought me a very good single malt whiskey. It was quite surprising as I was with the team for only 6 months. The comments they wrote in the binder were very touching and emotional yet very humorous. I was glad that everyone had fun times with me for the past 6 months 
Thank you, Global Relay. You guys will be missed and remembered. May the force be with you.
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New Career
After 3 months of the long interview process, I finally got an offer early February 2017. I will be continuing my career with Sony Pictures Imageworks starting March 20th, 2017. I am excited for the new opportunity at Sony but at the same time, I am nervous about what will be waiting for me there. Frankly, I just have a basic outline of what I will be working on there. Regardless of what kind of tasks I will be working on, I would like to continue to have awesome and respectable teammates in a great working environment. I just would like to be in the working environment where I can focus on my coding and write awesome software.
I hope that I have found one. Wish me a luck!
