I have only lived for 21 years

I have only lived for 21 years. Longer than some, shorter than most. Yet, most of you will be running a race, the most important one out of all the ones you have been through so far. I have just crossed the finishing line and here is my story.

Initially, university life of mine was no different from that of peers; for all of us were on the same starting line, once again. The only difference it had from previous ones was that this race was purely on our own. For the first time, we saw ourselves in a city where life would never be boring, but we were left with no one but ourselves. Boundless freedom is what we were given.

A year passed, I began to fear for my future. The next few years were going to decide my next decade, and turning a blind eye to it would waste the past decade I spent on education. I was neither especially talented, nor did I have connections with people in the industry. Therefore, I did what my friends then did — find a job at a startup.

MAY 2016 — I began my part-time at a startup. It was hosted at wework; just like any other decent startup. Casual-dressed developers sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, writing code and sometimes throwing out acronyms that made me clueless was quite intimidating. It was a good reality check and I learned how useless I was.

After a month, a startup reached out to me. It was a small startup, comparably smaller to the one previous. Yet, the possibility of pretty decent pay (£320 per week) got me excited as the previous one did not want to pay. They sent me a test to be done in C Language — unfortunately, when I looked at the test, I knew I failed the test. Still, in the correspondence, after the test had been completed, I explained as much as I could how I would have solved the problem. Things were out of my hands then.

Although them appreciating my passion got me the job, application for internship pay was declined from their sponsor, which was my own university. Well, did I have a choice? I was aware of how bad my skills are and how clueless I was. Therefore, I asked them for an unpaid internship, which they gladly accepted. My life at the startup finally began.

There we had 4 other interns. It was a competitive environment where seeing a desk being empty the next day would not be surprising and getting off work at 5 would be deemed as ‘not passionate enough; not worth it.’ However, it was the only shot I had and I gave my all — any life that I had outside of it. It did pay off tho, as they offered me to pay a decent amount for my work that had been done and that will be done in the continued time.

Still, juggling between both education and a part-time job was not easy. My startup was growing exponentially — we had a plethora of demonstrations with heads of innovation of different corporate and sometimes executives of interested partners. The issue was, I was the only developer back then. Both my CEO and CTO were busy with their ‘business problems’ and I had to take care of lots of things which were often beyond my abilities. Often, I got called to the office and stayed there until 4 AM / 5 AM to finish up my assignment from university and my work. Often, I got called at 2 AM or 3 AM in the midst of my sleep, to resolve an issue happening across the English Channel, while being quite frustrated and annoyed.

This went on for a year — till about Oct 2017. The motivation behind was neither passion for the job nor the desire to learn further. It was fear. I was scared of losing out, being left behind and having to watch what my parents have done for me go to waste for I was not capable enough. Although it did not keep me happy, it kept me going.

What happened then, in Oct 2017? I came back from summer holiday — most of which I spent as a senior software developer at the startup, partially working even during the holidays I spent in Italy with my family. Then I talked to my friends, who gave me quite a shock. Most of them had internships from banks / IB / tech firms in their second year. And, they got a return offer — which was considerably higher than the ‘best offer’ that my startup could provide.

Not that my friends put in less effort than I did, but surely I put either the same or even more effort into this. Yet, I felt behind. I tried justifying my choices — ‘Startup work is more fun! I can learn more here and be a better engineer probably.’ Well, it did not last long and thus, I began applying.

I wrote tens of cover letters, made tens of different applications and had another tens of interviews. I spent whatever free time I had on practicing coding interview questions. Despite multiple promising interviews, I never managed to get a single offer. My soul started crumbling. By that time, I got used to reading emails starting with ‘Thank you for your interest in our company. However, …’. I lost any motivation to keep myself going; after all, I still had an offer from the startup. Some evenings were spent me lying in bed, crying and worrying that after all, I might not just be capable. Therefore, I gave up caring about it.

That was the fun part though. The first interview I had after that night was with a big IB (investment bank). During the interview, I thought ‘what if I fail this interview?’ Well, it will just be added onto the huge pile of interviews I had failed, and wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway. So, I said what I wanted to say and did what I wanted to do. Surprisingly, it worked — the next day at 12 PM on Wednesday, when the driver left another note of ‘Sorry we’ve missed you!’ without any effort to reach out to me, the recruiter called me and gave me an offer in their front office. Despite wanting to accept it on the spot, I decided to take on another interview at my dream company, which was on the Friday of the same week.

On Friday, when they gave us interviewees a building tour — I was grateful that I did not accept it. I’m a sucker for modern and tall glass buildings. The interview went smooth and the whole process was quite enjoyable.

The next Monday, with every passing hour piling on the pressure, the recruiter called me at 6 PM and informed me that I got the offer. She was describing the follow-ups, stocks, salary, so on and so forth. But I could not hear anything. My focus was only on the fact that now, I will be working there, at the modern and tall glass building. That’s how I began working at Amazon.

To clarify, when I mentioned that I do not care about interviews, it does not mean that I did nothing to prepare it. Rather, I prepared what matters — which are obviously neither reading an article on ‘How to get a job at Company X’ nor trying to memorize every fine-prints on their pamphlets. I’ll soon be involved with the recruiting process and what I can now say for certain is, once you get the interview, they want to know if they can work with you for real.

Therefore, never fake yourself but rather, always be yourself. Interviewers are also humans just like us.

Also, what I hope someone would have told me was that I’ll fail all the interviews until I get that one offer. As in, until the point I get that single offer, my success rate will be 0%. But, once you get it, it’s 100%. Although believing that you’ll get any offer after failing tens of interviews is difficult, it will happen eventually.

Kim Hyojong,

Software Developer

at Amazon