Podcast with Hisyam Part 2
Summary:
Discover the captivating journey of Hisyam, a computerscience student, as he unveils the dynamic world of university life and the
pivotal decision that led him to pursue computer science. Explore the
challenges he faced, the triumphs he achieved, and the valuable insights he
gained along the way. From navigating subject selection to networking and
embracing opportunities like online hackathons, Hisyam's personal growth and
experiences will inspire and captivate you. Join us on this podcast episode to
delve into the exciting realm of academic exploration, personal development,
and the power of following one's passion.
This podcast episode features Hisyam, a computer sciencestudent, discussing his journey and decision to pursue computer science. The conversation explores the differences between university and Polytechnic, emphasizing independent study and decision-making. Hisyam shares his experiences with subject selection, overcoming challenges, and networking. The
episode also delves into his participation in online hackathons and proposes
optimizing them for companies as a hiring tool. Overall, it provides valuable
insights into Hisyam's personal and academic growth.
[00:00:00] Andrew Liew: Okay. After the military daystell us more about how you eventually go to university, and why do you choose
computer science, and what do you do during university days?
[00:00:09] Hisyam: Yes, thanks for the question. So forthe, when I graduated from Polytechnic, I actually had a dilemma to actually
pursue either because my diploma that I had was actually specializing in both
business and information technology.
[00:00:26] Hisyam: But then for when I moved on touniversity, there wasn't a course that offers both aspects. To the side and the
closest that we can get is actually a double degree in business and computer
science. But then, for example from myself the degree that I have wasn't that
it was good.
[00:00:47] Hisyam: I think a 3. 6 out of 4 over that. SoI was the one of the top students in my cohort over back then. But for example,
back then, if you wanted to pursue a double degree, you actually need a perfect
score [00:01:00] to actually do that, toactually pursue that, because definitely it's around five years to pursue a
double degree, and there comes a lot of a lot of sacrifice in terms of time,
and also...
[00:01:09] Hisyam: For the studies for five years. Yeah.So I think that is one of the step for me, because I came from Polytechnic, so
there was a lot of modules that I could actually not take because it's actually
actually did it, some of it in Poly already. So I actually don't have to
actually do it in. We can actually cut short the the curriculum from four years
to 3. 5 years. Yeah. So that's actually, that's my decision. I actually did
that. And after after the military moved on to computer science, because I
think during polytechnic, I actually asked most of my professors why not we
focus on programming, focus on a lot of these different various aspects.
[00:01:48] Hisyam: And the fun fact is actually right nowyou won't actually, the course that I was in, actually got disbanded. Yes, so
there wasn't actually the course that, if you wanted to take a mix of business
and IT right [00:02:00] now, in nearpolytechnic, you can't because the course is not there anymore.
[00:02:02] Hisyam: I was one of the last few bachelorsover there. Yeah and fun fact, they actually merged with the IT school. And
that's where they share all their resources over there. Definitely back then I
had more interest, or I was leaning more towards learning more on infogra
information technology, because I find that it's there's lots and lots of
development over there.
[00:02:23] Hisyam: And so I decided to actually go topursue computer science in NTU, and thankfully I got it. And we started it's
very different from polytechnic, where for studies wise, definitely there is,
it isn't as forgiving as polytechnic sometimes when there's no one's gonna tell
you, oh, okay, you need to study this, you need to study that there isn't
really like a like hard rule that you must pass at the same time do a lot of
the various projects.
[00:02:51] Hisyam: For example, if you want to overload.Overload means that you are, for the whole 3. 5 years or 4 years of your whole
syllabus you have to take a [00:03:00] minimumof maybe 150 AUs, which are academic units. It's actually split into 6 to 8
semesters over there, so for each semester, I think they recommended one
recommended AU that that is doable or that is suitable for students by the
school.
[00:03:16] Hisyam: It's actually 15, 15 to 16 AUs. Sothat's around five five modules. So each core module is actually five academic
units. So you can actually take sorry, each module is three academic units. So
you can actually take five, the recommender is taking five core every single
semester. So that amounts
[00:03:33] Andrew Liew: to 15 academic units in the end.
[00:03:34] Andrew Liew: Okay, slow it down here. So I'mtrying to get the audience to sink in. So let me repeat it in a different
language. So you're saying that they have to take x number of AUs, which is
almost like in other countries called university credits, right? And then you
have to take five modules, which is about five.
[00:03:52] Andrew Liew: Subjects. Or five differentschool subjects and at any one time. Is it, am I to say that, so that means if
one semester [00:04:00] is three months at anyone month, they have to take five subjects, correct? Correct. Yeah, that's
right. Continue.
[00:04:04] Hisyam: Definitely, no, unlike second school,unlike gc, I like Poly know.
[00:04:08] Hisyam: No one's gonna be there to, they know,oh, you must pass or nobody, nobody's going to give Yeah, they're taught on
whether you should pass or fail, because it's more independent than mental
defending for secondary school or junior college yeah, nobody's gonna, if you
are not performing well, nobody's gonna tell you to perform better.
[00:04:28] Hisyam: It's really more on intrinsicmotivation. I think that's what... University you get more independent. Sure.
And you need to have more intrinsic motivation to motivate yourself to actually
do in, in studies.
[00:04:40] Andrew Liew: Okay. So let me clarify here abit. When you say a bit more independent, so you're saying that during the high
school period, which in other countries or during the college polytechnic days,
You are given a preset or pre given subjects.
[00:04:53] Andrew Liew: That means you need to takesubject X, Y, Z, right? And then, whereas in university, you [00:05:00] are free to choose on your own, right?Yes,
[00:05:01] Hisyam: that's right, yeah. They actually havethey actually give you a guideline on what to choose based on the syllabus. You
have to achieve a certain amount of academic units at the end of 3 to 4 years.
[00:05:15] Hisyam: But everything in between. They don'ttell you what you must take or what you must not. But they give you a
recommended syllabus that you need to take down. So it's up to you whether you
want to actually follow that or you want to try your own path. To actually take
more modules, you want to overload more academic units per semester.
[00:05:31] Hisyam: So instead of the recommended 15academic units per semester, you can actually take, you can actually overload
up to 23 academic units. So that's an extra two to three subjects on top of
your the recommended path that you can take. If you, so it actually depends.
[00:05:47] Hisyam: If you like to finish your universitystudies faster, you can actually overload it. Every single semester. So instead
of taking 15, you take 23 for every semester. But that that really depends on
how fast how fast you learn[00:06:00] thesubject. Because each subject definitely is very heavy in university.
[00:06:04] Hisyam: Because for I think for poly and forpoly and JC JC, JC actually covers deaf. Breadth and depth. But for polytechnic
actually it's more breadth, because you actually learn a lot on the surface.
And then you actually learn a little bit on the depth. But for university, you
learn a lot, they drill down a lot on the depth of the subject.
[00:06:23] Hisyam: So you get to learn, so for example wejust, we don't just learn. Natural Language Processing I think that's one of
the terms for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. For example, you
want to take, you want to specialize in Natural Language Processing. We have to
have a few, we have to take a few starter courses, and then intermediate
course, and then followed by the advanced one it's very step by step basis,
where we have, there are a few prerequisites. I think there are more
prerequisites that we need to we need to take into account before specializing
into
[00:06:53] Andrew Liew: different focus areas. Hisham,hold it there. So for the audience to understand is that when you say more
independence, they get to choose their own [00:07:00]subjects in university.
[00:07:01] Andrew Liew: Let's go back to that situationis that when you were deciding to choose the the university subjects. And you
also have peers, like some of your friends, like guys and girls also have to
choose the university subjects. What was the challenges that, what was, what's
the challenge of choosing when in the previously you were given you're given, I
say, this X, A, B, C subjects.
[00:07:22] Andrew Liew: What is the challenges that younotice yourself and your friends when decided to choose the subjects? Then compared
to before that you were given whatever you were given, right?
[00:07:32] Hisyam: Yeah, correct. Yeah, that's a goodquestion. For how I actually navigated through that, was actually a few
challenges that arose in choosing those subjects.
[00:07:41] Hisyam: was actually that at the start ofuniversity, you actually get to know a few friends some friends you have there.
You go to the orientation groups at the same time to, to get yourself oriented
with university life and also with your batchmates back then you...
[00:07:55] Hisyam: You get to know a few friends overthere. At the start you are actually, I [00:08:00]think one of the challenges is actually peer pressure. For example a lot of
students, they go with the crowd, I think it is actually one of the one of the
more common ways. In university where we follow our peers.
[00:08:11] Hisyam: For example, if our peers are takingthis particular subject you tend to follow them or you tend to ask them, okay,
what classes are you in? Can we be together? Because there, in university,
there's a lot of there's a lot of project work and there's a lot of the
workload of project work and at the same time the theoretical aspect of the
syllabus is actually quite similar.
[00:08:30] Hisyam: It's actually weighted it's actuallyvery, it's a very balanced way. Definitely, we actually need to work on various
projects together throughout university life. So throughout the three years
definitely, I think, one of the challenges actually, I think that fear of,
okay, so if I don't go with my friends, this was one of the fears that I
actually had.
[00:08:48] Hisyam: If we don't go with our friends, thenwho are we going to team up with? What if, there's a lot of what ifs. What if,
the teammate that I was teamed up with actually it doesn't perform that well,
or it doesn't know a lot of the [00:09:00]things that are with that is required to actually perform well in that
particular project what if my teammate is actually a I think that the time is
free though where they just go they don't do any work, and they just they just
ride along with the team and then somebody has to carry, carry the the team to
actually perform well in the project.
[00:09:18] Hisyam: So I think that there's a lot of thesewhat if questions but I think definitely for me what I learned was that in the
three years that I had this fear was actually this is actually something that
you can overcome. Because the only way to To solve this fear is actually to
face it.
[00:09:35] Hisyam: So I think that's actually one of myone of my key points in Univers Brazil, was actually don't go with the crop why
not I do let's say I do a module together. I do a module myself. I don't know
anyone. A fresh, a clean slate.
[00:09:50] Hisyam: I don't go with go with my friends, I'llgo with anyone. So definitely take take a particular module alone. And then at
the same time over there when during [00:10:00]tutorial sessions you network with the rest of the people. And I think that's
one of the ways and actually for the grids wise it wasn't that far off from
doing it with friends.
[00:10:09] Hisyam: Because it can actually, the outcomecan actually be better sometimes because you actually meet You, when you
actually network with more students, more people some of these are actually,
some of them are actually geniuses that you don't even know that they could do
a lot of let's say Java programming, or you don't even know that some of them
actually intern for companies like Google all the, all this stuff.
[00:10:32] Hisyam: So you, when you actually go out thereto network and go out of your comfort zone, I think you tend to realize that
this skill is actually quite invaluable. Sometimes you tend to you tend to
overthink sometimes on, on a lot of these areas or aspects.
[00:10:48] Hisyam: So I think to, just don't overthink dostep up from the comfort zone to actually be brave to actually do things
yourself more independently. Be be more be more courageous [00:11:00] to actually talk to people talk to yourbest friends because you never know who you'll meet, you never know who you'll
learn from.
[00:11:06] Hisyam: I think those are one of the mostunexpected moments was actually in my final year where I actually met a lot of
I actually did a lot of things independently. And I actually met a lot of
project teammates that actually really smart. And I learned a lot from them.
[00:11:22] Hisyam: So I think definitely try your ownpath. I think that's one of the one of the key points that, that I've learned.
Through the end of my university days.
[00:11:30] Andrew Liew: Yeah. So you're saying that, yeahduring the university days, you tried, the challenge was to should I go with
the crowd or don't go with the crowd?
[00:11:54] Andrew Liew:Through that whole university. Can I say that the beauty about university? It
gives you a incubator [00:12:00] or shelterenvironment for you to take risks, to try out things. That you wouldn't have
try out and to encourage students who decided to go into university is to learn
to discover The ability and to take risk to do things that they would have
otherwise not
[00:12:17] Hisyam: do it.
[00:12:17] Hisyam: Yes, correct. Yes, definitely I thinkyou really nailed the point that you know on You know getting out of comfort
zone to actually do things that you never thought because I think all of us we
you know We prefer a safety net. I think most of us do that do prefer that.
[00:12:32] Hisyam: Because we do not want to think of thepossi the cons of the various possibilities that may come. The consequences
sorry, the negative consequences that may come with choosing a different path.
I think most of us do not want to go there or not want to explore that side of
university life.
[00:12:49] Hisyam: But yeah it's I've tried both, andit's not too bad yeah, so go out there and try try to do different things as
compared to being more of [00:13:00] safety,safe environment, safer environment. I think it's obviously the best time for
you to actually go out there, make new friends definitely network a lot with
especially professors with friends.
[00:13:10] Hisyam: With people that you've never metbefore and you, I think expect the unexpected. There, there are a lot of a lot
of areas that you can go to to actually get yourself to learn from because, for
example, university especially for poly students, I think they, some of them do
especially for me because my, for my particular course, we do like the
knowledge, the math knowledge that maybe that comes with the rigorous syllabus
of GC.
[00:13:38] Hisyam: Plus, I think most of them took H2Math GC A Level H2 Math. Over there, they actually do a lot of Calculus 1,
Calculus 2 and a lot of I think discrete math was actually, it's a flow. They
actually also learned some discrete math. Which we never touched in poly. I
think poly students, the foundation for mathematics is not that strong.
[00:13:59] Hisyam: For [00:14:00]some of us. How do you make up for that? Yes. How do you actually make up for
that? It's actually to mingle around with these JC students. Learn from them.
Ask them a lot of questions. And especially... Identify, I think, identify the
ones that are willing to help. Because, definitely, there are people in
university that mind their own business you don't talk to me, I won't talk to
You
[00:14:18] Andrew Liew: know
[00:14:18] Hisyam: Yes, there are people like that. But,I think, mostly for for myself, my idea was actually to identify people that
You know, can really help you out, go the extra mile to help you out. I think
those and sometimes it's quite unexpected.
[00:14:32] Hisyam: Some some and I think the mostimportant people in university, the most important, are their seniors. I think
those are the ones that they have been through that path, they have been
through those difficult modules and when I took Natural Language Processing,
one of the advanced module in my final year, it was actually one of the
toughest Things I've ever done in my life writing a transformer model and all
that stuff is it's really intense.
[00:14:59] Andrew Liew: Yeah, [00:15:00]so for the audience out there who is very new to artificial intelligence
natural language processing is one of the aspects of artificial intelligence. A
more simpler use case, Hisham, maybe you can continue, correct me if I'm wrong,
is a, just an example is to a chatbot, where you go on to a bank or you go to e
commerce, where there's a somebody at the backend that say, Hey welcome to this
website.
[00:15:22] Andrew Liew: And then you have those, you cantype your English or Chinese or whatever language that you feel comfortable,
right? Yeah that's right, yeah. It's that's a very good example of NLP
application. And I think another one is actually Google Translate. All the
sites are actually using NLP in their algorithms too, or in their models too.
[00:15:39] Hisyam: I think that's one of the, I thinkit's used a lot in model in language models. Yeah in, in linguistic models
also. Yeah, so I think NLP has a lot of use cases in those areas, yeah.
[00:15:49] Andrew Liew: Okay, so coming back while youare learning in university, I think as part of the university curriculum, you
have to take an internship, right?
[00:15:57] Andrew Liew: Tell us more about again from thepoly [00:16:00] days, you're trying to get aninternship, now in university you also need to get an internship. What goes
through your mind when you're now trying to get an internship in the university
days, and how is it different from the poly days?
[00:16:08] Hisyam: Yeah, definitely.
[00:16:09] Hisyam: For university, definitely there isfor your I think penultimate year, you have to actually, it's actually part of
the truth, okay, so this is actually something new that that I learned in uni.
Not all of the courses actually send their students or require their students
to actually do an internship.
[00:16:25] Hisyam: Yes, so I was actually quite surprisedbecause I thought there was a problem, but apparently for other courses, for
some other courses, students, they don't actually require the students to go
for an internship. So it's not required for you to go do an internship for you
to graduate at the end.
[00:16:40] Hisyam: So for but for Computer Science weactually, it's actually part of our syllabus. So the thing is, it's a very fast
moving industry. So definitely a lot of things that you need to after you have
learned a lot of the, because university has a lot of theoretical aspects to
it, where the syllabus is very theoretical.
[00:16:56] Hisyam: So there may be less less chances foryou to apply what you've [00:17:00] learned.Projects are just one aspect, but let's say for you want to link it to the
industry wide use cases less. Less chances for you to apply to industry wide
aspects. Definitely an internship is one of the core core syllabus in property
science where we actually get a chance to actually go out to the industry, to
actually learn more, or to actually apply what we've learned in university.
[00:17:22] Hisyam: Whether it be algorithms algorithmsthat we took, the algorithm, algorithm module that we took to actually apply
that to, to to normal programming on how and at the same time, to actually
explore more on what it takes for us to be a
[00:17:36] Andrew Liew: software engineer.
[00:17:37] Andrew Liew: Tell us more about Hisham whenyou apply for internship in a university, is it the same as Polytechnic where
they arrange it for you or you have to choose it yourself? Yes,
[00:17:47] Hisyam: so it's quite a different process. SoPolytechnic, you, but for university, you actually have to they actually give
you a portal where you actually have to manually apply yourself.
[00:17:57] Hisyam: Oh. Yes. But they do provide [00:18:00] you with various companies. That they arewilling to at a point of time within to take in infants and and pay them. Yeah
for example they actually, for NTU itself I'm not sure for other universities,
but for NTU, they actually have a portal.
[00:18:15] Hisyam: And we can actually, during when theportal opens during that particular period of time, I think it was, Around two
weeks, the portal will open, and then you can choose and apply what kind of
companies you want to... You want to apply to, so they actually give you a
limited choice so that you can only apply for three at any particular point of
at any particular point of time, you can only apply for three
[00:18:37] Andrew Liew: companies.
[00:18:38] Andrew Liew: Oh, so how many companies arethere normally given that you can only apply to? Is it three out of three or
three out of a hundred or what?
[00:18:44] Hisyam: Yes, so for, I think... You have toactually decide on three in the end the top three companies you would love to
that hundreds to thousands of them.
[00:18:53] Hisyam: Yes. So definitely an advice isactually to know what are the companies that you're interested in. And I [00:19:00] think one good way to know that isactually through hackathons again, because definitely In, in, in uni, I worked
on a lot of school projects. I worked on a lot of hackathons. I think one of
the hackathons that I joined was actually the AWS hackathon.
[00:19:13] Hisyam: So that was actually and one of thepeople who were in charge of the hackathons actually came down. And he was
working with AWS And he actually went to in his speech he actually went through
the leadership principles of AWS. He went through what are the cutting edge
technologies that AWS services have.
[00:19:31] Hisyam: And then at the same time the culturethat AWS has. So I was actually, during that speech, I was actually quite
inspired on, on What I was actually quite inspired to actually apply for an issue
database. So I ask around and at the same time I experiment with Plug right now
during the during the hackathon and I got on there and idea to apply over that
cause I love the culture.
[00:19:54] Hisyam: Depend based on the speech that youmade. I love what I was sharing and.
[00:19:58] Andrew Liew: Hackathon, is it a digital [00:20:00] hackathon or you have to go on site?
[00:20:01] Hisyam: Yeah, that's a good... The thing is,for... This was back when COVID wasn't
[00:20:06] Andrew Liew: there. Oh, so you... So both yourhackathons in the polytechnic days and the university days happened to be on
site, right?
[00:20:13] Andrew Liew: Yes. I was wondering, would youhave any advice if... There are kids who have to go online hackathons, oh yes I
do have an experience for this. Oh, tell us about it. I actually applied, yeah.
So if any of graduate opportunity. They call it DBSC program, where university
students are welcome to apply.
[00:20:31] Hisyam: And then over there when you apply,you actually get through the... So let me explain more of the process. When you
apply to DBSC this is just one of the graduate programs that is you know that
is offered by Development Bank of Singapore. So it's one of the top banks in
Singapore at the moment.
[00:20:46] Hisyam: Which focuses they focus, actuallyfocusing a lot on digitalization. Focusing a lot on digital transformation at
this point of time. So definitely, one of the top banks in Singapore which
graduates like us who are in computer science [00:21:00]would love to explore. So definitely, I did apply, and their process was you
have to go through, when you apply, at the same time you checkbox.
[00:21:07] Hisyam: So I think that's one of the one ofthe cutting edge technologies right now that's being used where companies
eviction processes actually handled by chatbots rather than physical you know,
rather than manually by humans. It is, you will be faced with a chatbot and
then that's where you...
[00:21:23] Hisyam: You get to know more about yourinformation, your graduation date, and all that stuff. After that you'll
actually be directed to a technical test. This technical test actually will...
There's actually a few questions, a few coding questions. There are two areas
in the technical test.
[00:21:39] Hisyam: So personality tests. And at the sametime, there's also, I think it's, there's part of an IQ test also. Yeah, so
there's a lot of tests that you have to go through during this process. And
after that, after you pass all the tests and they are happy with your
performance in those technical tests, then they'll move on to invite you for a
hackathon.
[00:21:55] Hisyam: This was one of the more interestingcompany hiring processes that [00:22:00] I'veexperienced. So it's not the normal you talk with the hiring manager is
interested in you, so they actually get to go to a hackathon, an online
hackathon because I actually did it last year very recently,
[00:22:11] Andrew Liew: yeah. So how was the experiencelike doing an online hackathon and offline hackathons? Yes, so
[00:22:16] Hisyam: online hackathon is very different.Because when I first went to the hackathon, you are, you don't know anybody
there. That's the first thing, you won't know anybody there.
[00:22:25] Hisyam: And then, the second thing isactually, you There's a lot of very awkward moments in online. Because there's
Because a lot of people, they They tend not to On their mic, or they're
uncomfortable with putting on their video, Or things like that.
[00:22:40] Hisyam: I guess it's more difficult tocommunicate With the whole team. Because you're just doing the hackathon or
doing the BTS hackathon. We are just randomized, and then we have to we have to
adapt to the working styles of five or four different people at the time.
[00:22:57] Hisyam: And then it was only like a eight hour[00:23:00] to eight, like six to eight hourlong hackathon, so we have to. You have to do it really fast. We have to
develop an app within eight to nine hours if you're counting. And, at the same
time, doing it with people that you don't even know, you don't even you haven't
even met.
[00:23:14] Hisyam: Yeah. I think one of the areas, keyareas of online hackathons is actually communication. I think never for me, my,
my key my key point is actually never have any awkward silences. Because, I
think those those just... It's unnecessary. During the hackathon, I actually
had a lot of communication with him, getting to know them more and at the same
time, the first three hours was actually us strategizing our strategizing our
application on who and then delegating tasks all that stuff.
[00:23:42] Hisyam: I think take the initiative to be theperson who organizes the team. I think that's one of
[00:23:49] Andrew Liew: the key aspects of an onlinehackathon. Okay, I'll hang on to that. Let me paraphrase again out there for the
audience. In an offline hackathon you get to choose your... teammates, [00:24:00] right?
[00:24:00] Andrew Liew: Based on your personalexperience, you got to choose who comes into the team and work on the problem,
whereas in the online hackathons, you are randomized, you don't even know the
guy, and you have to spend that time on knowing your guy during the course of
the hackathon. Am I able to say that? Is that the key difference?
[00:24:15] Andrew Liew: I think it's
[00:24:16] Hisyam: For offline hackathons, you are partlyright on that, because we For often hackathons, we don't, at the start of it,
we don't actually know anyone also, but I think it's easier to get to know them
because before the hackathon, you actually talk to them, actually know them
better there's a networking session just before the hackathon, during the
hackathon.
[00:24:34] Hisyam: So I think it's easier to navigatethrough this process of uncertainty where certain of your teammates
personalities, your teammate skills. I think it's easier to twitch during
offline hackathons, yeah, but online hackathons, definitely it's more
uncertainty involved over there.
[00:24:49] Hisyam: Because you never know whether thisperson has skill sets or not, whether this person
[00:24:53] Andrew Liew: has what kind
[00:24:54] Hisyam: of personality they have definitelyit's a challenge. But to navigate through that, actually, [00:25:00] a lot of communication. I think foronline, there are a lot more communication happening.
[00:25:04] Hisyam: Over there to actually find out, okay,what do you what it takes to actually do the application, do we delegate this,
do we delegate that who, are you more interested in front end, back end, or
doing the API all that stuff, so definitely communicate a lot to the team, I
think that's
[00:25:20] Andrew Liew: one of the key points.
[00:25:21] Andrew Liew: Ah, okay, so maybe, let meexplain out there, so what I noticed what you mentioned is that, Because in the
offline hackathon, yes, initially everybody also don't know each other, but
There is a gestation period or a period where before the actual hackathon start
offline People actually spend more time knowing each other and therefore the
trust and understanding builds up So when the offline hackathon, it's just faster
Whereas in the online hackathon people have to spend time to onboard
themselves.
[00:25:50] Andrew Liew: Onboard meaning I have to knowwho you are, what are you good at, what what does, what do you mean by your
communication languages. So that the trust, the understanding builds up. [00:26:00] And that has to be built during thehackathon itself, yes, that's right. Ah okay. Yeah. And
[00:26:04] Hisyam: also, I think part of the challengewas actually because I think you, you are a you yourself are a software
engineer.
[00:26:10] Hisyam: You and me have our own stack that weare comfortable with. Yes. That you want to go with. For example, there can be
a point of time where at the hackathon, each of us want to work on our own
stack. Sometimes for me let's say if I prefer Flutter and let's say ExpressJS
for backend.
[00:26:25] Hisyam: And Flutter for frontend, and then,for example, for you, you prefer Python Django that kind of thing. It's
definitely... It takes a bit of convincing. Sometimes you have to convince your
team maybe, let's say, if I find that okay, ReactJS ReactJS, or React Native
frontend is actually the fastest way.
[00:26:41] Hisyam: Solve this problem. I think it takes abit of convincing at the start to to really motivate your team or to inspire
your team that you work on the stack that you are, ah,
[00:26:50] Andrew Liew: that
[00:26:51] Hisyam: is more the most suitable
[00:26:52] Andrew Liew: at the point of time. I'm justthinking aloud. So let's say for companies out there hearing this audience like
human resource directors and they wanna use [00:27:00]hackathon to hire, do you think maybe before they actually onboard them to the
online hackathon, There needs to be an onboarding process and the selection
shouldn't be randomized.
[00:27:08] Andrew Liew: It should be like for exampleasking you and say Hisham you like flutter, right? I should they should like,
okay I have a flutter front end guy a flutter back end guy expressjs mongodb
guy And then a python for ai or middleware and then they put these people with
a pre preference for their stack so that from the get go The tools are very
familiar, then they just need to build the communication, they don't need to
figure out the stack, they don't need to figure out the communication, they
don't need to figure out the trust.
[00:27:34] Andrew Liew: These are three differentcomponents to figure out, right? Isn't
[00:27:36] Hisyam: that the case? Yeah, that's right, butI think for I think you made a good point on that. Putting different people
with the same stack experience together. But I think that also defeats the
purpose of the hackathonic also, where they actually, I think some of these HR
managers and some of these people who are going to grade you for the hackathon,
they actually want to see how you perform under uncertainty.
[00:27:59] Hisyam: I think that's one of [00:28:00] the key areas that they want to to know sofor example, if I'm familiar with a stack how fast do I learn it? Or what how
do I navigate through that, where if I've never done ReactJS before, I've never
done ExpressJS as a backend before.
[00:28:14] Hisyam: They want to see really how in myopinion they want to they wanna know how you actually tackle this problem of I
think that's one of the areas also talking about that.