Long straight hair that sparkled in the light.
A perfect S-line rear figure.
The white fingers were typing the fingers as if they were seducing men.
(This thing won’t de-link… It won’t lead you anywhere)
Looking at the internet window, it was the website which YongHo visited a lot.
“Huh?”
The woman stopped still while having bit into a peach. The sweetness of the peach could be felt from the pink lips.
“There’s a Korean person.”
An absolute majority of the open source projects were held in English-speaking countries. Stack overfly, too, was an activity that that answered people’s questions without any sort of reward.
A Korean was rare in a place like that.
[email protected]/* */
The thing the woman was looking at was YongHo’s ID. Perhaps due to being active for a long time, his ranking, which was near the end, had risen to the middle of the rankings.
Some of YongHo’s answers were even in the top 100.
Of course, YongHo, who had fear towards English, he was satisfied with just answering. He didn’t know that his answers ranked in the top 100 nor did he know that his ranking was now in the middle of the rankings.
The woman who confirmed the ID seemed to have decided that she will look further into this as she started looking at the posts made by YongHo.
Her eyes behind her horn-rimmed gla.s.ses seemed to glow in interest.
“He has some skill.”
A face that was white to the point of being pale showed that she was not an outdoor person. Perhaps due to her excitement due to her curiosity, a slight blush took place in her pale face.
YongHo never expected that the knot would get untied so easily.
“I called you because I didn’t get a notification of turning into a permanent employee.”
-Oh… You didn’t get contacted. Unfortunately, there was a limit to the employment capacity this time.
The person from the human resources team awkwardly stuttered his words. It was one week since YongHo left the motel because the project had finished. SuMin, HyeJin and SungGyu were all contacted to come to the company main building to renew their contract to be a permanent employee.
But YongHo wasn’t.
“May I inquire about the reason? I think I showed plenty of my ability.”
When he got the fail notification he instead got more confident. All the uncertainty before the decision was made had disappeared. He felt that something was lifted from his heart.
-I repeat but, Mr. YongHo’s talent and capability is to notch but there is a limit to how many people we can employ this time.
Just because something was lifted from his heart, didn’t mean that he didn’t get angry.
“Why is it me?”
An angry tone was mixed in with the frustrated voice. Such change of emotion could be felt by the human resources team employee.
-I will end the call here if there isn’t anything else.
“……”
And he ended the call there without even listening to YongHo’s words.
Even after the call ended, YongHo stared at his phone in a daze.
*Kketalk*(parody of kakaotalk’s notification sound katalk)
-You’ve been invited to a group talk.
When he confirmed, HyeJin made a group talk, inviting SungGyu, SuMin and himself.
HyeJin: Sunbae, why are you so late? Are you going to be late on the first day?
HyeJin: I guess that takes a load off our minds about employment.
SungGyu-Hyung: What are you doing? Come quickly, it’s boring here.
Ji SuMin: Tardiness is not good.
They were looking for YongHo. His eyes blurred while looking at the chat. A teardrop fell on to the phone screen. YongHo stayed with his head held down for a long while.
Dinner time.
He wanted to tell his parents of only good news. He wanted to tell them about turning into a permanent employee while giving them the money he received due to his own ability. However, life didn’t go as he willed. He brought his parents to the living room and he took out an envelope.
“What’s this?”
“It’s my salary until now. Use this to put out the urgent fire with this first.”
YongHo’s parents’ faces were full of shock after they opened the envelope. A 10 million won cheque was in the envelope. He gave An ByungHoon 20 million won and the rest was in YongHo’s bank account.
“Wh, where did you get a big sum like this?”
His parents had difficult lives all their life. It was a matter of fact that they would be shocked to receive a money like 10 million won. At their shocked figures, YongHo had difficulties telling them everything so he just told them vaguely.
“I earned it when I did some part time work while working. And……”
“And what?”
“I think Mirae IT is not suitable for me.”
“What?”
His parents raised their voices in surprise.
“I think I can get employed by a bigger company.”
“Of course, being employed by a big company is good but… Isn’t Mirae IT a good company too?”
“There is a sunbae from my school who got into Osung, and he said that a person with my capabilities could do in his company so he said he would look into it. Isn’t IT needed everywhere nowadays?”
There indeed was a person who got into Osung company. The trap was that there was only 1 in the last 5 years.
“Well, I did hear that nothing works without computers nowadays.”
At those words, YongHo smiled with all his might and said.
“Yes, so I’m trying to go to a better place.”
Perhaps due to the cheque he gave them, the talk ended well. YongHo’s parents seemed to be more interested in the envelope rather than what YongHo was saying.
He didn’t go to the graduation ceremony.
He also didn’t answer people’s calls.
But he also didn’t drown himself in alcohol.
He didn’t even ask ‘why me?’ while feeling despair of being thrown away by society.
And none of his job application papers pa.s.sed.
Fail.
Fail.
Fail.
Big companies demanded a good educational background, TOEIC(Test of English for International Communication, very important in Korea when looking for a job), and high credits; and middle sized enterprises and small businesses preferred experienced people who can get to work right away.
YongHo’s work experience only composed of his 6 months in Mirae IT.
‘F*ck, even the papers don’t pa.s.s.’
Even pa.s.sing the papers was not easy.
Once, he went to an enterprise that contacted him after seeing his résumé on SaramOut.
One was multiple marketing business.
The second was an employee from an estate agent project.
It wasn’t a place he could do normal work.
Meanwhile, one place contacted him. When he searched the internet, he found it was an IT company. They said to come for an interview since his papers pa.s.sed.
It took two months for his papers to pa.s.s.
The fact that he may become jobless for life at this rate made YongHo sensitive.
Youth unemployment rate of 410,000.
It was a continuous stream of anxious days when he thought about the fact that he could contribute to that number.
He knew better than anyone else that newbies don’t get employed easily. It was important to get experience.
However, even an opportunity to get experience was rare.
It was an opportunity he got with difficulty.
The location of the company was Gasan Digital Complex.
‘Gasan? That’s the same place I almost got scammed.’
On the subway, he thought of the past. The experience he got with SungGyu when he went there to receive the money from the part time job pa.s.sed through his head like a kaleidoscope.
As soon as he entered the small 15 pyung(≈50m2), YongHo had to listen to an absurd talk.
“Sorry?”
The female employee said bluntly.
“The president said that they don’t need to hire anyone and I forgot to contact you about it.”
“I came here to have an interview but what do you mean by that?”
“You can just return.”
The female employee who was sitting at the entrance didn’t even give YongHo a glance. She sat there while looking at the computer screen and retorted.
“Excuse me.”
“I said return. I don’t know why, but the president said that he won’t have an interview after he looked at your résumé.
The female employee didn’t even tell him the reason and just repeated that he should return.
“Didn’t you call me AFTER looking at my résumé?”
“I don’t know.”
“Excuse me.”
“If you are like this, then I will call security.”
He had to turn back without even having an interview.
*Bang*
He vented his frustration on the innocent wall but all he got was the pain of having hit a solid and impenetrable wall.
The continuous fails made YongHo more obsessed with stack overfly.
The only place where his ability can be acknowledged.
His English was insufficient but he could understand simple words.
great.
awesome.
I like your code.
I love it. (I doubt people will actually say this though)
Checking the simple replies and the private messages about appreciation for his help was his only consolation in life.
Although reality was sh*t, here on stack overfly he wasn’t envious of anyone else.
‘There are a lot of messages today too.’
YongHo answered other people’s posts but he also replied to the people who asked questions through messages.
Although he couldn’t explain in detail, he commented on the source a lot with his insufficient English and he organized the source neatly when he replied.
‘Hmm……’
When he ran the source he got from a message, the result was indeed different to the expected value, as the asker explained.
‘Dijkstra’s algorithm, huh.’
When he first came into contact with dijkstra’s algorithm, he even considered dropping the course since it was too difficult.
It was then that SungGyu helped. He advised that he should learn the algorithm by heart if it was too difficult and YongHo really did learn the source word by word while programming.
Fortunately, learning it by heart did have an effect in studying and when he learnt it, he started understanding the theory behind it.
He didn’t even need the bug window.
He found the bug as soon as he looked at the code.
‘He forgot to renew new the weight on each vertices.’
Dijkstra’s algorithm.
As an algorithm that is used to find the shortest path, it is used a lot in GPS navigators and maps to find the shortest path between two places. (Author says that but they usually aren’t)
With a weight on each point, the algorithm progressed as it moved one step when it found the smallest weight for a vertex. The weight had to be renewed when the the algorithm progressed to a new vertex.
‘I screwed up a lot too.’
YongHo seemed to have thought of the past as he smiled slightly. He had something to smile at amidst the tough life he had.
‘It should work if the weight is renewed in line 121.’
It was the part that YongHo had difficulties with in the past. After going through every single vertex, if a total weight that is lower than the previous value was found then a renewal of the total weight in the array which stored the previous values.
‘Let’s make an updateSearchResult method too.’
YongHo made a method in the middle of the source and inserted the statement to call that method in line 121.
When he ran the program, the result was as it should be.
YongHo, after he checked the result, pasted the code onto the message and added a new line.
He wished that the receiver could smile after solving the problem, as he added the new line.
I laughed and thought, thanks to old*
-I laughed while thinking about the past, thanks to you.
It was the English he got from koogle translate.