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Jemima Abu, Senior Product Engineer at CAIS, joins the podcast to unpack her no-fluff approach to functional programming in JavaScript. From why predictable code matters to how higher-order functions like map and reduce can save your sanity, Jemima breaks down real-world lessons on purity, immutability, and when it's okay to not be a functional purist. Links https://v3.jemimaabu.com https://www.jemimaabu.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/jemimaabu https://x.com/jemimaabu https://github.com/jemimaabu We want to hear from you! How did you find us? Did you see us on Twitter? In a newsletter? Or maybe we were recommended by a friend? Let us know by sending an email to our producer, Emily, at emily.kochanekketner@logrocket.com (mailto:emily.kochanekketner@logrocket.com), or tweet at us at PodRocketPod (https://twitter.com/PodRocketpod). Follow us. Get free stickers. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form (https://podrocket.logrocket.com/get-podrocket-stickers), and we'll send you free PodRocket stickers! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket provides AI-first session replay and analytics that surfaces the UX and technical issues impacting user experiences. Start understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at [LogRocket.com]. Try LogRocket for free today.(https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr) Special Guest: Jemima Abu.
Send us a textBefore you read "Cracking the Coding Interview" or "Clean Code", I want to offer a few books that you should read at every stage of your developer career from not-yet-hired to engineering manager.Me, sponsored? No.I just like sharing what's worked for me in the hopes it can work for you.If you have some good recommendations I didn't mention please let me and the rest of us know in the comments!Shameless Plugs(NEW) The Inner Circle - a highly customized program to take you from 0 to hired
Neste episódio do Emílias Podcast - Mulheres na Computação, a convidada é Ana Neri, engenheira de software sênior na Avenue Code, reconhecida como LinkedIn Top Voice, embaixadora do programa Women Techmakers e líder ativa em comunidades como NodeBR. Ana compartilha sua trajetória na área de tecnologia, explicando como alcançou o cargo atual trabalhando remotamente para uma empresa internacional. Ela também discute as tecnologias que utiliza, a importância do aprendizado contínuo e o papel que a criação de conteúdo desempenha em sua carreira. Com presença em várias plataformas digitais, Ana explica como construiu audiência ao compartilhar conhecimento técnico e experiências na área. Além disso, Ana fala sobre sua formação em Análise e Desenvolvimento de Sistemas pela São Paulo Tech School e o impacto das certificações que acumulou ao longo de sua carreira. Ela aborda os desafios enfrentados como mulher na tecnologia e a relevância de comunidades de apoio como o Women Techmakers e o WoMakersCode, onde ela foi voluntária por quatro anos. Ana encerra com mensagens para mulheres que desejam seguir carreira na computação e recomendações culturais, mostrando sua paixão pela disseminação do conhecimento e pela inclusão no setor. Indicações da Ana: Filmes sobre apocalipse zumbi https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32643879 Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions Gayle Laakmann McDowell https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55014663-cracking-the-coding-interview Indicação da Ingrid: Code Bunny, do Time Seventh Star. Liderado por uma conterrânea minha, a Lavie Azure. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3303780/CODE_Bunny/ Apresentadores: Adolfo Neto, Nathálya Chaves e Ingrid Mendes. Outra entrevista com Ana: ANA NERI (Engenheira de Software Sênior) - Papinho Tech #066 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY_wPIZHePo Editor: Allax Almeida O Emílias Podcast é um projeto de extensão da UTFPR Curitiba que faz parte da Rede Emílias de Podcasts https://fronteirases.github.io/redeemilias . Descubra tudo sobre o programa Emílias - Armação em Bits em https://linktr.ee/Emilias #podcast #EMILIAS
Com um mercado em constante expansão, o setor de tecnologia está intensificando a busca por profissionais qualificados. Para se preparar para este mercado, que pede cada vez mais por agilidade, a chave está na capacitação. É por meio dela que os desenvolvedores enfrentam esses desafios e crescem em suas carreiras. Nesta conversa entre Luciano Martins, Developer Advocate do Google Cloud, Yale Soares, Gerente de projetos e recrutadora do time de estágios na América Latina e Kizzy Terra, CoFounder do Programação Dinâmica, você vai entender mais sobre como os cursos de capacitação e as comunidades vão te ajudar a alavancar sua carreira e ficar atento às tendências do mercado. O Devs na Sala faz parte do hub de conteúdo do Google Cloud Cast. Nesse podcast, nós discutimos assuntos técnicos para o público técnico com foco na jornada de aprendizado, detalhes de projetos, futuro da tecnologia e muito mais! Participe da comunidade de desenvolvedores do Google Cloud: https://cloud.google.com /innovators Grupos de afinidade como estratégia de inclusão e diversidade: https://bit.ly/3Rtayc2 Link da Playlist “Classical Music for When You're on a Deadline”: https://bit.ly/41hPPLt Link para o livro “Cracking the Coding Interview”: https://bit.ly/3GxLlGU Conheça o blog técnico do Google Cloud: medium.com/google-cloud-brasil Conecte-se com a Yale Soares: www.linkedin.com/in/yalesoares Conecte-se com a Kizzy Terra: www.linkedin.com/in/kizzyterra Conecte-se com o Luciano Martins: www.linkedin.com/in/lucianommartins
Alle Firmen suchen nur Senior-Engineers - Steckt in Junior-Engineers das wahre Potential?Nachwuchs im Software-Engineering-Bereich zu bekommen ist nicht einfach. Die meisten Stellenanzeigen im Internet suchen Senior-Engineers mit über 5 Jahren Erfahrung. Doch wie sieht es denn mit Junior-Developer aus? Wie erkennt man motivierende Junior-Engineers in Interviews? Wie reagiert ein Team aus Senior-Engineers auf unerfahrene Personen? Welche Rolle spielen strukturierte Interviews und Entscheidungen aus dem Bauch heraus? Und was ist das richtige Verhalten, wenn man Zeit und Geld in die Weiterentwicklung einer Person investiert hat, aber die Person nach 2 Jahren kündigt?In dieser Episode teilen Wolfgang und Andy ihre Erfahrungen im Recruiting, in der Weiterentwicklung und bei Kündigungen von Junior Engineers.Bonus: Warum goto Statements böse sind und was Korn-Brause mit Sommer zu tun hat.Das schnelle Feedback zur Episode:
Everyone is always telling us to play it safe. Then one day we wake up and we're almost 40 years old, living a boring life and having a mid-life crisis…Zero to Mastery - Junior to Senior Web Developer Roadmap: https://bit.ly/ZTM_Web_Developer_RoadmapZero to Mastery - Master the Coding Interview! Data Structures + Algorithms: https://bit.ly/ZTM_Coding_Interview_PrepZero to Mastery - Complete React Developer in 2022:https://bit.ly/ZTM_React_DeveloperReceive 10% off at Zero to Mastery by using FRIENDS10 coupon code at check out!My Resume & Cover Letter Bundle (https://sowl.co/s/Rfqsd)Desk gear from Grovemade available at https://bit.ly/3NrZDKE New customers save 10% when they use the DORIANDEVELOPS coupon code!Buy me a coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/doriandevelopsJoin my Discord (https://discord.gg/XckBsDRQxg)Here are some direct affiliate links for the gear that I use in my home office and gear that I use to make my YouTube videos_____YouTube Gear_____Camera Sony FX3 (https://amzn.to/3AXfFGM)Sony GMaster 16-35mm Lens (https://amzn.to/3onQtpw)Aputure Light Storm LS 300X (https://amzn.to/3MErzLC)Aputure Light Dome II (https://amzn.to/3wvDQfG)Rode NTG5 Shotgun mic (https://amzn.to/3onM7OU)Shure SM7B Microphone (https://amzn.to/3Pzrs5R)Elgato Key Lights (https://amzn.to/2Y7oxvl)______Home Office_____ MacBook Pro (https://amzn.to/3PxYxPh)Monitor (https://amzn.to/39FdoHd)Secretlab Titan - https://bit.ly/3maIKX6Keyboard (https://amzn.to/3MvY4Lz)Mouse (https://amzn.to/3yTLO3T)Beat Studio Buds (https://amzn.to/3Lu5YUz)Noise Canceling Headphones (https://amzn.to/2EOKB4e)Standing Desk Base (https://amzn.to/38FJz9x) with Ikea Counter top (https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/kitchen-countertops-24264/)Rest of the gear I use that you can buy on my Amazon store: https://www.amazon.com/shop/doriandevelops
Listen to Screaming in the Cloud: https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/learning-in-public-with-swyx/Episode SummaryToday Corey sits down with swyx, head of developer experience at Airbyte, and so much more! They begin by chatting about swyx's career history, professional motivation, and an industry taboo: following the money. Then Corey and swyx move into a discussion about the surprisingly challenging nature of developer experience and what it means to “learn in public.” swyx talks about expertise and how to quantify and demonstrate learning. Corey and swyx discuss swyx's book “The Coding Career Handbook” and career coaching. swyx shares about his most recent foray into management in the era of zoom meetings, and conclude the conversation by talking about data integration and swyx's latest job at Airbyte.Links Referenced: “Learning Gears” blog post: https://www.swyx.io/learning-gears The Coding Career Handbook: https://learninpublic.org Personal Website: https://swyx.io Twitter: https://twitter.com/swyx TranscriptCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Some folks are really easy to introduce when I have them on the show because, “My name is, insert name here. I built thing X, and my job is Y at company Z.” Then we have people like today's guest.swyx is currently—and recently—the head of developer experience at Airbyte, but he's also been so much more than that in so many different capacities that you're very difficult to describe. First off, thank you for joining me. And secondly, what's the deal with you?swyx: [laugh]. I have professional ADD, just like you. Thanks for having me, Corey. I'm a—Corey: It works out.swyx: a big fan. Longtime listener, first time caller. Love saying that. [laugh].Corey: You have done a lot of stuff. You have a business and finance background, which… okay, guilty; it's probably why I feel some sense of affinity for a lot of your work. And then you went into some interesting directions. You were working on React and serverless YahvehScript—which is, of course, how I insist on pronouncing it—at Two Sigma, Netlify, AWS—a subject near and dear to my heart—and most recently temporal.io.And now you're at Airbyte. So, you've been focusing on a lot of, I won't say the same things, but your area of emphasis has definitely consistently rhymed with itself. What is it that drives you?swyx: So, I have been recently asking myself a lot of this question because I had to interview to get my new role. And when you have multiple offers—because the job market is very hot for DevRel managers—you have to really think about it. And so, what I like to say is: number one, working with great people; number two, working on great products; number three, making a lot of money.Corey: There's entire school of thought that, “Oh, that's gauche. You shouldn't mention trying to make money.” Like, “Why do you want to work here because I want to make money.” It's always true—swyx: [crosstalk 00:03:46]—Corey: —and for some reason, we're supposed to pretend otherwise. I have a lot of respect for people who can cut to the chase on that. It's always been something that has driven me nuts about the advice that we give a new folks to the industry and peop—and even students figuring out their career path of, “Oh, do something you love and the money will follow.” Well, that's not necessarily true. There are ways to pivot something you'd love into something lucrative and there are ways to wind up more or less borderline starving to death. And again, I'm not saying money is everything, but for a number of us, it's hard to get to where we want to be without it.swyx: Yeah, yeah. I think I've been cast with the kind of judgmental label of being very financially motivated—that's what people have called me—for simply talking about it. And I'm like, “No. You know, it's number three on my priority list.” Like, I will leave positions where I have a lot of money on the table because I don't enjoy the people or the products, but having it up there and talking openly about it somehow makes you [laugh] makes you sort of greedy or something. And I don't think that's right. I tried to set an example for the people that I talk to or people who follow me.Corey: One of the things I've always appreciated about, I guess, your online presence, which has remained remarkably consistent as you've been working through a bunch of different, I guess, stages of life and your career, is you have always talked in significant depth about an area of tech that I am relatively… well, relatively crap at, let's be perfectly honest. And that is the wide world of most things front-end. Every time I see a take about someone saying, “Oh, front-end is junior or front-end is somehow less than,” I'd like to know what the hell it is they know because every time I try and work with it, I wind up more confused than I was when I started. And what I really appreciate is that you have always normalized the fact that this stuff is hard. As of the time that we're recording this a day or so ago, you had a fantastic tweet thread about a friend of yours spun up a Create React App and imported the library to fetch from an endpoint and immediately got stuck. And then you pasted this ridiculous error message.He's a senior staff engineer, ex-Google, ex-Twitter; he can solve complex distributed systems problems and unable to fetch from a REST endpoint without JavaScript specialist help. And I talk about this a lot in other contexts, where the reason I care so much about developer experience is that a bad developer experience does not lead people to the conclusion of, “Oh, this is a bad interface.” It leads people to the conclusion, “Oh, I'm bad at this and I didn't realize it.” No. I still fall into that trap myself.I was under the impression that there was just this magic stuff that JS people know. And your tweet did so much to help normalize from my perspective, the fact that no, no, this is very challenging. I recently went on a Go exploration. Now, I'm starting to get into JavaScript slash TypeScript, which I think are the same thing but I'm not entirely certain of that. Like, oh, well, one of them is statically typed, or strongly typed. It's like, “Well, I have a loud mechanical keyboard. Everything I do is typing strongly, so what's your point?”And even then we're talking past each other in these things. I don't understand a lot of the ecosystem that you live your career in, but I have always had a tremendous and abiding respect for your ability to make it accessible, understandable, and I guess for lack of a better term, to send the elevator back down.swyx: Oh, I definitely think about that strongly, especially that last bit. I think it's a form of personal growth. So, I think a lot of people, when they talk about this sending the elevator back down, they do it as a form of charity, like I'm giving back to the community. But honestly, you actually learn a lot by trying to explain it to others because that's the only way that you truly know if you've learned something. And if you ever get anything wrong, you'll—people will never let you forget it because it is the internet and people will crawl over broken glass to remind you that you're wrong.And once you've got it wrong, you will—you know, you've been so embarrassed that you'll never forget it. So, I think it's just a really good way to learn in public. And that's kind of the motto that I'm kind of known for. Yeah, we can take the direction anywhere you want to go in JavaScript land. Happy to talk about it all day. [laugh].Corey: Well, I want to start by something you just said where you're doing the learning in public thing. And something I've noticed is that there are really two positions you can take—in the general sense—when you set out to make a bit of a reputation for yourself in a particular technical space. You can either do the, “I'm a beginner here, same as the rest of you, and I'm learning in public,” or you can position yourself as something of an expert. And there are drawbacks and advantages to both. I think that if you don't look as wildly over-represented as I do, both of them are more fraught in different ways, where it's, “Oh, you're learning in public. Ah, look at the new person, she's dumb.”Or if you're presenting yourself as an expert, you get nibbled to death by ducks on a lot of the deep technical nuances and well, actually'ed to death. And my position has always been and this is going to be a radical concept for some folks, is that I'm genuinely honest. I tend to learn in public about the things that I don't know, but the things that I am something of a subject matter expert in—like, I don't know, cloud billing—I don't think that false modesty necessarily serves me particularly well. It's yeah, I know exactly what I'm talking about here. Pretending otherwise it's just being disingenuous.swyx: I try to think of it as having different gears of learning in public. So, I've called this “Learning Gears” in a previous blog post of mine, where you try to fit your mode of learning to the terrain that you're on, your domain expertise, and you should never over-represent the amount that you know because I think people are very rightly upset when there are a lot of people—let's say on Twitter, or YouTube, or Udemy even—who present themselves as experts who are actually—they just read the docs the previous night. So, you should try not to over-represent your expertise.But at the same time, don't let your imposter syndrome stop you from sharing what you are currently learning and taking corrections when you're wrong. And I think that's the tricky balance to get which is constantly trying to put yourself out there while accepting that you might be wrong and not getting offended when or personally attacked when someone corrects you, inevitably. And sometimes people will—especially if you have a lot of followers, people will try to say—you know, someone of your following—you know, it's—I kind of call this follower shaming, like, you should act, uh—invulnerable, or run every tweet through committee before you tweet after a certain sort of following size. So, I try to not do that and try to balance responsibility with authenticity.Corey: I think that there's something incredibly important about that, where there's this idea that you either become invulnerable and get defensive and you yell at people, and down that path lies disaster because, believe it or not, we all get it wrong from time to time, and doubling down and doubling down and doubling down again, suddenly, you're on an island all by yourself and no one respectable is going to be able to get there to help you. And the other side of it is going too far in the other direction, where you implicitly take any form of criticism whatsoever as being de facto correct. And I think that both paths don't lead to super great places. I think it's a matter of finding our own voices and doing a little bit of work as far as the validity of accepting a given piece of feedback goes. But other than that, I'm a big fan of being able to just more or less be as authentic as possible.And I get that I live in a very privileged position where I have paths open to me that are not open to most folks. But in many respects so to you are one of the—easily—first five people I would think of if someone said, “Hey if I need to learn JavaScript for someone, who should I talk to first?” You're on that list. And you've done a lot of things in this area, but you've never—you alluded to it a few minutes ago, but I'm going to call it out a little more pointedly—without naming names, let's be clear—and that you're never presented as a grifter, which is sort of the best way I can think of it of, “Well, I just learned this new technology stack yesterday and now I'm writing a book that I'm going to sell to people on how to be an expert at this thing.” And I want to be clear, this is very distinct from gatekeeping because I think that, “Oh, well, you have to be at least this much of an expert—” No, but I think that holding yourself out as I'm going to write a book on how to be proud of how to become a software engineer.Okay, you were a software engineer for six months, and more to the point, knowing how to do a thing and knowing how to teach a thing are orthogonal skill sets, and I think that is not well understood. If I ever write a book or put something—or some sort of info product out there, I'm going to have to be very careful not to fall into that trap because I don't want to pretend to be an expert in things that I'm not. I barely think I'm an expert in things that I provable am.swyx: there are many ways to answer that. So, I have been accused a couple of times of that. And it's never fun, but also, if you defend yourself well, you can actually turn a critic into a fan, which I love doing.Corey: Mm-hm.swyx: [laugh].Corey: Oh yes.swyx: what I fall back to, so I have a side interest in philosophy, based on one of my high school teachers giving us, like, a lecture in philosophy. I love him, he changed my life. [Lino Barnard 00:13:20], in case—in the off chance that he's listening. So, there's a theory of knowledge of, like, how do you know what you know, right? And if you can base your knowledge on truth—facts and not opinions, then people are arguing with the facts and not the opinions.And so, getting as close to ground truth as possible and having certainty in your collection of facts, I think is the basis of not arguing based on identity of, like, “Okay, I have ten years experience; you have two years experience. I am more correct than you in every single opinion.” That's also not, like, the best way to engage in the battlefield of ideas. It's more about, do you have the right amount of evidence to support the conclusions that you're trying to make? And oftentimes, I think, you know, that is the basis, if you don't have that ability.Another thing that I've also done is to collect the opinions of others who have more expertise and present them and curate them in a way that I think adds value without taking away from the individual original sources. So, I think there's a very academic way [laugh] you can kind of approach this, but that defends your intellectual integrity while helping you learn faster than the typical learning rate. Which is kind of something I do think about a lot, which is, you know, why do we judge people by the number of years experience? It's because that's usually the only metric that we have available that is quantifiable. Everything else is kind of fuzzy.But I definitely think that, you know, better algorithms for learning let you progress much faster than the median rate, and I think people who apply themselves can really get up there in terms of the speed of learning with that. So, I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff. [laugh].Corey: It's a hard thing to solve for. There's no way around it. It's, what is it that people should be focusing on? How should they be internalizing these things? I think a lot of it starts to with an awareness, even if not in public, just to yourself of, “I would like advice on some random topic.” Do you really? Are you actually looking for advice or are you looking—swyx: right.Corey: For validation? Because those are not the same thing, and you are likely to respond very differently when you receive advice, depending on which side of that you're coming from.swyx: Yeah. And so, one way to do that is to lay out both sides, to actually demonstrate what you're split on, and ask for feedback on specific tiebreakers that would help your decision swing one way or another. Yeah, I mean, there are definitely people who ask questions that are just engagement bait or just looking for validation. And while you can't really fix that, I think it's futile to try to change others' behavior online. You just have to be the best version of yourself you can be. [laugh].Corey: DoorDash had a problem. As their cloud-native environment scaled and developers delivered new features, their monitoring system kept breaking down. In an organization where data is used to make better decisions about technology and about the business, losing observability means the entire company loses their competitive edge. With Chronosphere, DoorDash is no longer losing visibility into their applications suite. The key? Chronosphere is an open source compatible, scalable, and reliable observability solution that gives the observability lead at DoorDash business, confidence, and peace of mind. Read the full success story at snark.cloud/chronosphere. That's snark.cloud slash C-H-R-O-N-O-S-P-H-E-R-E.Corey: So, you wrote a book that is available at learninpublic.org, called The Coding Career Handbook. And to be clear, I have not read this myself because at this point, if I start reading a book like that, and you know, the employees that I have see me reading a book like that, they're going to have some serious questions about where this company is going to be going soon. But scrolling through the site and the social proof, the testimonials from various people who have read it, more or less read like a who's-who of people that I respect, who have been on this show themselves.Emma Bostian is fantastic at explaining a lot of these things. Forrest Brazeal is consistently a source to me of professional envy. I wish I had half his musical talent; my God. And your going down—it explains, more or less, the things that a lot of folks people are all expected to know but no one teaches them about every career stage, ranging from newcomer to the industry to senior. And there's a lot that—there's a lot of gatekeeping around this and I don't even know that it's intentional, but it has to do with the idea that people assume that folks, quote-unquote, “Just know” the answer to some things.Oh, people should just know how to handle a technical interview, despite the fact that the skill set is completely orthogonal to the day-to-day work you'll be doing. People should just know how to handle a performance review, or should just know how to negotiate for a raise, or should just know how to figure out is this technology that I'm working on no longer the direction the industry is going in, and eventually I'm going to wind up, more or less, waiting for the phone to ring because there's only three companies in the world left who use it. Like, how do you keep—how do you pay attention to what's going on around you? And it's the missing manual that I really wish that people would have pointed out to me back when I was getting started. Would have made life a lot easier.swyx: Oh, wow. That's high praise. I actually didn't know we're going to be talking about the book that much. What I will say is—Corey: That's the problem with doing too much. You never know what people have found out about you and what they're going to say when they drag you on to a podcast.swyx: got you, got you. Okay. I know, I know, I know where this is going. Okay. So, one thing that I really definitely believe is that—and this happened to me in my first job as well, which is most people get the mentors that they're assigned at work, and sometimes you have a bad roll the dice. [laugh].And you're supposed to pick up all the stuff they don't teach you in school at work or among your friend group, and sometimes you just don't have the right network at work or among your friend group to tell you the right things to help you progress your career. And I think a lot of this advice is written down in maybe some Hacker News posts, some Reddit posts, some Twitter posts, and there's not really a place you to send people to point to, that consolidates that advice, particularly focused at the junior to senior stage, which is the stage that I went through before writing the book. And so, I think that basically what I was going for is targeting the biggest gap that I saw, which is, there a lot of interview prep type books like Crack the Coding Career, which is kind of—Crack the Coding Interview, which is kind of the book title that I was going after. But once you got the job, no one really tells you what to do after you got that first job. And how do you level up to the senior that everyone wants to hire, right? There's—Corey: “Well, I've mastered cracking the coding interview. Now, I'm really trying to wrap my head around the problem of cracking the showing up at work on time in the morning.” Like, the baseline stuff. And I had so many challenges with that early in my career. Not specifically punctuality, but just the baseline expectation that it's just assumed that by the time you're in the workplace earning a certain amount of money, it's just assumed that you have—because in any other field, you would—you have several years of experience in the workplace and know how these things should play out.No, the reason that I'm sometimes considered useful as far as giving great advice on career advancement and the rest is not because I'm some wizard from the future, it's because I screwed it all up myself and got censured and fired and rejected for all of it. And it's, yeah, I'm not smart enough to learn from other people's mistakes; I got to make them myself. So, there's something to be said for turning your own missteps into guidance so that the next person coming up has an easier time than you did. And that is a theme that, from what I have seen, runs through basically everything that you do.swyx: I tried to do a lot of research, for sure. And so, one way to—you know, I—hopefully, I try not to make mistakes that others have learned, have made, so I tried to pick from, I think I include 1500 quotes and sources and blog posts and tweets to build up that level of expertise all in one place. So hopefully, it gives people something to bootstrap your experience off of. So, you're obviously going to make some mistakes on your own, but at least you have the ability to learn from others, and I think this is my—you know, I'm very proud of the work that I did. And I think people have really appreciated it.Because it's a very long book, and nobody reads books these days, so what am I doing [laugh] writing a book? I think it's only the people that really need this kind of advice, that they find themselves not having the right mentorship that reach out to me. And, you know, it's good enough to support a steady stream of sales. But more importantly, like, you know, I am able to mentor them at various levels from read my book, to read my free tweets, to read the free chapters, or join the pay community where we have weekly sessions going through every chapter and I give feedback on what people are doing. Sometimes I've helped people negotiate their jobs and get that bump up to senior staff—senior engineer, and I think more than doubled their salary, which was very personal proud moment for me.But yeah, anyway, I think basically, it's kind of like a third place between the family and work that you could go to the talk about career stuff. And I feel like, you know, maybe people are not that open on Twitter, but maybe they can be open in a small community like ours.Corey: There's a lot to be said for a sense of professional safety and personal safety around being—having those communities. I mean, mine, when I was coming up was the freenode IRC network. And that was great; it's pseudo-anonymous, but again, I was Corey and network staff at the time, which was odd, but it was great to be able to reach out and figure out am I thinking about this the wrong way, just getting guidance. And sure, there are some channels that basically thrived on insulting people. I admittedly was really into that back in the early-two-thousand-nothings.And, like, it was always fun to go to the Debian channel. It's like, “Yeah, can you explain to me how to do this or should I just go screw myself in advance?” Yeah, it's always the second one. Like, community is a hard thing to get right and it took me a while to realize this isn't the energy I want in the world. I like being able to help people come up and learn different things.I'm curious, given your focus on learning in public and effectively teaching folks as well as becoming a better engineer yourself along the way, you've been focusing for a while now on management. Tell me more about that.swyx: I wouldn't say it's been, actually, a while. Started dabbling in it with the Temporal job, and then now fully in it with Airbyte.Corey: You have to know, it has been pandemic time; it has stood still. Anything is—swyx: exactly.Corey: —a while it given that these are the interminable—this is the decade of Zoom meetings.swyx: [laugh]. I'll say I have about a year-and-a-half of it. And I'm interested in it partially because I've really been enjoying the mentoring side with the coding career community. And also, I think, some of the more effective parts of what I do have to be achieved in the planning stages with getting the right resources rather than doing the individual contributor work. And so, I'm interested in that.I'm very wary of the fact that I don't love meetings myself. Meetings are a means to an end for me and meetings are most of the job in management time. So, I think for what's important to me there, it is that we get stuff done. And we do whatever it takes to own the outcomes that we want to achieve and try to manage people's—try to not screw up people's careers along the way. [laugh]. Better put, I want people to be proud of what they get done with me by the time they're done with me. [laugh].Corey: So, I know you've talked to me about this very briefly, but I don't know that as of the time of this recording, you've made any significant public statements about it. You are now over at Airbytes, which I confess is a company I had not heard of before. What do y'all do over there?swyx: [laugh]. “What is it we do here?” So Airbyte—Corey: Exactly. Consultants want to know.swyx: Airbyte's a data integration company, which means different things based on your background. So, a lot of the data engineering patterns in, sort of, the modern data stack is extracting from multiple sources and loading everything into a data warehouse like a Snowflake or a Redshift, and then performing analysis with tools like dbt or business intelligence tools out there. We like to use MetaBase, but there's a whole there's a whole bunch of these stacks and they're all sort of advancing at different rates of progress. And what Airbyte would really like to own is the data integration part, the part where you load a bunch of sources, every data source in the world.What really drew me to this was two things. One, I really liked the vision of data freedom, which is, you have—you know, as—when you run a company, like, a typical company, I think at Temporal, we had, like, 100, different, like, you know, small little SaaS vendors, all of them vying to be the sources of truth for their thing, or a system of record for the thing. Like, you know, Salesforce wants to be a source of truth for customers, and Google Analytics want to be source of truth for website traffic, and so on and so forth. Like, and it's really hard to do analysis across all of them unless you dump all of them in one place.So one, is the mission of data freedom really resonates with me. Like, your data should be put in put somewhere where you can actually make something out of it, and step one is getting it into a format in a place that is amenable for analysis. And data warehouse pattern has really taken hold of the data engineering discipline. And I find, I think that's a multi-decade trend that I can really get behind. That's the first thing.Corey: I will say that historically, I'm bad at data. All jokes about using DNS as a database aside, one of the reasons behind that is when you work on stateless things like web servers and you blow trunks and one of them, oops. We all laugh, we take an outage, so maybe we're not laughing that hard, but we can reprovision web servers and things are mostly fine. With data and that going away, there are serious problems that could theoretically pose existential risk to the business. Now, I was a sysadmin and a, at least mediocre one, which means that after the first time I lost data, I was diligent about doing backups.Even now, the data work that we do have deep analysis on our customers' AWS bills, which doesn't sound like a big data problem, but I assure you it is, becomes something where, “Okay, step one. We don't operate on it in place.” We copy it into our own secured environment and then we begin the manipulations. We also have backups installed on these things so that in the event that I accidentally the data, it doesn't wind up causing horrifying problems for our customers. And lastly, I wind up also—this is going to surprise people—I might have securing the access to that data by not permitting writes.Turns out it's really hard—though apparently not impossible—to delete data with read-only calls.swyx: [crosstalk 00:28:12].Corey: It tends to be something of just building guardrails against myself. But the data structures, the understanding the analysis of certain things, I would have gotten into Go way sooner than I did if the introduction to Go tutorial on how to use it wasn't just a bunch of math problems talking about this is how you do it. And great, but here in the year of our lord 2022, I mostly want a programming language to smack a couple of JSON objects together and ideally come out with something resembling an answer. I'm not doing a whole lot of, you know, calculating prime numbers in the course of my week. And that is something that took a while for me to realize that, no, no, it's just another example of not being a great way of explaining something that otherwise could be incredibly accessible to folks who have real problems like this.I think the entire field right now of machine learning and the big data side of the universe struggles with this. It's, “Oh, yeah. If you have all your data, that's going to absolutely change the world for you.” “Cool. Can you explain how?” “No. Not effectively anyway.” Like, “Well, thanks for wasting everyone's time. It's appreciated.”swyx: Yeah, startup is sitting on a mountain of data that they don't use and I think everyone kind of feels guilty about it because everyone who is, like, a speaker, they're always talking about, like, “Oh, we used our data to inform this presidential campaign and look at how amazing we are.” And then you listen to the podcasts where the data scientists, you know, talk amongst themselves and they're like, “Yeah, it's bullshit.” Like, [laugh], “We're making it up as we go along, just like everyone else.” But, you know, I definitely think, like, some of the better engineering practices are arising under this. And it's professionalizing just like front-end professionalized maybe ten years ago, DevOps professionalized also, roughly in that timeframe, I think data is emerging as a field that is just a standalone discipline with its own tooling and potentially a lot of money running through it, especially if you look at the Snowflake ecosystem.So, that's why I'm interested in it. You know, I will say there's also—I talked to you about the sort of API replication use case, but also there's database replication, which is kind of like the big use case, which, for example, if you have a transactional sort of SQL database and you want to replicate that to an analytical database for queries, that's a very common one. So, I think basically data mobility from place to place, reshaping it and transferring it in as flexible manner as possible, I think, is the mission, and I think there's a lot of tooling that starts from there and builds up with it. So, Airbyte integrates pretty well with Airflow, Dexter, and all the other orchestration tools, and then, you know, you can use dbt, and everything else in that data stack to run with it. So, I just really liked that composition of tools because basically when I was a hedge fund analyst, we were doing the ETL job without knowing the name for it or having any tooling for it.I just ran a Python script manually on a cron job and whenever it failed, I would have to get up in the middle of night to go kick it again. It's, [laugh] it was that bad in 2014, '15. So, I really feel the pain. And, you know, the more data that we have to play around with, the more analysis we can do.Corey: I'm looking forward to seeing what becomes of this field as folks like you get further and further into it. And by, “Well, what do you mean, folks like me?” Well, I'm glad you asked, or we're about to as I put words in your mouth. I will tell you. People who have a demonstrated ability not just to understand the technology—which is hard—but then have this almost unicorn gift of being able to articulate and explain it to folks who do not have that level of technical depth in a way that is both accessible and inviting. And that is no small thing.If you were to ask me to draw a big circle around all the stuff that you've done in your career and define it, that's how I would do it. You are a storyteller who is conversant with the relevant elements of the story in a first-person perspective. Which is probably a really wordy way to put it. We should get a storyteller to workshop that, but you see the point.swyx: I try to call it, like, accessibly smart. So, it's a balance that you want to make, where you don't want to talk down to your audience because I think there are a lot of educators out there who very much stay at the basics and never leave that. You want to be slightly aspirational and slightly—like, push people to the bounds of their knowledge, but then not to go too far and be inaccessible. And that's my sort of polite way of saying that I dumb things down as service. [laugh].Corey: But I like that approach. The term dumbing it down is never a phrase to use, as it turns out, when you're explaining it to someone. It's like, “Let me dumb that down for you.” It's like, yeah, I always find the best way to teach someone is to first reach them and get their attention. I use humor, but instead we're going to just insult them. That'll get their attention all right.swyx: No. Yeah. It does offend some people who insist on precision and jargon. And I'm quite against that, but it's a constant fight because obviously there is a place at time for jargon.Corey: “Can you explain it to me using completely different words?” If the answer is, “No,” the question then is, “Do you actually understand it or are you just repeating it by rote?”swyx: right.Corey: There's—people learn in different ways and reaching them is important. [sigh].swyx: Exactly.Corey: Yeah. I really want to thank you for being so generous with your time. If people want to learn more about all the various things you're up to, where's the best place to find you?swyx: Sure, they can find me at my website swyx.io, or I'm mostly on Twitter at @swyx.Corey: And we will include links to both of those in the [show notes 00:33:37]. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.swyx: Thanks so much for having me, Corey. It was a blast.
People are FRUSTRATED with the current state of coding interviews. Down with data structures and algorithm interviews! Why am I being tested ON THE SPOT in the interview, only to have my anxiety spike? Do hiring managers even know what the hell they're doing!?We've landed on a controversial topic for sure in this video! I brought on 2 hiring managers and put them on the spot with many of the common concerns I've heard about the interview process. One has extensive experience training and hiring in the startup world. One has a tremendous amount of experience doing the same at FAANG companies.I think these 2 were the perfect people to bring on for this. I challenge them with many of these frustrations developers have. Both are VERY honest, so I hope you're ready. They may challenge a couple of your assumptions about the hiring process. Try to keep an open mind during this episode. Enjoy!Scott Ferguson (guest):Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottfergDaniel Tomko (guest):Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieltomko---------------------------------------------------
Interviews als Bewerber zu führen ist nicht immer leicht. Oft hat man das Gefühl, dass man sich “Beweisen” muss. Doch muss das wirklich so sein?Besonders im Tech-Sektor sind Whiteboard-Challenges und Coding-Interviews der Endgegner. Viele Bewerber sind aber schon vorher nervös, stammeln, stehen unter Druck und sind ggf. nicht sich selbst. In dieser Episode sprechen wir mal ein wenig über die aktuelle Lage im Tech-Sektor in Bezug auf Layoffs, und falls man eine neue Firma sucht, wie man an ein Interview locker und sicher ran geht. Wir klären wie heutzutage eine Bewerbung aussehen kann, was man vor dem eigentlichen Interview tun kann, um herauszustechen, wie man sich im Interview verhält und aus dem “Frage-Antwort-Spiel” eine ordentliche Konversation auf Augenhöhe macht aber auch wie man den Endgegner, die Coding Challenge, meistern kann.Bonus: Warum Wolfgang nur Kaffee in Portugal trinkt und was ein Gehsteig, Bürgersteig und Klettersteig gemeinsam haben.Feedback an stehtisch@engineeringkiosk.dev oder via Twitter an https://twitter.com/EngKioskLinksHackerRank: https://www.hackerrank.com/StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/Xing: https://xing.de/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/Buch “Cracking the Coding Interview”: https://www.amazon.de/Cracking-Coding-Interview-6th-Programming/dp/0984782850/Sprungmarken(00:00:00) Intro(00:00:49) Intro: Kultureller Anspruch mit Portugal, Verkehrsmittel, Braindrain, Einwanderung(00:04:41) Portugal als Tech-Hub: Startups und Web-Summit(00:06:33) Aktuelle Lage in der Startup/Scale-Up Welt: Layoffs, Fachkräftemangel und Welt-Krisen(00:16:52) Das heutige Thema: Interviews aus der Sicht des Bewerbers(00:19:37) Der Lebenslauf: Was soll rein, was soll nicht rein(00:28:01) Internet-Profile wie LinkedIn und XING(00:30:06) Arbeitszeugnisse, persönliche Referenzen, das Anschreiben und der personalisierte Lebenslauf(00:35:47) Anforderungen an den Job, eure Qualifikation, Referenzen und Background-Checks(00:38:21) Was man vor dem Interview bereits tun kann(00:43:52) Wie Ihr das Interview sehen solltet: Bidirektional und Glück(00:45:52) Wie ist die generelle Struktur eines Interviews und wie viel Redezeit ist angebracht?(00:55:05) Das Interview selbst: Der technische Test bzw. die Hardskill-Evaluation(01:01:42) Verhaltens-Fragen im Interview (Selbst-Reflektion und Team-Arbeit) und Fragenkatalog(01:04:12) Architektur-Fragen bei der Software-Entwicklung: Setze den Kontext(01:06:33) Vorbereitung auf Interviews durch Interviews, auch wenn man keinen neuen Job sucht(01:11:17) OutroHostsWolfgang Gassler (https://twitter.com/schafele)Andy Grunwald (https://twitter.com/andygrunwald)Engineering Kiosk Podcast: Anfragen an stehtisch@engineeringkiosk.dev oder via Twitter an https://twitter.com/EngKiosk
About swyxswyx has worked on React and serverless JavaScript at Two Sigma, Netlify and AWS, and now serves as Head of Developer Experience at Airbyte. He has started and run communities for hundreds of thousands of developers, like Svelte Society, /r/reactjs, and the React TypeScript Cheatsheet. His nontechnical writing was recently published in the Coding Career Handbook for Junior to Senior developers.Links Referenced: “Learning Gears” blog post: https://www.swyx.io/learning-gears The Coding Career Handbook: https://learninpublic.org Personal Website: https://swyx.io Twitter: https://twitter.com/swyx TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friend EnterpriseDB. EnterpriseDB has been powering enterprise applications with PostgreSQL for 15 years. And now EnterpriseDB has you covered wherever you deploy PostgreSQL on-premises, private cloud, and they just announced a fully-managed service on AWS and Azure called BigAnimal, all one word. Don't leave managing your database to your cloud vendor because they're too busy launching another half-dozen managed databases to focus on any one of them that they didn't build themselves. Instead, work with the experts over at EnterpriseDB. They can save you time and money, they can even help you migrate legacy applications—including Oracle—to the cloud. To learn more, try BigAnimal for free. Go to biganimal.com/snark, and tell them Corey sent you.Corey: Let's face it, on-call firefighting at 2am is stressful! So there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is that you probably can't prevent incidents from happening, but the good news is that incident.io makes incidents less stressful and a lot more valuable. incident.io is a Slack-native incident management platform that allows you to automate incident processes, focus on fixing the issues and learn from incident insights to improve site reliability and fix your vulnerabilities. Try incident.io, recover faster and sleep more.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Some folks are really easy to introduce when I have them on the show because, “My name is, insert name here. I built thing X, and my job is Y at company Z.” Then we have people like today's guest.swyx is currently—and recently—the head of developer experience at Airbyte, but he's also been so much more than that in so many different capacities that you're very difficult to describe. First off, thank you for joining me. And secondly, what's the deal with you?swyx: [laugh]. I have professional ADD, just like you. Thanks for having me, Corey. I'm a—Corey: It works out.swyx: a big fan. Longtime listener, first time caller. Love saying that. [laugh].Corey: You have done a lot of stuff. You have a business and finance background, which… okay, guilty; it's probably why I feel some sense of affinity for a lot of your work. And then you went into some interesting directions. You were working on React and serverless YahvehScript—which is, of course, how I insist on pronouncing it—at Two Sigma, Netlify, AWS—a subject near and dear to my heart—and most recently temporal.io.And now you're at Airbyte. So, you've been focusing on a lot of, I won't say the same things, but your area of emphasis has definitely consistently rhymed with itself. What is it that drives you?swyx: So, I have been recently asking myself a lot of this question because I had to interview to get my new role. And when you have multiple offers—because the job market is very hot for DevRel managers—you have to really think about it. And so, what I like to say is: number one, working with great people; number two, working on great products; number three, making a lot of money.Corey: There's entire school of thought that, “Oh, that's gauche. You shouldn't mention trying to make money.” Like, “Why do you want to work here because I want to make money.” It's always true—swyx: [crosstalk 00:03:46]—Corey: —and for some reason, we're supposed to pretend otherwise. I have a lot of respect for people who can cut to the chase on that. It's always been something that has driven me nuts about the advice that we give a new folks to the industry and peop—and even students figuring out their career path of, “Oh, do something you love and the money will follow.” Well, that's not necessarily true. There are ways to pivot something you'd love into something lucrative and there are ways to wind up more or less borderline starving to death. And again, I'm not saying money is everything, but for a number of us, it's hard to get to where we want to be without it.swyx: Yeah, yeah. I think I've been cast with the kind of judgmental label of being very financially motivated—that's what people have called me—for simply talking about it. And I'm like, “No. You know, it's number three on my priority list.” Like, I will leave positions where I have a lot of money on the table because I don't enjoy the people or the products, but having it up there and talking openly about it somehow makes you [laugh] makes you sort of greedy or something. And I don't think that's right. I tried to set an example for the people that I talk to or people who follow me.Corey: One of the things I've always appreciated about, I guess, your online presence, which has remained remarkably consistent as you've been working through a bunch of different, I guess, stages of life and your career, is you have always talked in significant depth about an area of tech that I am relatively… well, relatively crap at, let's be perfectly honest. And that is the wide world of most things front-end. Every time I see a take about someone saying, “Oh, front-end is junior or front-end is somehow less than,” I'd like to know what the hell it is they know because every time I try and work with it, I wind up more confused than I was when I started. And what I really appreciate is that you have always normalized the fact that this stuff is hard. As of the time that we're recording this a day or so ago, you had a fantastic tweet thread about a friend of yours spun up a Create React App and imported the library to fetch from an endpoint and immediately got stuck. And then you pasted this ridiculous error message.He's a senior staff engineer, ex-Google, ex-Twitter; he can solve complex distributed systems problems and unable to fetch from a REST endpoint without JavaScript specialist help. And I talk about this a lot in other contexts, where the reason I care so much about developer experience is that a bad developer experience does not lead people to the conclusion of, “Oh, this is a bad interface.” It leads people to the conclusion, “Oh, I'm bad at this and I didn't realize it.” No. I still fall into that trap myself.I was under the impression that there was just this magic stuff that JS people know. And your tweet did so much to help normalize from my perspective, the fact that no, no, this is very challenging. I recently went on a Go exploration. Now, I'm starting to get into JavaScript slash TypeScript, which I think are the same thing but I'm not entirely certain of that. Like, oh, well, one of them is statically typed, or strongly typed. It's like, “Well, I have a loud mechanical keyboard. Everything I do is typing strongly, so what's your point?”And even then we're talking past each other in these things. I don't understand a lot of the ecosystem that you live your career in, but I have always had a tremendous and abiding respect for your ability to make it accessible, understandable, and I guess for lack of a better term, to send the elevator back down.swyx: Oh, I definitely think about that strongly, especially that last bit. I think it's a form of personal growth. So, I think a lot of people, when they talk about this sending the elevator back down, they do it as a form of charity, like I'm giving back to the community. But honestly, you actually learn a lot by trying to explain it to others because that's the only way that you truly know if you've learned something. And if you ever get anything wrong, you'll—people will never let you forget it because it is the internet and people will crawl over broken glass to remind you that you're wrong.And once you've got it wrong, you will—you know, you've been so embarrassed that you'll never forget it. So, I think it's just a really good way to learn in public. And that's kind of the motto that I'm kind of known for. Yeah, we can take the direction anywhere you want to go in JavaScript land. Happy to talk about it all day. [laugh].Corey: Well, I want to start by something you just said where you're doing the learning in public thing. And something I've noticed is that there are really two positions you can take—in the general sense—when you set out to make a bit of a reputation for yourself in a particular technical space. You can either do the, “I'm a beginner here, same as the rest of you, and I'm learning in public,” or you can position yourself as something of an expert. And there are drawbacks and advantages to both. I think that if you don't look as wildly over-represented as I do, both of them are more fraught in different ways, where it's, “Oh, you're learning in public. Ah, look at the new person, she's dumb.”Or if you're presenting yourself as an expert, you get nibbled to death by ducks on a lot of the deep technical nuances and well, actually'ed to death. And my position has always been and this is going to be a radical concept for some folks, is that I'm genuinely honest. I tend to learn in public about the things that I don't know, but the things that I am something of a subject matter expert in—like, I don't know, cloud billing—I don't think that false modesty necessarily serves me particularly well. It's yeah, I know exactly what I'm talking about here. Pretending otherwise it's just being disingenuous.swyx: I try to think of it as having different gears of learning in public. So, I've called this “Learning Gears” in a previous blog post of mine, where you try to fit your mode of learning to the terrain that you're on, your domain expertise, and you should never over-represent the amount that you know because I think people are very rightly upset when there are a lot of people—let's say on Twitter, or YouTube, or Udemy even—who present themselves as experts who are actually—they just read the docs the previous night. So, you should try not to over-represent your expertise.But at the same time, don't let your imposter syndrome stop you from sharing what you are currently learning and taking corrections when you're wrong. And I think that's the tricky balance to get which is constantly trying to put yourself out there while accepting that you might be wrong and not getting offended when or personally attacked when someone corrects you, inevitably. And sometimes people will—especially if you have a lot of followers, people will try to say—you know, someone of your following—you know, it's—I kind of call this follower shaming, like, you should act, uh—invulnerable, or run every tweet through committee before you tweet after a certain sort of following size. So, I try to not do that and try to balance responsibility with authenticity.Corey: I think that there's something incredibly important about that, where there's this idea that you either become invulnerable and get defensive and you yell at people, and down that path lies disaster because, believe it or not, we all get it wrong from time to time, and doubling down and doubling down and doubling down again, suddenly, you're on an island all by yourself and no one respectable is going to be able to get there to help you. And the other side of it is going too far in the other direction, where you implicitly take any form of criticism whatsoever as being de facto correct. And I think that both paths don't lead to super great places. I think it's a matter of finding our own voices and doing a little bit of work as far as the validity of accepting a given piece of feedback goes. But other than that, I'm a big fan of being able to just more or less be as authentic as possible.And I get that I live in a very privileged position where I have paths open to me that are not open to most folks. But in many respects so to you are one of the—easily—first five people I would think of if someone said, “Hey if I need to learn JavaScript for someone, who should I talk to first?” You're on that list. And you've done a lot of things in this area, but you've never—you alluded to it a few minutes ago, but I'm going to call it out a little more pointedly—without naming names, let's be clear—and that you're never presented as a grifter, which is sort of the best way I can think of it of, “Well, I just learned this new technology stack yesterday and now I'm writing a book that I'm going to sell to people on how to be an expert at this thing.” And I want to be clear, this is very distinct from gatekeeping because I think that, “Oh, well, you have to be at least this much of an expert—” No, but I think that holding yourself out as I'm going to write a book on how to be proud of how to become a software engineer.Okay, you were a software engineer for six months, and more to the point, knowing how to do a thing and knowing how to teach a thing are orthogonal skill sets, and I think that is not well understood. If I ever write a book or put something—or some sort of info product out there, I'm going to have to be very careful not to fall into that trap because I don't want to pretend to be an expert in things that I'm not. I barely think I'm an expert in things that I provable am.swyx: there are many ways to answer that. So, I have been accused a couple of times of that. And it's never fun, but also, if you defend yourself well, you can actually turn a critic into a fan, which I love doing.Corey: Mm-hm.swyx: [laugh].Corey: Oh yes.swyx: what I fall back to, so I have a side interest in philosophy, based on one of my high school teachers giving us, like, a lecture in philosophy. I love him, he changed my life. [Lino Barnard 00:13:20], in case—in the off chance that he's listening. So, there's a theory of knowledge of, like, how do you know what you know, right? And if you can base your knowledge on truth—facts and not opinions, then people are arguing with the facts and not the opinions.And so, getting as close to ground truth as possible and having certainty in your collection of facts, I think is the basis of not arguing based on identity of, like, “Okay, I have ten years experience; you have two years experience. I am more correct than you in every single opinion.” That's also not, like, the best way to engage in the battlefield of ideas. It's more about, do you have the right amount of evidence to support the conclusions that you're trying to make? And oftentimes, I think, you know, that is the basis, if you don't have that ability.Another thing that I've also done is to collect the opinions of others who have more expertise and present them and curate them in a way that I think adds value without taking away from the individual original sources. So, I think there's a very academic way [laugh] you can kind of approach this, but that defends your intellectual integrity while helping you learn faster than the typical learning rate. Which is kind of something I do think about a lot, which is, you know, why do we judge people by the number of years experience? It's because that's usually the only metric that we have available that is quantifiable. Everything else is kind of fuzzy.But I definitely think that, you know, better algorithms for learning let you progress much faster than the median rate, and I think people who apply themselves can really get up there in terms of the speed of learning with that. So, I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff. [laugh].Corey: It's a hard thing to solve for. There's no way around it. It's, what is it that people should be focusing on? How should they be internalizing these things? I think a lot of it starts to with an awareness, even if not in public, just to yourself of, “I would like advice on some random topic.” Do you really? Are you actually looking for advice or are you looking—swyx: right.Corey: For validation? Because those are not the same thing, and you are likely to respond very differently when you receive advice, depending on which side of that you're coming from.swyx: Yeah. And so, one way to do that is to lay out both sides, to actually demonstrate what you're split on, and ask for feedback on specific tiebreakers that would help your decision swing one way or another. Yeah, I mean, there are definitely people who ask questions that are just engagement bait or just looking for validation. And while you can't really fix that, I think it's futile to try to change others' behavior online. You just have to be the best version of yourself you can be. [laugh].Corey: DoorDash had a problem. As their cloud-native environment scaled and developers delivered new features, their monitoring system kept breaking down. In an organization where data is used to make better decisions about technology and about the business, losing observability means the entire company loses their competitive edge. With Chronosphere, DoorDash is no longer losing visibility into their applications suite. The key? Chronosphere is an open source compatible, scalable, and reliable observability solution that gives the observability lead at DoorDash business, confidence, and peace of mind. Read the full success story at snark.cloud/chronosphere. That's snark.cloud slash C-H-R-O-N-O-S-P-H-E-R-E.Corey: So, you wrote a book that is available at learninpublic.org, called The Coding Career Handbook. And to be clear, I have not read this myself because at this point, if I start reading a book like that, and you know, the employees that I have see me reading a book like that, they're going to have some serious questions about where this company is going to be going soon. But scrolling through the site and the social proof, the testimonials from various people who have read it, more or less read like a who's-who of people that I respect, who have been on this show themselves.Emma Bostian is fantastic at explaining a lot of these things. Forrest Brazeal is consistently a source to me of professional envy. I wish I had half his musical talent; my God. And your going down—it explains, more or less, the things that a lot of folks people are all expected to know but no one teaches them about every career stage, ranging from newcomer to the industry to senior. And there's a lot that—there's a lot of gatekeeping around this and I don't even know that it's intentional, but it has to do with the idea that people assume that folks, quote-unquote, “Just know” the answer to some things.Oh, people should just know how to handle a technical interview, despite the fact that the skill set is completely orthogonal to the day-to-day work you'll be doing. People should just know how to handle a performance review, or should just know how to negotiate for a raise, or should just know how to figure out is this technology that I'm working on no longer the direction the industry is going in, and eventually I'm going to wind up, more or less, waiting for the phone to ring because there's only three companies in the world left who use it. Like, how do you keep—how do you pay attention to what's going on around you? And it's the missing manual that I really wish that people would have pointed out to me back when I was getting started. Would have made life a lot easier.swyx: Oh, wow. That's high praise. I actually didn't know we're going to be talking about the book that much. What I will say is—Corey: That's the problem with doing too much. You never know what people have found out about you and what they're going to say when they drag you on to a podcast.swyx: got you, got you. Okay. I know, I know, I know where this is going. Okay. So, one thing that I really definitely believe is that—and this happened to me in my first job as well, which is most people get the mentors that they're assigned at work, and sometimes you have a bad roll the dice. [laugh].And you're supposed to pick up all the stuff they don't teach you in school at work or among your friend group, and sometimes you just don't have the right network at work or among your friend group to tell you the right things to help you progress your career. And I think a lot of this advice is written down in maybe some Hacker News posts, some Reddit posts, some Twitter posts, and there's not really a place you to send people to point to, that consolidates that advice, particularly focused at the junior to senior stage, which is the stage that I went through before writing the book. And so, I think that basically what I was going for is targeting the biggest gap that I saw, which is, there a lot of interview prep type books like Crack the Coding Career, which is kind of—Crack the Coding Interview, which is kind of the book title that I was going after. But once you got the job, no one really tells you what to do after you got that first job. And how do you level up to the senior that everyone wants to hire, right? There's—Corey: “Well, I've mastered cracking the coding interview. Now, I'm really trying to wrap my head around the problem of cracking the showing up at work on time in the morning.” Like, the baseline stuff. And I had so many challenges with that early in my career. Not specifically punctuality, but just the baseline expectation that it's just assumed that by the time you're in the workplace earning a certain amount of money, it's just assumed that you have—because in any other field, you would—you have several years of experience in the workplace and know how these things should play out.No, the reason that I'm sometimes considered useful as far as giving great advice on career advancement and the rest is not because I'm some wizard from the future, it's because I screwed it all up myself and got censured and fired and rejected for all of it. And it's, yeah, I'm not smart enough to learn from other people's mistakes; I got to make them myself. So, there's something to be said for turning your own missteps into guidance so that the next person coming up has an easier time than you did. And that is a theme that, from what I have seen, runs through basically everything that you do.swyx: I tried to do a lot of research, for sure. And so, one way to—you know, I—hopefully, I try not to make mistakes that others have learned, have made, so I tried to pick from, I think I include 1500 quotes and sources and blog posts and tweets to build up that level of expertise all in one place. So hopefully, it gives people something to bootstrap your experience off of. So, you're obviously going to make some mistakes on your own, but at least you have the ability to learn from others, and I think this is my—you know, I'm very proud of the work that I did. And I think people have really appreciated it.Because it's a very long book, and nobody reads books these days, so what am I doing [laugh] writing a book? I think it's only the people that really need this kind of advice, that they find themselves not having the right mentorship that reach out to me. And, you know, it's good enough to support a steady stream of sales. But more importantly, like, you know, I am able to mentor them at various levels from read my book, to read my free tweets, to read the free chapters, or join the pay community where we have weekly sessions going through every chapter and I give feedback on what people are doing. Sometimes I've helped people negotiate their jobs and get that bump up to senior staff—senior engineer, and I think more than doubled their salary, which was very personal proud moment for me.But yeah, anyway, I think basically, it's kind of like a third place between the family and work that you could go to the talk about career stuff. And I feel like, you know, maybe people are not that open on Twitter, but maybe they can be open in a small community like ours.Corey: There's a lot to be said for a sense of professional safety and personal safety around being—having those communities. I mean, mine, when I was coming up was the freenode IRC network. And that was great; it's pseudo-anonymous, but again, I was Corey and network staff at the time, which was odd, but it was great to be able to reach out and figure out am I thinking about this the wrong way, just getting guidance. And sure, there are some channels that basically thrived on insulting people. I admittedly was really into that back in the early-two-thousand-nothings.And, like, it was always fun to go to the Debian channel. It's like, “Yeah, can you explain to me how to do this or should I just go screw myself in advance?” Yeah, it's always the second one. Like, community is a hard thing to get right and it took me a while to realize this isn't the energy I want in the world. I like being able to help people come up and learn different things.I'm curious, given your focus on learning in public and effectively teaching folks as well as becoming a better engineer yourself along the way, you've been focusing for a while now on management. Tell me more about that.swyx: I wouldn't say it's been, actually, a while. Started dabbling in it with the Temporal job, and then now fully in it with Airbyte.Corey: You have to know, it has been pandemic time; it has stood still. Anything is—swyx: exactly.Corey: —a while it given that these are the interminable—this is the decade of Zoom meetings.swyx: [laugh]. I'll say I have about a year-and-a-half of it. And I'm interested in it partially because I've really been enjoying the mentoring side with the coding career community. And also, I think, some of the more effective parts of what I do have to be achieved in the planning stages with getting the right resources rather than doing the individual contributor work. And so, I'm interested in that.I'm very wary of the fact that I don't love meetings myself. Meetings are a means to an end for me and meetings are most of the job in management time. So, I think for what's important to me there, it is that we get stuff done. And we do whatever it takes to own the outcomes that we want to achieve and try to manage people's—try to not screw up people's careers along the way. [laugh]. Better put, I want people to be proud of what they get done with me by the time they're done with me. [laugh].Corey: So, I know you've talked to me about this very briefly, but I don't know that as of the time of this recording, you've made any significant public statements about it. You are now over at Airbytes, which I confess is a company I had not heard of before. What do y'all do over there?swyx: [laugh]. “What is it we do here?” So Airbyte—Corey: Exactly. Consultants want to know.swyx: Airbyte's a data integration company, which means different things based on your background. So, a lot of the data engineering patterns in, sort of, the modern data stack is extracting from multiple sources and loading everything into a data warehouse like a Snowflake or a Redshift, and then performing analysis with tools like dbt or business intelligence tools out there. We like to use MetaBase, but there's a whole there's a whole bunch of these stacks and they're all sort of advancing at different rates of progress. And what Airbyte would really like to own is the data integration part, the part where you load a bunch of sources, every data source in the world.What really drew me to this was two things. One, I really liked the vision of data freedom, which is, you have—you know, as—when you run a company, like, a typical company, I think at Temporal, we had, like, 100, different, like, you know, small little SaaS vendors, all of them vying to be the sources of truth for their thing, or a system of record for the thing. Like, you know, Salesforce wants to be a source of truth for customers, and Google Analytics want to be source of truth for website traffic, and so on and so forth. Like, and it's really hard to do analysis across all of them unless you dump all of them in one place.So one, is the mission of data freedom really resonates with me. Like, your data should be put in put somewhere where you can actually make something out of it, and step one is getting it into a format in a place that is amenable for analysis. And data warehouse pattern has really taken hold of the data engineering discipline. And I find, I think that's a multi-decade trend that I can really get behind. That's the first thing.Corey: I will say that historically, I'm bad at data. All jokes about using DNS as a database aside, one of the reasons behind that is when you work on stateless things like web servers and you blow trunks and one of them, oops. We all laugh, we take an outage, so maybe we're not laughing that hard, but we can reprovision web servers and things are mostly fine. With data and that going away, there are serious problems that could theoretically pose existential risk to the business. Now, I was a sysadmin and a, at least mediocre one, which means that after the first time I lost data, I was diligent about doing backups.Even now, the data work that we do have deep analysis on our customers' AWS bills, which doesn't sound like a big data problem, but I assure you it is, becomes something where, “Okay, step one. We don't operate on it in place.” We copy it into our own secured environment and then we begin the manipulations. We also have backups installed on these things so that in the event that I accidentally the data, it doesn't wind up causing horrifying problems for our customers. And lastly, I wind up also—this is going to surprise people—I might have securing the access to that data by not permitting writes.Turns out it's really hard—though apparently not impossible—to delete data with read-only calls.swyx: [crosstalk 00:28:12].Corey: It tends to be something of just building guardrails against myself. But the data structures, the understanding the analysis of certain things, I would have gotten into Go way sooner than I did if the introduction to Go tutorial on how to use it wasn't just a bunch of math problems talking about this is how you do it. And great, but here in the year of our lord 2022, I mostly want a programming language to smack a couple of JSON objects together and ideally come out with something resembling an answer. I'm not doing a whole lot of, you know, calculating prime numbers in the course of my week. And that is something that took a while for me to realize that, no, no, it's just another example of not being a great way of explaining something that otherwise could be incredibly accessible to folks who have real problems like this.I think the entire field right now of machine learning and the big data side of the universe struggles with this. It's, “Oh, yeah. If you have all your data, that's going to absolutely change the world for you.” “Cool. Can you explain how?” “No. Not effectively anyway.” Like, “Well, thanks for wasting everyone's time. It's appreciated.”swyx: Yeah, startup is sitting on a mountain of data that they don't use and I think everyone kind of feels guilty about it because everyone who is, like, a speaker, they're always talking about, like, “Oh, we used our data to inform this presidential campaign and look at how amazing we are.” And then you listen to the podcasts where the data scientists, you know, talk amongst themselves and they're like, “Yeah, it's bullshit.” Like, [laugh], “We're making it up as we go along, just like everyone else.” But, you know, I definitely think, like, some of the better engineering practices are arising under this. And it's professionalizing just like front-end professionalized maybe ten years ago, DevOps professionalized also, roughly in that timeframe, I think data is emerging as a field that is just a standalone discipline with its own tooling and potentially a lot of money running through it, especially if you look at the Snowflake ecosystem.So, that's why I'm interested in it. You know, I will say there's also—I talked to you about the sort of API replication use case, but also there's database replication, which is kind of like the big use case, which, for example, if you have a transactional sort of SQL database and you want to replicate that to an analytical database for queries, that's a very common one. So, I think basically data mobility from place to place, reshaping it and transferring it in as flexible manner as possible, I think, is the mission, and I think there's a lot of tooling that starts from there and builds up with it. So, Airbyte integrates pretty well with Airflow, Dexter, and all the other orchestration tools, and then, you know, you can use dbt, and everything else in that data stack to run with it. So, I just really liked that composition of tools because basically when I was a hedge fund analyst, we were doing the ETL job without knowing the name for it or having any tooling for it.I just ran a Python script manually on a cron job and whenever it failed, I would have to get up in the middle of night to go kick it again. It's, [laugh] it was that bad in 2014, '15. So, I really feel the pain. And, you know, the more data that we have to play around with, the more analysis we can do.Corey: I'm looking forward to seeing what becomes of this field as folks like you get further and further into it. And by, “Well, what do you mean, folks like me?” Well, I'm glad you asked, or we're about to as I put words in your mouth. I will tell you. People who have a demonstrated ability not just to understand the technology—which is hard—but then have this almost unicorn gift of being able to articulate and explain it to folks who do not have that level of technical depth in a way that is both accessible and inviting. And that is no small thing.If you were to ask me to draw a big circle around all the stuff that you've done in your career and define it, that's how I would do it. You are a storyteller who is conversant with the relevant elements of the story in a first-person perspective. Which is probably a really wordy way to put it. We should get a storyteller to workshop that, but you see the point.swyx: I try to call it, like, accessibly smart. So, it's a balance that you want to make, where you don't want to talk down to your audience because I think there are a lot of educators out there who very much stay at the basics and never leave that. You want to be slightly aspirational and slightly—like, push people to the bounds of their knowledge, but then not to go too far and be inaccessible. And that's my sort of polite way of saying that I dumb things down as service. [laugh].Corey: But I like that approach. The term dumbing it down is never a phrase to use, as it turns out, when you're explaining it to someone. It's like, “Let me dumb that down for you.” It's like, yeah, I always find the best way to teach someone is to first reach them and get their attention. I use humor, but instead we're going to just insult them. That'll get their attention all right.swyx: No. Yeah. It does offend some people who insist on precision and jargon. And I'm quite against that, but it's a constant fight because obviously there is a place at time for jargon.Corey: “Can you explain it to me using completely different words?” If the answer is, “No,” the question then is, “Do you actually understand it or are you just repeating it by rote?”swyx: right.Corey: There's—people learn in different ways and reaching them is important. [sigh].swyx: Exactly.Corey: Yeah. I really want to thank you for being so generous with your time. If people want to learn more about all the various things you're up to, where's the best place to find you?swyx: Sure, they can find me at my website swyx.io, or I'm mostly on Twitter at @swyx.Corey: And we will include links to both of those in the [show notes 00:33:37]. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.swyx: Thanks so much for having me, Corey. It was a blast.Corey: swyx, head of developer experience at Airbyte, and oh, so much more. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice or if it's on the YouTubes thumbs up and subscribe, whereas if you've hated this podcast, same thing, five-star review wherever you want, hit the buttons on the YouTubes, but also leaving insulting comment that is hawking your book: Why this Episode was Terrible that you're now selling as a legitimate subject matter expert in this space.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.
About JohnnyJohnny was born in Cleveland, OH and graduated from the University of Toledo with a Bachelor's in Computer Science Engineering. He began his career as a software engineer focused on embedded device protocols and systems engineering. Eventually he realized that Program Management worked better with the grain of his brain, so he took his career in that direction.In 2019, he was hired by Google Cloud to serve as a Communications Lead on their incident management teams. Most recently, he joined Waymo in November 2021 as a Technical Program Manager, acting as an anti-entropy agent for the self-driving car company's offboard infrastructure teams.Outside his day job, Johnny enjoys mountain biking, playing piano and trumpet, personal finance, coaching, and studying complex systems. He currently lives in Sunnyvale, CA with his wife Emily, and is expecting their first child in April 2022! Links: Original Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1436129343399346184 Personal website: https://jmpod.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmpod Twitter: https://twitter.com/gratitudeisfree/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gratitudeisfree/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Couchbase Capella Database-as-a-Service is flexible, full-featured and fully managed with built in access via key-value, SQL, and full-text search. Flexible JSON documents aligned to your applications and workloads. Build faster with blazing fast in-memory performance and automated replication and scaling while reducing cost. Capella has the best price performance of any fully managed document database. Visit couchbase.com/screaminginthecloud to try Capella today for free and be up and running in three minutes with no credit card required. Couchbase Capella: make your data sing.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by LaunchDarkly. Take a look at what it takes to get your code into production. I'm going to just guess that it's awful because it's always awful. No one loves their deployment process. What if launching new features didn't require you to do a full-on code and possibly infrastructure deploy? What if you could test on a small subset of users and then roll it back immediately if results aren't what you expect? LaunchDarkly does exactly this. To learn more, visit launchdarkly.com and tell them Corey sent you, and watch for the wince.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Every once in a while I get feedback from people who I've encountered who are impacted in various ways. Most of it is feedback delivered of the kind you might expect, like, “Unsubscribe me from this newsletter,” or, “Block,” or sometimes bricks thrown through my window. But occasionally, I get some truly horrifying feedback, and far and away one of the most horrifying things I can ever be told is, “So, I was reading one of your tweet threads and it changed the course of my career.”It's like, “Oh, dear,” because nothing good is going to happen after something like that. It's, “Yeah, they were going to name something terrible here at AWS, so I ran over my boss in the parking lot,” is sort of what I'm expecting to hear. But I got that exact feedback about life-changing tweet threads from today's guest. We'll get into what that tweet thread was a little bit, but let's first let the other person talk for a minute. Johnny Podhradsky is a technical program manager at Waymo. Specifically, of Offboard Infrastructure. Johnny, thanks for suffering through a long, painful introduction, as well as, more or less, the slings and arrows that invariably come with being on the show.Johnny: Thanks, Corey. I'm grateful to be here.Corey: So, first things first. I always like to find out what people actually do for a living that is usually a source of entertainment, if nothing else. You are a technical program manager—or TPM as they say in tech companies—of Offboard Infrastructure. I'm assuming because Waymo, is at least theoretically, a self-driving car company, ‘offboard' means things that are not on the vehicle themselves.Johnny: That's exactly right. Yeah.Corey: Fantastic. Now, ask the dumb question because I'm still not sure I have an answer after however many years in this industry. What does a technical program manager do?Johnny: [laugh]. I get that question a lot. Often people try to distinguish between what's a technical program manager do versus what does a product manager do.Corey: Or a project manager, too, because there's a lot of different ways it can express itself, and I'm a PM, and it's, “Oh, wonderful. That's like four different acronyms I can disambiguate into and I'm probably going to get it wrong.”Johnny: And to make it even more confusing, it varies company by company. So, just focus in on specifically what I do as a technical program manager, I'm an anti-entropy agent, right? I make sure things stay on track, specifically embedded into technical teams. So, I have a degree in engineering; I'm able to speak fluently about technology. And the entire idea, the entire purpose of my existence is to make sure that things don't fall apart. So, I'm keeping track of people and resources; I'm keeping track of overall timelines; risks and mitigations for programs that are ongoing, whether they're small with just a few people or cross-org, cross-functional teams; serving as an unblocker and making sure that all the dependencies that exist between the various tasks in the teams are addressed ahead of time so that we know what needs to be done when.Corey: It's one of those useful almost glue functions, it feels like that is, “Well, what have you actually built? Point at the thing you've constructed yourself from your hands on your keyboard?” And it's hard to do and it's very nebulous, when you're not directly able to point to a website, for example. “Yeah, you see that button in the corner? I made that button.” Great.Like, that's the visceral thing that people can wrap their heads around. Project and program management feels to me like one of those areas that, in theory, you don't need those people to be a part of building anything, but in practice you very much do. Another example of this—from my own history, of course—is operations because in theory, you just have developers write code correctly the first time and then they leave it where it is and it never needs to be updated again, and there's no reason to have operations folks. Yeah. As they say, the difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is none.Johnny: I'll buy that. Yeah, when it comes to actual, I mean, digital, but physical deliverables and things that you can show that you've done, there are standards that you can have with documentation, like Gantt charts and risk registers and all that sort of thing, but it is very much a glue role. It is very much a gentle nudge to get things done. And it really revolves around the transparency and making sure that the people who are invested in the success of whatever it is that you're doing program-wise are aware of what's going on as far ahead of time as possible. That's why I like to consider it sort of an anti-entropy role because things will just naturally go off the rails if no one is there to help guide them.I mean, that doesn't happen in every situation, of course, but having someone dedicated to the role of making sure that things are moving according to a good rhythm is a critical role. And it just so happens that that is sort of the way the grain of my brain works and I discovered that throughout the course of my career.Corey: So, let's get back to the reason you originally reached out to me. I think that is always an interesting topic to explore because whenever someone says, “Wow, your tweet really helped me with my career,” I get worried. Because as I said before, I am one of the absolute best in the world at getting myself fired from jobs, so when it comes to being a good employee, mostly my value is as a counter-example of advice I'll give [unintelligible 00:05:49] job interviews. For example, when they say something condescending and rude, insult them right back because A, it's funny, and that plays well on Twitter. And B, interviews are always two-way streets, and if they're going to treat you like crap, you don't want to work there anyway, so you may as well have some fun with it. But a lot of what I say doesn't really lend itself to the kind of outcomes that lead to happy employment scenarios. So, I've got to ask, what the hell did I say?Johnny: Yeah, it was kind of serendipitous. I'm in a number of Slack communities, one of them being the Cleveland Tech Slack—if you're in Cleveland or around Cleveland, I highly recommend it—and someone just randomly posted this thread right in the middle of me interviewing at Waymo. So, previously before Waymo, I was at Google, and I loved my job. I loved the team that I was on, I loved the—I mean, I was still very much in the honeymoon phase of Silicon Valley. I had moved to Silicon Valley from Cleveland in 2019 with my then fiance.And so I was just, you know, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and everything was just incredible to me; why would I ever consider leaving this? So, I had an interview at Waymo and I ended up getting an offer and I just didn't know whether I should take it. Because I loved where I was at and I really enjoyed the opportunities, so it was just, you know, ten out of ten. One of the things that I was thinking about then was, you know, I kept thinking back to our first team dinner where our teammates were sharing their stories of their careers. And my mentor, Ted, had mentioned how he had worked on the iPhone at Apple and was in the same room with Steve Jobs.And me being a Cleveland boy, just it sounded like, “Whoa.” My eyes got really big like dinner plates. And it's just like, “I'm sitting at a table with people who have done these things with these people.” And I was wondering, like, what did that mean for my career? And so where did I want to take my career and have those kinds of stories? So fast-forwarding, you know, I was interviewing at Waymo; I ended up getting the offer. And I was just on the fence; I couldn't decide if that was the way I wanted to go, if I really wanted to leave my amazing job at Google.Corey: What was holding you back on that? Was it a sense of well you want to be disloyal to the existing team? You were thriving in the role you're in? Was it the risk of well, I don't know how I'll do in a different company solving different problems? What was it that was holding you back?Johnny: It was all of those. When you do an apples-to-apples comparison, you don't really know what you're getting into when you're going to a new company, and that's part of why your thread was so critical in making my decision. Just to say exactly what you said in the tweet, “So, an anonymous Twitter person DM'ed me this morning with a scenario. Quote, ‘I work at a large cloud company that makes inscrutable naming decisions, and I have an offer elsewhere for 35% more. Should I take it?'” to which you said, “Oh, good heavens, yes. A thread.”What followed is a number of questions that you asked exactly like you just asked now and your short answers to them. And they were just so on point and so quick, and it was so serendipitous for me to see that because this ended up being the tipping point that made me decide that, yes, this is the direction that I want to go. And you know, I'm—let's see, I started in November, so five months into the role. It was more than I ever expected; it's harder than I ever expected, but I'm growing so much, I'm getting a ton of eustress, if you're familiar with that concept of the positive stress that makes your muscles grow. And just wanted to give back to you and in thanks and gratitude for being that tipping point. And that thread definitely led me down this path, so thank you for that.Corey: It's interesting because so far as of this recording, there are no two podcast episodes that came out of that thread because, to be clear, this was the thread-summary of a half-hour conversation I had with the person who messaged me about whether or not she should take the role. Because her manager had gone to bat for her to give her a raise and… yeah, she wanted to be loyal and show thanks for that. Which I get, but the counterpoint to that is okay, you turn down the offer out of loyalty. Great. A month goes by.Now, your manager tells you that he or she is leaving to go work at a different company. Well, that opportunity is gone. Now, what? When it comes to career management, you can't love a company because the company can't ever love you back. And I got some pushback on that from Brian Hall, the VP of Product Marketing at Google Cloud—something about Google seems to be inspiring feedback on this one—because he spent something like 20 years at Microsoft and learned how to work within an organization, and then transfer jobs a couple of times to Amazon, they tried to non-compete lawsuit him on the way out—because, I don't know, his PowerPoints were just that amazing or something, or they're never going to replace his ability to name services badly—who knows why.But he took the other position on this. And I'm not saying that my way is always right, it is provably not, as a self-described terrible employee, but it really is interesting that that's the thing that resonated the most. I take a very mercenary approach to my career and I'm not convinced that's at all the best way, but when someone dangles a significant opportunity in front of you, I always take the view that it's better to explore and learn something about yourself if it appeals and the rest of the stars tend to align. And there's a certain reluctance to go out and try new things, but it's not like you're leaving your family. It's not like you're selling out people who've come to depend on you.Employment is fundamentally a business transaction and the company is never going to be able to have any sort of feeling for you, so you shouldn't necessarily have this sense of loyalty, and oh, it'd be it would leave the team in the lurch if I left. That is the company's problem to deal with. No one is irreplaceable.Johnny: Yeah, and a lot of times when you were talking there, you talked about ‘the company, the company,' but really, it's the people that you're working with that—and that was really what was weighing on me the most. I found myself in the same position. I had just recently gotten promoted. You know, my manager, and my team had gone to bat for me a lot, and so it's hard for me to walk away. But it was ultimately the strong relationships that I had built with the team and my managers over time that allowed me to make this step because as a program manager, I'm always thinking that anything I work on needs to survive multiple generations of stakeholders.So, everything that I do on a day-to-day basis has a breadcrumb trail, so that, hey, if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, someone with minimal amount of effort, can pick that up and move forward. And I've actually built that mindset into my entire career. Walking away from a role, you know, it'll always leave a gap, it'll always be challenging for the people and the teams around you, especially if you, you know, have a great affection for them, but by setting myself up to exit and still being there, since you know, Waymo is within the Alphabet companies and I can still talk with my old team, it wasn't like I was completely leaving; I was kind of still there if I needed to be, if they needed help or needed to find something. But I can definitely see what how that would be challenging moving to a totally different company. But yeah, it's really important that if you're thinking about exiting, you have a good exit plan. And I'm all about planning as a program manager, and that just helped kind of grease the wheels a little bit.Corey: I want to call it my own bias. You're right, I use the term team and company interchangeably because that's been my entire career. I, right now, have 12 employees here at The Duckbill Group and it is indistinguishable for me to make any meaningful distinction between team and company. Personally, I'm also not allowed to leave the company, given that I own it, and it looks really bad to the rest of the team if I decide, yeah, I'm going to go do something else now. People don't like playing games with their future.You're on the exact opposite end of a very wide spectrum. It's not that Google slash Alphabet is a big company, but you went from working on cloud computing to self-driving cars and you didn't leave the company, you're still at the same place as far as the benefits, the tenure, the organization, the name on the paycheck in all likelihood, and a bunch of other niceties as well. It almost presents is looking a little bit more like a transfer than it does leaving for a brand new job slash company.Johnny: It definitely was a soft landing to go from Google to Waymo. There were a lot of risks—again, talking about risks and mitigations—that I was concerned about that we're just kind of alleviated by the fact that okay, you can keep your same health care plan and various other things. So, that made it a soft landing for me. But yeah, it really was just making sure that the thing that I was working on at Google was able to be carried forward by the team and the people that I really enjoyed working with. So.Corey: As you went through all of this, you said that you were in Ohio before you wound up taking the job at Google—Johnny: Yeah, Cleveland [crosstalk 00:14:22].Corey: —and one of the best parts about Ohio [unintelligible 00:14:22] family and spending time there is you get to leave at some point. And—Johnny: [laugh].Corey: There was a large part of that of, great. I felt the same way growing up in Maine, let's be very clear here, where when I came to California, it was going to this storied place out of legend. And that was wild. And once your worldview expands, it feels very hard to go back again. At least for me.It took me years to really internalize that if this particular job or this particular path didn't work out, my failure mode—if you want to call it that—was not and then I return to Maine with my tail between my legs and go back to the relatively dead end retail fast food job that I was working before, comparatively. No. It's like, you go in a different direction; you apply the skill set; you have the stamp of validation on you. I mean, you have something working for you that I never did, which is the legitimacy of a household name on your resume. Whereas you look at mine, it's just basically a collection of, “Who are they again?” And, “You make that company up?”Which, fine, whatever. There's a bias in tech—particularly—towards big company names because that's a stamp of approval. You've already got that. The world is very much your oyster when it comes to solving the type of problem that you've been aimed at. I'm used to thinking about this from a almost purely technical point of view.It's like I'm here to write some javascript—badly—and I can write bad JavaScript for you or I can write bad JavaScript for that company across the street, and everyone knows what it is that they're going to get from you: Technical debt. Whereas when you're a technical program manager, that is something that you said varies from between company to company. And you hear founders talking about, “Oh yeah, our first engineering hire, we're going to bring in a VP of engineering; we're going to bring in a whole bunch of engineers; it's going to be great.” You very rarely hear people talk about how excited they are like, “Oh yeah, employee number three is going to be a technical program manager, and we're going to just blow the doors off of folks.” Which haven't been through the growth process myself, yeah, we really should have had a technical program manager analog far sooner; it would have helped us blow the doors off of competition. And great, the things we learn, but only in hindsight.Articulating the value of what a software engineer does is relatively straightforward, even for folks who aren't great salespeople for their own work. Being a TPM inherently requires, on some level, a verification that your understanding and the person that you're talking to are communicating about the same thing. Like, if you wind up having to solve code on a whiteboard, maybe that is part of your conception of it—I mean, you work at Google, probably—but for most companies, it's yeah, my ability to write shitty JavaScript is not the determining factor of success in a TPM role. How do you go about even broaching that conversation?Johnny: So, part of the way that program managers can be successful is through anticipating what's coming next and understanding not only the patterns that were implanted over time, but also thinking ahead. And this actually kind of takes me back to why I learned program management in the first place. Pretty early in my life, I started feeling a great deal of anxiety, especially thinking towards future situations, or, you know, even in the present moment. I mean, we've all been through it right? Right before the big test, you're feeling anxious; maybe talking to your crush—or before you talk to your crush—you're feeling this anticipatory anxiety; in hindsight replaying that interview that you just went through.For me, I was kind of like, constantly stuck in this future-state mode about being anxious about what's coming next, and that combined with ADHD—which is something that I also have—is kind of a wicked combination. And we can talk about that separately, but once I started understanding what program management did and how program management allowed businesses to keep things on track, I realized that there was a parallel into my own life there. The skill of program management actually became my defense against the crippling anxiety that I felt anticipating future events. And it's really become kind of the primary lens by which I understand and synthesize the world around me. And I know that sounds kind of weird, but with ADHD, I have a tendency to either being total diffuse mode and just working on nothing in particular, and letting my attention take me, or being in hyperfocus mode. And when you're hyper-focused and anxious, it can be a deadly combination, right?So, what I learned was taking that hyperfocus and taking that idea of program management and figuring out what it takes to get from here to there. I'm a strong believer in go as far as you can see, and when you get there, you'll see further. And this skill of program management kind of becomes the stepwise function by which I get to that later point, very much like you were saying with coming to Waymo: You never know what you're going to get until you get there. Well, now I see further and in hindsight, it was the right decision. So, the concept of program management is bringing structure, is bringing order, is bringing hierarchy to the chaos and uncertainty that we all naturally navigate in whatever we're doing and trying to transmute that into some kind of transparent order and rhythm, not only for my own benefit to reduce my overall anxiety, but also for the benefit of everyone else who's interested in what's going on. Does that answer your question?Corey: No, it absolutely does. Dealing with ADHD has been sort of what I've been struggling with my entire life. I was lucky and got diagnosed very early, but I always thought it was an aspect of business, but in many respects, it's not just about owning a business; it's about any aspect of your career, where the hardest thing you're ever going to have to do, on some level, is learn to understand and handle your own psychology where there are so many aspects of how things happening can impact us internally. I can't control what event happens next, of people yelling at me on Twitter, or I get a cease and desist from Amazon after they finally realized five years in, “You're not nearly as funny as we thought you were. Stop it.”Great. I can deal with those things, but the question is how I'm going to handle what happens in that type of eventuality? It's, am I going to spiral into a bitter depression? Am I going to laugh it off and keep going on things that are clearly working? Am I going to do something else? And so much of it comes from—at least in my experience—the ability to think through what's going on in a somewhat dispassionate way, and not internalize all of it to a point where you freeze. It's way easier said than done, I want to be very clear on this.Johnny: That's absolutely right. Stepping back, seeing the forest for the trees. I've recently become fascinated with systems thinking. You know, I'm in Silicon Valley, so I might as well start looking into a complex adaptive systems—Corey: Oh, no.Johnny: —[crosstalk 00:21:09] buzzword. We don't have to go down that thread because I'm very much an amateur when it comes to it, but what it does is it forces you to look at the connections between the components rather than the reductionism approach of let's look at this component, let's look at this component… instead, it forces you to step back and see the system as a whole. And so when you're responding to you just got a cease and desist, you know, of course you're going to feel depression, of course you're going to feel anxiety, and understanding all those as part of the system of experiencing that situation, it lets you kind of step back and say, okay, it's normal to be feeling this, it's normal to be feeling that. How can I harness these and structure my approach so that I can get to some further point where I not only know what I can do, and what options are available to me, but I have a clear path forward and strategy for how I want to approach this.Corey: How long have you been in your career at this point?Johnny: So, I graduated college in 2009. And I worked at my first company for about ten years from 2005, so I guess you could say 17 years, plus or minus, if you don't count internships.Corey: Looking back, it's easy to look at where we are at any given point in our career and feel that, oh, well, here's where I started, and here's where I am now, and here are the steps I took along the way where there's a sense of plodding inevitability to it. But there never is because when you're in the moment, in the eternal now that we live in, it's there are millions of things you could do next. If you were to be able to go back to your to talk to yourself at the beginning of your career, what would you do differently? What advice would you give yourself that would have really helped out early on?Johnny: You know, I think the thing that gave me the most leverage in my career was—as I move forward—is seeking out communities of like-minded, positive people. On the surface, that sounds a little shallow; of course, you would want to seek out communities, but what I've observed is that the self-organizing communities that pop up around technologies, or ideas, or roles, their communities of people who want to help you succeed. And I think, you know, one of the ways I reached out to you and was able to contact you was through one of these communities, right? So, you know, I talked a little bit the Cleveland Tech Slack earlier; most people aren't familiar with what mediums are even available. There's Discord, there's forums, there's Slack, there's probably other areas that I'm not aware of, where you can find people who will help you find that next step in your career.Actually [laugh] I got my first taste of community in online video games, so—Corey: Oh no.Johnny: —playing World of Warcraft back in 2003, you know you would have a guild—I was, gosh, how old was I in 2003, basically, early-20s and, you know, you'd have a guild of 40 people trying to coordinate all over one single voice chat server. And there was various groups and subdivisions, and so that was almost a project management exercise in itself. That's where I first learned project management. By the way, I have a sneaking suspicion that the roles that we play and that we are have an affinity for in video games mirror the roles that were best suited to play in life. So, I find myself playing a support class in League of Legends or a priest in World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online. I'm always that support person, the glue that helps keep things moving. And surprise, that's exactly what I do for my career. And it works perfectly. So.Corey: The accountant I keep playing gets eaten by goblins constantly, but, you know—Johnny: [laugh].Corey: —that's the joy that I suppose.Johnny: So, pretty early on, I developed this skill of creating friendships, and those friendships, in turn opened me up to these new communities. So, if I were to give one piece of advice to my early self, it would be to put more emphasis on finding and seeking out the communities that consists of people who are interested in the things that you're interested in, but also are willing to help you get to where you want to go. How do you succeed? Well, you find someone who is doing what you want and you talk to them. About it and you figure out how to get to where you're at from where you're at.And maybe they can't help you, maybe they can help you but, you know, we have a unique ability to crowdsource our questions, whether it's on Reddit, whether it's on Slack or Discord, and just say, “Hey, I'm thinking about this thing. Does anyone have any thoughts?” You're immediately—you know, if you ask the question correctly—given five or six different opinions, and then you can kind of meld and understand, okay, here are the options. Again, going back to what we were saying about how do you even decide what the next steps are? You can crowdsource that now, and so the one piece of advice that I would give is to seek out communities of like-minded positive people.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Vultr. 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My thanks to them for sponsoring this ridiculous podcast.Corey: And I think the positivity is important. There's a lot as particularly in tech, that breeds a certain cynicism that breeds a contempt almost. And Lord knows, I'm not one to judge; I revel in a lot of that when it comes to making fun of companies' ridiculous marketing and some of the nonsense we have to deal with, but it has to be tempered. You can't do what some of the communities I started out with did. IRC, learn how to configure Debian or FreeBSD, where it was generally, “Oh, great, someone else joined? Let's see what this dumbass wants.”It doesn't work that way. It's like just waiting for someone to ask a question so you can sink the knives in is not helpful. Punch up, not down. And making people feel welcomed and valued, even if they don't understand the local behavioral norms quite yet is super important. I'm increasingly discovering, as I suspect you are as well, that I'm older than I thought were when I talk to folks who are just starting their careers about here's how to manage a career, here's how to think about this, I am veering dangerously close to giving actively harmful advice, if I'm not extraordinarily careful because the path that I walked is very much closed.It is a different world; there are different paths; there's a different societal understanding of technology and its place in the world. There's a—what worked for me does absolutely not work the same way for folks who aren't wildly over-represented. And I increasingly have to back off lest I wind up giving the, I guess, career Boomer advice style of irrelevant and actively harmful stuff. How are you thinking about that?Johnny: So, I guess that kind of gets into the underpinnings of what I think it takes to be successful, right, and how do you find success in any aspect of your career? And—Corey: And what is success?Johnny: It differs for every person—yeah, what is success? And we were talking just before the show about how every person experiences not only what is success, but what does success mean and what do you believe the key is differently. For me—and this is pretty on—brand with where I am in my career and what I do—is I think the key to success is preparation. And it really ties into finding those communities and asking those questions, right?There's three key aspects to it, right? First is understanding how you learn. Everyone learns differently, and so knowing how you learn—and you know, college and school is kind of meant to kind of eke that out; it's how best do you learn? How best can you succeed with these tasks that we give you, study for this test, learn these concepts? If you can understand how you learn, that's the first step in preparing correctly, right, building your personal knowledge systems around that, taking notes, ordered hierarchy, structured thinking, that sort of thing.Knowledge management is a good field, if you ever have some time to figure out what you want to do with your external hard drive of your whiteboard like I have back behind me here. The second aspect is just mastering how to seek out information, right? So, how do you prepare? Well, you have to understand how to seek out information. You mentioned, you know, positive communities versus potentially cynical or toxic communities. Their opinions are still very valid.They might be jaded and they might provide a cynical opinion, but you still need to encompass that within the spectrum of your understanding of the world, right, because they have something that happened to them, or they have some experience that still is very valid from their perspective. So, seeking out information, understanding the people and the tools at your disposal, the communities that you can go to knowing how to discern the signal from the noise. And again, that's really where your thread that really helped me—because you nailed a bunch of the questions that I just wasn't entirely sure on in that Twitter thread, and when I went through that, it hit some of the major points that I was just uncertain on, and you just gave very clear, albeit, you know, somewhat tongue in cheek cynical advice, to say like, don't worry about the company, worry about yourself. And that really was helping me get to that next step.And then lastly, how do you prepare? And this is the one I always struggle with. It's calibrating your confidence barometer. What does that even mean? How can you calibrate your own barometer of your confidence? It's a knowingness; it's knowing what to expect.And so for example, when I was getting into Google, I had no idea what to expect in terms of the interviews. So, what's the first thing I do? I go out and I ask a bunch of people, people who know people who are at Google people who are at Google, what do I expect? What should I prepare for? What communities should I join? What books should I read? What YouTube videos should I watch?I ended up finding a book called Cracking the PM Interview by Gayle—I think her name is Laakmann McDowell. There's a Cracking the Coding Interview as well. That ended up being, like, exactly what I needed, and going through that cover-to-cover got me into Google, amongst other things, and talking with the community. So, calibrating your confidence parameter, that knowingness of, I know that I'm ready enough for this. There will always be things that catch you by surprise, but knowing that you're ready and having that preparation and that internal knowingness not only increases your confidence, but it also increases your ability to operate improvisationally when you're in the moment.And in fact, that's exactly what I went through for this podcast. I have a little document in front of me where I just jotted my notes down last night, I was thinking through, what do I want to cover? What do I want to say? How can I respond to the questions that he's going to ask me? He might ask me, you know, a curveball, but I have some thoughts that are structured, I'm prepared for this so that no matter what happens, I'll be okay. And again, that really gets down to that essence of philosophy of program management that I have. No matter what happens, I'll be okay; no matter what happens, we'll be okay. And believing in that and having a level of knowingness—[laugh].Corey: I am not a planner at all. For me, my confidence comes from the fact that I can't predict what's going to happen so I don't even try. Instead, what I do is I focus on preparing myself to be effectively dynamic enough that whatever curveball comes my way, I can twist myself in a knot and catch it, which drives people to distraction when they're trying to plan a panel that I'm going to be on. “Okay, so we're going to ask this, what's your answer going to be?” I have absolutely no idea until I find the words coming out of my mouth.And if I try and do a rehearsal, I'll make completely different points, and that really bothers folks. It's, I don't know; I'm not here to read a script. I'm here to tell stories, which is great for, you know, improv panel activity and challenging if you're trying to get a software project off the ground. So, you know, there are different strengths that call us in different ways.Johnny: Exactly. I mean, the flip side of preparation is improvisation. And you know, I spent ten years as a jazz musician playing trumpet in a swing band back in Cleveland before I moved out here. And that really helped me understand how to think improvisationally, right? They give you the chords, the underlying structure by which you can operate, and then you can kind of choose your own path through there.And sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, you learn over time, you come up with libraries of ideas to pull out of your head at any given time. So, there is an aspect of preparation to improvisation. And I think if you, I would encourage you to think about it more; I bet you do more planning than you think you do; maybe you just don't call it that.Corey: No, I have people for that now.Johnny: [laugh]. “I have people for that.”Corey: I am very deliberately offloading that. Honestly, that was part of the challenge I had psychologically of running my own place. If I were just a little better at following a list or planning things in advance, all these people around me wouldn't have to do all this extra work to clean up my mess. Instead, it's okay, let it go. Just let it go and instead, focus on the thing that I can do this differentiated. That was my path. I don't know how well it works for others, and again, I'm swimming in privilege when I say it.One last topic I want to get into, I think it might be part of the reason that you and I are talking so much about the future, the next generation, and the rest is we're recording this on March 9th. I don't know the date this is going to air, but there's a decent chance that will be after April 22nd, where you and your wife Emily are expecting your first child. So congratulations, even though I'm a little early. I definitely want to get that in there.Johnny: Thank you.Corey: Have you found that since you realized you were expecting a child—with an arrival date, which is generally more accurate than most Amazon order dates—that you find yourself thinking a lot more about the future and how you're going to wind up encapsulating some of the lessons you picked up along the way for, I guess, the next generation of your family?Johnny: Yeah. I mean, everyone who finds himself in this situation, finds himself somewhere between panic and bliss, right? There's some balance that I have to find there. And fortunately, my wife Emily, and I have a very strong rapport when it comes to how I think and how she thinks, and so we're able to—you know, our emotional intelligence is very high; we talk about that sort of thing a lot. And we try to plan for the future as best we can, knowing that things will go off the rails as soon as you know, what's the old saying about the best laid plans and how, you know, every plan is—Corey: Man plans and God laughs.Johnny: Yeah, or goes awry as soon as the first shot is fired, et cetera. Thinking more than five years out is still pretty challenging for me, but thinking within the first five years, we can already sketch out some plans. I already have some ideas of where we want to go and what we want to do and how we want this new child, this being, to experience the world and how we want to impart the things and the wisdom that we've learned and experiences and skills that we've developed—Emily and I—to this new child, realizing that I have no idea what's coming and I have no idea what to expect because I just really haven't had much exposure to babies or children at all in my life, so I'm just kind of rolling the dice here and trusting that it'll all work out really well. And again, going back to communities, the communities that I'm in, there are parenting channels, there are friends and family that I can talk to. So, I have everything that I need in terms of knowledge.Now, I just need to go through the experience, right? So, I'm definitely thinking a lot about the future. In fact, I've got a—I don't know if you can see it here—quarterly plan for my life up here on the wall that I [unintelligible 00:35:33]. It's just something that I can glance at every so often, and there it is, right, there: ‘Q1 2022: Kid.'Corey: How long has that ‘Q1 2022: Kid' been on the board? Like oh, since 2014? Like that is remarkably good planning.Johnny: Mid-2021.Corey: Okay, fair enough.Johnny: No joking: Mid-2021.Corey: [laugh].Johnny: Yeah, just even having that up there and writing a sticky note and slapping it on there for, like, a hey, here's what I think, some of them fall off, some of them don't fall off, but I'll tell you what, more than more often than not, it actually ends up working and happening and being realized, no matter what it is. Because just having it there and glancing at it every so often is that repetition, it keeps it on my mind. It's like, hey, I should probably think about that. The next thing you know, it's done. And then I can take it off and put it in my binder of accomplishments.Corey: I am about five years ahead of you on that particular path that you're on because five years ago, I was expecting my first child. And I don't want to spoil the surprise entirely, but I will Nostradamus this prediction here, five years from now, when you go back and listen to or watch this episode and listen to yourself talk about how you're planning to parent and your hopes and your dreams, you are going to, in a fit of rage, attempt to build a time machine to travel back to what is now the present day for us, in order to slap yourself unconscious for how naive you are being [laugh] because that is—I'm hearing my words coming out of your mouth in a bunch of different ways, and oh my God, I was—it's the common parent story you all these hopes and dreams and aspirations for kids and then they hand you a tiny little baby and suddenly it becomes viscerally real in a different way where, “It's going to be a little while until I can teach you to do a job interview, isn't it?” And other things start wind up happening to, like—Johnny: [laugh]. Right.Corey: —what do I do? I've never held a baby before. How do I not drop it and kill it? And later in time they learn to talk. They talk an awful lot, and then it's like, how do I give them a bath without drowning them in the process? Not because I'm bad at it, but just because I'm at my wit's end because I haven't slept in three days.Parenting is one of the hardest things you'll ever do and everyone has opinions on it. And it's gratifying to know that the world continues to go on even in these after-times where things have gotten fairly dark. It's nice to see that flash of optimism and remember walking down at myself. It's exciting times for you. Congratulations.Johnny: Yeah. Thank you. It's a beautiful thing. And I'm self-aware and I have a knowingness of my naivete, right? And that's part of the fun.And the whole idea of it is an explorative journey. I have no idea what to expect, but I have a good support system; my wife is incredible. She has an early childhood education degree, so that's going to be really useful. Yeah. And so kind of going back to that concept of preparation.And I don't feel a lot of anxiety about it because I am feeling like I have the knowledge, the community, the friends, the family in place so that no matter what happens, I'll be able to maneuver through it. And I can ask, and I can get help. Yeah, so that's where my head is at with that. [laugh].Corey: We'll be checking back in once you're up to your elbows and diapers and I assure you, you'll be lucky if it stops your elbows.Johnny: [laugh].Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk to me about your own journey and, I guess, a variety of different things; hard to encapsulate it all at once. If people want to learn more or chat with you, where's the best place to find you?Johnny: Yeah, thanks for asking. So, I have a website jmpod.com, JM Pod. My middle name is Michael. So, John Michael Podhradsky. jmpod.com. That links to my blog, there's links to LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. I'm most active on Instagram.I'm always looking to connect with and just chat with new people, people who want a new perspective, people who are interesting or want to share their stories with me. Coaching is something that I thought of doing in the long-term. It's not on the plate right now because I'm focused on my current career, but that's something that I'm very interested in doing, so you know, happy to field that questions or if anyone wants to reach out and hey, what communities can I look for or where should I be looking for communities, I'm happy to help with that as well.Corey: I will, of course, put a link to that in the [show notes 00:39:39]. Thanks again for your time. I really appreciate it.Johnny: Yeah, this was a fantastic experience. It's the first podcast I've done, I'm hoping it went well, and I really appreciate that you even asked me to do this. It was a surprise. My eyes went like dinner plates when you said, “Hey, why don't you come join me?” And I said, “Absolutely. That sounds like a fantastic idea.” So, thank you again, Corey. I really appreciate spending time with you and looking forward to doing it again sometime in the future. With a baby in the background, screaming. [laugh].Corey: Oh, yes. They do eventually sleep; you won't believe it for the first three months, but they do eventually pass out. Johnny Podhradsky, technical program manager of Offboard Infrastructure at Waymo. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment telling me exactly which tweet of mine you followed for advice and it did not in fact help your career one iota.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.
Ask anyone who's hunted for a job as a software developer what they did to prepare for their technical interviews, and they will more or less provide a similar general framework. At a high-level, we grind data structures & algo problems using some flavor of an interview prep site such as LeetCode, Hackerrank, Interview Cake, among many others. Armed with a copy of Cracking the Coding Interview at our disposal, we can even spend the majority of our evenings and weekends studying and hoping to land that dream job at our dream company. Frances Coronel, who is a racial equity advocate and former software engineer at Slack, realized the potential harm this cookie cutter interview process could really have on improving diversity for underrepresented folks in the tech industry. Seeing that there were so few members from the Latinx community in the tech ecosystem relative to the general population, she identified many holes in the tech talent pipeline and decided to land herself a role at Byteboard, a company disrupting the interviewing space. Tune into this week's episode as she talks about her journey into tech, how the industry is doing in terms of diversity & inclusion in general, and what suggestions she has for allies who want to help address the various issues that have created this leaky pipeline. Resources: https://francescoronel.com https://techqueria.org https://byteboard.dev
Anyone who is involved in the technical hiring process, whether as a hiring manager or candidate, has probably heard of Gayle Laakmann McDowell. She's the author of Cracking the *interview books (Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the PM Interview, and Cracking the Tech Career). In this episode, she talks about the rise of interview prep companies, advice for candidates who are out of practice and why there is no perfect interview process.
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Maximizing Your Donations via a Job, published by Alexei on the LessWrong. In November of 2012 I set a goal for myself: find the most x-risk reducing role I can fill. At first I thought it would be by working directly with MIRI, but after a while it became clear that I could contribute more by simply donating. So my goal became: find the highest paying job, so I can donate lots of money to CFAR and MIRI. A little bit of background on me. Started programming in 2000. Graduated in 2009 with Bachelor's in computer science. Worked for about a year and a half at a game company. Then did my own game startup for about a year. Then moved to the bay area and joined a game startup here, which was acquired 10 months later. Worked a bit at the new company and then left. So, just under four years of professional programming experience, but primarily in the game industry. Almost no leadership / managerial experience, aside from the startup I did where I hired freelancers. Below is my experience of finding a software engineering job in the Silicon Valley. If you are not an engineer or not in the Silicon Valley, I think you'll still find a lot of useful information here. Pre-game Before sending out my resume, I spent about a month preparing. I read Intro to Algorithms, which was very good overall, but not a huge help in preparing for interviews.[1] I read Cracking the Coding Interview, which was extremely helpful. (If you read only one book to prepare, make it this one.) The book has a lot of questions that are similar to the ones you'll actually see during interviews. I also did TopCoder problems, which were pretty helpful as well.[2] Looking back, I wish I spent more time finding actual interview questions online and doing more of those (that's why CCI book was so helpful). After several weeks of preparation, I compiled a long list of companies I was going to apply to. I checked on GlassDoor to see what kind of salary I could expect at each one. I then rated all the companies. Companies with low salaries and poor personal fit received the lowest rating. I started by applying to companies with the lowest ratings. This way I could use them as practice for the companies I thought would actually make a competitive offer. This was the right move and worked very well. (Another friend of mine did the same approach with good results as well.) Remember, you are not just doing those interviews to practice the coding problems, you are practicing pitching yourself as well. Interviewing with a company Standard procedure for applying to a tech company: 1. Send them your resume. Proofread your resume. Let your friends proofread it. Make sure there are only relevant things on it. When I applied to tech companies, I removed a lot of game-specific things from my resume. When I applied to companies that did 3D graphics, I made sure I had all my 3D graphics experience listed. I ended up with two version of my resume. Have your resume in DOC, PDF, and TXT formats. This way you'll always have the right one when you upload / paste it. For a few companies, I had a friend or friend of a friend who referred me. This REALLY HELPS in two ways: 1) your resume will be processed a lot faster, 2) if your friend is a great engineer/employee, you'll be taken a lot more seriously, and the company will fight for you a lot harder. 2. You'll get an email from the recruiter and setup a time to speak, where you'll talk about yourself, what you've done, why you are interested in their company, and so on. You can and should ask them questions as well. When you start getting multiple calls each day, make sure you know who is calling. There is nothing worse than talking about the challenges of streaming music to a car sharing startup. (True story.) Read about the company on Wikipedia before the call. Know the basic stuff. L...
How can we leverage product design exercises in our hiring process? Our guest is Artiom Dashinsky, author of Solving Product Design Exercises and founder of Swag Fair. You'll learn how to prepare for interviews as a designer, how to evaluate designers as a manager, tips for building your design portfolio, and more.Download the MP3 audio file: right-click here and choose Save As.Podcast feed: subscribe to https://feeds.simplecast.com/4MvgQ73R in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Podcasts.Show NotesSolving Product Design Exercises — Artiom's bookSwag Fair — Artiom's current companyWeWork — Artiom's previous place of workCracking the Coding Interview — book by Gayle Laakmann McDowellCracking the PM Interview — book by Gayle Laakmann McDowell and Jackie BavaroArtiom's websiteFollow Artiom on TwitterToday's SponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — the best way for SaaS founders to send onboarding emails, segment your users based on events, and see where your customers get stuck in the product. Start your free trial today at userlist.com.Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here.Leave a ReviewReviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how.
The panel puts their heads together to talk about how to bring DevOps practices into a work situation based where they're not implemented. They discuss the various pro's and con's of specific practices and how to get people on board with adoption. Panel Charles Max WoodJillian RoweJonathan HallWill Button Sponsors Top End DevsRaygun | Click here to get started on your free 14-day trialCoaching | Top End Devs Picks Charles- Shadow Hunters | Board Game | BoardGameGeekCharles- CampfireJillian- DragonbreathJillian- Bath & Body WorksJonathan- Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast FlowJonathan- LexxWill- Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and SolutionsWill- DIY DevOps Projects to build DevOps skills NOW! - YouTube Contact Charles: Devchat.tvDevChat.tv | FacebookTwitter: DevChat.tv ( @devchattv ) Contact Jillian: GitHub: Jillian Rowe ( jerowe )LinkedIn: Jillian RoweTwitter: Jillian Rowe ( @jillianerowe ) Contact Jonathan: Jonathan HallGitHub: Jonathan Hall ( flimzy )Twitter: Jonathan Hall ( @TinyDevOps ) Contact Will: DevOps For Developers
The application process for a job in software development or software engineering typically involves what's known as a "technical interview." Technical interviews are notorious for being intimidating and exclusionary of otherwise good candidates. Technical interviews may involve whiteboarding, live coding, brain teasers, or even take-home projects. In this episode we'll explain what these different kinds of technical interviews are like and why they induce so much fear. We'll also discuss the bias inherent in these interviews, their pros and cons versus the alternatives, and how to best prepare for them. Show Notes Episode 62: What is an Algorithm? Episode 61: What is a Data Structure? Episode 57: Version Control Systems, Git, and GitHub HackerRank LeetCode Cracking the Coding Interview via Amazon Follow us on Twitter @KopecExplains. Theme “Place on Fire” Copyright 2019 Creo, CC BY 4.0 Find out more at http://kopec.live
About EmmaEmma Bostian is a Software Engineer at Spotify in Stockholm. She is also a co-host of the Ladybug Podcast, author of Decoding The Technical Interview Process, and an instructor at LinkedIn Learning and Frontend Masters.Links: Ladybug Podcast: https://www.ladybug.dev LinkedIn Learning: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/instructors/emma-bostian Frontend Masters: https://frontendmasters.com/teachers/emma-bostian/ Decoding the Technical Interview Process: https://technicalinterviews.dev Twitter: https://twitter.com/emmabostian TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Jellyfish. So, you're sitting in front of your office chair, bleary eyed, parked in front of a powerpoint and—oh my sweet feathery Jesus its the night before the board meeting, because of course it is! As you slot that crappy screenshot of traffic light colored excel tables into your deck, or sift through endless spreadsheets looking for just the right data set, have you ever wondered, why is it that sales and marketing get all this shiny, awesome analytics and inside tools? Whereas, engineering basically gets left with the dregs. Well, the founders of Jellyfish certainly did. That's why they created the Jellyfish Engineering Management Platform, but don't you dare call it JEMP! Designed to make it simple to analyze your engineering organization, Jellyfish ingests signals from your tech stack. Including JIRA, Git, and collaborative tools. Yes, depressing to think of those things as your tech stack but this is 2021. They use that to create a model that accurately reflects just how the breakdown of engineering work aligns with your wider business objectives. In other words, it translates from code into spreadsheet. When you have to explain what you're doing from an engineering perspective to people whose primary IDE is Microsoft Powerpoint, consider Jellyfish. Thats Jellyfish.co and tell them Corey sent you! Watch for the wince, thats my favorite part.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Liquibase. If you're anything like me, you've screwed up the database part of a deployment so severely that you've been banned from touching every anything that remotely sounds like SQL, at at least three different companies. We've mostly got code deployments solved for, but when it comes to databases we basically rely on desperate hope, with a roll back plan of keeping our resumes up to date. It doesn't have to be that way. Meet Liquibase. It is both an open source project and a commercial offering. Liquibase lets you track, modify, and automate database schema changes across almost any database, with guardrails to ensure you'll still have a company left after you deploy the change. No matter where your database lives, Liquibase can help you solve your database deployment issues. Check them out today at liquibase.com. Offer does not apply to Route 53.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. One of the weird things that I've found in the course of, well, the last five years or so is that I went from absolute obscurity to everyone thinking that I know everyone else because I have thoughts and opinions on Twitter. Today, my guest also has thoughts and opinions on Twitter. The difference is that what she has to say is actually helpful to people. My guest is Emma Bostian, software engineer at Spotify, which is probably, if we can be honest about it, one of the least interesting things about you. Thanks for joining me.Emma: Thanks for having me. That was quite the intro. I loved it.Corey: I do my best and I never prepare them, which is a blessing and a curse. When ADHD is how you go through life and you suck at preparation, you've got to be good at improv. So, you're a co-host of the Ladybug Podcast. Let's start there. What is that podcast? And what's it about?Emma: So, that podcast is just my three friends and I chatting about career and technology. We all come from different backgrounds, have different journeys into tech. I went the quote-unquote, “Traditional” computer science degree route, but Ali is self-taught and works for AWS, and Kelly she has, like, a master's in psychology and human public health and runs her own company. And then Sydney is an awesome developer looking for her next role. So, we all come from different places and we just chat about career in tech.Corey: You're also an instructor at LinkedIn Learning and Frontend Masters. I'm going to guess just based upon the name that you are something of a frontend person, which is a skill set that has constantly eluded me for 20 years, as given evidence by every time I've tried to build something that even remotely touches frontend or JavaScript in any sense.Emma: Yeah, to my dad's disdain, I have stuck with the frontend; he really wanted me to stay backend. I did an internship at IBM in Python, and you know, I learned all about assembly language and database, but frontend is what really captures my heart.Corey: There's an entire school of thought out there from a constituency of Twitter that I will generously refer to as shitheads that believe, “Oh, frontend is easy and it's somehow less than.” And I would challenge anyone who holds that perspective to wind up building an interface that doesn't look like crap first, then come and talk to me. Spoiler, you will not say that after attempting to go down that rabbit hole. If you disagree with this, you can go ahead and yell at me on Twitter so I know where you're hiding, so I can block you. Now, that's all well and good, but one of the most interesting things that you've done that aligns with topics near and dear to my heart is you wrote a book.Now, that's not what's near and dear to my heart; I have the attention span to write a tweet most days. But the book was called Decoding the Technical Interview Process. Technical interviewing is one of those weird things that comes up from time to time, here and everywhere else because it's sort of this stylized ritual where we evaluate people on a number of skills that generally don't reflect in their day-to-day; it's really only a series of skills that you get better by practicing, and you only really get to practice them when you're interviewing for other jobs. That's been my philosophy, but again, I've written a tweet on this; you've written a book. What's the book about and what drove you to write it?Emma: So, the book covers everything from an overview of the interview process, to how do you negotiate a job offer, to systems design, and talks about load balancing and cache partitioning, it talks about what skills you need from the frontend side of things to do well on your JavaScript interviews. I will say this, I don't teach HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in-depth in the book because there are plenty of other resources for that. And some guy got mad at me about that the other day and wanted a refund because I didn't teach the skills, but I don't need to. [laugh]. And then it covers data structures and algorithms.They're all written in JavaScript, they have easy to comprehend diagrams. What drove me to write this is that I had just accepted a job offer in Stockholm for a web developer position at Spotify. I had also just passed my Google technical interviews, and I finally realized, holy crap, maybe I do know what I'm doing in an interview now. And this was at the peak of when people were getting laid off due to COVID and I said, “You know what? I have a lot of knowledge. And if I have a computer science degree and I was able to get through some of the hardest technical interviews, I think I should share that with the community.”Because some people didn't go through a CS degree and don't understand what a linked list is. And that's not their fault. It's just unfortunately, there weren't a lot of great resources—especially for web developers out there—to learn these concepts. Cracking the Coding Interview is a great book, but it's written in backend language and it's a little bit hard to digest as a frontend developer. So, I decided to write my own.Corey: How much of the book is around the technical interview process as far as ask, “Here's how you wind up reversing linked lists,” or, “Inverting a binary tree,” or whatever it is where you're tracing things around without using a pointer, how do you wind up detecting a loop in a recursive whatever it is—yeah, as you can tell, I'm not a computer science person at all—versus how much of it is, effectively, interview 101 style skills for folks who are even in non-technical roles could absorb?Emma: My goal was, I wanted this to be approachable by anyone without extensive technical knowledge. So, it's very beginner-friendly. That being said, I cover the basic data structures, talking about what traditional methods you would see on them, how do you code that, what does that look like from a visual perspective with fake data? I don't necessarily talk about how do you reverse a binary tree, but I do talk about how do you balance it if you remove a node? What if it's not a leaf node? What if it has children? Things like that.It's about [sigh] I would say 60/40, where 40% is coding and technical stuff, but maybe—eh, it's a little bit closer to 50/50; it kind of depends. I do talk about the take-home assessment and tips for that. When I do a take-home assessment, I like to include a readme with things I would have done if I had more time, or these are performance trade-offs that I made; here's why. So, there's a lot of explanation as to how you can improve your chances at moving on to the next round. So yeah, I guess it's 50/50.I also include a section on tips for hiring managers, how to create an inclusive and comfortable environment for your candidates. But it's definitely geared towards candidates, and I would say it's about 50/50 coding tech and process stuff.Corey: One of the problems I've always had with this entire industry is it feels like we're one of the only industries that does this, where we bring people in, and oh, you've been an engineer for 15 years at a whole bunch of companies I've recognized, showing career progression, getting promoted at some of them transitioning from high-level role to high-level role. “Great, we are so glad that you came in to interview. Now, up to the whiteboard, please, and implement FizzBuzz because I have this working theory that you don't actually know how to code, and despite the fact that you've been able to fake your way through it at big companies for 15 years, I'm the one that's going to catch you out with some sort of weird trivia question.” It's this adversarial, almost condescending approach and I don't see it in any other discipline than tech. Is that just because I'm not well-traveled enough? Is that because I'm misunderstanding the purpose of all of these things? Or, what is this?Emma: I think partially it was a gatekeeping solution for a while, for people who are comfortable in their roles and may be threatened by people who have come through different paths to get to tech. Because software engineer used to be an accredited title that you needed a degree or certification to get. And in some countries it still is, so you'll see this debate sometimes about calling yourself a software engineer if you don't have that accreditation. But in this day and age, people go through boot camps, they can come from other industries, they can be self-taught. You don't need a computer science degree, and I think the interview process has not caught up with that.I will say [laugh] the worst interview I had was at IBM when I was already working there. I was already a web developer there, full-time. I was interviewing for a role, and I walked into the room and there were five guys sitting at a table and they were like, “Get up to the whiteboard.” It was for a web development job and they quizzed me about Java. And I was like, “Um, sir, I have not done Java since college.” And they were like, “We don't care.”Corey: Oh, yeah, coding on a whiteboard in front of five people who already know the answer—Emma: Horrifying.Corey: —during a—for them, it's any given Tuesday, and for you, it is a, this will potentially determine the course that your career takes from this point forward. There's a level of stress that goes into that never exists in our day-to-day of building things out.Emma: Well, I also think it's an artificial environment. And why, though? Like, why is this necessary? One of the best interviews I had was actually with Gatsby. It was for an open-source maintainer role, and they essentially let me try the product before I bought it.Like, they let me try out doing the job. It was a paid process, they didn't expect me to do it for free. I got to choose alternatives if I wanted to do one thing or another, answer one question or another, and this was such an exemplary process that I always bring it up because that is a modern interview process, when you are letting people try the position. Now granted, not everyone can do this, right? We've got parents, we've got people working two jobs, and not everyone can afford to take the time to try out a job.But who can also afford a five-stage interview process that still warrants taking vacation days? So, I think at least—at the very least—pay your candidates if you can.Corey: Oh, yeah. One of the best interviews I've ever had was at a company called Three Rings Design, which is now defunct, unfortunately, but it was fairly typical ops questions of, “Yeah, here's an AWS account. Spin up a couple EC2 instances, load balance between them, have another one monitored. You know, standard op stuff. And because we don't believe in asking people to work for free, we'll pay you $300 upon completion of the challenge.”Which, again, it's not huge money for doing stuff like that, but it's also, this shows a level of respect for my time. And instead of giving me a hard deadline of when it was due, they asked me, “When can we expect this by?” Which is a great question in its own right because it informs you about a candidate's ability to set realistic deadlines and then meet them, which is one of those useful work things. And they—unlike most other companies I spoke with in that era—were focused on making it as accommodating for the candidate as possible. They said, “We're welcome to interview you during the workday; we can also stay after hours and have a chat then, if that's more convenient for your work schedule.”Because they knew I was working somewhere else; an awful lot of candidates are. And they just bent over backwards to be as accommodating as possible. I see there's a lot of debate these days in various places about the proper way to interview candidates. No take-home because biases for people who don't have family obligations or other commitments outside of work hours. “Okay, great, so I'm going to come in interview during the day?” “No. That biases people who can't take time off.” And, on some level, it almost seems to distill down to no one likes any way that there is of interviewing candidates, and figuring out a way that accommodates everyone is a sort of a fool's errand. It seems like there is no way that won't get you yelled at.Emma: I think there needs to be almost like a choose your own adventure. What is going to set you up for success and also allow you to see if you want to even work that kind of a job in the first place? Because I thought on paper, open-source maintainer sounds awesome. And upon looking into the challenges, I'm like, “You know what? I think I'd hate this job.”And I pulled out and I didn't waste their time and they didn't waste mine. So, when you get down to it, honestly, I wish I didn't have to write this book. Did it bring me a lot of benefit? Yeah. Let's not sugarcoat that. It allowed me to pay off my medical debt and move across a continent, but that being said, I wish that we were at a point in time where that did not need to exist.Corey: One of the things that absolutely just still gnaws at me even years later, is I interviewed at Google twice, and I didn't get an offer either time, I didn't really pass their technical screen either time. The second one that really sticks out in my mind where it was, “Hey, write some code in a Google Doc while we watch remotely,” and don't give you any context or hints on this. And just it was—the entire process was sitting there listening to them basically, like, “Nope, not what I'm thinking about. Nope, nope, nope.” It was… by the end of that conversation, I realized that if they were going to move forward—which they didn't—I wasn't going to because I didn't want to work with people that were that condescending and rude.And I've held by it; I swore I would never apply there again and I haven't. And it's one of those areas where, did I have the ability to do the job? I can say in hindsight, mostly. Were there things I was going to learn as I went? Absolutely, but that's every job.And I'm realizing as I see more and more across the ecosystem, that they were an outlier in a potentially good way because in so many other places, there's no equivalent of the book that you have written that is given to the other side of the table: how to effectively interview candidates. People lose sight of the fact that it's a sales conversation; it's a two-way sale, they have to convince you to hire them, but you also have to convince them to work with you. And even in the event that you pass on them, you still want them to say nice things about you because it's a small industry, all things considered. And instead, it's just been awful.Emma: I had a really shitty interview, and let me tell you, they have asked me subsequently if I would re-interview with them. Which sucks; it's a product that I know and love, and I've talked about this, but I had the worst experience. Let me clarify, I had a great first interview with them, and I was like, “I'm just not ready to move to Australia.” Which is where the job was. And then they contacted me again a year later, and it was the worst experience of my life—same recruiter—it was the ego came out.And I will tell you what, if you treat your candidates like shit, they will remember and they will never recommend people interview for you. [laugh]. I also wanted to mention about accessibility because—so we talked about, oh, give candidates the choice, which I think the whole point of an interview should be setting your candidates up for success to show you what they can do. And I talked with [Stephen 00:14:09]—oh, my gosh, I can't remember his last name—but he is a quadriplegic and he types with a mouthstick. And he was saying he would go to technical interviews and they would not be prepared to set him up for success.And they would want to do these pair programming, or, like, writing on a whiteboard. And it's not that he can't pair program, it's that he was not set up for success. He needed a mouthstick to type and they were not prepared to help them with that. So, it's not just about the commitment that people need. It's also about making sure that you are giving candidates what they need to give the best interview possible in an artificial environment.Corey: One approach that people have taken is, “Ah, I'm going to shortcut this and instead of asking people to write code, I'm going to look at their work on GitHub.” Which is, in some cases, a great way to analyze what folks are capable of doing. On the other, well, there's a lot of things that play into that. What if they're working in environment where they don't have the opportunity to open-source their work? What if people consider this a job rather than an all-consuming passion?I know, perish the thought. We don't want to hire people like that. Grow up. It's not useful, and it's not helpful. It's not something that applies universally, and there's an awful lot of reasons why someone's code on GitHub might be materially better—or worse—than their work product. I think that's fine. It's just a different path toward it.Emma: I don't use GitHub for largely anything except just keeping repositories that I need. I don't actively update it. And I have, like, a few thousand followers; I'm like, “Why the hell do you guys follow me? I don't do anything.” It's honestly a terrible representation.That being said, you don't need to have a GitHub repository—an active one—to showcase your skills. There are many other ways that you can show a potential employer, “Hey, I have a lot of skills that aren't necessarily showcased on my resume, but I like to write blogs, I like to give tech talks, I like to make YouTube videos,” things of that nature.Corey: I had a manager once who refused to interview anyone who didn't have a built-out LinkedIn profile, which is also one of these bizarre things. It's, yeah, a lot of people don't feel the need to have a LinkedIn profile, and that's fine. But the idea that, “Oh, yeah, they have this profile they haven't updated in a couple years, it's clearly they're not interested in looking for work.” It's, yeah. Maybe—just a thought here—your ability to construct a resume and build it out in the way that you were expecting is completely orthogonal to how effective they might be in the role. The idea that someone not having a LinkedIn profile somehow implies that they're sketchy is the wrong lesson to take from all of this. That site is terrible.Emma: Especially when you consider the fact that LinkedIn is primarily used in the United States as a social—not social networking—professional networking tool. In Germany, they use Xing as a platform; it's very similar to LinkedIn, but my point is, if you're solely looking at someone's LinkedIn as a representation of their ability to do a job, you're missing out on many candidates from all over the world. And also those who, yeah, frankly, just don't—like, they have more important things to be doing than updating their LinkedIn profile. [laugh].Corey: On some level, it's the idea of looking at a consultant, especially independent consultant type, when their website is glorious and up-to-date and everything's perfect, it's, oh, you don't really have any customers, do you? As opposed to the consultants you know who are effectively sitting there with a waiting list, their website looks like crap. It's like, “Is this Geocities?” No. It's just that they're too busy working on the things that bring the money instead of the things that bring in business, in some respects.Let's face it, websites don't. For an awful lot of consulting work, it's word of mouth. I very rarely get people finding me off of Google, clicking a link, and, “Hey, my AWS bill is terrible. Can you help us with it?” It happens, but it's not something that happens so frequently that we want to optimize for it because that's not where the best customers have been coming from. Historically, it's referrals, it's word of mouth, it's people seeing the aggressive shitposting I engage in on Twitter and saying, “Oh, that's someone that should help me with my Amazon bill.” Which I don't pretend to understand, but I'm still going to roll with it.Emma: You had mentioned something about passion earlier, and I just want to say, if you're a hiring manager or recruiter, you shouldn't solely be looking at candidates who superficially look like they're passionate about what they do. Yes, that is—it's important, but it's not something that—like, I don't necessarily choose one candidate over the other because they push commits, and open pull requests on GitHub, and open-source, and stuff. You can be passionate about your job, but at the end of the day, it's still a job. For me, would I be working if I had to? No. I'd be opening a bookstore because that's what I would really love to be doing. But that doesn't mean I'm not passionate about my job. I just show it in different ways. So, just wanted to put that out there.Corey: Oh, yeah. The idea that you must eat, sleep, live, and breathe is—hell with that. One of the reasons that we get people to work here at The Duckbill Group is, yeah, we care about getting the job done. We don't care about how long it takes or when you work; it's oh, you're not feeling well? Take the day off.We have very few things that are ‘must be done today' style of things. Most of those tend to fall on me because it's giving a talk at a conference; they will not reschedule the conference for you. I've checked. So yeah, that's important, but that's not most days.Emma: Yeah. It's like programming is my job, it's not my identity. And it's okay if it is your primary hobby if that is how you identify, but for me, I'm a person with actual hobbies, and, you know, a personality, and programming is just a job for me. I like my job, but it's just a job.Corey: And on the side, you do interesting things like wrote a book. You mentioned earlier that it wound up paying off some debt and helping cover your move across an ocean. Let's talk a little bit about that because I'm amenable to the idea of side projects that accidentally have a way of making money. That's what this podcast started out as. If I'm being perfectly honest, and started out as something even more self-serving than that.It's, well if I reach out to people in this industry that are doing interesting things and ask them to grab a cup of coffee, they'll basically block me, whereas if I ask them to, would you like to appear on my podcast, they'll clear time on their schedule. I almost didn't care if my microphone was on or not when I was doing these just because it was a chance to talk to really interesting people and borrow their brain, people reached out asking they can sponsor it, along with the newsletter and the rest, and it's you want to give me money? Of course, you can give me money. How much money? And that sort of turned into a snowball effect over time.Five years in, it's turned into something that I would never have predicted or expected. But it's weird to me still, how effective doing something you're actually passionate about as a side project can sort of grow wings on its own. Where do you stand on that?Emma: Yeah, it's funny because with the exception of the online courses that I've worked with—I mentioned LinkedIn Learning and Frontend Masters, which I knew were paid opportunities—none of my side projects started out for financial reasonings. The podcast that we started was purely for fun, and the sponsors came to us. Now, I will say right up front, we all had pretty big social media followings, and my first piece of advice to anyone looking to get into side projects is, don't focus so much on making money at the get-go. Yes, to your point, Corey, focus on the stuff you're passionate about. Focus on engaging with people on social media, build up your social media, and at that point, okay, monetization will slowly find its way to you.But yeah, I say if you can monetize the heck out of your work, go for it. But also, free content is also great. I like to balance my paid content with my free content because I recognize that not everyone can afford to pay for some of this information. So, I generally always have free alternatives. And for this book that we published, one of the things that was really important to me was keeping it affordable.The first publish I did was $10 for the book. It was like a 250-page book. It was, like, $10 because again, I was not in it for the money. And when I redid the book with the egghead.io team, the same team that did Epic React with Kent C. Dodds, I said, “I want to keep this affordable.” So, we made sure it was still affordable, but also that we had—what's it called? Parity pricing? Pricing parity, where depending on your geographic location, the price is going to accommodate for how the currency is doing. So, yes, I would agree. Side project income for me allows me to do incredible stuff, but it wasn't why I got into it in the first place. It was genuinely just a nice-to-have.Corey: I haven't really done anything that asks people for money directly. I mean, yeah, I sell t-shirts on the website, and mugs, and drink umbrellas—don't get me started—but other than that and the charity t-shirt drive I do every year, I tend to not be good at selling things that don't have a comma in the price tag. For me, it was about absolutely building an audience. I tend to view my Twitter follower count as something of a proxy for it, but the number I actually care about, the audience that I'm focused on cultivating, is newsletter subscribers because no social media platform that we've ever seen has lasted forever. And I have to imagine that Twitter will one day wane as well.But email has been here since longer than we'd been alive, and by having a list of email addresses and ways I can reach out to people on an ongoing basis, I can monetize that audience in a more direct way, at some point should I need them to. And my approach has been, well, one, it's a valuable audience for some sponsors, so I've always taken the asking corporate people for money is easier than asking people for personal money, plus it's a valuable audience to them, so it tends to blow out a number of the metrics that you would normally expect of, oh, for this audience size, you should generally be charging Y dollars. Great. That makes sense if you're slinging mattresses or free web hosting, but when it's instead, huh, these people buy SaaS enterprise software and implement it at their companies, all of economics tend to start blowing apart. Same story with you in many respects.The audience that you're building is functionally developers. That is a lucrative market for the types of sponsors that are wise enough to understand that—in a lot of cases these days—which product a company is going to deploy is not dictated by their exec so much as it is the bottom-up adoption path of engineers who like the product.Emma: Mm-hm. Yeah, and I think once I got to maybe around 10,000 Twitter followers is when I changed my mentality and I stopped caring so much about follower count, and instead I just started caring about the people that I was following. And the number is a nice-to-have but to be honest, I don't think so much about it. And I do understand, yes, at that point, it is definitely a privilege that I have this quote-unquote, “Platform,” but I never see it as an audience, and I never think about that “Audience,” quote-unquote, as a marketing platform. But it's funny because there's no right or wrong. People will always come to you and be like, “You shouldn't monetize your stuff.” And it's like—Corey: “Cool. Who's going to pay me then? Not you, apparently.”Emma: Yeah. It's also funny because when I originally sold the book, it was $10 and I got so many people being like, “This is way too cheap. You should be charging more.” And I'm like, “But I don't care about the money.” I care about all the people who are unemployed and not able to survive, and they have families, and they need to get a job and they don't know how.That's what I care about. And I ended up giving away a lot of free books. My mantra was like, hey if you've been laid off, DM me. No questions asked, I'll give it to you for free. And it was nice because a lot of people came back, even though I never asked for it, they came back and they wanted to purchase it after the fact, after they'd gotten a job.And to me that was like… that was the most rewarding piece. Not getting their money; I don't care about that, but it was like, “Oh, okay. I was actually able to help you.” That is what's really the most rewarding. But yeah, certainly—and back really quickly to your email point, I highly agree, and one of the first things that I would recommend to anyone looking to start a side product, create free content so that you have a backlog that people can look at to… kind of build trust.Corey: Give it away for free, but also get emails from people, like a trade for that. So, it's like, “Hey, here's a free guide on how to start a podcast from scratch. It's free, but all I would like is your email.” And then when it comes time to publish a course on picking the best audio and visual equipment for that podcast, you have people who've already been interested in this topic that you can now market to.This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle Cloud. Counting the pennies, but still dreaming of deploying apps instead of "Hello, World" demos? Allow me to introduce you to Oracle's Always Free tier. It provides over 20 free services and infrastructure, networking databases, observability, management, and security.And - let me be clear here - it's actually free. There's no surprise billing until you intentionally and proactively upgrade your account. This means you can provision a virtual machine instance or spin up an autonomous database that manages itself all while gaining the networking load, balancing and storage resources that somehow never quite make it into most free tiers needed to support the application that you want to build.With Always Free you can do things like run small scale applications, or do proof of concept testing without spending a dime. You know that I always like to put asterisks next to the word free. This is actually free. No asterisk. Start now. Visit https://snark.cloud/oci-free that's https://snark.cloud/oci-free.Corey: I'm not sitting here trying to judge anyone for the choices that they make at all. There are a lot of different paths to it. I'm right there with you. One of the challenges I had when I was thinking about, do I charge companies or do I charge people was that if I'm viewing it through a lens of audience growth, well, what stuff do I gate behind a paywall? What stuff don't I? Well, what if I just—Emma: Mm-hm.Corey: —gave it all away? And that way I don't have to worry about the entire class of problems that you just alluded to of, well, how do I make sure this is fair? Because a cup of coffee in San Francisco is, what, $14 in some cases? Whereas that is significant in places that aren't built on an economy of foolishness. How do you solve for that problem? How do you deal with the customer service slash piracy issues slash all the other nonsense? And it's just easier.Emma: Yeah.Corey: Something I've found, too, is that when you're charging enough money to companies, you don't have to deal with an entire class of customer service problem. You just alluded to the other day that well, you had someone who bought your book and was displeased that it wasn't a how to write code from scratch tutorial, despite the fact that he were very clear on what it is and what it isn't. I don't pretend to understand that level of entitlement. If I spend 10 or 20 bucks on an ebook, and it's not very good, let's see, do I wind up demanding a refund from the author and making them feel bad about it, or do I say, “The hell with it.” And in my case, I—there is privilege baked into this; I get that, but it's I don't want to make people feel bad about what they've built. If I think there's enough value to spend money on it I view that as a one-way transaction, rather than chasing someone down for three months, trying to get a $20 refund.Emma: Yeah, and I think honestly, I don't care so much about giving refunds at all. We have a 30-day money-back guarantee and we don't ask any questions. I just asked this person for feedback, like, “Oh, what was not up to par?” And it was just, kind of like, BS response of like, “Oh, I didn't read the website and I guess it's not what I wanted.” But the end of the day, they still keep the product.The thing is, you can't police all of the people who are going to try to get your content for free if you're charging for it; it's part of it. And I knew that when I got into it, and honestly, my thing is, if you are circulating a book that helps you get a job in tech and you're sending it to all your friends, I'm not going to ask any questions because it's very much the sa—and this is just my morals here, but if I saw someone stealing food from a grocery store, I wouldn't tell on them because at the end of the day, if you're s—Corey: Same story. You ever see someone's stealing baby formula from a store? No, you didn't.Emma: Right.Corey: Keep walking. Mind your business.Emma: Exactly. Exactly. So, at the end of the day, I didn't necessarily care that—people are like, “Oh, people are going to share your book around. It's a PDF.” I'm like, “I don't care. Let them. It is what it is. And the people who wants to support and can, will.” But I'm not asking.I still have free blogs on data structures, and algorithms, and the interview stuff. I do still have content for free, but if you want more, if you want my illustrated diagrams that took me forever with my Apple Pencil, fair enough. That would be great if you could support me. If not, I'm still happy to give you the stuff for free. It is what it is.Corey: One thing that I think is underappreciated is that my resume doesn't look great. On paper, I have an eighth-grade education, and I don't have any big tech names on my resume. I have a bunch of relatively short stints; until I started this place, I've never lasted more than two years anywhere. If I apply through the front door the way most people do for a job, I will get laughed out of the room by the applicant tracking system, automatically. It'll never see a human.And by doing all these side projects, it's weird, but let's say that I shut down the company for some reason, and decide, ah, I'm going to go get a job now, my interview process—more or less, and it sounds incredibly arrogant, but roll with it for a minute—is, “Don't you know who I am? Haven't you heard of me before?” It's, “Here's my website. Here's all the stuff I've been doing. Ask anyone in your engineering group who I am and you'll see what pops up.”You're in that same boat at this point where your resume is the side projects that you've done and the audience you've built by doing it. That's something that I think is underappreciated. Even if neither one of us made a dime through direct monetization of things that we did, the reputational boost to who we are and what we do professionally seems to be one of those things that pays dividends far beyond any relatively small monetary gain from it.Emma: Absolutely, yeah. I actually landed my job interview with Spotify through Twitter. I was contacted by a design systems manager. And I was in the interview process for them, and I ended up saying, “You know, I'm not ready to move to Stockholm. I just moved to Germany.”And a year later, I circled back and I said, “Hey, are there any openings?” And I ended up re-interviewing, and guess what? Now, I have a beautiful home with my soulmate and we're having a child. And it's funny how things work out this way because I had a Twitter account. And so don't undervalue [laugh] social media as a tool in lieu of a resume because I don't think anyone at Spotify even saw my resume until it actually accepted the job offer, and it was just a formality.So yeah, absolutely. You can get a job through social media. It's one of the easiest ways. And that's why if I ever see anyone looking for a job on Twitter, I will retweet, and vouch for them if I know their work because I think that's one of the quickest ways to finding an awesome candidate.Corey: Back in, I don't know, 2010, 2011-ish. I was deep in the IRC weed. I was network staff on the old freenode network—not the new terrible one. The old, good one—and I was helping people out with various things. I was hanging out in the Postfix channel and email server software thing that most people have the good sense not to need to know anything about.And someone showed up and was asking questions about their config, and I was working with them, and teasing them, and help them out with it. And at the end of it, his comment was, “Wow, you're really good at this. Any chance you'd be interested in looking for jobs?” And the answer was, “Well, sure, but it's a global network. Where are you?”Well, he was based in Germany, but he was working remotely for Spotify in Stockholm. A series of conversations later, I flew out to Stockholm and interviewed for a role that they decided I was not a fit for—and again, they're probably right—and I often wonder how my life would have gone differently if the decision had gone the other way. I mean, no hard feelings, please don't get me wrong, but absolutely, helping people out, interacting with people over social networks, or their old school geeky analogs are absolutely the sorts of things that change lives. I would never have thought to apply to a role like that if I had been sitting here looking at job ads because who in the world would pick up someone with relatively paltry experience and move them halfway around the world? This was like a fantasy, not a reality.Emma: [laugh].Corey: It's the people you get to know—Emma: Yeah.Corey: —through these social interactions on various networks that are worth… they're worth gold. There's no way to describe it other than that.Emma: Yeah, absolutely. And if you're listening to this, and you're discouraged because you got turned down for a job, we've all been there, first of all, but I remember being disappointed because I didn't pass my first round of interviews of Google the first time I interviewed with them, and being, like, “Oh, crap, now I can't move to Munich. What am I going to do with my life?” Well, guess what, look where I am today. If I had gotten that job that I thought was it for me, I wouldn't be in the happiest phase of my life.And so if you're going through it—obviously, in normal circumstances where you're not frantically searching for a job; if you're in more of a casual life job search—and you've been let go from the process, just realize that there's probably something bigger and better out there for you, and just focus on your networking online. Yeah, it's an invaluable tool.Corey: One time when giving a conference talk, I asked, “All right, raise your hand if you have never gone through a job interview process and then not been offered the job.” And a few people did. “Great. If your hand is up, aim higher. Try harder. Take more risks.”Because fundamentally, job interviews are two-way streets and if you are only going for the sure thing jobs, great, stretch yourself, see what else is out there. There's no perfect attendance prize. Even back in school there wasn't. It's the idea of, “Well, I've only ever taken the easy path because I don't want to break my streak.” Get over it. Go out and interview more. It's a skill, unlike most others that you don't get to get better at unless you practice it.So, you've been in a job for ten years, and then it's time to move on—I've talked to candidates like this—their interview skills are extremely rusty. It takes a little bit of time to get back in the groove. I like to interview every three to six months back when I was on the job market. Now that I, you know, own the company and have employees, it looks super weird if I do it, but I miss it. I miss those conversations. I miss the aspects—Emma: Yes.Corey: —of exploring what the industry cares about.Emma: Absolutely. And don't underplay the importance of studying the foundational language concepts. I see this a lot in candidates where they're so focused on the newest and latest technologies and frameworks, that they forgot foundational JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Many companies are focused primarily on these plain language concepts, so just make sure that when you are ready to get back into interviewing and enhance that skill, that you don't neglect the foundation languages that the web is built on if you're a web developer.Corey: I'd also take one last look around and realize that every person you admire, every person who has an audience, who is a known entity in the space only has that position because someone, somewhere did them a favor. Probably lots of someones with lots of favors. And you can't ever pay those favors back. All you can do is pay it forward. I repeatedly encourage people to reach out to me if there's something I can do to help. And the only thing that surprises me is how few people in the audience take me up on that. I'm talking to you, listener. Please, if I can help you with something, please reach out. I get a kick out of doing that sort of thing.Emma: Absolutely. I agree.Corey: Emma, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. If people want to learn more, where can they find you?Emma: Well, you can find me on Twitter. It's just @EmmaBostian, I'm, you know, shitposting over there on the regular. But sometimes I do tweet out helpful things, so yeah, feel free to engage with me over there. [laugh].Corey: And we will, of course, put a link to that in the [show notes 00:35:42]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I appreciate it.Emma: Yeah. Thanks for having me.Corey: Emma Bostian, software engineer at Spotify and oh, so very much more. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an incoherent ranting comment mentioning that this podcast as well failed to completely teach you JavaScript.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.
Bu bölümde Bo Burnham'ın Netflix'teki yeni showu, LinkedIn'i doğru kullanarak nasıl iş verenlerin dikkatini çekebileceğimizi ve yurtdışında iş bulma/interview süreçleri hakkında konuştuk.Bölümde bahsettiğimiz konular hakkında linkler:Bo Burnham — Inside: https://www.netflix.com/title/81289483Welcome to the Internet — Bo Burnham: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcUThe Big Short: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596363/Little America (Dizi): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8000674/Little America (Kitap): https://www.mcdbooks.com/books/little-americaJoker: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7286456/Yüzüklerin Efendisi Dizisi: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7631058Zaman Çarkı Dizisi: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7462410/Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines 1993: https://www.amazon.com/Macintosh-Human-Interface-Guidelines-Computer/dp/0201622165How to Do Nothing: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42771901-how-to-do-nothingCivilization VI: https://store.steampowered.com/app/289070/Sid_Meiers_Civilization_VI/Pillars of Eternity: https://store.steampowered.com/app/291650/Pillars_of_Eternity/Pathfinder: Kingmaker: https://kingmaker.owlcatgames.comİş Dünyasında LinkedIn ile Networking: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40964135-i-d-nyas-nda-linkedln-ile-networkingCracking the Coding Interview: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12544648-cracking-the-coding-interviewMert'in LinkedIn profili: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mertbulan/Seyfeddin'in LinkedIn profili: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seyfeddin-bassarac-45004b32/Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41795733-rangeYorumlarınızı ve sorularınızı hey@seyfedd.in e-posta adresine iletebilirsiniz.
Sheila and Sabina chat with the great Mark Fajet about nailing technical interviews. Specifically, they discuss some of the ambiguity around these interviews, Mark's straightforward approach to them, and helpful resources that helped him to easily and consistently ace software development technical interviews. Mark is currently a software development engineer 2 at Amazon, and in today's episode, we hear his perspective as both a successful interviewee and interviewer. Resources from today's episode: Cracking the Coding Interview book: https://www.crackingthecodinginterview.com HackerRank Interview Preparation Kit: https://www.hackerrank.com/interview/interview-preparation-kit LeetCode Practice Problems: https://leetcode.com
This week, the crew sits down to talk about interviewing, both from the side of the interviewer and from the side of interviewee. What are we looking for? What are the red flags? What kinds of questions should we be asking? Are we putting too much faith in the sanctity of the interview process? And, why the heck does Zappos offer to pay you $2,000 not to work there ( https://www.businessinsider.com/zappos-tony-hsieh-paid-new-workers-to-quit-the-offer-2020-11 ) ?! This discussion is particularly insightful because Carol shares her perspective as a female which includes things most men will have never considered. For example, did you know that you can ask ahead of time who will be interviewing you? And, that it's even OK to ask for a woman to be present on the interview panel? This underscores the importance of creating and hiring for a diverse team: everyone's perspective is different; and, everyone's perspective is valuable. And, when we only hire people that look and act like us, we only see the human experience through a small window. Each week, our top Patreon supporters get a sponsored shout-out. And, today's shout-out goes to Girls Who Code ( https://girlswhocode.com/ ) , an organization who's mission it is to close the gender gap in technology and to change the image of what a programmer looks like and does. Triumphs & Failures ------------------- * Adam's Triumph - In 2014, he wrote REST Assured ( https://restassuredbook.com/ ) , a no-nonsense ebook about architecting RESTful APIs. Now in 2021 - by popular demand - this digital work is finally coming to a paperback near you! And of course, we're all demanding signed copies! * Ben's Failure - this past week just left him feeling destroyed. Between the "Spring forward" clock change, an absurd number of meetings, and the abysmal performance of his ColdFusion custom tag DSL inside a Docker container, this whole week has felt like a kick in the gut. Not every week is going to be a winner; and, he just hopes that next week is better! * Carol's Triumph - she bought a daily-planer to help her keep track of what she's done today ; and, what she needs to get done tomorrow. Part optimization, part self-care, writing everything down allows her to see a clear record of what she's accomplished; which, in turn, allows her to embrace her own success and feel good about stepping away from her desk when she needs to take a break. * Tim's Triumph - his plan is really coming together! After months-and-months of consulting with customers, writing business plans, organizing marketing campaigns, collecting testimonials, obtaining budgets, running things by Legal, and working with Quality Assurance (QA), all the pieces are falling into place. And, for him, it's been a truly humbling experience. As engineers, we can be lulled into thinking that we are the center of the universe ; but, when one see just how many people are involved in bringing a product to market, it becomes clear that we are just small cogs in a massive, harmonious machine. Notes & Links ------------- * The MEGA Interview Guide ( https://github.com/danieldelcore/mega-interview-guide ) - a humble guide to give developers the tools they need to nail technical interviews! * Awesome Interview Questions ( https://github.com/DopplerHQ/awesome-interview-questions ) - a curated list of lists of technical interview questions. * Cracking the Coding Interview ( https://github.com/careercup/CtCI-6th-Edition ) - the 6th edition of the book's crowd-sourced solutions guide. * MOVA ( https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/10/fake_mova_programming ) - a fake programming language created to help weed-out nefarious recruiters and engineers. * How to Deal with Difficult People on Software Projects ( https://www.howtodeal.dev/ ) - a breakdown of different work personalities and how to work effectively with them. Follow the show! Our website is workingcode.dev ( https://workingcode.dev/ ) and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/WorkingCodePod ) and Instagram ( https://www.instagram.com/workingcodepod/ ). New episodes weekly on Wednesday. And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon ( https://www.patreon.com/workingcodepod ).
Show Notes:Introductions: 00:00-5:51Job Hunting Pet Peevs and Fears about Job Hunting Today: 5:51- 14:21Self Evaluation: 14:21- 18:24Assessing if a Job is Right for You and Working with Recruiters: 18:27- 37:47Negotiating Salary: 37:41-42:00Networking: 42:30-52:00Prepping for the Interview and Day-Of Rituals: 52:11- 1:05-26The Actual Interview: 1:05:26-1:14:46Post-Interview and Rejection: 1:14:51- 1:20:03Conclusion: 1:20:41-EndResources:Cracking the Coding Interview : 189 Programming Questions and Solutions by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
This week we have YouTube content creator and Ladybug Podcast host Sidney Buckner on to talk about content creation and her process for creating relatable, honest content. We may also spend a lot of time fangirling over each other, but when there’s two successful Black women in tech finally talking to each other 1-1, what…More
In this episode, I interviewed Aaron Vaage, an senior software engineer at Google. We talked about his experience as a student at the University of Manitoba in Canada, getting internships in college, how he ended up at Google, deleting his first email from his Google recruiter, why he DOESN'T recommend use Cracking the Coding Interview, and other tips on preparing for technical interviews. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/sarah-hudson9/support
#Engineering is the career up for discussion on today's podcast! Tune in to discuss the journey of an #Amazon & #Audible Director. Learn about working at Amazon, working at Audible, a career in Quality Assurance Engineering, and much more only on #TheCareerShow. Discover the Journey of a QA Engineer and find your QA Engineering passion by listening to the best Engineering Podcast on YouTube! Tanya started off her journey at leading investment banks, i.e, UBS & Morgan Stanley as an automation engineer. She currently is a Senior Director of Quality Assurance at Audible, an Amazon company and is helping to build a new Quality Assurance team to support innovative product development at scale. She is also the founder of the DevOps – Quality Assurance New Jersey Meetup group, a co-lead of Women in Tech employee resource group at Audible and an international speaker on the topics of Quality and DevOps. TANYA's BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS : 1. “The Phoenix Project” by Gene Kim - AUDIBLE - https://amzn.to/3gkY16j OR Hard Cover - https://amzn.to/2L60sxR 2. "How to Land that Engineering Job at Audible" - https://bit.ly/2InkEdB 3. “Cracking the Coding Interview” by Gayle Laakmann McDowell - https://amzn.to/3gqxGUu 4. “Lessons Learned in Software Testing” by Cem Kaner, James Bach & Bret Pettichord - https://amzn.to/3oxGI4C TANYA's LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanyakravtsov/ Super excited to introduce our newest podcast section: GOT CAREER QUESTIONS in partnership with SIZIGI, which will give students an opportunity to get their questions answered by experts! Sizigi is a professional branding platform that allows users to build custom job presentations with their immersive ePortfolio content. Sizigi: The Resume of the New Generation, create your FREE ACCOUNT at joinsizigi.com. Follow us and learn more: https://linktr.ee/Sizigi ------------------------------------- Introduction: (0:00) Role of Technology in Investment Banking: (2:21) QA Engineering in the Tech Industry V/S Finance Industry: (4:10) Customer Obsession at Audible & Amazon: (6:16) What is it like to work at Amazon & Audible?: (9:03) Career Trajectory at Amazon & Audible: (13:08) Biggest Challenge of being a QA Engineer at Amazon & Audible?: (18:26) 'Got Career Questions' in partnership with Sizigi: (22:13) Automation Testing & Manual Test at Amazon & Audible: (22:38) What teams does a QA Engineer work with?: (23:59) Tips to ace an Amazon & Audible interview: (26:15) Book Recommendations for Amazon & Audible interviews: (29:23) How to deal with a fast-paced work environment?: (30:42) Important advice to note!: (32:43) Conclusion: (35:20) ------------------------------------- INSTAGRAM: @the_careershow https://www.instagram.com/the_careershow/ LINKEDIN: @The Career Show https://www.linkedin.com/company/thecareershow --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thecareershow/message
Finding a job is like a pipeline; it's a series of steps to reach your dream job. How do you master the software engineering job process? How do you write a stellar resume and prepare for technical interviews? Today, Clayton Lawrence takes us through his journey becoming a software engineer, providing actionable advice for resumes, interviews, and landing internships. Clayton Lawrence is a mobile developer at NCR and a Georgia Tech graduate. He recently started his own company, Pipeline Career Services, to help people find and land their dream jobs through storytelling, resume reviews, mock interviews, career office hours for software engineering, and his weekly podcast, Connecting with Careers. Technical Interview Resources: Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell Leetcode - Online practice problems Hackerrank - Online practice problems Additional Resources: Codeacademy - Free online courses Software Engineering Daily - Podcast The Other F Word by John Danner and Mark Coopersmith Connect with Clayton: LinkedIn: /claytonlawrence3 Instagram: @_claytonlawrence Follow Pipeline Career Services: Podcast: Connecting with Careers Instagram: @PipelineCareerServices Facebook: @pipelinecareerservices LinkedIn: /pipelinecareerservices Follow Blossoming Technologist: Instagram: @blossomingtechnologist Twitter: @blssmngtchnlgst --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/blossoming-technologist/support
Jessica Jordan hat Biologie studiert und hat während des Studiums aus Neugier an einem Programmier-Kurs teilgenommen. Sie hat das Programmieren liebgewonnen und ist seit über sieben Jahre als Software Entwicklerin/Redner bei Konferenzen und teilweise als Tutorin tätig. Zurzeit arbeitet Jessica in Berlin als Senior Webentwicklerin bei Honeypot. Video zum Podcast: https://youtu.be/O4uL0U-_6wA Themen dieser Episode: - Jessica's Werdegang. - Welche Quellen sie zum Lernen benutzt hat. - Warum es so wenig Frauen in der Programmierung gibt und vieles mehr. Community: https://www.codecurious.org/ https://rubymonstas.org/ https://www.opentechschool.org/cities/berlin Buch: Cracking the Coding Interview: https://amzn.to/2IdeYm6 Jessica ist hier erreichbar: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjayjpg/| Twitter: https://twitter.com/jayjayjpg Meine Kontaktdaten: YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/codestoriesde Xing | https://www.xing.com/profile/Nathaniel_Idahosa/ LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathaniel-idahosa/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/_codestories
In Episode 3 we break down the 3 c's of interviewing, but today we are diving deep into Morgan's top 10 interview hacks to get you noticed, keep you in the game, and take your farther than your competitors. To submit your own questions to the podcast, visit effectivelyhuman.tech.
This is the kick off episode of the Java Series! Join Jocelyn as she explains object orientated programming and polymorphism as it pertains to Java. Merch!!! >>> https://teespring.com/stores/git-cute
Bad For Education - Coding Tips For The Junior Developer & Beyond
We dive right into JavaScript Event Handling and Listening today with the added bonus of discussing books we like and what we're reading currently. Enjoy!Event Handling and Listening are the fourth out of five must-know JavaScript core concepts and they take into account what is happening between users and the page. For example, HTML events are "things" that happen to HTML elements.When JavaScript is used in HTML pages, JavaScript can "react" on these events.Other examples of events include:An HTML web page has finished loadingAn HTML input field was changedAn HTML button was clickedBooks! Andrew and Jason discuss literature and give their latest reads. They also talk about audiobooks and the Young Adult novel Andrew has written, Gods From the Machine.In terms of coding books, Andrew recommends the two-part series written by John Duckett and Eloquent JavaScript. Jason recommends Mastering the Coding Interview.Connect With Us!Instagram: @badforeducationpodcastTwitter: @badforedupodEmail: badforeducationpodcast@gmail.comWant a free $20 Amazon gift card and to start your own podcast with Buzzsprout?It's as simple as one click in our link below. Get started today, and have access to their extensive network and assistance. Podcasting isn't hard when you have the right partners!Click our link here
Preciso aprender teoria de algoritmos para ser dev? Por quê muitos brasileiros, especialmente em mobile, são contra esse tópico que é requisito mínimo em empresas estrangeiras? No episódio dessa semana, recebemos Rafael Machado e conversamos sobre a importância de entender como um software funciona, os benefícios disso para a sua carreira e porque o mercado brasileiro ignora esse assunto. Siga-nos no Twitter: https://twitter.com/BuildFailedCast Links mencionados: - HackerRank: https://www.hackerrank.com/ - LeetCode: https://leetcode.com - Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions: https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/0984782850 - Write Great Code, Volume 1: Understanding the Machine (English Edition): https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B0096FEJGQ/ref=pe_740090_127726600_TE_M1DP - Embracing Algorithms: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/223/ - Data Structures & Algorithms in Swift: https://www.udacity.com/course/data-structures-and-algorithms-in-swift--ud1011 - Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/
I told y’all that I really like Fortnite and so do Bob and Nuru. So of course I had to invite them back to talk about the new season and the best things we love (and maybe dislike strongly) about the current game of Fortnite. Sponsors: eDX: Get your discount on courses: https://www.edx.org/cute Merch!!! >>> https://teespring.com/stores/git-cute … Continue reading Season 2, Episode 17: MORE FORTNITE →
How To Create, TIPS & MINDSET To CRACK EVERY INTERVIEW ? Find out How to Make Impressive Resume (Fresher or Experienced) and How to Crack Every Interview, And The Mindsets That Will Help you Impress During Your Job Search Click links (affiliate) below to get these books -
Math guru, Former College Athlete, Web & Mobile App Developer. Ladies and gentlemen, today's guest is Ben Gilman! Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell MLB.com Sandia National Labs Colorado School of Mines
In this episode, I talk about how to deal with finding a job and using the great – and sometimes frustrating – technical recruiters. I breakdown the types of recruiters and the most common questions that a recruiter will ask including the best answers to give! Knowing how to interact with recruiters is one essential … Continue reading Season 2, Episode 6: How to Manage Tech Recruiters →
In this episode, I am going to give you a breakdown of how I approach my LeetCode problems and how it helps me come to the solution the fastest! Sponsored: Today’s episode is sponsored by AUDIBLE. Get your free 30-day trial and free book here: https://www.audibletrial.com/gitcute LeetCode Problem: https://leetcode.com/problems/two-sum/ Where to Donate: Black Lives Matter … Continue reading Season 2, Episode 5: How to Solve LeetCode FAST →
Afua, in an effort to demystify the myth around getting competitive internships, discusses LinkedIn etiquette, email etiquette around cold-calling recruiters. Crafting a resume that stands out, landing the interview, and preparing to ace the interview (both technical and non-technical), and, finally, evaluating the offer. This episode is definitely for both people who have not written a single line of code in their lives, and people who are already in CS or Engineering. Resources Mentioned in Episode: Introductory CS courses: Udacity’s CS 101, Harvard’s CS50 on edX Google’s Technical Development Guide Edmond Lau’s Article on Quora Online reading for tech news, check out TechCrunch, Techmeme, Product Hunt, and Hacker News To learn more about a company: Crunchbase and Glassdoor Make a Website and Deploy a Website on Codecademy. Learn how to use Git Google Summer of Code and Sayan Chowdhury’s article on open source for beginners. Github’s open source guide List of topics you need to know to pass technical interviews. To master these topics, use the following four resources: Cracking the Coding Interview (~2 months before applying) LeetCode (~1 month before applying) Read Haseeb Qureshi’s killer guide on negotiation. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly rate and review on iTunes. Connect with us @thecodeinmyfro
Let's examine the myth around coding interviews evaluating algorithms vs day-to-day language/stack specific patterns.
Lee is a front-end developer with experience in JavaScript, Node, React, and Vue. He's the Project Codex Organizer and co-host of TechJR podcast. Links https://leewarrick.com/ https://twitter.com/leewarrickjr https://github.com/mynar7 https://www.linkedin.com/in/lee-warrick/ Resources Cracking the Coding Interview "Tempting Time" by Animals As Leaders used with permissions - All Rights Reserved × Subscribe now! Never miss a post, subscribe to The 6 Figure Developer Podcast! Are you interested in being a guest on The 6 Figure Developer Podcast? Click here to check availability!
01:30 - James’ Superpower: Spending time chasing his daughter and her robots around. Helping with her robotics club at school. 02:37 - “Just Be Yourself” is Terrible Advice 03:50 - What Are You Trying to Accomplish in the Interview 06:00 - Be Authentic: Which Parts of Yourself to Show Be a Strong Communicator Be an Avid Learner Don’t be a Jerk 07:25 - Turn Your Interviewers into Your Advocates 12:42 - Technical Interviews Saying “I Don’t Know” is OK 16:00 Interviewee as the Interviewer Make Sure You Want to Work Here Answer Questions Honestly 18:53 - Prepare for Common Interview Questions Rephrasing Weakness 23:34 - Intrinsic Motivation Mastery by Robert Greene (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_(book)) 29:29 - Storytelling in the Interview Being Confident in Your Accomplishments Interviewers Explain Why You Are Asking the Question 37:15 - Management Techniques Richard Cook (https://www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/richard-cook/) Herbert Simon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon) 45:00 - Why Technical Interviews are Challenging Cracking the Coding Interview (http://www.crackingthecodinginterview.com/) Reflections: John: Setting the context for being approachable as an interviewer is important. Rein: Some of this advice works all the time, and some of this advice only works when you have been able to develop a personal connection with the interviewer/interviewee. James: Think about if this is a place you want to work while interviewing. Avdi: Turning your interviewer into your advocate can help them also be able to tell you if this place will be a good fit for you. Jessica: It’s not just about being able to interview well as the interviewee, but we need to choose a company that can interview well too. Ask your personal contacts about what it is like to work at a certain company. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: James Edward Gray.
Sponsors Thinkster.io Adventures in Blockchain - Devchat.tv My Ruby Story - Devchat.tv CacheFly Panel Joe Eames Brooke Avery Jesse Sanders Mike Dane Sam Julien Luis Hernandez Joined by special guest: Dylan Israel Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to Dylan Israel. Dylan is a self-taught software engineer working as a developer and a content creator. His YouTube channel has over 60k subscribers where he aims to help people trying to learn programming on their own. He teaches a course on Thinkster.io called "100 Algorithms Challenge", aimed at developers preparing for technical whiteboard interviews or those wanting regular challenges to improve their skills, and has a collection of the top most commonly asked interview questions on algorithms and data structures. Joe starts the discussion by throwing the fundamental question to the panel - What is the meaning of the terms "data structures" and "algorithms". Dylan explains that these are fairly common concepts in software development, and traditionally data structures represent the way data is organized and algorithms define how to parse through them while maintaining optimum performance using fewer iterations and reduced time. Others chime in as well and explain these terms using the analogy of building blocks and recipes. After the basics, they discuss why should one bother learning data structures and algorithms in the first place. The main reasons mentioned are cracking job interviews especially for high paying jobs at large companies, efficient computing, forcing one to think differently and out of the box, studying time and space complexity leading to a better understanding of the software. Joe mentions that what we learn in a computer science class is rarely used at an actual job, and asks the panel to challenge his statement that learning data structures and algorithms except for clearing job interviews, is inherently a waste of time. Brooke explains that learning about them helps in getting into the right mindset, whereas Dylan says that he has had a chance to use them in certain significant applications on his e-commerce platform, and Jesse adds that they help in honing developer skills to a large extent. Thinking on a level higher than what is expected in order to create efficient solutions, and understanding things well through problem-solving are some of the important takeaways from learning these concepts. The panelists then discuss some great ways to learn data structures and algorithms. They share their own interesting interview experiences offering insight into what worked for each of them, and suggest books, online resources including courses, and emphasize that practicing a ton of problem-solving on a whiteboard/paper is one of the best ways to go about it. They also mention that recognizing repetitive patterns in problems is a good approach, and using a different language to solve can be beneficial too. They also advise listeners to take into consideration the opportunity cost involved in spending a significant amount of time learning data structures and algorithms, so that they can take an informed decision. They talk about how much the knowledge of these concepts affects their hiring decisions and what exactly do they look for in candidates. They wrap up the show by each giving one piece of advice to someone preparing for a job - comparing solutions with others and learning from them, consistent attitude, test-driven development, interviewing a lot and researching about the interview as well as the interviewing panel. They end the episode with picks. Links Dylan Israel - YouTube 100 Algorithms Challenge Cracking the Coding Interview Picks Luis Hernandez: The Imposter's Handbook Combo Brooke Avery: 10 Day Algorithm Challenge The Art of Racing in the Rain Dylan Israel: Pramp Mike Dane: Google Fi Sam Julien: Base CS podcast You need a budget Jesse Sanders: CSS Tricks Hawaii Joe Eames: Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World
Sponsors Thinkster.io Adventures in Blockchain - Devchat.tv My Ruby Story - Devchat.tv CacheFly Panel Joe Eames Brooke Avery Jesse Sanders Mike Dane Sam Julien Luis Hernandez Joined by special guest: Dylan Israel Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to Dylan Israel. Dylan is a self-taught software engineer working as a developer and a content creator. His YouTube channel has over 60k subscribers where he aims to help people trying to learn programming on their own. He teaches a course on Thinkster.io called "100 Algorithms Challenge", aimed at developers preparing for technical whiteboard interviews or those wanting regular challenges to improve their skills, and has a collection of the top most commonly asked interview questions on algorithms and data structures. Joe starts the discussion by throwing the fundamental question to the panel - What is the meaning of the terms "data structures" and "algorithms". Dylan explains that these are fairly common concepts in software development, and traditionally data structures represent the way data is organized and algorithms define how to parse through them while maintaining optimum performance using fewer iterations and reduced time. Others chime in as well and explain these terms using the analogy of building blocks and recipes. After the basics, they discuss why should one bother learning data structures and algorithms in the first place. The main reasons mentioned are cracking job interviews especially for high paying jobs at large companies, efficient computing, forcing one to think differently and out of the box, studying time and space complexity leading to a better understanding of the software. Joe mentions that what we learn in a computer science class is rarely used at an actual job, and asks the panel to challenge his statement that learning data structures and algorithms except for clearing job interviews, is inherently a waste of time. Brooke explains that learning about them helps in getting into the right mindset, whereas Dylan says that he has had a chance to use them in certain significant applications on his e-commerce platform, and Jesse adds that they help in honing developer skills to a large extent. Thinking on a level higher than what is expected in order to create efficient solutions, and understanding things well through problem-solving are some of the important takeaways from learning these concepts. The panelists then discuss some great ways to learn data structures and algorithms. They share their own interesting interview experiences offering insight into what worked for each of them, and suggest books, online resources including courses, and emphasize that practicing a ton of problem-solving on a whiteboard/paper is one of the best ways to go about it. They also mention that recognizing repetitive patterns in problems is a good approach, and using a different language to solve can be beneficial too. They also advise listeners to take into consideration the opportunity cost involved in spending a significant amount of time learning data structures and algorithms, so that they can take an informed decision. They talk about how much the knowledge of these concepts affects their hiring decisions and what exactly do they look for in candidates. They wrap up the show by each giving one piece of advice to someone preparing for a job - comparing solutions with others and learning from them, consistent attitude, test-driven development, interviewing a lot and researching about the interview as well as the interviewing panel. They end the episode with picks. Links Dylan Israel - YouTube 100 Algorithms Challenge Cracking the Coding Interview Picks Luis Hernandez: The Imposter's Handbook Combo Brooke Avery: 10 Day Algorithm Challenge The Art of Racing in the Rain Dylan Israel: Pramp Mike Dane: Google Fi Sam Julien: Base CS podcast You need a budget Jesse Sanders: CSS Tricks Hawaii Joe Eames: Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World
Coding interviews are hard… really hard! Let’s dive into why they are so hard and the resources that you will need to get through it. Follow the podcast on social media! Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/gitcutepodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gitcutepodcast Facebook Follow and Subscribe to us on: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/git-cute/id1461999830 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4jqYpBPILmskQFASTSfKGd Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/git-cute-podcast?refid=stpr Cracking the Coding Interview: https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/0984782850 Transcript: TBA
Entrevista a Caleb De La Cruz, Ingeniero en Google/Youtube - Liga del Código 017 Entrevista a Caleb De La Cruz, Ingeniero en Google/Youtube En este episodio tenemos a Caleb De La Cruz como invitado quien actualmente trabaja para Google en YouTube, nos cuenta sobre su trayectoria profesional y formación académica, nos comenta sobre la cultura de trabajo en YouTube y da tips para conseguir trabajo en Google. Links de Educación Fulbright https://us.fulbrightonline.org/ Líderes del Mañana https://www.unibe.edu.do/admisiones/programas-de-grado/programas-de-becas-lideres-del-manana/ CMU - MSIT https://sv.cmu.edu/programs/msit.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~msit-se/ Links de Preparación LeetCode https://leetcode.com/ Cracking the Coding Interview https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/0984782850 En este episodio participan: Tomás Veras - https://twitter.com/TomasVeras Winner Crespo - https://twitter.com/WinnerCrespo Manuel Mejía - https://twitter.com/mejiamanuel57 Invitado: Caleb de la Cruz - https://twitter.com/delacruzp Youtube: https://youtu.be/5r4OCifACiU
En esta emisión de SaaS Product Chat tuvimos de invitado a Fernando Seror, Ingeniero de Software de Google. Aprovechamos para conversar con él del proceso de entrevistas para entrar en Google, su experiencia trabajando en interfaces gráficas para productos de seguridad y privacidad de Google Cloud después de 6 años trabajando en Ruby, cómo evaluar programadores, por qué se ha enamorado de Ruby y algunas buenas prácticas para programar en este lenguaje. Fernando también nos habla del valor del mentoring. Disfrutad de este episodio y no dudéis en dejar vuestros comentarios sobre el show. Te recomendamos: Conecta con Fernando en perfiles sociales: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ferdy89 GitHub: https://github.com/Ferdy89 Enlaces: Charla que dio Fernando Seror en RubyHACK sobre mentoring: https://youtu.be/KIiLoVwL7H4 The Bike Shed podcast: http://bikeshed.fm/ Lenguaje de Programación Ruby: https://www.ruby-lang.org/es/ Google Cloud: https://cloud.google.com LeetCode: https://leetcode.com/ Interview Cake: https://www.interviewcake.com HackerRank: https://www.hackerrank.com Consulta el libro Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions - https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/098478280X En el episodio 26 reflexionamos acerca de si las métricas de software son útiles o no para medir el rendimiento de los programadores: http://www.saasproductchat.com/goals Productos de Google: https://about.google/intl/es-419/products/ Lista completa de los últimos productos y herramientas de Google para desarrolladores, con documentación, ejemplos, foros de la comunidad y mucho más: https://developers.google.com/products/?hl=es-419
Preguntas de entrevista (parte 1) - Liga del Código 010 Winner Crespo - https://twitter.com/winnercrespo Tomás Veras - https://twitter.com/TomasVeras German Popoter - https://twitter.com/GermanPopoter En este episodio intercambiamos preguntas y respuestas de entrevistas pasadas, al discutirla te damos tips y herramientas. Debajo te listo parte del contenido. Espero que disfrutes este episodio y te sirva de ayuda, buena suerte! Preguntas técnicas de JavaScript call, bind, apply scopes Variable hoisting const, let, var async, await ”==” vs “===” Functional Programming Explícale a un niño de 5 años ¿Cómo funciona una API? ¿Cómo funciona un Web Request? Object Oriented Programming (OOP) Kubernetes?!! (https://cdn.chrisshort.net/The-Illustrated-Childrens-Guide-to-Kubernetes.pdf) Preguntas de cultura / comportamiento Cuéntame un problema difícil que hayas tenido de software y como lo resolviste. ¿Qué haz desarrollado que te haya sentir orgulloso? ¿Qué diría de ti alguien que no le agradas? Cuéntame de un conflicto en el trabajo Tips para: Negociar el sueldo y los beneficios Evitar el auto sabotaje Manejo de conflictos Recursos para prepararte Interview Cake (https://www.interviewcake.com) What the heck is event loop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aGhZQkoFbQ) Cracking the Coding Interview (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0984782850/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_ZY-gDbJPJ9Q4T) Salarios en Glassdoor https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/index.htm Youtube: https://youtu.be/o57wuAr1z8g
Top 10 Algorithms for the Coding Interview (for software engineers)
Our first ever guest is Mark Wilbur, the quintessential non-traditional technical founder. He's currently running alchemist.camp, a hands-on subscription website to help programmers learn the powerful Elixir programming language. Cracking the Coding Interview -> https://www.amazon.com.au/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/0984782850 Actionable Gamification -> https://www.amazon.com.au/Actionable-Gamification-Beyond-Points-Leaderboards-ebook/dp/B00WAOGY4U How I Tricked Myself into Being Awesome -> https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2012/05/how-i-tricked-myself-into-being-awesome/ Alchemist Camp Podcast -> https://alchemist.camp/podcast Mark's blog -> https://toshou.com Mark's Twitter -> https://twitter.com/logicmason --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/create-your-world/message
Cracking the Coding Interview (in 5 simple steps, for software engineers)
7 Common Mistakes in the Coding Interview (for Software Engineers)
How many times were you in a position to negotiate your salary? Financial Mechanic is a software engineer at the age of 25. She's negotiated for her salary several times which has boosted her income into the impressive 6 figures. She's now on her track to reach FI at the age of 32. You'll love her story. We also chat about... How to get a job in software engineering How she applied to jobs Why she wants to reach FI Her timeline for the next few years How negotiating booster her income to 6 figures Her love for travel Enjoy this chat with Financial Mechanic, and please subscribe to us in iTunes if you enjoyed it! Show notes and links from today's episode Financial Mechanic Blog Financial Mechanic on Twitter and Instagram 7 Tips for Negotiating - How I Doubled My Salary in Two Years Tackling the Money Taboo — How to Talk About Your Finances How I Became a Software Engineer Without a CS Degree Don’t Climb The Ladder; Take the Elevator On Love and Money—The Mechanics of Shared Finances Codecademy Khan Academy Book: Cracking the Coding Interview MatLab Episode: Canada’s Youngest Retirees and the 3 Paths to FI – Millennial Revolution Chautauquas Key takeaways from our chat with Financial Mechanic 1 - You'll learn the most on the job Financial Mechanic has a degree in mechanical engineering, but got a job in software engineering. She explains that she did have to pick a coding language to work on so she could apply to the job, and recommends Javascript as a good place to start. But she does admit that she learnt most of what she knows on the job itself. If you're thinking of a career pivot she recommends looking for a job geared towards a junior position, or even checking out schools for people who want to change industry. She researched the interview questions and read the book 'Cracking the Coding Interview' to be fully prepared. 2 - Negotiate when switching job When negotiating, FM recommends to ask employers to give the first number. Both Gwen and J also talk about the importance of knowing what to expect, whether by talking to someone already in the company or doing some in-depth research. If the employers don't give you a number, you can also ask for a range, and aim for what you feel they would accept. J emphasises that you don't need to reveal how much you got paid in your last job when applying to a new one. J and Financial Mechanic recommend not to be confrontational and to look for a win win situation. If the company can't afford the money, you can also try asking for more vacation time or other benefits. 3 - The more you negotiate the better you get at it The more negotiating Financial Mechanic did, the better she got at it. She started with $65k salary, moved up to $72k and then $105k. After that her salary kept increasing 10%, and she gained more confidence to ask for more. She admits that there are not a lot of resources for women to learn effective strategies to negotiate, but with continuous practice she now feels confident. Questions? Like or dislike? Leave us a comment! Want to support the podcast? Here are three things you can do. 1. Start tracking your net worth with Personal Capital using our link. It's free. 2. Subscribe to our YouTube Channel and get one extra LIVE episode from us per week. 3. Join our Facebook group and connect with other members of the FI community.
Top Algorithms for the Coding Interview (for software engineers)
On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Quincy interviews Shawn Wang (@swyx). We talk about "learning in public" and his transition into tech from finance, where he left behind a job that paid him US $350,000 per year. Shawn grew up in Singapore and came to the US as a college student. He worked in finance, but at age 30, he burned out. So he decided to learn to code. He used freeCodeCamp and a ton of other resources, and since then he's worked as a freelance developer, and at several companies including Netlify. Follow Shawn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/swyx Follow Quincy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ossia Here are some links we discuss in the interview. Shawn's Projects: The official React subreddit that Shawn moderates: https://reddit.com/r/reactjs Shawn's article on No Zero Days: https://www.freecodecamp.org/forum/t/no-zero-days-my-roadmap-from-javascript-noob-to-full-stack-developer-in-12-months/164514 Job Search / Salary Negotation articles: Cracking the Coding Interview: https://fcc.im/2UihbNm Hasseeb Qureshi's story of getting a $250K/y developer job at Airbnb: https://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-i Steve Yegge's "Get that job at Google" essay: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html Patrick McKenzie on Salary Negotiation https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ Quincy's recommended article: I spent 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp. Here's what I learned: https://medium.freecodecamp.org/9a07468d2331 Algorithm Expert: https://www.algoexpert.io Full Stack Academy https://www.fullstackacademy.com Shawn's Learn In Public movement: Shawn's Learn In Public essay https://gist.github.com/sw-yx/9720bd4a30606ca3ffb8d407113c0fe5 Kent C Dodds' Zero to 60 in Software Development: How to Jumpstart Your Career https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qPh6I2hfjw&app=desktop Cory House on Becoming an Outlier: https://vimeo.com/97415346 Brad Frost on Creative Exhaust: http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/creative-exhaust/ Patrick McKenzie on the origin of the word "friendcatcher": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=511089 Chris Coyier on "Working In Public": https://chriscoyier.net/2012/09/23/working-in-public/ Links to other things we discuss: Shawn's Software Engineering Daily Interview with Sacha Greif: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/08/09/state-of-javascript-with-sacha-greif/ The origin of No Zero Days: https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_just_dont_care_about_myself/cdah4af/ John Resig, creator of jQuery, telling his team to rip out jQuery: http://bikeshed.fm/180 Jeff Bezos' Two Pizza Team rule: https://buffer.com/resources/small-teams-why-startups-often-win-against-google-and-facebook-the-science-behind-why-smaller-teams-get-more-done Shawn's "You can learn so much on the internet for the low, low price of your ego" quote draws from Paul Graham's Keep Your Identity Small: http://paulgraham.com/identity.html Shawn's Impostor Syndrome Bootcamp Podcast: https://player.fm/series/impostor-syndrome TypeScript's growth via npm surveys: https://mobile.twitter.com/seldo/status/1088240877107965953
Panel Joe Eames Brooke Avery Mike Dane Joined by Special guest Sam Julien Sam Julien is a GDE for Angular and Web Technologies, the creator of UpgradingAngularJS.com, and a Content Engineer for Auth0. He’s also one of the organizers of Angular Portland. When he’s not coding or writing, you’ll find Sam camping or hiking like a good Oregonian. Summary Joe Eames leads the panel through an in-depth discussion on boot camps. The panel starts by sharing their experience with boot camps. After discussing the finances that go into attending a boot camp, the panel answers the question, “Are boot camps worth it?”. They then discuss what one might look for in a boot camp and how to vet boot camps to get the best education for the right cost. The episode ends with many motivating tips from the panel about how to ensure success during boot camp. Links https://lambdaschool.com Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions 6th Edition by Gayle Laakmann McDowell https://www.careercup.com Picks Joe Eames Lucky Duck Games Chronicles of Crime Brooke Avery https://www.canva.com/ Nintendo Switch Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sam Julien LCR® Left Center Right™ Dice Game Mike Dane https://codesignal.com/
Panel Joe Eames Brooke Avery Mike Dane Joined by Special guest Sam Julien Sam Julien is a GDE for Angular and Web Technologies, the creator of UpgradingAngularJS.com, and a Content Engineer for Auth0. He’s also one of the organizers of Angular Portland. When he’s not coding or writing, you’ll find Sam camping or hiking like a good Oregonian. Summary Joe Eames leads the panel through an in-depth discussion on boot camps. The panel starts by sharing their experience with boot camps. After discussing the finances that go into attending a boot camp, the panel answers the question, “Are boot camps worth it?”. They then discuss what one might look for in a boot camp and how to vet boot camps to get the best education for the right cost. The episode ends with many motivating tips from the panel about how to ensure success during boot camp. Links https://lambdaschool.com Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions 6th Edition by Gayle Laakmann McDowell https://www.careercup.com Picks Joe Eames Lucky Duck Games Chronicles of Crime Brooke Avery https://www.canva.com/ Nintendo Switch Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sam Julien LCR® Left Center Right™ Dice Game Mike Dane https://codesignal.com/
We have the pleasure of sitting down with Role Tea CEO and co-founder Mike Johnson to discuss the topic of entrepreneurship while other and what building an effective network looks like for underrepresented communities. Connect with Mike (and Role Tea) on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikecjohnson1/https://www.linkedin.com/company/role-tea/about/Learn more about Role Tea:https://www.drinkroletea.com/https://www.instagram.com/roletea/?hl=enhttps://twitter.com/getroletea?lang=enhttps://www.facebook.com/GetRoleTea/Connect with us: https://linktr.ee/livingcorporateTRANSCRIPTZach: My grandfather was born in Mississippi and was a sharecropper on a cotton farm. With only an elementary education, he eventually moved to a small Illinois town to work for John Deere. After working for over 20 years, he established his wealth through entrepreneurship, namely real estate. "Remember," he would say to me as a child, "jobs are to pay your bills. If you want to be successful and make real money, do something else." Though he was successful, his journey was challenging and fraught with various hardship. It actually reminds me of an excerpt from a piece from Inc Magazine authored by Web Smith called "What It Really Means to Be a Black Entrepreneur in America," and I quote, "Regardless of race or ethnicity, entrepreneurs always begin at a disadvantage. However, blacks tend to need to reach levels of traction with our own money since seed money is often unavailable. This contributes to the rarity of URM entrepreneurs. Richard Kirby, vice president of Vinrock, recently compiled a list that reported a total of 23 African-American investors in the U.S. It should be of no surprise that black founders receive less than 1% of institutional capital. As important as money is the ability to realize your potential through mentorship and direction. This begins with confidence, belonging, and familiarity." End quote. Listen to that. Confidence, belonging, and familiarity. Networking is the catalyst for each of these things, but what does building such networks look like for underrepresented communities? My name is Zach, and you're listening to Living Corporate.Ade: So today we're talking about entrepreneurship and what it means to be an entrepreneur as a non-white person.Zach: I'm glad that we're dedicating an episode to this. Living Corporate isn't just about working for someone else, but also we want to explore ways in which you can work for yourself.Ade: For sure, and shout-out to your grandpa. That's an amazing story.Zach: Yeah, it's inspiring for sure, and while it's impressive--you know, he built his empire through real estate in a small Midwestern town after building up decades of social equity by being in the community, right? Like, he bought homes, like, no one else was really wise enough to invest in, then he fixed them himself, then he managed all of his own maintenance on this homes.Ade: Wow. Yeah, I mean, he weaved his own boot straps out of thin air and then pulled himself up by them. Like, he's an amazing success story, no doubt. To your point, in 2019, the world is just way more connected and social, which is cool, but it also creates more invisible hurdles and roles and just stuff to navigate in being a full-time or even moderately successful part-time entrepreneur, right? And those three things that you quoted--confidence, belonging, and familiarity--those are all needed in the hyper-connected world.Zach: It's just funny, 'cause I was telling a colleague that because of that fact that entrepreneurship success is built on access to capital, which lie in relationships, that people of color are well-benefitted by having partners and backing that don't really look like them, and I remember I had this conversation, and you would think this person, like, thought that I had said, I don't know, just something, like, really racist or, like--"What are you talking about? What are you trying to say? I mean, anybody can do anything." I was like, "OK, all right. Yes, we can do anything." And it also helps to know the right people so that we can have access to things, so that we can do the things that we want. I mean, like, let's be realistic. It frustrates me sometimes when we talk about, like, success and striving to do better and building things that we don't acknowledge, like, the very real capitalist structures that exist, right? Not even that we're fighting against, but that we have to plug into to be successful. Like, come on. Like, this is America. Everybody does not--everybody with a great idea does not wake up and then work really hard towards that idea and then somehow, like, become successful. There's plenty of people out there with great ideas who work very hard who are never successful, right?Ade: Right, and because people of color often don't have access to power or the relationships or the rooms in which these bills are being made in these countries to be movers and shakers there's a bit of a disadvantage. Let's look at the most prominent black clothing brand ever, FUBU. Long story short, FUBU popped off by having a relationship with LL Cool J, and yes, that LL Cool J. He is black, but guess who else LL Cool J had a commercial partnership with? Gap. He plugged FUBU in the middle of a Gap promotional commercial, and he did it while he was rapping, so nobody who was on set or was clearing the ad afterwards really noticed.Zach: Right, and it's a crazy story, but people just forget about that and the fact that Damon John, he had a ton of creative methods to promote FUBU, right? Like, he had a ton of different ways he was kind of getting it out on the street, but it was that Gap commercial--that's the one that really got 'em on the map and really--anyone who studies FUBU and studies, like, advertising, they know about the LL commercial, right? Like, it's common knowledge that's--that was the tipping point for that brand, and so, like, the point is entrepreneurship is changing already. Like, the majority of entrepreneurs don't make it, but being someone who doesn't have advantages built on centuries of historical inequity makes it even harder. Not to say it isn't possible. I'm not saying that it's impossible at all, it's just--it's just hard.Ade: Correct. Wouldn't it be dope if we had an entrepreneur with, let's say, over a 15-year track record of successfully launching dozens of new products or services in the food and beverage media and industrial goods industry? In fact, I would love to hear from someone who has experience maybe launching a brand from concept to the shelf of three of the top ten grocery chains in the country.Zach: Oh, you mean like our guest Mike C. Johnson?Ade and Zach: Whaaaaaat?Zach: [imitates air horns, then Sound Man supplies them] Y'all thought we weren't gonna have these air horns this season. Y'all thought. That's right. We still here with these air horns. We are here with these air horns. More fire for your head top. I'm not playing.Ade: This is really all Zach. I'm blaming it on you.Zach: Aye, drop the air horns. In fact, hold on, drop extra air horns, because we had someone who was actually from Jamaica hit us up on Instagram and say, "Please keep the air horns coming, and make them louder."Ade: Make them louder?Zach: Make them louder, so we here for y'all. We here for the people, 'cause we got it like that. We love y'all, okay?Ade: Not surprised. Not surprised in the least. All right, y'all. Keep listening for a really dope conversation.Zach: And we're back. And as we shared before the break, we have Mike Johnson with us. Welcome to the show, Mike. How are you doing?Mike: I'm doing good, man. How are you doing?Zach: I'm doing really good, man. So today we're talking about entrepreneurship. So can you tell me--where did your entrepreneurial itch come from or start with?Mike: Oh, man. I really can trace it back to my early 20s. I had a couple ventures around that time that I went after. I had a website called VirtualREGallery, which was basically a website that displayed virtual tours of real estate listings before virtual tours were pretty popular. I was a realtor for a little while, and I also did some construction on the side. So I've always kind of had that aspiration to somewhat control my own destiny, but I would say what really motivated me to start Role Tea was just as I learned more about marketing and innovation, I always just had this dream to want to turn an idea or a vision to a concept and go start to finish and pretty much have complete control over how that product will come to market. So that to me has been the most gratifying part of entrepreneurship. Even to this day when I walk into a store or restaurant and I see someone, you know, drinking Role Tea and, you know, just randomly, that to this day still makes me a little excited, 'cause I'm like, "Man, 3 years ago that product was just an idea in my head, and now people can actually purchase it and consume it in a store." So that's just probably the most gratifying thing, to have that control over the idea from start to finish.Zach: That's amazing. And, you know, you talking about your previous ventures, it reminds me of another question that--you know, in season 1 we had a guest who brought up the concept of failing forward--failing quickly and failing forward, so can you talk a little bit about that concept and perhaps what some of your biggest Ls--and we'll say Ls are lessons--that you've taken in your entrepreneurial journey?Mike: Yeah, man. That's a great question. The crazy thing for me about failure that I've learned in this experience is that--you know, I've realized that you really only fail at almost anything when you quit. Like, going into this venture, you know, sometimes your mind can play tricks on you. You start thinking about the worst things that could happen and failure and whatnot, but when you get into it you realize that, man, virtually everything that happens to a business can be resolved if you have the fortitude to try to work through it. So, I mean, you know, we're no different. Like, you know, everyone talks about the great side of entrepreneurship, but man, we've had at least four or five near-death experiences with our company in 2 years. Like, you know, from running out of cash, which a lot of startups have that issue with running out of money, to, you know, having key suppliers back out last minute, literally weeks before launching into Wegmans, which is a 95+ grocery chain from Virginia up to upstate New York, to having distributors back out the last minute. I mean, all of these things have taken out other companies, but for us we just looked at it as, you know, "Okay, here's another problem." You know, "What are our options just to get past it?" And you kind of take it on the chin and move forward. So, you know, you really only fail at almost anything when you quit or when you run out of, you know, hands to play. So once you realize that and you realize that, "Wow," you know, "what happens with me and this business is largely up to my control," it's kind of empowering once you realize that. But as far as just lessons in general around business, to me the two biggest lessons that come to mind for me is--the first one is just starting as small as you can until you can completely the validate the concept, and when I say validate the concept I mean that, you know, you have a product or a concept that people are gonna want to buy, where the economics of it will actually be able to create a business, right? There's a lot of ideas out there that you can sell, but you're never gonna get the price point that you need to actually have a business. Making sure that you actually know who the consumer is. You know how to talk to them or the channels to sell to them. Those are all the things that are required to really validate a concept, and it's best to try to do that on a very small scale to start. That's definitely been a lesson that we've learned early on, and then I think the second big lesson that I've learned in this in terms of failure as well is just trying to get the business to a point where it can be self-sustainable as quickly as possible, right? So right now we're going through some pretty, you know, dramatic changes around our operations to get a little bit more margin back in house versus giving it to a supplier or an outsourced vendor, and that's just all in an effort to get our business to a point where it can pretty much eat off of what it kills, right? We can sustain ourselves based on our own selves as opposed to relying too much on outside investments. So that's a piece of advice I would give to any aspiring entrepreneur. Even if you want to raise capital, it's just good to have financial discipline to try to get your business as self-sustainable as possible as quickly as possible. So there's many lessons, but those two stand out the most.Zach: And so, you know, you've talked--you talked a little bit about Role Tea, and we're definitely gonna get into that as we get further along in this interview. I'm curious to know about your ventures. Could you--would you mind walking us through? Typically when I meet--the reason I ask your ventures is because typically when I meet entrepreneurs, they may have, like, one big thing, but they have a few other things kind of cooking around them. So I'm curious to know, what are your ventures right now?Mike: No, yeah, that is very true. We tend to have short attention spans, so it's easy to kind of get involved with different things. You know, we launched Role Tea in December, November timeframe of 2016, so we're right at the 2 years, and to be honest, man, aside from, you know, being a new father, which I actually became a father the same year I became an entrepreneur with Role Tea, that's been my primary focus. Now that Role Tea is a little bit more established in terms of distributors and it doesn't take as much of me doing virtually everything to keep it going, I am starting to get back a little bit into consulting. That's something that I did prior to launching Role Tea, so I do like to work with other startups and help them however way I can, but aside from that, man, the bulk of my focus right now is with Role Tea.Zach: What challenges do you believe that you've had as a black entrepreneur? And I ask that because in the research that Ade and I have been doing, we've noticed that there are some challenges that are unique to being a non-white builder of businesses, and so I'm curious to know, like, if you--have you run into any challenges that you believe are unique juxtaposed to your white counterparts? And if so, what are they?Mike: Entrepreneurship, just inherent in the way it is, is already built with plenty of challenges. White, black, yellow, whatever. So sometimes it can be a challenge to understand, "Okay, is this a challenge that I'm facing because I'm simply an entrepreneur, or is this a challenge that I'm facing because I'm a black entrepreneur?" And that can be difficult sometimes to decipher, but one challenge that I think is definitely tied to us being, you know, African-American [and own a business,] especially in the food and beverage industry. It's just the fact that, you know, we are launching a beverage brand that is--our intent is to scale to 100+ million in sales and potentially exit, so we're treating our business like a true startup, not like a family-owned business where we're just, you know, looking to sell locally and et cetera, and I think that that's a very different thing in the food and beverage industry amongst a black entrepreneur that most people would expect. So I think that just simply not having a whole lot of examples to point to of black-owned food and beverage brands that have been able to do that successfully makes it hard for a lot of people to see the vision and see the potential in our concept, and I think that's especially true primarily with investors. We've actually had, you know, pretty good success with, for example, some major retailers. We've gotten our product onto the shelves of Whole Foods, of Wegmans. Those are two of the top-rated grocery chains in the country. Hy-Vee is another one. You know, but from a business standpoint, I think that's where we've seen most of the challenge in terms of, you know, working with investors and things of that nature, and I think that's largely because there's just not a whole lot of examples of African-American-owned food and beverage brands that have done it to that level, which is what we're aspiring to do. So I'm sure that there is plenty more, but that's definitely one that I can say for certain I think is unique to us.Zach: So what advice would you give to the person who thinks, you know, entrepreneurship is an all-or-nothing thing and it isn't--they're not starting their journey because they're afraid of missing a steady paycheck?Mike: Yeah, man. That's definitely something that is--I find is very common amongst a lot of people. I struggle with that myself. The first thing is you don't have to be all in to be an entrepreneur, right? Don't listen to everything that you see on Instagram and, you know, social media. There's a lot of people out here glamorizing entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship is great, right? I spent 12+ years in the corporate world, and now I'm 2 years as an entrepreneur, so I can give you the perspective of both sides, and there's definitely a lot of advantages on the entrepreneur side, but there is nothing wrong with side-hustling it for as long as you can, right? That extra paycheck from your job is--it actually can position your business to be more successful, you know? Thankfully I have 12+ years of experience in the corporate world working for other people, learning, collecting that nice six-figure salary so that I can actually build up a savings to even have a chance to do what I'm doing now. So it's all about when is the right time for you, even if you ever want to go all in, right? All in meaning you're full-time with your entrepreneurship venture, but that's the first thing. Don't feel pressured to go all in, right? And when you go all in is another big question that I hear a lot, and it's also one that I--challenge that I dealt with, and, you know, there's no right or wrong answer. Everyone has to lok at their particular situation to know when is the right time, but I will say that there's probably about four or five things that, you know, anyone that's in that situation is looking to do, to transition, to go all in, they should be looking at. Like, the first thing is, you know, what does your business require? Like, for example, if you're gonna launch a catering business versus a restaurant, you know, they're two very different demands and requirements, right? When you're talking about a restaurant, you have to deal with a storefront, which likely comes with remodeling, et cetera. Not the typical type of thing that you can get, you know, to market on the weekends and evenings, right? Whereas a catering service, you can do that evenings, weekends. You can pretty much side-hustle that until you actually get paying customers before you even have to leave your job. So the type of business that you're looking to start a lot of times will dictate largely when you can actually go all in or if and when you can actually cut the 9-to-5 path. The other thing you've got to look at is, you know, what type of support do you have going into it, right? Do you have people, whether it's family members or friends, that can help you out early on without having to get paid, right? I mean, early on there's no cash coming in. To get it stood up, you're gonna need people to help. You're gonna need your team. What type of support do you have? If you have a pretty good support system, you may be able to go all in a little bit sooner. Also you've got to look at, you know, what are your responsibilities in terms of financially and with people, right? Are you 21 years old, no kids, no family, very low bills? You know, that gives you a whole lot more flexibility in terms of what you can do sooner and the risks that you can take, whereas if you are--like, in my situation, I started, you know, Role Tea already in my mid-30s. Like I said, I'm a father, newly father, so I have to move a lot different in that situation.Zach: Congratulations on that, by the way.Mike: Oh, I definitely appreciate it, man. Fatherhood is a lot of fun, a lot of fun. But yeah, you have to move a lot different if you have a lot of financial responsibilities and people responsibilities. Obviously you have to be a little bit more smart about when you go all in. You also might have to look at are there skills that you just don't have yet but you need to develop before you go all in, right? And then lastly, this is probably often times, you know, skipped and not really taken into consideration, but you definitely have to look at what's your appetite for risk and uncertainty, right? Once you pull the plug on that 9-to-5 and you're all in, you know, on the good side is it really motivates you to have a sense of urgency, to move forward fast, but at the same time it can also be stressful by not having that paycheck coming in every week or two or whatever it was you got paid, and that can definitely cause a lot of stress and anxiety, and if you're the type of person that doesn't deal well with that type of uncertainty and stress, #1: you're probably going to struggle as an entrepreneur, 'cause that's gonna come naturally, but that may also dictate you keeping your business as a side hustle a little bit longer. So I never tell someone exactly what to do in that situation, but I would definitely tell you that those are probably the four or five things that you should be thinking about in your situation to determine, you know, when you go all in or if you go all in at all.Zach: And so, you know--and I alluded to this earlier about some of your challenges as a black entrepreneur, but the research I was speaking to specifically had to do with the variance in acquiring capital, right? So venture capital, angel investments, and other types of non-business loan-sourced funding. I'm curious, have you had any challenges in acquiring that type of funding, and really what's been your journey in building those relationships with those with access with the capital to help your ventures?Mike: Yeah, that's a great question. It's definitely one of the bigger challenges that I'm finding with not just our business but other black-owned entrepreneurs, and it's a complex one, which I--I know that this is probably an area of business that's foreign to a lot of people, so I definitely want to make sure I kind of break this down because, you know, I have an MBA, but yet 3 years ago I didn't understand hardly anything about the idea of raising capital. I've had to learn a lot through this venture, and the challenges that are unique to African-Americans is--it's kind of a snowball effect, so let me explain it like this. So investment in startups typically happens in a progression, right? So, you know, the first step is typically money out of your own pocket, right? So that's called bootstrapping, right? Maybe you've worked in the corporate world for a number of years, you've built up some savings. Maybe you got an inheritance. Whatever the case may be, right? But you need some sort of cash to get things going very early on. That's typically the first step. Second step is you look to friends and family, right? "Who do I know in my own personal network?" Friends, family, associates, that have the means to write a $10, 20, 30, 50,000 check or more, right? That's the second step, and then once you get past that, then you get into what's called angel investors, which are typically either high net worth or high-income individuals who choose to invest in startups, right? And then lastly you get to venture capital, which essentially are, you know, funds that investors who are called limited partners, or LPs, invest in, and they then have managers of those funds look for startups to invest in, right? And they can go from $500,000 up to, you know, $100,000,000, right? They write very large checks. So that's the typical progression of a startup raising capital for their business. So let's think about that, right? Now, what we know about African-Americans is we traditionally have a lower income than non-whites. We also traditionally have a lower net worth, which is probably more significant, than whites. So going back to the very first step in that progression, right? Most of us could struggle with having the means to even bootstrap, to have that $20, 30, 50,000 just to get started, right? Because of the points that I just made, right? And if you get past that hurdle, then now you have to find friends and family that also can write that $10, 15, 20,000 check or more. Again, that's a struggle that's unique for African-Americans moreso than others because of the points that I just made. So right out the gate as an African-American entrepreneur you have some disadvantages, right? And VCs and angels, you have to get past those first couple stages typically before they're even interested in looking at your business, right? And the crazy thing about investment, the investment world, that I've learned is investors rely significantly on their personal networks to even be introduced to an entrepreneur to invest in. So they're--again, how many African-Americans have the social network, the connections that people that have that kind of means to write those checks, right? So it's a snowball effect that, collectively speaking, puts us at a disadvantage, and again, that's definitely a challenge that is well-documented. We've experienced it. Other founders that we know have experienced it, but, you know, how you deal with that is--again, I don't want to make it sound simple, but the first thing that we've tried to do is just bridge that gap in terms of relationships, right? And that's really done largely by just putting yourself out there, putting yourself in situations to meet people that can invest in your brand. So, you know, the very first angel investor that we had we met at the Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Summit last year. We were chosen as a finalist to pitch in that competition, so, you know, we got a lot of visibility at that show down in Houston last year. We met with our first investor there, our first angel investor I should say, and, you know, months down the road after the rapport was established he decided to invest in us, right? So that was an example of where we had to kind of bridge that gap by just going out and making those connections, and then the second thing really is just--you know, you have to have the mindset that you're gonna make your startup undeniable, right? You know, if someone says no now, which we've definitely heard tons of nos, and you're gonna hear nos. Raising capital is very difficult for any startup, so you have to have the mindset that, you know, "Okay, you say no today, but we're gonna build up the traction that we need over the next 6 months to 12 months to the point where if you say no you're basically foolish," right? So you just have to make your startup--you have to make your startup undeniable, 'cause everyone likes to make money, and I think it's a little bit more of a challenge to show that we can do that, but, you know, if you can definitely demonstrate that, people will invest in your startup. It's just a little bit difficult for us for those reasons.Zach: That's just such a great point around--especially when you started--when you talked about, like, the various levels of investment, right? So I'll even use Living Corporate as an example. For us, you know, I'm one of the few people in my family even in corporate America. We don't all have money like that. I certainly would not--I don't even feel comfortable. I mean, and some of that might just be culture too, Mike. I don't feel comfortable walking to a member of my family talking about, "Hey, would you mind investing $10,000 to help us hire writers and videographers and so on, so on, and so forth," and really invest in Living Corporate. Like, what? You know what I mean? Like, just the thought of that, right? And then, you know, we had an episode again in season 1 when we were talking about family [inaudible]--like, the wealth gap. The wealth inequality gap, and there's plenty of research to show that in the next 10, 20 years, that the average value of a black home will be zero dollars, right? So you're talking about the fact that starting up and getting all this capital, for a community who has no money--like, we don't have the centuries of privilege and things of that nature to have an uncle or a second cousin who can write a check, right? And I think that's just a really good point. You know, I'm curious about Role Tea, so let's dig into that a little bit more. So first off, when can Living Corporate get a case of the tea?Mike: I'm always open to giving Role Tea to whoever wants it, so yeah, I'll let you go with the second question.Zach: [laughs] Okay, so we're good on the tea. And then why tea? Why Role Tea, and then what was the inspiration behind Role Tea?Mike: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we definitely got you on the case. No problem there. As far as the inspiration for the tea, we always say on the--we launched the tea 2 years ago, but the idea for Role Tea really started probably in my early 20s more than 10 years ago where I had the experience of losing 100 pounds, right? So, you know, I'm like 22 years old, and I get that scale shock where I go to the doctor and--I know I'm obviously way too big, but I didn't realize I had actually gone over 300 pounds, and I'm like, "Man," like, "Okay, something's gotta change." So at that point my relationship with food changed, and I learned that, you know, a lot of the traditional foods and beverages that I had consumed, that were, you know, typically less than healthy, right, if I'm creative I can remix those recipes to be better for me, still taste good, and actually serve a purpose to either help me feel better or perform better, and so, you know, over the course of the next 2 to 3 years I lost 100 pounds just, you know, changing the way I ate and exercising more, et cetera. So fast forward to 2015. At this time I was training for a boxing match. I'm a huge boxing fan. I've boxed for several years. Anyone that knows me knows that I'm passionate about boxing just as I am about business, but I was training for a boxing match in 2015, and I noticed--again, now in my mid-30s, you know, after training, what used to take a day or two to feel normal again, not feel sore, not feel stiff, was now taking 2 or 3 days, right? So I started to research beverages that I could drink--you know, not supplements, but just every day traditional beverages--Zach: Natural.Mike: Yeah, natural beverages that I could incorporate into my diet that may help, and so, you know, that's when I learned about ingredients like tumeric and ginger and, you know, green tea and tart cherries, which all have natural anti-inflammatory properties, and so I looked for options in the store, and virtually everything I saw was $6 or $7 bottles of juice, [inaudible] sugar. So, you know, my background is in innovation, new product development and launches, so I immediately saw a business opportunity. I went to a friend of mine named Corey Benson with the idea, and he has an operations background. He was running a manufacturing plant at the time, and he said, "You know what, man? Like, I see people every day that are standing up at the job for 9, 10 hours a day. They're popping Aleves. They're, you know, popping Advils and drinking Mountain Dews to deal with the soreness from just their job," right? So he immediately saw the pain point that, you know, the concept that we were thinking about would address, but he saw it from a regular 9-to-5 job, whereas I was dealing with it from a weekend warrior boxing perspective, right? So we immediately saw, like, "Wow, this whole thing around inflammation and a functional beverage that can help with that has some legs, and it probably could impact a lot of people." So from there we were ready to go. We started to research the industry a lot more in 2015 and 2016. We worked with a development company to take our recipes that we had created with tea and juice and spices, like tumeric and ginger, to basically create a product that could be sold on a shelf. We chose tea because, you know, tea is a very popular drink, and it still is. Shout-out to Guru, even though he talked about lemonade. But tea's a very popular drink, and the great thing about it is, again, you know, a lot of the options before were juices, which is more expensive. Tea is a much less expensive catalyst to use to deliver functional spices and benefits, so we figured we would be able to create a functional drink that's also affordable, right? So we're probably one of the first functional beverages in stores like Whole Foods and Wegmans that was under $3 per bottle, and again--plus I'm a huge iced tea fan, right? So that was a natural ingredient, or product, to use. So, you know, we worked through the recipe process in 2016, and we launched a product literally the night before Thanksgiving in the D.C. Metro area in 2016, and, you know, we started off just very independent, selling out of the trunk of our cars, and, you know, now we're currently sold in over 100 locations, from Virginia up to upstate New York as well as a few states in the Midwest. So right now we're just, you know, looking to continue to grow the business, bring on more partners, bring on more investors, and just see how far it can go.Zach: Man, that's incredible, man. You know, and down the road, once, you know, we get this tea and we drink it, we'll make sure to shout y'all out on the podcast on the part of our Favorite Things.Mike: Definitely. Definitely do that.Zach: Yeah, man. Now, this has been a great conversation. I really want to know where people can learn more about Role Tea and where they can get some.Mike: Yeah, yeah. So Role Tea--and that's R-O-L-E, as in, like, play your role. Role Tea is sold online, so you can see us at RoleTea.com. R-O-L-E-T-E-A dot com. We're also sold on the East Coast, primarily in stores like Wegmans as well as some independent stores in the D.C. Metro area. So yeah, check us out online, RoleTea.com. A lot of good information there. You can order right through that website. Yeah.Zach: That's what's up, man. Now, look, before we get out of here, do you have any parting thoughts or shout-outs?Mike: Yeah, I definitely want to shout-out everyone that has tried Role Tea, everyone that will try Role Tea, including you, Zach. Yeah, everyone that's worked with the brand to help get us this far, to this point, definitely appreciate the support. I definitely want to shout-out my co-founder Corey Benson. Definitely want to shout-out, you know, again, everyone that's listening to this podcast. I didn't get a chance to say this before, man, but when I first heard about this podcast and what you guys are attempting to do as far as help educate people in how to navigate, you know, the world of corporate America, I'm like, "Man, that's definitely something that's needed." Like you mentioned yourself, you're a first-generation corporate professional, right? Did I hear that right?Zach: Right.Mike: Yep, so same here. You know, first in my family to, you know, get a bachelor's degree, master's degree, corporate world and, you know, going into the corporate world I'm thinking, "Okay, I'm ready for success based on my education," but I quickly learned that most of what determines your success in that world is the things that are not taught in the classroom, right? It's the soft skills. It's the implied cultural norms that are often times a little bit different than what we grew up with, so, you know, a lot of us learn those lessons on the job as opposed to being prepared beforehand. So this podcast is doing a great service to help educate young professionals on those waters before they get into them, so kudos to you guys, and again, I'm glad to be a part of this.Zach: Man, Mike, thank you so much for the kind words. Again, the drink, Role Tea--like know your role, R-O-L-E T-E-A, and we're excited to give it a little review. So I appreciate your time. We consider you a friend of the show. Can't wait to have you back, man.Mike: Definitely appreciate it, man.Zach: Peace.Mike: Peace.Ade: And we're back. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview, Zach. I mean, I've known Mike for a little while now. He's been a great friend and supporter. Like, he's always good, not only to listen to you for advice but just listen to his experiences, and how he's been able to grow Role Tea as a brand has been very inspiring, and I'm so glad that we got so much of that in that interview.Zach: No, for sure. In our discussion, and outside of it too, we talked about--just talked about his history and talked about the challenges of building up his brand and really, like, trying and failing at some other things too, but super happy he was on the show, and hopefully we'll get some--we'll get some tea out of this. He told me he'd actually send us a couple pallets. I don't know about pallets, but he said he'd send--Ade: Word?Zach: Yeah. Not pallets, 'cause pallets sounds like--Ade: 'Cause that tea is delicious.Zach: Yeah. No, I've heard it's--I haven't had any yet, but I'm positive that once I have it I'm gonna enjoy it.Ade: Okay. Well, I am keeping an eye out, because Role Tea is amazing. Anyway, awesome. Thank you, and shout-out again to Mike Johnson and Role Tea. I'm looking forward to that tea.Zach: Salute to Mike. Okay, so Favorite Things?Ade: Favorite Things. Let's go. All right.Zach: All right, cool. So look, my favorite thing right now has to be Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Now, some of y'all are like, "Super Smash Bros.? What's that?" But let me tell you something, those who know--Pusha T voice. "If you know, you know." So look, my favorite thing right now has to be Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on my Nintendo Switch. It's super fun. I play in the evening after a long day at work, and I love it because I can just kind of pick it up. I don't have to, like, sit down in front of a big TV, boot up the game. I can just pick up my handheld, boot it up. And for those who want to know, my favorite--my main character is Chrom. So again, for those who are kind of, like, outside of this whole video game space, Super Smash Bros. is a Nintendo game, right, but it's like you can, like, pick Nintendo characters against each other to fight, right? But, like, not in a, like, super violent Mortal Kombat way. More, like, kind of, like, a cartoonish, fun way, but it's a deep, deep game, right? So you can put Mario against Sonic. You can put Princess Peach against Captain Falcon or Fox or Falco or Ganondorf versus Kirby. You can do all kinds of crazy match-ups, right? Super fun, and so it's been cool. It's a really good stress reliever. That--you know, working out sometimes, you don't want to necessarily want to get up and work out. Forgive me. I don't want to work out all the time. Sometimes I just want to kind of veg out, and it's great. It's great for that. So that's my favorite thing.Ade: Okay, self-care. I see you.Zach: That's right.Ade: So my favorite thing lately has been a book called Cracking the Coding Interview. It's been invaluable, I think. I struggle--for those of you who are just joining us, just in case this is your very first Living Corporate episode ever, I am switching careers, or I'm in the process of switching careers. I'm becoming a software engineer, and part of that process is self-teaching both foundational concepts and computer science, but also understanding algorithms, binary trees. Just how the very technical elements of software engineering, something that you are supposed to pick up in a classroom that I did not have the luxury of doing, therefore I have to teach myself. And there are also books that exist out there that kind of help you through the process of thinking through and developing strategies for coding interviews. I'm discussing it like it's a journal or something like that, [inaudible], but yeah, it's been a really important book, and I've kind of been adding more and more base computer science books and algorithm books to my library, right next to Frantz Fanon and Audre Lorde. So yeah, those are my favorite things.Zach: That's a sick combination though. That's dope.Ade: I want you to know our library in our home consists of tax law code and regulations and vegan chef--vegan cookbooks and regular cookbooks and Sister Outsider. [laughs] And computer science books and data science books.Zach: That's dope though.Ade: Oh, and [Ola had a?] self-help book. So there's no way you can walk into my home and not have something to read.Zach: You're gonna have something. You're gonna learn about something.Ade: There will be something available to edify you. I even have, like, fiction novels, everything from John Green to Grisham to Tomi Adeyemi, which, again, shout-out to her.Zach: Shout-out to her. No, straight up. She's great.Ade: I'm looking up to the next book in the series, by the way. Okay, we have veered so far off track. Did you have--Zach: Good. It's a Favorite Things segment. We're supposed to turn up. It's cool.Ade: You know what? You're right. You're right. Sir, sir. Sir. [Not turning up. Cruise?]. I'm tired. [laughs]Zach: [laughs] [Turn me up. Cruise?]Ade: Nope, I'm tired of you.Zach: Okay. No, no, no, but that's dope. So look, you know, y'all, if it wasn't evident by our kickoff episode, as well as our Supporting Black Women at Work section, the B-Side that we had as well as the full episode, we're here, man.Ade: We outchea.Zach: We're gonna have a good time this season. Make sure you keep checking us out. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast. Make sure to follow us on Instagram @LivingCorporate, Twitter @LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through living-corporate.com. Please say the dahs.Ade: The dash.Zach: If you have a question you'd like for us to answer and read on the show, just email us or hit us on DM, right? We out here. Don't forget to give us 5 stars too. Now, look, some of y'all actually been responding and gave us some stars, but not all of y'all though. That's right, I'm looking at you. That's right. We need those 5 stars, okay? Right? Am I tripping, Ade? Do we need the 5 stars or nah?Ade: We need the 5 stars.Zach: We need the 5 stars. Okay, cool. Look, y'all. That does it for us. We'll catch y'all next week. This has been Zach.Ade: And this is Ade. Free 21 Savage.Zach: Free 21 Savage. Peace.Ade: Peace.
Matthew Castelaz earned Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering and Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin – Platteville and is technical solution consultant at Google. [0:56] Describes the difference between Software Engineering and Computer Science – computer science is more software classes and software engineer is more system design type classes but both will typically write code in their day to day job but will spend time on system design and know how to manage a project from start to finish with a software engineering degree. [2:59] Delving into his mathematics emphasis – it helped set him apart from other engineers looking at the same position [4:37] Internships – what Matthew did at Kohls in their IT department. Built some front end web pages to add new attributes for new products and also did research. [5:59] Describes what a Technical Solutions Consultant is a at Google – about 70% software and 30% project management. [7:34] Getting a job at Google – was afraid of going to a smaller state school that is not well known outside of Wisconsin and the surrounding area that it would be a disadvantage – this was not the case at all. But you should get experience through internships or co-ops as well as activities outside of class, like student body president. This essentially told Google that he could excel in school and outside of school. [10:30] What has Matt really fired up today is artificial intelligence and machine learning and google just announce a project called Google Duplex. Also he is excited about the wearable space and google just released a product called Jacquard which is technologically advanced fibers in clothing and can use the clothing to control your smart phone. [12:38] Matts ah-ha moment – there has not been any big moments but a lot of smaller ah-has and the small success of writing software [13:57] Getting through college he wish he realized that it is ok to change your mind and ok to make mistakes as long as you are able to learn from it. [15:43] Best piece of advice ever received is don’t be afraid to fail and don’t let fear prevent you from trying something new. And a personal habit is persistence. And a book that Matthew recommends for getting through the technical interview is Cracking the Coding Interview. [16:51] Parting piece of guidance – explore your options in college. You can get a free book from Audible at www.stemonfirebook.com and can cancel within 30 days and keep the book of your choice with no cost. Free Audio Book from Audible.
Манай энэ удаагийн дугаарт Амазон компанийн програм хангамжийн ахлах инженер Шагай оролцон технологийн компаниудын ажлын ярилцлага ямар байдаг талаар болон хүмүүсийн, тэр дундаа Монголчуудын нийтлэг гаргадаг алдаа зэрэгийг ярилцлаа. Та бүхэн дэлхийн хэмжээний технологийн компаниудад хэрхэн өөрийгөө бэлдэх вэ, ажлын санал авсаны дараа цалингаа хэрхэн тохиролцох вэ гэх мэт үнэтэй зөвлөмжүүдйиг ярилцлага өгсөн, авсан тоо нь гурван оронтой тоонд орсон манай зочиноос сонсоорой. **Ярилцлагын явцад дурдагдсан ном, материалууд:** 1. [Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions](https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/0984782850/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546397102&sr=8-1&keywords=cracking+the+coding+interview) 2. [LeetCode.com](https://leetcode.com/) 3. [Hacker Rank Interview Preperation Kit](https://www.hackerrank.com/interview/interview-preparation-kit 4. [TripleByte.com](https://triplebyte.com/)
Are you trying to get a jump-start on your tech career while you're still in school? Have you found that perfect internship - or job - but you're not sure how to approach it? If so, this is the resource for you. Michael discusses how to craft your résumé, how to prepare for interviews, and much more. Written by Michael Deng: https://twitter.com/themichaeldeng Read by Abbey Rennemeyer: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn Original article: https://fcc.im/2BCESfo Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Intro music by Vangough: https://fcc.im/2APOG02 Transcript: Seven semesters ago, I started college with no programming background. The only thing I had was lofty aspirations of working in tech. When recruiting season first rolled around, I applied to a bunch of companies. I got a few callbacks, but that’s it. No follow-ups. No onsite interviews. Nothing. I kept trying. I applied to over 150 companies. I faced dozens of interviews. I failed way more than I succeeded. But that’s all right. Because those failures made my moments of triumph all the more memorable. Along the way, I met helpful mentors and guided ambitious mentees. These people are now working at places like Airbnb, Facebook, Google, SpaceX, and Snap. As for me, I landed an internship at Uber last summer. And I’m on track to accept a full-time job at one of my favorite companies when I graduate. Now that I’m in my final year of school, I want to share everything I’ve learned over the years. This isn’t meant to be the ultimate handbook. It’s only a modest guide born out of my love of helping others reach their goals (and my love of Legos). By the end of this article, you’ll know everything I wish I had known when I first started sending in applications. A few words before we begin… Don’t let your struggle for the perfect job take over your life. School is a time of self-discovery and all-around personal growth. So go out there and meet people who are doing different things. Join diverse student organizations and take part in activities outside your comfort zone. It’s all too easy to associate your self-worth with how prestigious of a job you can get. But remember: there are so many more important things in life than work. My best memories of college aren’t spending weeks on end prepping for interviews or even getting offer phone calls. They’re exploring San Francisco for the first time with my closest friends. They’re playing volleyball with my hilarious teammates. I value these unique experiences I shared with people I love much more than any job. To paraphrase my favorite quote by Twitter and Medium founder Ev Williams: “Failure of your [work] is not failure in life. Failure in your relationships is.” Don’t lose sight of what’s important. It’s also no coincidence that everyone I know with a strong support system eventually found success. When you fall into a slump — and all of us do — you need your friends to be there for you. I would never have made it through my first year without amazing friends who kept me afloat. Now, let’s get started. You pumped? I’m pumped! Building fundamentals Before we get to the good stuff, you need to build solid fundamentals. Seems obvious? Absolutely. But this is the hardest step of this guide, so listen up. Now, this guide is designed for college students, so if you’re in high school, scram! Just kidding. In fact, I admire your initiative. When I was in high school, I didn’t have the faintest idea what I wanted to do. Leading up to college, your top priority should be solidifying your math skills. Computer science relies heavily on mathematic concepts like probability, logic, and number theory. Without math, you’re not going to get far in hard weeder classes and technical interviews. If you’re already proficient in math, keep reading. Most of this guide is just as applicable to you as it is to college students. Skip to the online classes section below and progress through the rest of this guide. Landing an internship as a high schooler is challenging, but certainly not impossible. OK. Back to college students. Building fundamentals starts with your intro programming classes. Pay attention and master the basics. A popular but misguided notion is “GPA doesn’t matter.” Although it’s true that most companies won’t scrutinize your GPA, any gaps in your fundamental knowledge will come back to bite you later. By getting a decent GPA, you’re also most likely getting a grasp of the basics. Your classes will cover a lot of basic knowledge, but they’ll barely scratch the surface of modern technology. Go explore interesting topics around the core concepts taught in class. This is how you gain a breadth of knowledge and come up with future project ideas. If you’re not studying computer science, don’t worry. I have friends who changed their minds and started CS their Junior year. They still graduated on time with great job offers, so you’re not too late at all. This said, you will need to make sacrifices and take extra classes every semester. If you’re not able to take CS classes in college, there are plenty of awesome online resources to help you out. Two of the best online intro courses are Harvard CS50x on edX and CS101 on Udacity. After this intro, you need to master data structures and algorithms. I recommend Princeton Algorithms Part 1 and Part 2 on Coursera, or CS61B by UC Berkeley. To make sure you’re on track, reference Google’s Technical Development Guide. Don’t worry if you struggle at first. A few weeks into my first semester, I was completely overwhelmed. I spent days studying concepts that took other students hours to grasp. I thought about giving up every week. “How am I ever going to catch up to those prodigies?” But if you ask me or any of my friends who made it through, we’ll all tell you the same thing: Learning to program isn’t about how talented you are or how early you started coding. It’s about perseverance. Building up your programming intuition takes a long time — much like learning a human language. You won’t see the light at the end of the tunnel for a long time. But trust me. If you take one step at a time, you will eventually get there. Staying motivated is difficult, but there’s a secret. Focus on mastery instead of results. Make it your goal to get better at a skill rather than achieve a certain result. Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson did a study where she asked two groups of people to solve various problems. The first group was told to score as high as they could. The second group was told to treat the problems as a learning opportunity. The results were surprising. The first group got frustrated, whereas the second group persisted and solved more problems. By focusing on mastery, you view obstacles and time pressure as things that will help you grow. In contrast, a result-oriented mindset frames problems as irritating roadblocks impeding your way. What’s more, you’ll see continual progress if you concentrate on mastery. Every time you read a new paragraph or solve a new question, you’re improving your skills. This kind of continuous gratification is incredibly satisfying. So next time you’re studying for class or practicing for interviews, focus on getting better instead of acing the exam or landing the offer. You can read more about this tactic in Edmond Lau’s Quora post. Beyond basic coding skills, you need to know what’s happening in the tech industry. This goes beyond sounding smart during recruiting. By paying attention to the industry, you’ll be the first to discover new opportunities to propel your career forward. For online reading, check out TechCrunch, Techmeme, Product Hunt, and Hacker News. If you’re a frequent Twitter user, follow tech news sources. On Medium and Quora, personalize your feeds to get insightful takes on the industry. If you’re into email newsletters, look into Axios Pro Rata, CB Insights, and Mattermark Daily. To do a deep dive on a particular company, use Crunchbase and the company’s blog. You can also learn about the company’s culture from Glassdoor. Finally, don’t forget to actually talk to people. I learned so much about the tech world from casual conversations with friends and classmates. Over time, you’ll read about a lot of interesting companies. Begin compiling a spreadsheet of companies you’re interested in from day 1. When you apply to these companies in the future, use this spreadsheet to track your progress. Once you have the fundamentals down, it’s time to apply your skills. One of the best ways to do that is by… Building projects If you’re like me, you don’t have much experience to begin with, and that’s OK! The first step is populating that empty resume with projects. When I first decided to work on a project, I had decision paralysis for days. “What should I make? What if it’s not original? What if people don’t like it?” Later, I realized it doesn’t really matter what the project is. Learning something and finishing what you start is much more important. But this doesn’t mean you can make whatever you want. If your project is too trivial, you won’t impress any recruiters. If yourq project is too complex, you’ll lose momentum before completing it. Aim to do a project you think you can complete in one to two months. The project should involve data structures, algorithms, and design decisions. And do something you’re interested in so you’ll actually take it all the way to completion. Here’s a compilation of project ideas on Reddit for inspiration. After coming up with an idea, take some time to plan, but don’t take too long. You want to start as soon as possible. Now, you might be wondering “Isn’t it irresponsible to jump in prematurely?” Generally, yes. But personal projects are different from company projects. Personal projects should teach you something new and strengthen your background during recruiting. Unlike company projects, you don’t need to obsess over design and code quality. If you’re feeling stuck at the beginning, write down some code — any code. Building a personal project is like writing, you just start. Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense. Seeing code in an editor will get your juices flowing. Track your project with version control. If you don’t know what that is, make a Github account and learn how to use Git. You need Github as it’s the primary way you save and display your projects. If you can, make your project live so recruiters can play with it. Most recruiters won’t inspect your code, so a live demo is the best way to show off your project. Aim to complete three to five projects by the time you start applying. A terrific first project is a personal website. You learn the basics of web development and get your own space on the internet to display your work. Codecademy has two excellent tutorials on building websites: Make a Website teaches you the basics of HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap. Deploy a Website teaches you how to put your website on the internet. Step 3 of this tutorial isn’t necessary, just use the free .github.io domain. Too easy? Convert your personal website into a dynamic blog. To do this, you need to learn a web development framework like Rails or Django. Check out the Ruby on Rails Tutorial or The Django Girls Guide. The Muse and Awwwards have examples of personal websites if you need design inspiration. Also, you have to check out this wicked personal website. Hackathons are great for motivating yourself to do projects. Schools and organizations around the world host hackathons, which are project-building competitions lasting several days. In this short span of time, you’ll learn a lot, come up with unique ideas, and meet interesting people. Many hackathons reimburse travel, so there’s no excuse not to go. Use Hackalist or Hackevents to discover upcoming ones. Some of the top North American hackathons I know of are PennApps, HackMIT, HackNY, MHacks, HackTech, HackIllinois, CalHacks, TreeHacks, Hack the North, YC Hacks, and Greylock Techfair. You can also contribute to open source projects. Working on open source is an awesome way to add value to meaningful projects. Plus, you learn a lot from seeing code written by more experienced engineers. Jumping into open source for the first time can be intimidating. Two good entry points are Google Summer of Code and Sayan Chowdhury’s article on open source for beginners. Github also just released their very own open source guide. Find a cool project and dive in. You’ll get the hang of it soon enough. Research is an alternative to projects. If your school has a student research program, great! Apply asap. If it doesn’t have one, look up what research your professors are doing. If their work seems interesting, email them and ask if you can contribute. You’d be surprised at how receptive they are to eager undergrads. In the future, you can even ask your team to refer you to cutting-edge companies. Keep in mind research belongs under Experience rather than Projects on your resume. It can be tough balancing projects and school. One complaint I hear frequently is “I don’t have time to do side projects while taking classes.” I’m personally guilty of saying that from time to time. It’s tough to set aside time for projects because, unlike school, you’re not held accountable by deadlines and exams. After a day of studying, it’s tempting to choose social media or video games over your project. But if you keep putting it off, the semester will be over before you know it. To combat procrastination, force yourself to work on your project a little bit every day. Even if it’s just 15 minutes, you’ll form a habit of making continual progress. This is also why hackathons and research projects are so great. They impose external deadlines and expectations so you can’t drag your heels. Now that you have some experience, you need to put it somewhere. Creating a resume Writing a resume might seem pretty straightforward, but there are lots of nuances. After all, it’s the first thing recruiters will read about you. It’s crucial to make a good first impression. …And you need to make that impression fast. Recruiters spend an average of six seconds reviewing a resume. You heard that right. Six seconds. Almost all that time is spent on your name, companies, job titles, start/end dates, school, major, and project titles. Everything on your resume should be tailored towards helping recruiters find these key pieces of info as fast as possible. Here are some important guidelines. Easy to scan. Stick to one page. Keep it black and white if you’re not skilled at design. Colors are noisy. Stick to a standard format (chronological, no weird fonts, 10.5 to 12 pt font size, 0.5 to 1 inch margins). Standard formats are more readable by resume-parsing programs and easier to skim by recruiters. Keep it concise. Text walls discourage readers. Highlight the key points Make your name big. Highlight company names, job titles, start/end dates, school name, major, and project titles. Important content should be higher up. For a student, the order of importance is usually Education > Experience > Projects > Skills. Cut the fat. Objective and Summary are unnecessary. Descriptions should say something tangible. “Exceptional team player” doesn’t work. “Increased user conversion rates by 20%” does. People without technical background will be reading your resume, so get rid of convoluted details. Don’t neglect the details: Include the higher of your cumulative GPA and your major GPA. If they’re both less than 3.0, leave it off. Include links to a live demo or Github repo for each project. Don’t include anything you wouldn’t be comfortable answering questions about. Most people make this mistake when listing their skills. After finishing your resume, have your peers review it. Ask them to be honest and harsh. My first draft was awful compared to my tenth draft. Use online resume builders if you’re short on time. Standard Resume and CakeResume are two outstanding tools that make it a breeze to generate a handsome resume. If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, create one. LinkedIn enables recruiters to find you and helps you maintain your professional network. Plus, you need it for the cold-emailing recruiters later. With a few projects under your belt and resume in hand, you’re ready to begin preparing for interviews. Getting battle-ready for interviews Interview problems can be separated into two buckets, behavioral questions and technical questions. You need to start practicing both at least two months before applying. Since recruiting season kicks off in August/September, summer break is a good time to begin. Behavioral questions The purpose of behavioral questions are to find out more about your background and if you actually did what you said on your resume. Don’t take the behavioral interview lightly. A poor performance can sink your chances of getting the offer. To ace behavioral questions, you need a strong answer to “Tell me about yourself” and three stories to handle all other questions. “Tell me about yourself” is the most common behavioral question you’ll get and you need to crush it. Don’t make the cardinal mistake of regurgitating your resume. Instead, tell a story. Capture the attention of the interviewer with a strong introduction. Then, transition into a commentary about your key projects and experiences. Don’t prattle on about the details — keep it simple and emphasize the outcomes. Finally, explain why you’re interested in the position. It’s tempting to talk about every single thing you did, but you’ll lose your interviewer. Keep it concise. Your answer should be one to two minutes long. Prepare three stories you can tell in response to all other behavioral questions. Typically, you’ll be asked to give examples of leadership, overcoming a challenge, or failure. Each of your three stories should show at least one of these themes. A story needs an initial summary, a problem, three to five action steps, and a final outcome. Here’s an example. Summary: Lead an unmotivated team to complete CS project Problem: Two team members didn’t do their work and wanted to drop CS Action 1: Talked to them one-on-one to understand why they’re studying CS Action 2: Told them although it’s tough now, they can succeed if they work hard Action 3: Emphasized that they’re invaluable to the rest of the team Action 4: Used google calendar to plan meetings and Trello to track progress Action 5: Held social events to bring the team closer Outcome: Finished the project and all got at least A- This story can be used to answer any question about leadership or overcoming a challenge. Now go think of your own! Not all your stories have to be about tech. For example, I always talk about how I helped my volleyball team overcome defeat. With this, you should be able to pass any behavioral interview. To learn more, read the Behavioral Questions section in Cracking the Coding Interview. Technical questions Technical questions are the essence of the tech interviewing process. Here’s a list of topics you need to know to pass technical interviews. To master these topics, use the following four resources: Cracking the Coding Interview (~2 months before applying) LeetCode (~1 month before applying) Mock interviews (~2 weeks before applying) Glassdoor (~2 days before interviewing) Cracking the Coding Interview is one of the best resources out there. Gayle Laakmann McDowell’s Cracking the Coding Interview is the quintessential tech recruiting manual. First, read the Technical Questions section. Take notes to help you remember the main ideas. As for practice questions, concentrate on the Arrays and Strings, Linked Lists, Stacks and Queues, Trees and Graphs, Objected-Oriented Design, Recursion, and Sorting sections. Also, familiarize yourself with the Bit Manipulation, Scalability, Databases, and Threads and Locks sections. If you’re having trouble with any of the topics, study the first couple pages of that section. They contain a short and sweet explanation of the topic. Attempt each question for at least 30 minutes before looking at the solution. After reading the solution, you should still implement it and test it on your own. Otherwise, you won’t fully understand the logic. Finishing CtCI should take three to four weeks of dedicated effort. LeetCode is the second resource you should tackle. It has a huge list of problems ranked by difficulty. Each problem has its own tests, time complexity requirements, and solutions. Aim to complete 30 to 50 questions and be comfortable with medium level questions before you start applying. If you do just three a day, you can finish 42 in two weeks. It’s easy to get frustrated by Leetcode at first. In the beginning, I couldn’t solve a single easy problem. I improved over time, but I still get stuck frequently on medium and hard level problems. The good thing is interviews are different from Leetcode. In an interview, you get hints if you’re stuck. Plus, deducing the correct logic is more important than writing runnable code. Although Leetcode isn’t the best simulation of real interviews, it’s phenomenal for building problem solving intuition. Mock interviews are highly effective if you do them right. The trick is emulating a real interview as closely as possible. If you’re the interviewee, be professional, ask questions, and talk out loud. If you’re the interviewer, time the interview, engage in the conversation, and write down feedback. I suggest booking a private room on campus and grinding through back-to-back interviews. Make sure the room has a big whiteboard to draw on. Take turns interviewing and being interviewed by a friend who’s also recruiting. Being able to understand the interviewer’s perspective will improve your own interviewing skills. Glassdoor is an invaluable resource for company-specific info. In most cases, you don’t need Glassdoor until a few days before your interview. Unless the company is very large, Glassdoor won’t have many specific interview questions. Glassdoor is better for learning about the company’s general interview process. Navigate to the Interviews section and filter by the position you’re applying for. Sometimes there are different labels for the same job, so look through all of them. Read candidates’ experiences and think through the interview questions they posted. You likely won’t get the same questions, but working through them will give you an idea of what to expect. Making your application stand out It’s finally time to send out applications and start seeing your hard work pay off! Recruiting season begins in August/September, but you can reach out a month or two earlier. For off-season jobs, apply at least 6 months before. First, you need a list of companies to apply to. If you’ve been following the tech industry, you should already have some companies in mind. To add to your list, check out The Breakout List, Wealthfront’s Career-Launching Companies List, and the CrunchBase Unicorn Leaderboard. For more ideas, here’s a list of 163 companies I looked at when I was recruiting. Don’t be picky about which companies to apply to. If you think the product is interesting or you’ve heard good things about the company, then apply. Worry about choosing after you get a few offers. The application process I recommend first applying and interviewing for companies you’re less interested in. This is a good way to train for future interviews of companies you want more. But don’t do too many — you don’t want to burn out. When I recruit, I try to keep the process under 3 months and not do more than 10 onsite interviews. Anything more than that, I run out of steam and my performance suffers. When you’re scheduling your interviews, spread them out. Interviews are mentally draining, so you need time to rest in between. Companies won’t mind if you ask for a week or two before starting their process. Once you’re ready to apply, use a 5-pronged approach: Referrals Emailing recruiters Career fairs Online applications This list is ordered by success rate and time commitment. For example, referrals have the highest success rate but require the most time. Referrals are the single best way to land interviews. When an employee refers someone, that’s the golden endorsement. Referrals make up for less than 10% of applications, but 20-50% of eventual hires. Ask your friends or older students to refer you. You can also ask employees for a phone chat or coffee to learn more about the company and request a referral at the end. Don’t be shy about this. If you get hired, the employee who referred you gets a bonus — it’s win-win for both of you. Cold-emailing recruiters is the next best thing to referrals. For smaller companies without a formal recruiting pipeline, reach out to an Engineering Manager instead. For even smaller companies, just email the CEO or CTO. The easiest way to get email addresses is asking your network for recruiter contacts. You need a LinkedIn account to find email addresses. Look up the companies you want to apply to on LinkedIn and filter their employees by recruiters. Next, install Hunter or Slik, which lets you get the email address from a LinkedIn profile. Hunter doesn’t like it if you try to sign up using a personal email, so use your school email. Your emails should be concise. State your interest in a position and include a summary of your background. Remember to attach your resume. To save time, make a template. You just have to change the name of the recruiter, the name of the company, and your statement of interest. If you don’t get a reply in a week, follow up. If you don’t get a reply in another week, follow up again. Career fairs get you face time with recruiters and engineers. For career fairs, check which companies are attending beforehand. Jot down the ones you’re most interested in because you might not have time to talk to all of them. Print out 10 to 20 copies of your resume to pass to recruiters. Be ready to answer questions about your experiences and projects. I recommend going early — miss class if you have to. You’ll avoid the lines and catch recruiters before they’re exhausted from chatting nonstop. Don’t feel pressured to ask recruiters questions if you don’t have any. You won’t offend anyone if you get straight to the point and ask if they have openings. After your conversation, make sure to get their emails so you can follow up later. Oh yeah, and actually follow up! Don’t let those business cards gather dust with the free t-shirts and drawstring bags. For hackathons, you’ll be targeting one company you really like instead of 10 to 20. Company sponsors will set up shop at the venue. This is your in. Before the hackathon, find the sponsoring company you want to target. When you arrive, introduce yourself to its engineers and recruiters. Use their API in your project and interact with them throughout the hackathon. On the last day, go show them your project. Then, ask about job/internship opportunities. At this point, they’ve already seen your work ethic, creativity, and interest in their company. You’re pretty much guaranteed an interview. Hackathons can function as indirect career fairs also. I know people who’ve landed interviews through talking to engineers and recruiters from sponsoring companies at hackathons. For more advice on this strategy, read Ryan Norton’s article. Online applications are the easiest way to apply. Use a shotgun approach. Most applications only ask for your resume, so it’s easy to apply to a lot of companies in one go. Intern Supply, the Easy Application List, and your school’s career website are essential for finding open positions. Most of the time, you don’t need a cover letter. But if the company makes the cover letter mandatory or asks for a short answer response, be careful. In this case, the company really cares about fit, so craft a meticulous response. I’ve been burned many times by disregarding mandatory cover letters and short answers. Take your time when writing — a hurried response will show. For applying online, I also recommend TripleByte. You first complete a coding quiz. Then, TripleByte matches you with top companies and fast-tracks you through their hiring processes. Bear in mind this resource only works for finding full-time jobs. Conquering the interview For many people, this is the most nerve-wracking part of the process, but there’s no need to be anxious. The interviewer is on your side (even if it doesn’t seem like it). Before we go any further, there’s one thing you have to keep in mind. Show enthusiasm! Enthusiasm plays a huge role in whether you get an offer. Companies these days love to talk about how much they value culture fit. What they basically mean is they want someone who’s enthusiastic about their mission and product. The truth is most candidates aren’t good at being enthusiastic. The best way to ensure you do it is preparing a list of things you like about the company in advance. When answering behavioral questions or asking questions, bring up the items on your list. Use the company’s blog and its Crunchbase profile to find things you can talk about. Now, let’s go over some best practices for technical interviews. When you first hear the problem, write it down. Then, clarify with your interviewer what you think the question is asking. Don’t assume you understood the question the first time you heard it. Next, write down a few example inputs and outputs and verify they’re correct. This gives you time to think of a solution and provides tests you can run later. If you need more time to think, don’t be afraid ask for a minute to brainstorm. It shouldn’t be too hard to devise a brute-force solution. Talk through it with your interviewer while thinking of ways you can improve it. Continue bouncing ideas off your interviewer until you come up with a better solution. Explain it to your interviewer and only start coding after they’re satisfied. While you’re working through the problem, continuously communicate your thought process. How you think is more important than the actual answer. Be outspoken, but don’t blab on endlessly. Take pauses to think and let the interviewer make suggestions. Don’t space out or look distant. You should direct your full attention towards the interviewer to engage them. If they’re engaged, they’ll give you positive signals if you’re on track and hints if you’re not. What’s more, they’ll be emotionally invested in you and want you to succeed. At the end of the interview, you’ll get time to ask questions. Remember an interview is two-way. Don’t just ask questions you think the interviewer will like to hear. Ask questions you actually want to know the answers to. I suggest asking about personal experiences to get more authentic answers. Remember these tips and you’ll be ready to ace technical interviews. The average interview process looks like this: Coding challenge > Recruiter chat > Phone interview > Onsite interview The process varies by company. Sometimes the recruiter chat will be first. Sometimes you won’t have a coding challenge. But the general structure is similar. The coding challenge is a straightforward test. It’s usually hosted on Hackerrank. I suggest doing a couple of questions on it ahead of time to get familiar with the format. There’s no trick to the coding challenge. Pass as many tests as you can. With enough practice on Leetcode, this should be a walk in the park. The recruiter chat is an informal conversation. It’s usually for setting up the phone interview and answering any questions you have. You might get one or two behavioral questions. Once in a while, you might get trivia-esque technical questions like “Explain how a hashmap works.” Candidates rarely get rejected at this stage (although I’ve managed to do just that a few times). Treat this as a chance to learn more about the company. Ask high-level questions — recruiters generally don’t know technical details. Make sure to ask about the format of the rest of the interview process so you aren’t caught off guard by anything. The phone interview stage is one to two rounds of technical interviews. Sometimes you’ll do a video chat instead of a phone call. You’ll typically code out the answer in a shared editor like Collabedit. If the connection is bad or you’re having trouble understanding the interviewer, speak up. You’re not going to get docked points, so don’t try to tough it through. The onsite interview is three to six rounds of interviews with a lunch in between. A day of back-to-back interviews is exhausting — get enough sleep beforehand! Onsite interviews are mostly technical, but some companies mix in behavioral and design rounds. The lunch is for you to learn more about the company, so relax a little. During the interview, use the whiteboard to your advantage. Leave plenty of space on the right side and between the lines so you have room to make edits. After the interview, don’t dwell on it. Thinking about it isn’t going to change the final result. Treat it as if you were rejected and continue applying and practicing. Evaluating the offer Congratulations! You got an offer! Give yourself a big pat on the back — you earned it. But your work isn’t done yet. First, thank your recruiter and re-express your enthusiasm for the company. Then, ask for your offer in writing. It’s time to negotiate. A job offer isn’t an act of generosity — it’s a proposal to strike a deal. Naturally, a deal involves negotiation. I’m not going to elaborate too much on negotiation tactics. Just read Haseeb Qureshi’s killer guide on negotiation. Bear in mind some offers are non-negotiable, but it never hurts to try. Avoid unpaid jobs. In 90% of cases, it’s not worth it. I’m all for prioritizing learning over pay, but at least work for a company that values you enough to pay you. If you have more than one offer, congrats! You’re awesome. But now you have to make a decision. Choosing which offer to accept is a nice problem to have. The best offer depends on the specific candidate, but here’s one universal suggestion I hope serves you well. Make a list of 10 professional and personal goals you want to achieve in the next 10 years. It could be anything, like paying off student loans, founding a startup, or mastering a new hobby. Choose the job that brings you closest to these goals. Here are a couple more tips to remember: Your future manager is vital to your career growth. Find a great mentor who will double as your champion. Do internships at different companies to gain broader experiences. You’ll learn more and expand professional network. Optimize for learning and growth over pay, unless the pay is really bad. Work at one brand name company. It’ll make recruiting in the future easier, but know that it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have one. Choice of programming language doesn’t matter. What matters is learning good engineering practices and how to work in a team. Choose an engineering-first company with a software/hardware product. Don’t forget about passion. It’s an amazing feeling building a product you believe in. Conclusion This brings us to the end of this guide. I hope that with this, you’ll be much better prepared than I was when starting a career in tech. In the beginning, getting an offer might seem impossible, but the key is treating it as a series of milestones rather than one enormous task. If you make a little bit of progress every day, you’ll be there before you know it! When you do get that dream job, don’t forget to give back. Share your experiences and extend referrals. Pass on the love, and we’ll all fly higher.
Gayle McDowell is the Founder and CEO of CareerCup and the author of Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the Coding Interview and Cracking the Tech Career. She talks about how to prepare for Product Manager interviews, what top companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft really look for, and how to tackle the toughest problems. She also discussed how PM role varies across companies, what experience you need, how to make your existing experience translate, what a great PM resume and cover letter look like, and finally, how to master the PM interview questions.
Podlodka #31 – Собеседования у нас и за рубежом Мы уже несколько раз вкратце проходились по теме собеседований, но в этот раз решили посвятить ей целый выпуск. Иованна Мишанина, посетившая 80 собеседований за свою жизнь, из которых 30 – этим летом в Лондоне, рассказала нам о своем опыте общения с разными компаниями. В этот раз поговорили про все этапы интервью – HR, технический и знакомство с командой, пользу написание кода на листочке, важность знания алгоритмов для мобильщика, и поделились восхитительными историями из своего опыта. На правах рекламы: Приходи работать в Badoo. Проходите онлайн-тест, затем 18-19 ноября их разработчики на месте проводят серию интервью, по окончанию которых выдают оффер и увозят вас к себе в Лондон. https://events.badoo.com/podlodka Поддержи лучший подкаст про мобильную разработку: www.patreon.com/podlodka Также ждем вас, ваши лайки, репосты и комменты в мессенджерах и соцсетях! Telegram-чат: https://t.me/podlodka Страница в Facebook: www.facebook.com/podlodkacast/ Twitter-аккаунт: https://twitter.com/PodlodkaPodcast Содержание: - 00:03:00 - Обновление Patreon - 00:07:45 - Знакомство с гостем - 00:09:25 - Как готовить резюме - 00:18:04 - Самые важные пункты в резюме - 00:27:25 - Выбираем, в какую компанию пойти работать - 00:39:10 - Собеседование с HR - 00:53:50 - Технический этап интервью - 01:06:00 - Нужно ли писать код на интервью - 01:21:30 - Различия в знаниях у Android и iOS разработчиков - 01:30:14 - Архитектурный этап интервью - 01:37:10 - Собеседования техлидов - 01:40:13 - Про тестовые задания - 01:53:50 - Набор советов по прохождению интервью от Стаса - 02:01:00 - Набор советов по прохождению интервью от Иованны - 02:06:47 - Набор советов по прохождению интервью от Егора - 02:12:10 - Полезные советы по проведению интервью от абстрактной компании Полезные ссылки: - Cracking the Coding Interview https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Cracking_the_Coding_Interview.html?id=anhAXwAACAAJ&hl=en - Get that Job at Google http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com.ar/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html - Пример прохождения интервью на знание алгоритмов https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKu_SEDAykw&feature=em-subs_digest - Top Coder Algorithm Practise https://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=ProblemArchive - Glassdoor https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/index.htm - Hacker Rank https://www.hackerrank.com/
Heriberto Pérez, Alejandro Espinoza, Víctor Velázquez Ingenieros de Software en MagmaLabs comparten otro episodio De código, Café y Cervezas con temas de tecnología, desarrollo de software, entrevistas, y eventos. Tema central: - Technical Interviews: Invitado especial [Ivan Velasquez](https://twitter.com/IvanChukitow) - Cracking the coding interview: https://books.google.com.mx/books/about/Cracking_the_Coding_Interview.html?id=anhAXwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y ¿Cuál es la empresa de tus sueños?
Нам очень часто задают вопрос “Как войти в IT”. Чтобы закрыть эту тему на долгое время, мы решили позвать настоящего эксперта - Алексея Скутаренко, автора самого известного в России курса для начинающих iOS разработчиков. Обсудили, что должен знать Junior, откуда можно получить эти знания и как их потом конвертировать в работу. Также затрагивается животрепещущая тема работы в мировых корпорациях. Разговор получился действительно интересным, хоть и длинным! Содержание: 00:00:00 - Приветствие 00:00:40 - Знакомство с гостем 00:23:50 - Как стать Junior iOS разработчиком 00:54:00 - Что должен знать Junior 01:13:05 - Про группу iOS Development Course 01:46:55 - Советы по прохождению собеседований 02:15:47 - Ответы на вопросы к Алексею Полезные ссылки: - Сообщество Алексея Скутаренко https://vk.com/iosdevcourse - Книги: Effective Java, Effective Objective-C, Thinking In Java, Clean Code, Cracking the Coding Interview
A lot of guys have been asking me to do a review about Cracking The Coding Interview, and the time has come. In this video I'll tell you if you should buy Cracking The Coding Interview and why I consider it one of the best programming books ever written (even though it is above Soft Skills on Amazon). Here is the book description extracted from Amazon "I am not a recruiter. I am a software engineer. And as such, I know what it's like to be asked to whip up brilliant algorithms on the spot and then write flawless code on a whiteboard. I've been through this as a candidate and as an interviewer. Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition is here to help you through this process, teaching you what you need to know and enabling you to perform at your very best. I've coached and interviewed hundreds of software engineers. The result is this book. Learn how to uncover the hints and hidden details in a question, discover how to break down a problem into manageable chunks, develop techniques to unstick yourself when stuck, learn (or re-learn) core computer science concepts, and practice on 189 interview questions and solutions. These interview questions are real; they are not pulled out of computer science textbooks. They reflect what's truly being asked at the top companies, so that you can be as prepared as possible. WHAT'S INSIDE? 189 programming interview questions, ranging from the basics to the trickiest algorithm problems. A walk-through of how to derive each solution, so that you can learn how to get there yourself. Hints on how to solve each of the 189 questions, just like what you would get in a real interview. Five proven strategies to tackle algorithm questions, so that you can solve questions you haven't seen. Extensive coverage of essential topics, such as big O time, data structures, and core algorithms. A behind the scenes look at how top companies like Google and Facebook hire developers. Techniques to prepare for and ace the soft side of the interview: behavioral questions. For interviewers and companies: details on what makes a good interview question and hiring process." Cracking The Coding Interview: https://simpleprogrammer.com/codinginterview Soft Skills: http://simpleprogrammer.com/softskills
Alex and Drew open the show talking about interview protocols and discuss the book Drew is reading: Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions, by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. They review hightlights from the previous week's meetups in the Vancouver tech scene, then Alex talks about progress and encountering rabbit holes with learning to code from her blog currently hosted on Medium. They also discuss drawbacks (bloat) and benefits of software, including how awesome the Jet Brains IntelliJ IDEA IDE is. Our guest this week is Dean Sutton. Dean is the CEO and Co-founder of Insight Diagnostics which is a medical technology company from Vancouver and speaks about the projects they're working on and the process of fundraising. Dean believes in developing technologies, companies and movements that truly matter. He's focused on building health technologies, clean energy and early stage technology development. Dean recommends a few resources if you're just getting started: read Lean Startup by Eric Reise, go out to meetups and events and speak to Universities about their recent or upcoming grads in the fields and technology you're looking to pursue. Dean supports the Vancouver startup / technology scene from a founders perspective and is providing guidance and support through Farmteam and has provided early stage financing for startups through resources such as Wavefront, Creative Destruction Labs and many more. Dean is also looking for technical talent with health tech experience to join his team, so if you're on the hunt, reach out to him by email or on twitter @DeanSutton.
Carina C. Zona helps us understand algorithms, both what they are and how they are used. She walks us through fascinating examples of how they've been used in technology over the years, exploring the benefits and unintended consequences they've had along the way, and how we as developers can boost those benefits and decrease those unintended consequences. Show Links Digital Ocean (sponsor) MongoDB (sponsor) Heroku (sponsor) TwilioQuest (sponsor) Consequences of an Insightful Algorithm Schemas for the Real World Cracking the Coding Interview (book) How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did Google's Autotagging Feature Flickr's Autotagging Feature Codeland Conf Codeland 2019
Check out Ruby Remote Conf! 02:12 - Ra’Shaun “Snuggs” Stovall Introduction Twitter GitHub Facebook 02:29 - Noel Sagaille Introduction Twitter GitHub Censible 02:56 - The Pomodoro Technique Parkinson's Law 04:43 - Community and Community Leaders The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss “Hometraining” Being John Malkovich Polyphasic Sleep Carl Jung 19:11 - Values Altruism Autonomy 26:02 - Mentorship Switching Roles Advocacy Mastermind Groups Homage Picks RFC 2119 (Sam) James Edward Gray II: Implementing the LHC on a Whiteboard (Coraline) Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions by Gayle Laakmann McDowell (Coraline) Thinking about your health (Chuck) FitBit One (Chuck) Block & Flow (Ra'Shaun) Censible (Ra’Shaun) Heroku Pipelines (Noel) Dialogue - A proposal by David Bohm, Donald Factor and Peter Garrett (Noel)
Check out Ruby Remote Conf! 02:12 - Ra’Shaun “Snuggs” Stovall Introduction Twitter GitHub Facebook 02:29 - Noel Sagaille Introduction Twitter GitHub Censible 02:56 - The Pomodoro Technique Parkinson's Law 04:43 - Community and Community Leaders The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss “Hometraining” Being John Malkovich Polyphasic Sleep Carl Jung 19:11 - Values Altruism Autonomy 26:02 - Mentorship Switching Roles Advocacy Mastermind Groups Homage Picks RFC 2119 (Sam) James Edward Gray II: Implementing the LHC on a Whiteboard (Coraline) Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions by Gayle Laakmann McDowell (Coraline) Thinking about your health (Chuck) FitBit One (Chuck) Block & Flow (Ra'Shaun) Censible (Ra’Shaun) Heroku Pipelines (Noel) Dialogue - A proposal by David Bohm, Donald Factor and Peter Garrett (Noel)
Check out Ruby Remote Conf! 02:12 - Ra’Shaun “Snuggs” Stovall Introduction Twitter GitHub Facebook 02:29 - Noel Sagaille Introduction Twitter GitHub Censible 02:56 - The Pomodoro Technique Parkinson's Law 04:43 - Community and Community Leaders The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss “Hometraining” Being John Malkovich Polyphasic Sleep Carl Jung 19:11 - Values Altruism Autonomy 26:02 - Mentorship Switching Roles Advocacy Mastermind Groups Homage Picks RFC 2119 (Sam) James Edward Gray II: Implementing the LHC on a Whiteboard (Coraline) Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions by Gayle Laakmann McDowell (Coraline) Thinking about your health (Chuck) FitBit One (Chuck) Block & Flow (Ra'Shaun) Censible (Ra’Shaun) Heroku Pipelines (Noel) Dialogue - A proposal by David Bohm, Donald Factor and Peter Garrett (Noel)
This week, we talk with Gayle Laakmann McDowell in Palo Alto, CA. Gayle is the Founder and CEO of CareerCup.com and Author of multiple interview books, including Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the PM Interview, and Cracking the Tech Career. Her background is in software development with undergrad and graduate degrees in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and a MBA from the Wharton School. She previously worked as a software engineer at Google, Microsoft, and Apple. On today's episode, Gayle shares her advice on how to crack the coding interview. She also shares tips on how to move from one functional area to another, and how to avoid common mistakes. Listen and learn more! If you've enjoyed the program today, be sure to subscribe to the Copeland Coaching Podcast on iTunes to ensure you don't miss an episode. To learn more about Career Cup, visit Gayle's website at http://www.careercup.com/.
02:36 - Software Development and Reality Construction by Christiane Floyd Hermeneutics 05:42 - Peter Naur: Programming as Theory Building 07:55 - The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life's Most Essential Skill by Karla McLaren 13:14 - Programming Elixir: Functional |> Concurrent |> Pragmatic |> Fun by Dave Thomas 14:32 - ng-book 2 16:09 - Paper Reading Group Adrian Colyer's Blog We hear you like papers by Ines Sombra (Slides) 19:58 - Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck 20:29 - Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions by Gayle Laakmann McDowell 22:01 - Ruby Rogues Book Club Books Episodes Ruby Rogues Episode #23: Book Club: Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns with Kent Beck Ruby Rogues Episode #87: Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby with Sandi Metz Ruby Rogues Episode #68: Book Club: Growing Object Oriented Software Guided by Tests with Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce Ruby Rogues Episode #97: Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture with Martin Fowler Ruby Rogues Episode #178: Book Club: Refactoring Ruby with Martin Fowler 22:43 - Books to Learn When You’re Learning to Become a Software Developer Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick Phillips Brooks Software Project Survival Guide by Steve McConnell Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by Steve McConnell The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt The Practice of Programming by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike 33:07 - Technical Programming Books Programming Perl: Unmatched power for text processing and scripting by Tom Christiansen (The Camel Book) Unix Power Tools by Shelley Powers Ruby Cookbook by Lucas Carlson Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide by Dave Thomas, with Chad Fowler and Andy Hunt Agile Web Development with Rails 4 (Facets of Ruby) by Sam Ruby SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL by John Viescas The Art of SQL by Stephane Faroult PostgreSQL: Up and Running: A Practical Introduction to the Advanced Open Source Database by Regina O. Obe SQL Pocket Guide by Jonathan Gennick SQL Antipatterns: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Database Programming by Bill Karwin Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby Why The Lucky Stiff 41:17 - Pramming and Business Books The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development (Pragmatic Life) by Chad Fowler Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual by John Sonmez The Rails Freelancing Handbook by Mike Gunderloy The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy: Practical Tips for Staying Safe Online by Violet Blue Doxing Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World by Venkat Subramaniam Picks Mark Manson: The Most Important Question of Your Life (Jessica) Dan Luu: Normalization of Deviance in Software: How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal (Coraline) The Noun Project (Avdi) Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen (Avdi) CES (Chuck) Bill Buxton: Avoiding the Big Crash (Jessica)
02:36 - Software Development and Reality Construction by Christiane Floyd Hermeneutics 05:42 - Peter Naur: Programming as Theory Building 07:55 - The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life's Most Essential Skill by Karla McLaren 13:14 - Programming Elixir: Functional |> Concurrent |> Pragmatic |> Fun by Dave Thomas 14:32 - ng-book 2 16:09 - Paper Reading Group Adrian Colyer's Blog We hear you like papers by Ines Sombra (Slides) 19:58 - Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck 20:29 - Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions by Gayle Laakmann McDowell 22:01 - Ruby Rogues Book Club Books Episodes Ruby Rogues Episode #23: Book Club: Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns with Kent Beck Ruby Rogues Episode #87: Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby with Sandi Metz Ruby Rogues Episode #68: Book Club: Growing Object Oriented Software Guided by Tests with Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce Ruby Rogues Episode #97: Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture with Martin Fowler Ruby Rogues Episode #178: Book Club: Refactoring Ruby with Martin Fowler 22:43 - Books to Learn When You’re Learning to Become a Software Developer Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick Phillips Brooks Software Project Survival Guide by Steve McConnell Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by Steve McConnell The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt The Practice of Programming by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike 33:07 - Technical Programming Books Programming Perl: Unmatched power for text processing and scripting by Tom Christiansen (The Camel Book) Unix Power Tools by Shelley Powers Ruby Cookbook by Lucas Carlson Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide by Dave Thomas, with Chad Fowler and Andy Hunt Agile Web Development with Rails 4 (Facets of Ruby) by Sam Ruby SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL by John Viescas The Art of SQL by Stephane Faroult PostgreSQL: Up and Running: A Practical Introduction to the Advanced Open Source Database by Regina O. Obe SQL Pocket Guide by Jonathan Gennick SQL Antipatterns: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Database Programming by Bill Karwin Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby Why The Lucky Stiff 41:17 - Pramming and Business Books The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development (Pragmatic Life) by Chad Fowler Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual by John Sonmez The Rails Freelancing Handbook by Mike Gunderloy The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy: Practical Tips for Staying Safe Online by Violet Blue Doxing Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World by Venkat Subramaniam Picks Mark Manson: The Most Important Question of Your Life (Jessica) Dan Luu: Normalization of Deviance in Software: How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal (Coraline) The Noun Project (Avdi) Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen (Avdi) CES (Chuck) Bill Buxton: Avoiding the Big Crash (Jessica)
02:36 - Software Development and Reality Construction by Christiane Floyd Hermeneutics 05:42 - Peter Naur: Programming as Theory Building 07:55 - The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life's Most Essential Skill by Karla McLaren 13:14 - Programming Elixir: Functional |> Concurrent |> Pragmatic |> Fun by Dave Thomas 14:32 - ng-book 2 16:09 - Paper Reading Group Adrian Colyer's Blog We hear you like papers by Ines Sombra (Slides) 19:58 - Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck 20:29 - Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions by Gayle Laakmann McDowell 22:01 - Ruby Rogues Book Club Books Episodes Ruby Rogues Episode #23: Book Club: Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns with Kent Beck Ruby Rogues Episode #87: Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby with Sandi Metz Ruby Rogues Episode #68: Book Club: Growing Object Oriented Software Guided by Tests with Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce Ruby Rogues Episode #97: Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture with Martin Fowler Ruby Rogues Episode #178: Book Club: Refactoring Ruby with Martin Fowler 22:43 - Books to Learn When You’re Learning to Become a Software Developer Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick Phillips Brooks Software Project Survival Guide by Steve McConnell Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by Steve McConnell The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt The Practice of Programming by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike 33:07 - Technical Programming Books Programming Perl: Unmatched power for text processing and scripting by Tom Christiansen (The Camel Book) Unix Power Tools by Shelley Powers Ruby Cookbook by Lucas Carlson Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide by Dave Thomas, with Chad Fowler and Andy Hunt Agile Web Development with Rails 4 (Facets of Ruby) by Sam Ruby SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL by John Viescas The Art of SQL by Stephane Faroult PostgreSQL: Up and Running: A Practical Introduction to the Advanced Open Source Database by Regina O. Obe SQL Pocket Guide by Jonathan Gennick SQL Antipatterns: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Database Programming by Bill Karwin Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby Why The Lucky Stiff 41:17 - Pramming and Business Books The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development (Pragmatic Life) by Chad Fowler Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual by John Sonmez The Rails Freelancing Handbook by Mike Gunderloy The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy: Practical Tips for Staying Safe Online by Violet Blue Doxing Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World by Venkat Subramaniam Picks Mark Manson: The Most Important Question of Your Life (Jessica) Dan Luu: Normalization of Deviance in Software: How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal (Coraline) The Noun Project (Avdi) Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen (Avdi) CES (Chuck) Bill Buxton: Avoiding the Big Crash (Jessica)
Naoki Hiroshima さんと、及川卓也さん、Google, 採用面接などについて話しました。 Show Notes グーグルでChrome開発に関わった及川卓也氏が「Qiita」開発元Incrementsの14人目の社員に A Day of Communication at GitHub WINDOWS NT 4.0完全技術解説 NHK プロフェッショナル 仕事の流儀 #20 Browser | mozaic.fm Cracking the Coding Interview, 6th Edition
Gayle Laakman McDowell is the Founder and CEO of CareerCup.com as well as the author of “Cracking the Coding Interview” and the “Google Resume”. Gayle has worked as a software engineer for a number of companies, including Google, Microsoft and Apple and has an extensive amount of interviewing experience at both sides of the table. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UPenn in Computer Science as well as an MBA from the Wharton School.