BC SOFTWARE
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

Software engineering interview experiences don't have to be terrible.

Thread on my best software engineering interview experience.
👇🏼 (Thanks @PaulYacoubian for the idea)

 Starting from the top of the funnel, I heard of this company (fintech startup, close to $1b valuation, based in NYC) from a podcast they were advertising on, and I liked the mission.

I went to their website and applied.
Their application portal used greenhouse. One page and no need for re-typing resume info.

They had an open field that said "Tell me something we should know about you".

I wrote about how I was a career switcher, had kids, went to school while working full time, etc.
Here's where they started to stand out.

They emailed me back a few days later and sent me a calendly link to schedule my first interview.

Letting the candidate choose a time for an interview is a small detail but is great for reducing candidate stress.
I scheduled my first interview. I received an email detailing what the interview would be about, what to expect, and what to prepare for. It would be a casual chat.

My interviewer mentioned and asked tons of questions about the free-response field I had filled out earlier.
After, He immediately told me the next steps and gave an outline for the whole process.

1- Pair programming with one engineer. Pass/Fail to next round
2- Pair programming session with 3 engineers in one day. Pass/Fail to next round
3- Talks with executive folks
4 - Offer
The first pair programming session was an open-ended system design type interview. (I interviewed for two different roles 2 years apart at this company. They later switched to using @byteboardDev for this portion, which I really enjoyed.)
They let me use my own laptop for all pair programming. I could use google, ask questions from the interviewer, and overall it felt more closely related to a pair programming session at work than an interview.

All the people I paired with were friendly and low-ego.
Something that stood out to me:
I spoke with ~10 people each time I interviewed, and I could tell that each of them had read my application closely.

They showed a general interest in me!

Contrast this to other interviews I've had where they seemed almost bothered I was there
At the end of each step, I was informed clearly what and when I should expect to hear from them next.

I never felt in the dark.

They biased towards responding quickly. The whole interview felt well thought out.
The pair programming itself was a problem related to finance. Add X feature to this full-stack application in rails.

The interview closely approximated what a day in the life of working at the company would be like. No algorithm questions.
It was a fun exercise and I didn't feel drained for once during the interview process.

The talks with the executives went great too. They were transparent about the needs, what they were looking for, growth trajectory, etc.
Here's where it gets even better.

I accepted an offer but later had to rescind it.
I rescinded because we found out we were having a baby.

The offer was for an internship in NYC. I live in Texas. Couldn't miss his birth.

I felt bad but they were very understanding. The recruiter also recently found out they were having a child and he sounded excited for us!
I thought that was the end of it but around a year later the recruiter reached back out to me and asked how the baby was doing.

We chatted back and forth for a few weeks over email on babies, software development, etc.

It felt very human and it made a huge impression on me.
A few years later in my career, I started looking for a new full-time role. The first company that popped up in my head was this one.

I emailed the recruiter and he started the process over for me again. It was mostly the same but just as pleasant.
I didn't ever end up working at this company but I've told countless friends and colleagues about the interview process and how great it was.

If you put the candidate experience first, your interview process can be another form of PR/Marketing for your hiring funnel
Lots of companies get this wrong, so if you can do things to stand out, your candidates will tell engineers and lower your overall hiring cost.

Have empathy for the people you are interviewing.

More from Software

John Mashey
John Mashey
@JohnMashey
@mattblaze AFAIK the only group to discover Ken’s hack was us in PWB/UNIX. One of the other guys noticed C prepreprocessor had gotten bigger, looked at binary namelist, found symbol not in source code. I got onto Ken’s system, found the code, very clever.

A bit latet, I was in Lab 127’s terminal room, talking to dmr or bwk, and overheard amusing conversation between ken and Robert Morris Sr, who sometimes consulted for NSA.
(RM Jr of worm fame was just a kid then.)

They were chortling away over cleverness of exploit. Then one (must have been ken) said “think we could put this over on NSA?” (which already had UNIX systems... we did favors now and then).
More chortling, then (must have been Bob): uhh, NSA really doesn’t have sense of humor.

PWB crew ran 1st real UNIX computer center & we were hyper-sensitive, partly because someone had called at night, told operator he was Ken Thompson & needed root password ... and got it. Turned out to be high schooler ... proving that social engineering tactics have been eternal.

Years later, as many BTL Directors were buying PDP11-70s for labs as general service systems, some PWB crew were asked to do security audits, given experience running biggest UNIX site. One lab was very proud of enhanced password software.
We did audit, agreed with that, BUT:
SOFTWARE
Yan Cui is making the AppSync Masterclass
Yan Cui is making the ...
@theburningmonk
I've gotten a few questions about Aurora Serverless v2 preview, so here's what I've learnt so far. Please feel free to chime in if I've missed anything important or got any of the facts wrong.

Alright, here goes the 🧵...

Q: does it replace the existing Aurora Serverless offering?
A: no, it lives side-by-side with the existing Aurora Serverless, which will still be available to you as "v1".

Q: Aurora Serverless v1 takes a few seconds to scale up, that's too much for our use case where we get a lot of spikes. Is that the same with v2?
A: no, v2 scales up in milliseconds, during preview the max ACU is only 32 though

Q: is the cold start for Aurora Serverless v2 still a few seconds?
A: yes, unfortunately...
Q: so if you want to avoid cold starts, what's the minimum ACU you have to run?
A: minimum ACU with v2 is 0.5

Q: does v2 still scale up in double increments, e.g. 4 ACU -> 8 ACU?
A: no, it scales up in increments of 0.5 ACUs, so it's a much tighter fit for your workload, so you'll waste less money on over-provisioned ACUs
SOFTWARE
Advertisement
John Fetterman
John Fetterman
@JohnFetterman
buffalo uses dominion scoreboard software so not really


DEAD PEOPLE SCORED FOR BUFFALO!

A truck delivered off a suitcase full of points at halftime from Canada for Buffalo.

#StopTheSteel !!!!

I’ll be submitting sworn affidavits from Steelers fans than they saw the Buffalo rigging the game but I want to emphasize that I’m not under oath.
SOFTWARE
Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald
@ggreenwald
How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed

In the last three months, tech giants have censored political speech and journalism to manipulate U.S. politics -- banning reporting on the Bidens, removing the President, destroying a new competitor -- while US liberals, with virtual unanimity, have cheered.

The ACLU said the unity of Silicon Valley monopoly power to destroy Parler was deeply troubling. Leaders from Germany, France and Mexico protested. Only US liberals support it, because the dominant strain of US liberalism is not economic socialism but political authoritarianism.

https://t.co/qD9OdwlPbV


Just three months ago, a Dem-led House Committee issued a major report warning of the dangers of the anti-trust power of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook. Left-wing scholars have been sounding the alarm for years. Now it's here, and liberals
SOFTWARE
Yan Cui is making the AppSync Masterclass
Yan Cui is making the ...
@theburningmonk
If you missed @clare_liguori's Continuous Delivery session this week (like I did) then good news, it's available on-demand now 🎊

https://t.co/78b8sI2hHs

And here's my play-by-play for the session

🧵...

This is a typical CD pipeline in AWS.

This is far more complex than the most complex CD pipeline I have ever had! Just cos it's complex, doesn't mean it's over-engineered though. Given the blast radius, I'm glad they do releases carefully and safely.


If you look closely, beyond all the alpha, beta, gamma environments, it's one-box in a region first then the rest of the region, I assume starting with the least risky regions first.

For anyone thinking about going multi-region (after the recent Kinesis outage), this is one of the complexities you need to consider. To do multi-region right and deploy safely (minimize blast radius), this is one of the complexities you have to factor in.

This "deploy small at first then more broadly" principle applies to #serverless apps too, though you can't "deploy to one box". You can do it with canary deployments instead, CodeDeploy supports this practice for Lambda (using weighted aliases) out-of-the-box.
SOFTWARE

You May Also Like

Anu Satheesh \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Anu Satheesh 🇮🇳...
@AnuSatheesh5
Panniyur Sri Varahamurthy Temple Palakkad, Kerala
#KeralaTemples 🚩

Panniyur Sri Varahamurthy Temple is located in Pattambi Taluk of Palakkad District. This is believed to be the first temple in Kerala, where Prathishta was done by Parasurama

Story says that, Parashurama after


Creating Kerala was doing Tapasya here. But he was disturbed as the land faced turbulence. Parashurama sought Narada’s help, who advised him to pray to Vishnu. Parashurama started praying Maha Vishnu. Finally Maha Vishnu appeared and told to do Prathishta of his Varaha Avatar.


As Earth is saved in Varaha Avatar, this temple is famous to solve land related issues.

Many people conduct Bhoomi puja here, which is very special here. They bring sand from around the temple which is used for pooja and then has to be returned to the same spot 👇


from where it was taken.
It is also believed that Perumthachan, the legedary craftsman has abandoned his tools here.
Om Shri Varaha Murthaye Namah
🙏🕉🙏
ALL
Nikita Poojary
Nikita Poojary
@niki_poojary
One of the most successful stock trader with special focus on cash stocks and who has a very creative mind to look out for opportunities in dark times

Covering one of the most unique set ups: Extended moves & Reversal plays

Time for a 🧵 to learn the above from @iManasArora

What qualifies for an extended move?

30-40% move in just 5-6 days is one example of extended move

How Manas used this info to book


Post that the plight of the


Example 2: Booking profits when the stock is extended from 10WMA

10WMA =


Another hack to identify extended move in a stock:

Too many green days!

Read
SCREENERS , A SCREENER
Advertisement
Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
SRI BANKEY BIHARI JI, VRINDAVAN (UP)

Very famous Krishna Mandir where Bankey Bihari Ji is worshipped and looked after as a child.
Bankey means “Bent at three places”.
Thakur Ji was worshipped in Nidhivan till 1863. This mandir was constructed in 1864 by Goswamis.
@LostTemple7


Legend says that Swami Haridas used to worship Krishna in Nidhivan.
Once, his curious disciples entered the forest but they were almost blinded by bright, intense light. Upon knowing this, Swamiji himself went there and after his requests, Krishna appeared with his consort.


Krishna, then, left back this black charming murti,which we see now, before disappearing.
A curtain is drawn before the murti after every 15-30 second. It is said that if one stares long enough into the eyes of Shri Banke Bihari, the person would lose his self consciousness.


Bankey Bihari Ji sports a flute only once a year on the eve of Sharad Purnima.
Darshan of His lotus feet can be done only on Akshay Tritiya every year.
There are no loud bells here and
no early morning Darshan can be done so that child Krishna’s sleep is not disturbed.
ALL
Tom Hirst
Tom Hirst
@tom_hirst
How to create a freelancing website that makes money.

Everything I've learned.

A thread.

As a freelancer,

Your website is everything.

First, prioritise its existence.

Second, prioritise its improvement.

The technology you use is irrelevant.

- WordPress
- Notion
- Carrd
- Wix

It doesn't matter which you choose,

What matters is you have a website.

Pick a platform that you're comfortable with.

If you can:

- Capture leads
- Add content easily
- Have a clear design

You're good.

If your website doesn't get leads,

It's not working.

Don't rest on a website that doesn't work for you.

Improve it until it does.
STARTUPS
Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
Most software founders, particularly in B2B, need to get radically better at sales. @Steli , who is the best person for explaining the scrappy stages in the beginning and then building out a team with scripts and processes, wrote a guide to:

For technical founders it is irrationally, obscenely hard to reverse years of programming (ba dum bum) that sales is a value-destroying activity. Sales is CLEARLY a value-creating activity, contingent on you have a value-creating product.

The world will not drop what they are doing to adopt your work. This is particularly true in B2B, where simply building a better mousetrap won't overcome the activation energy required to get people with additional non-mice problems to prioritize changing mousetraps today.

This is very non-obvious for founders because founders are not often people who *want* to be sold to. We often come from a background where trying out tools is a bit of a fun hobby. We like looking at all the options, making charts, and ripping out partially complete tests.

"This week I unsuccessfully trialed four software options for automating that thing that has been killing us. Our actual production process remains the same as last week. Don't worry; this was a great use of time." is not a thing you want to write in a progress report to manager.
TECH