Our last session was the most fun we've had - thanks to the almost 100 of you who joined us to discuss tips to succeed in your tech interviews. Find the recap below 🥰 💯 . The next session is on Thursday, March 11 6:30pm PST about choosing your path as a software engineer. Our experience is with software engineering, but we think there will still be some wisdom here even if you're thinking about PM, DS, or something else.

To get reminded about the event, join (1) the LinkedIn event and (2) our Slack. If you have feedback, we're all ears :)

Here's a recap of the previous session, "How To Ace Your Tech Interview":

Meta-discussion:

1. Interviews suck but they get better as you do more of them. Interview at companies you're less excited about earlier in the process.
2. Try to pack together all interviews with companies you care about within the same time window, so you can leverage competing offers to maximize your compensation.
3. Interview even if you're happy with your job. It's a good exercise to keep this muscle in check, explore the world, and get a feeling on whether you are being paid what you're worth.

Preparation:

1. If you have a big company interview, just get Leetcode Premium (or any service you think is worthwhile). Paying ~$100 dollars to increase your chances of landing a prestigious $100k+ job is a very worthwhile value exchange.
2. Find a buddy to mock interview you! It's so valuable being able to bounce ideas off of a human. Pooja shared interviewing.io as a tool with a free tier that can help here.
3. Take frequent breaks! Interview prep can be exhausting, so the most important thing is to do it consistently- taking breaks will help with this.

During the interview:

1. Don't spend too long introducing yourself. You're eating up valuable time for the main technical portion of the interview.
2. Interviews should feel more like a conversation than a test- talk through various options and take hints from the interviewer.
3. Done is better than perfect. Present multiple options, including bad ones, but acknowledge weaknesses in your proposal if you can.
4. System design questions: if you're coding, you're failing. Ask a bunch of questions to understand the requirements. Remember that there's no right answer - every solution will have tradeoffs which you should highlight with the interviewer.

After the interview:

1. Take the part where you can ask the interviewer questions about the company seriously. Ask a question where thoughtful, smart people can have different answers (yes/no questions or those with a concrete answer are not good).
2. Interviews produce a lot of false negatives and can frankly be stupid a lot of the time. Don't be discouraged if an interview doesn't work out.

A lot more discussion happens in Slack if you're interested (reply to this message if you want an explicit invite) :)

Hope to hear your voices on Thursday!

Rahul and Alex

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