Imagine you just finished an important job interview. You prepared extensively, had great answers to every question, and felt you really connected with the interviewer. But a few days later, you get the dreaded rejection email. What went wrong? There‘s a critical factor in interviews that‘s often overlooked: how you sound. You could have the…
Photo by Ilya Pavlov on Unsplash If you‘ve interviewed for a developer job in the past few years, chances are you‘ve received a dreaded interview assignment. You know, those "take-home" coding challenges, technical tests, or mini-projects companies ask you to complete on your own time as part of the screening process. On the surface, these…
As a full-stack developer with a year and a half of experience, I found myself unexpectedly thrust back into the job market. The company I worked for had undergone significant downsizing, and my position was one of many that were eliminated. While the experience was shocking and disheartening, it also presented an opportunity for growth…
As a seasoned full-stack developer, I‘ve been on both sides of the interview table countless times. One thing I‘ve learned: the interview is a two-way street. It‘s not just a chance for the company to evaluate your technical chops and culture fit, but an opportunity for you to assess if the role and organization align…
Landing a coveted software engineering job at Instagram is no easy feat. The Facebook-owned company is known for its rigorous technical interview process, which can involve multiple rounds of phone screens, coding exercises, system design discussions, and on-site interviews. Just how hard is it to get hired at Instagram? According to data from Candor, the…
As a full-stack developer with over a decade of experience, I‘ve had the opportunity to participate in numerous pair programming interviews, both as an interviewer and an interviewee. These collaborative coding sessions offer a unique glimpse into how developers think, communicate, and work together to solve problems. In this article, I‘ll share some of the…
As a seasoned full-stack developer who has conducted hundreds of technical interviews, I‘ve seen firsthand what separates the top candidates from the rest of the pack. While there‘s no one-size-fits-all formula for acing a programming interview, there are several key strategies that can help you showcase your skills and stand out from the crowd. In…
I‘ll never forget the first time I faced a major rejection as a developer. Early in my coding journey, I poured my heart into a web app project, excitedly submitted it to a prestigious competition… and didn‘t even make it past the first round. I was crushed. If my code wasn‘t good enough to win,…
As developers, we tend to fixate on having the right answers. After all, our job is often about providing solutions, delivering features, and debugging issues. We pride ourselves on our technical expertise, on our ability to crack hard problems, and on our skill in translating abstract requirements into concrete code. But amidst this drive to…
Backtracking is a powerful algorithmic technique that solves problems by incrementally building candidates to solutions and abandoning a candidate ("backtracking") as soon as it determines that the candidate cannot lead to a valid solution. It is especially prevalent in coding interviews, with many common question types relying on backtracking as the optimal approach. As a…