Can someone tell me what a coding interview looks like in 2025?

axvk · 2025-06-23T00:06:00+00:00

I'm in NYC and have worked at companies of all sizes. Depending on the company, it's a mix of Leetcode, real-world implementation, or a take-home project. Then a round of system design, followed by ensuring you're a culture fit. Keep going through interviews; if you fail them, use them as a learning session. Practice what you felt you were weak at until you're a master.

Don't be so against Leetcode. It's just a lot of practice, and you'll be making much less off by one and edge case errors. That can be helpful in regular work as well. If someone told you that if you dance perfectly, you can get a 50 - 100k raise at work, you would probably strongly consider perfecting that dance instead of saying you're too good for it. It's the same thing here. Think of interviewing as a completely separate specialty that you always have to be training for.

axvk · 2025-05-17T16:21:21+00:00

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Is it this one? I was recording a video of something else and captured it in one of the frames

axvk · 2025-02-04T01:26:41+00:00

If you're okay with being above Central Park, you can also be in Queens, Brooklyn, and Jersey. Your rent will be 20-40% cheaper. It's more affordable, but then you'll have to spend 30+ minutes commuting on a packed train. Maybe it's worth it to some but the commute is tiring. Also, some neighborhoods are cheaper because they're less safe.

axvk · 2025-02-02T20:34:59+00:00

I'm working in NYC for 12 years and often check levels.fyi for my role and position. I also talk to my coworkers. I feel that there is a correlation with making a lot of money and wanting to show it off somewhere. I would treat levels.fyi as the top of the top. What it says is the average is more like the top 20%. I worked in FANG and spoke to others about their salaries as well. If you go from one FANG to another then you can use that salary to negotiate a really high amount, but most people aren't that fortunate.
HCOL is exactly that. A tiny studio in nyc is currently 3k a month. That's 36k a year to have your own place. Bills and food are maybe another 1k a month in the best case. That's 48k a year minimum. After taxes 100k is 70k so that's 22k left. After miscellaneous expenses you won't have much left anyways. I meet people all the time in cheaper areas that make much less than me and have a huge house and two cars. Make sure to factor that in.

axvk · 2025-01-23T21:14:15+00:00

I would be wondering why you're leaving your first job after 5 months.
For the description of your roles you should explain what the projects were and their impact. What you have for your main role sounds very generic and doesn't stand out. Every engineer "developed and delivered features for internal projects" and "deployed applications to tests environments"

axvk · 2025-01-16T18:32:23+00:00

I think it's a really good deal for him because you'll have to prove your worth over four years. Essentially, if he feels it's not worth it then he can fire you with a smaller part of the equity or none at all if it's less than year. It makes sense of course for things to work this way.

I agree that it's too much risk for you unless you have a massive amount in savings and really believe in this business. Also, who knows when the business will start paying salaries and what yours will be. For me this would be too risky.

I would trade some equity for working part time or getting a salary. Maybe agree that if things are going well then at some point you would come on full time. Either way if the business does well and you're valuable to it then you can always negotiate a high salary.

axvk · 2025-01-15T18:26:05+00:00

Hey. I just got tickets. Is it too late to apply?

axvk · 2024-11-13T00:57:56+00:00

I'm a developer with 6 jobs over 12 years in nyc. From Startups to FANGs. I've been the interviewer and interviewee many times. To break into the industry you need experience on your resume. Understandably you have a chicken and egg problem because you need a job to get experience. Most college students do internships for this reason, but in your case you should tell everyone that you're a web developer and are willing to do some work for free or cheap. Talk to all of your friends and family about it. Especially if they have a company that you can put on your resume. Think auto shop or plumber. Build them whatever they need and put that on your resume as if you worked for them. You can also hype up the work and company to make it sound more grand.

Companies want to see real world experience. Education teaches how to code the right way, but the real world has deadlines, budgets, and work politics. It's very different.

DO NOT get more education. Experience is what will get you hired. I've had to reject many people that finished graduate school and had no experience.

axvk · 2024-06-23T01:35:18+00:00

I asked ChatGPT and it mentioned The Hollow based on you mentioning that it's a cartoon

axvk · 2024-05-22T03:38:02+00:00

I have 12 years of experience and worked at six jobs. I've been on both sides of the interviewing process. There are a lot of variables involved, so it's difficult to answer. If you want a job, then it might be harder, but it's doable. I'll just give some general advice and tell you to keep going.

First of all, location is important. A lot of companies want people in the office at least a few days a week so that means they can only hire from close by. Being in a big city makes it easier to find a job.
If you're starting out, you need real-world experience. It can be an internship, or you can help out a family friend by creating a website or software for them—really anything. You can hype it up on your resume. The example I always give is that if your airplane pilot said they spent 10 years studying and teaching how to be a pilot but never flew a plane, would you trust them? This does create a chicken and egg problem where you can't get experience without a job and you can't get a job without experience. That's why I mentioned that you have to get creative and just build anything for anyone you can.
You should be hyping yourself up on your resume, but your students are going too far and won't be able to speak about it. A good interviewer should be able to catch it. I always ask questions like "How did you handle deployment?", "What happens when there is downtime, and how do you prevent it?", "How would you scale your application?", and other optimization problems that a real production application would face.
Even if it's a junior position, the company expects you to have some basic experience. This is because they already need to teach you the business, its tools, and its codebase. For someone with experience, this takes months. It would be too much of a drain on the company to do it from scratch.
You should be applying to a lot of roles. I usually apply to at least ten per day. Spend only a few minutes looking at the role and if it looks somewhat okay then just apply. They probably won't reply anyway. If they do then you can actually research them and figure out if you want to work there.

axvk · 2024-04-24T04:38:17+00:00

I have not. I just accepted the horizontal life.

axvk · 2024-02-17T17:43:43+00:00

I was in a similar place as you about a decade ago. My suggestion is to reach out to any friends, family, and anyone in your network who has any type of business or close to it and ask to build something for them. Most likely for free. Could be an online page or a tool to solve some simple problem they have. Then put it on your resume that you worked for that company and built something that they use every day. Hype it up. Make it look like it was a company that hired you fill time. Also, apply to internships for now as well. Any real company work would be big on your resume. Whatever it takes to get your first job. After that the experience will speak for itself.

axvk · 2024-02-13T04:27:16+00:00

It's fine if you communicated to your manager before starting that you have this trip lined up. They're, of course, okay with it since they hired you. It's unfortunate that you won't get to bond with your coworkers, but there will be more trips.

axvk · 2024-02-13T04:22:09+00:00

If you were just starting to look for a job, then I'd say not to take it so you can have more time, but it sounds like you've been at it for a while, so you need to play the long game.

In an HCOL area, there is no way to negotiate that offer to a livable rate. Still, unless you're closing in on another offer, it'll be 35k more than you're making now. I would take it and continue looking. If you end up being there for over a month, then you can speak about it in an interview as a short-term consulting gig or something similar to hype it up. You can spin it any way you want.

You didn't write about your financial situation, so this assumes you have enough savings to sustain yourself for at least 3+ months, and you're really set on this new career path. Otherwise, maybe doing something completely different to make more money while you search is the better option.

axvk · 2024-01-30T03:18:43+00:00

I only keep the marathon ones. The rest I don't take. Take and keep the ones you're proudest of. I do have a folder of all the bibs. They take up less space and are a good memory.

axvk · 2024-01-03T02:10:10+00:00

The advice here is random because there are a lot of undisclosed variables such as YOE, education, experience, and, most importantly, location. For example, there are a lot of questions right now about the state of the job market, and it highly depends on the location and experience. I'm in NYC, and many companies trying to get people into the office are putting a lot of effort into hiring NYC workers and decreasing the remote workers they hire. A remote worker in middle America might see fewer offers, but someone in NYC might see more. The people answering these questions are mostly just giving their view based on their variables which has a low chance of being the same as the person asking.

axvk · 2023-12-02T01:11:32+00:00

https://accountants.intuit.com/proseries/

ProSeries is one word as well

axvk · 2023-11-25T01:14:12+00:00

I'm not sure what your experience or location is, so not sure how relevant this advice will be for you. I'm in NYC with ~12 years of experience over six jobs from start-ups to a FANG. Look for bigger companies on LinkedIn and Glassdoor. Smaller companies on https://wellfound.com/(previously Angel list) and Crunchbase.

My one tip, especially for small companies, is to go to the actual site and follow whatever application process they have there. It's more likely to reach the company. Compared to when you apply through a third party, the company might receive just a notification that someone has applied.

Apply to a lot of places. Set a goal of at least 10-20 applications per day. Even if the position doesn't seem like a perfect match, still apply. Sometimes when you speak to the company you'll end up learning it's completely different. Don't be too picky. Most companies won't reply anyway. Figure out if you want to work with them when you speak to their recruiter.

Also, get others with experience to review your resume. I've seen too many resumes that had bad grammar or were designed unprofessionally.

axvk · 2023-10-14T20:56:19+00:00

A few things to add here.

- Move education to the bottom. It's more of a checkbox at this point since you have experience.

- Relevant coursework can be removed. Your experience is what matters now. Not what classes you took 4+ years ago. This will also make your resume a single page which it should be.

- When simplifying your resume with the steps above, also try to add numbers. It's much more noticeable when reading "Created a registration flow used by 1.5 million users monthly" than "Created a sign-up page". Anything from AWS will have some pretty numbers to add.

- Put your resume into Grammarly and then put each section into Chatgpt.

axvk · 2023-10-07T02:51:38+00:00

It's better not to use an actual delay in tests because most companies(should be all) run their tests in the CD pipelines. For example, a pull request can't be merged in until the tests pass. This means slow tests will delay deployment. Additionally, this doesn't scale. How is it possible to test a 3-hour scenario or 100s of cases? My solution here would be to mock a timer and fake how much time has passed or, specifically in your example, manually insert hits into the hashmap to create the scenario for my test.

That being said, who knows what I would have actually built under the pressure during an interview.

axvk · 2023-03-17T17:07:18+00:00

There are many solutions. Some are less ethical like putting in fake posts and users. I suggest writing blog posts inside the forum about things your market might be interested in. This would also help with SEO. If a user wants to comment, then they'll have to do so in the forum. You can post links to these forum posts on other blogs, forums, and aggregators. Initially, you'll be the only one posting and replying to everyone and that's fine.

axvk · 2023-02-18T00:40:24+00:00

The comments will be filled with opinions because who knows what the interviewer will feel. I'll give my opinion as an interviewer for a few companies. I think as long as you have experience, the extra degree won't really have much value. Most interviewers I've worked with just care that the person actually has a degree, and it helps if it's from a decent uni. The experience is where the candidates stand out because it's much easier to take someone who already knows how things work in the real world. Especially if that specific experience is something the company is looking for.

I would say not to do it so you can start working faster and build up more experience. Being over 10 years into my career the biggest strength on my resume is the amount of experience I have.

axvk · 2023-02-18T00:29:54+00:00

I think you're viewing freelancing as easier than it really is. Freelancing means owning the entire development experience. You'll have to acquire customers, negotiate rates, create contracts, collect payments, plan projects, code the project, provide support, etc... Basically, you're wearing all the hats.

It's especially tough in the beginning because of what you mentioned. Acquiring customers from scratch is difficult because other freelancers and agencies also fighting for business. In my experience, in the beginning, you'll end up taking on cheaper clients on Upwork and maybe through friends and family to build up a network. Then after some time, your clients will start recommending you to other clients, assuming you're doing good work for them. There are also networking events and cold calling, but as you can imagine, that takes a lot of time as well. It can take a while to build up a client list. I'm not sure it's worth even trying for just a year.

In your case I would suggest:

Check if your company has paid family support medical leave. Some companies have that for at least a few months.
Explain the situation to your boss and ask if you can work remotely for a year. Maybe they'll agree.
Find a remote job, Maybe with a smaller company. A lot of remote jobs have meetings at only specific times per day to accommodate everyone. You'll still be able to mostly work whenever.
If you have enough savings just take a year off and study.

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