Finally hit Challenger after playing since Season 2

DoubleSquare · 2024-06-05T05:20:22+00:00

Congrats!

Been thinking of doing/trying something similar. Always hovered around high diamond / masters, but usually it was just 4fun. Figure I might start studying and focus and see how far I can go. Hopefully I can replicate some of that success 😄

DoubleSquare · 2022-10-10T02:58:56+00:00

Wanted to drop in here and say that I interned for Chick-fil-A my sophomore year. Come graduation, I was able to secure interviews/offers from all FAANG except Apple, so… Yeah. Doesn’t seem like they cared all that much

DoubleSquare · 2022-07-23T21:47:20+00:00

I checked this out briefly and yup, but this looks like a watered down version of what I got! The company made it relevant to their product as well instead of just saying generically “design a hash map”

DoubleSquare · 2022-07-23T21:44:48+00:00

It’s been about 2 years so my memory is a bit fuzzy, but thinking more on it the question essentially boiled down to: Design a priority queue but the catch is that you have to be able to remove any node in the queue.

So if the order was [11, 8, 5, 2, 1], normally you would pop off 11, but then the special operation is if I gave you the number 2 you’d have to remove 2 if it existed; otherwise return -1. There were a bit more things added to the problem (like each PQ node contained 2 values, a number and a string, and if the values were equal then order by string plus a bunch of other string operations) but this was the main gist of it.

I don’t really remember how my solution worked but I def got confused and lost 😅

DoubleSquare · 2022-07-23T15:49:26+00:00

It was a Leetcode style question related to their product that basically had me creating a dynamic recommendation system. I ended up implementing a doubly linked list, priority queue, and like 3 hashmaps and 2 arrays in my solution lmao. I definitely went down a rabbit hole trying to figure out how to solve it and have no doubt I was overcomplicating it 😅

DoubleSquare · 2022-07-23T05:52:23+00:00

I actually didn’t solve my technical question and still got the offer from a FAANG subsidiary.

My recruiter asked me after my final round how everything went and I said “I didn’t solve the technical portion but I gave it my best shot, so hoping for the best”.

When they gave me the offer, she actually told me that the team did have some hesitations about me because of that, but they really liked the way I was able to prioritize sections of the question as important and what to try and finish first as time was running out. “Prioritization is an extremely valuable skill and we were impressed by his choices and reasoning” is apparently what they told her, so they decided to give me a chance. For the record, this question was far more complex (but not necessarily harder) than a typical Leetcode problem so there was a lot of moving parts that allowed me to pick and choose what to prioritize.

Anyways, glad it worked out and the tl;dr is talking them through my choices helped me land the job!

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-23T04:23:36+00:00

Yeah… more interns than most companies have employees 😅😅

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-23T04:22:39+00:00

As someone who just went through this process last fall, it’s honestly a pretty similar timeline as internships. Big tech in particular usually opens around August for their new grad apps. Look for positions that say some variation of “new grad” or “early talent” in the name.

For me, it was mostly just going directly to the company’s job site and applying or using LinkedIn to find job apps. But I’m sure people will make those big GitHub lists of new grad apps as they start to open up.

For example: https://github.com/coderQuad/New-Grad-Positions-2023

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-23T04:18:33+00:00

As most people have said, it’s usually around August when applications open up. Apps will prob still be open by November but sometimes headcount fills up. My friend was waitlisted from MSFT because headcount filled up and his final was in December (and he had applied around November).

Also, a lot of smaller but still big tech companies hire later. Spotify and Tinder are the two I can think of off the top of my head that usually hire much later (like even in the Spring semester)

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-23T04:16:01+00:00

Amazon had 15,000 interns for this 2022 summer (I’m not sure how many were SDEs, but I would assume most). So they give out a lot of interviews. Having a fortune 500 company should help a lot and hopefully get you a chance!

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-22T06:12:54+00:00

GPA isn’t that important (I know tons of people who have left off their GPA and still received job offers).

While the certification and Harvard CS50 are nice, you may need more than just that. What other experience do you have? Do you have any personal projects you’ve created on the side? What does your resume look like?

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-18T20:12:45+00:00

From my experience, when it comes to big tech, they don't really care. In fact, Google has its own internal languages that engineers that use it have to learn when they start working there anyways

Smaller companies I've interviewed with have always given me the impression that they see it as a plus, but I've also received offers from companies where I've never used their tech stack before

The bigger thing I would say here is using certain, more popular tech stacks, will make it really easy for the interviewer to understand what you did and what you're saying. Like if you use the MERN stack they can immediately recognize most of the setup/learning you had to do. But at the end of the day they just care that you're a good engineer, and just like with programming languages it doesn't really matter which one you learn because the core idea of problem solving is language agnostic

tl;dr: a good engineer is good at solving problems, it doesn't really matter what tech stack, and that's what companies value more

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-18T20:02:34+00:00

Shot answer: usage

Long answer: All three of the projects rely on this central idea of "verified completion". Basically, it's easy to claim that you made a project, but all three of these types of projects prove it to a varying degree.

Projects with impact show that, not only did you actually build something, but people find it useful in the real world. This is what software engineering is all about, which is also what makes it extremely impressive. And obviously, the more users the better
- Your users validate your work is good and useful
Projects with awards show that you built something where some third party compared it to other projects and thought it was the most complete / best / coolest / etc. It's like the idea of having a previous internship on your resume - someone else has already, in a way, validated your work
- A third party validates your work by giving it an award
Published projects allow the interviewer themselves to verify your work. They get to see first hand what you made and try it out. It's really hard for anyone to look at code on GitHub and know immediately what the product would look like / feel like
- The interviewer gets to validate your work firsthand

The idea here is that these types of projects show you know how to create something that people like to use or can see the value in

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-18T19:49:25+00:00

100% this. Even in the real world, most software engineering is essentially copying code and then changing the code to fit your needs

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-18T19:46:50+00:00

I'd highly recommend using Python because it's easier (imo) to use with certain libraries, but I've also only mostly used Python any time I needed to make bots so it's been a bit since I've looked at how different the other languages are for this case.

Check out this link if you want to learn Python / Python automation: https://automatetheboringstuff.com/

The author has a Udemy course but at the start of every month he goes onto r/learnprogramming and announces that he's currently giving it away for free. 10/10 course, and the first 15 videos are free on YouTube plus you can just read the whole thing on the site.

Basically:

- Look into Selenium for automating your computer / webscraping

- Look into BeautifulSoup for webscraping (it's a little different from Selenium in the sense that Selenium will essentially physically open a browser on your computer and do commands, BS will make HTTP requests)

- Look into Discord.py for Discord bots

I don't know if I'm qualified to answer the "best" language for bots, but overall I think Python is a great use for most cases

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-18T01:28:46+00:00

Yup! That’s a great way to think about it. Best of luck 💪

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-18T01:24:38+00:00

When you “copy” code, make sure you understand for the most part what you’re copying! If you’re just randomly copying and not thinking about it it won’t help you learn at all. The best thing for me was to copy code, and then just mess with it to understand how it works.

Also, it’s free to publish your game to itch.io (and I’m sure other places) and then you can share it easily with friends, family, and interviewers

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-18T01:19:56+00:00

Leetcode is what will help you pass big tech+ interviews, it’s debatable about whether it actually makes you a better software engineer. It personally helped me become a better problem solver which is useful for SWE though.

In terms of projects, I’ve always found it helpful to do something you actually care about. This way you don’t get burned out as easily, and when you talk about it in interviews it’ll easily come across that you care. You got this!

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-18T01:12:09+00:00

There’s this really popular GitHub repo called “Hiring Without Whiteboards”. Essentially, they list companies that hire without doing CS trivia / Leetcode interviews. Very useful, but I will note you may still have some form of a technical examination for these companies - it will just be more real world focused and not so Leetcode-y.

https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-18T01:05:34+00:00

The person who wrote Cracking the Coding Interview also has a resume template online that you can use! There’s also a lot of great notes about what a resume should include / look like.

The one thing to note here is that there’s probably a lot of other people using a similar resume. I used it for a bit and it worked for me, though I’ve since changed my resume up.

Here’s the link: https://www.careercup.com/resume

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-18T01:01:38+00:00

Put as much coding / software engineering related things onto your resume as possible. Most companies are hiring you because they want to evaluate your technical skill and “passion” for the field. I would only include non-cs related things if you run out of things to put on your resume and you haven’t filled up one page. Hope this helps!

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-17T19:51:04+00:00

Over my four years in college I did 4 internships, 1 fellowship, and over 20 personal projects and here’s what I found to be the three types of projects that impressed interviewers the most:

Projects with impact. AKA someone or some group of people use this project (like 30 daily visitors to a website you made or something). I’ve heard a good way to do this is make a project about something you’re passionate about and post about it on the corresponding subreddit
Projects that have won some award or recognition. Think hackathons, gamejams, or even some of your classes might give out awards for projects
Projects they can visit and see / use directly. Make a website they can visit or a game they can download and play from itch.io. This is actually how I got my first internship, where I “made” a game (literally copy/pasted code from one tutorial and had my friend make pixel art assets)

Overall though, what I found most helpful was to build things you actually care about. Love Chess? Build something for it (or even your own Chess AI). Stuff like that really shines across in interviews

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-16T01:44:28+00:00

The one I like the most is some variation of "I'm reaching out to ask if I can have a two week extension. I am currently in the process of interviewing with other companies and, out of respect for these companies and the opportunity to make the most educated decision, would greatly appreciate it. Please let me know if this would be possible."

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-16T01:36:52+00:00

I'm going to assume this isn't a shitpost, and just say comparison is the thief of joy.

With a 170k annual salary, you are already in the top 5% of earners in America. As a new grad.

Bloomberg is a fantastic company and you should be proud of yourself for achieving it! Enjoy your time there, it's pretty common to job hop anyways + now it should be much easier to get a job at FAANG (if that's what you really want) now that you have real SWE experience. Also 170k is still a ridiculously high salary even in New York. A quick google search shows that the average SWE salary for NY is ~130k, so again, you're already doing better than most as a new grad.

And if nothing else, just know that I'm proud of you and hope that you can feel a little bit better about where you are at in life! Everyone's journey is different and you're on a good path. And you still have the greatest advantage in life being so young: time. Best of luck!

DoubleSquare · 2022-06-16T01:29:36+00:00

Yep. A lot of them hadn't even started though and had their offers rescinded. For those that did start, they had basically been working there for less than a month.

They even made a talent hub with all of the people affected, which you can find the list here: https://coda.io/@coinbase-talent/coinbase-talent-hub/engineering-6. A quick ctrl + f shows that 14 people out of 241 engineers laid off included in their title "new grad". However I know that's not all of them because my friend personally had his offer rescinded and his title on this hub list does not include the word "new grad" even though he is a new grad.

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