5 Coding Interview Tips From A Senior Engineer

what's up everybody Travis here from travis. media today I want to look at an article that I think will be helpful for anyone planning their first or even fifth interview for a programming job I'm always fascinated in hearing what people who conduct these interviews on a regular basis expect from those interviewing and what kind of mistakes people keep making so that you and I can be sure not to make these same mistakes and stand out better so in this video I'll give you five lessons that you can take away from this information and better equip yourself for that next interview let's get started so found this really good medium article which can be really rare for medium nowadays and it's targeted towards senior Engineers specifically and it's actually called This is why I didn't accept you as a senior software engineer but I think it applies all the way down the chain to Mid and even junior level Engineers even if this is your first interview because of you're exhibiting Behavior like a senior in your Junior interview it's a good thing so let's take a look at this article so here's what the author says I've been interviewing Engineers for different companies for the last few years but lately I've been turning down candidates like never before I'm still using the same questions nothing's changed the problem is that people have no idea about what it means to be a senior engineer and these professionals are scarcer than ever okay that's good let's find out the skills we need to work on to make us some of those scarce people and that leads us to lesson one general knowledge I call it general knowledge he calls it development methodologies so let me read this development methodologies are organizational methods that are meant to make teams effective these could be boring for us but it's expected of you to have expertise in them during my years of work I have developed a rejection of non-agile development methodologies and more than that I think that scrum is not agile enough its exhaustive use ends up helping the ego of the project managers more than the programmers I agree though I like scrum but I like this meme too so here's the point when I do an interview I look for that capacity of criticism in developers knowing scrum is not enough but you also have to know its disadvantages in proposed solutions to them so the lesson here is that you shouldn't be agreeing to everything we go into the interview and we're like yeah yeah I like that yeah I like this but you should be forming opinions about things with reasons to back them up not in a quarrelsome way but no one really wants another developer that just does whatever he or she is told without sometimes disagreeing or offering better or alternative Solutions as a developer programming is only part of the job another very important part is leaning in with your expertise on the task at hand maybe the feature that the project manager or the client wants is not a good idea or will not go well with how things are currently built you're needed to speak up share your concern and offer a better alternative in the case of this interviewer he's looking for someone that can offer their opinions of scrum regardless if you like it or not you can actually offer your opinion about it and not just agree to whatever he says about it in the hopes that they give you the job because you guys are the same the lesson here is to read up on things form opinions yourself about industrywide tools and development methodologies and be able to speak your mind about it if asked the point here is not that you need to learn scrum for this guy the point is is that if you're asked about scrum you have an opinion about it we want to carry on a conversation with the interviewer and not just nod our heads at everything said and I'll close lesson one with this quote here I thought it was good general knowledge will help you form better opinions and show you're willing to learn outside your field general knowledge is important read up form your opinions lesson two how well do you know your language he labels this section softwar design principles the reason the Rockstar engineer is so much more valuable than his counterparts isn't unique to programming the great software engineer is incredibly creative and can see conceptual patterns that others can't after finishing every interview this is important listen to what this guy's saying after finishing every interview when writing feedback for the candidate I swear I could copy and paste the same response every time and it's this I suggest you read more about python design patterns a good resource can be this guide we'll get back to that guide in a minute it's so easy to filter candidates with design principles only in really strange cases I've found people with an answer to all of these questions and he goes go on to say that hey these design patterns are challenging it's not always easy to apply and recall them but forcing yourself to do these checks while you're programming will put you a step ahead why do we use length array in Python while in other language we can use array. length is there any optimization behind it how much do you know your language so this lesson is twofold number one learn about your language design patterns and two know your language well that's why when I say if you're starting out programming learn one language and learn it well like JavaScript you can do everything with it or python that's a popular one let's say that you learn python first and you decide to go all in with it learn it well learn its quirks find a book like one of those O'Reilly books that goes in depth with the language and be able to discuss things like why python is using a length function instead of a length method as this author mentions sure this may be more catered to senior interviews but it will help you stand out better as a junior if you're at least familiar with the deeper parts of a language such that you can carry on a conversation about it you don't have to be an expert just be able to carry on the the conversation think about books like JavaScript the good parts a book that's old but really helps you see what's going on under the hood and learn about the quirks of the language he says here reading a book about the language you use is absolutely necessary when you're growing any senior engineering interview will include Advanced questions that you will only know by reading because books always go deeper than online courses so do the online courses learn the stuff and then go deeper learn the language build projects get familiar learn algorithms but also here and there read a new chapter or two that takes you a little bit deeper next try to learn some design patterns for that language or really design patterns in general with programming yes even as a junior as you build your apps if it's python then do check out this link that he provides it's a really really good resource it's at python dps.sd.gov and overhaul of the community it's going to be awesome when it relaunches if you want to be notified when that reopens just go to travis. mediac community put your email in this form here and I'll email you when it reopens and work it into your hobby projects or your portfolio projects you of course don't have to memorize all of these and be able to implement them all but if you're at least familiar with them and can Implement a few that's enough to allow you into the conversation and thus have an opinion which is part of lesson one that we just talked about lesson three is check your attitude look at this working with a vain person person is immensely difficult they make you feel bad all of the time and create bad vibes in the team in the long term the damage that such a person can do the company can be very expensive this has been an experience for any and every developer out there probably working with a toxic developer companies are looking for great humans when they're offering humongous salaries and part of that is being a good person when doing an interview we're not only evaluating the candidate's knowledge but also his or her attitude in a specific process I did months ago the company asked us specifically to look for for good and honest persons more than great programmers he was told to look for good and honest people more than great great programmers I can attest to company's doing this personally the job I had in the past as a site reliability engineer did just that the CTO landed a new contract they needed like 30 people local people we had to go into the office but he went on LinkedIn he found a bunch of people in my city me being one of them he reached out called me on the phone told me the situation and told me the company's philosophy which was we look for good people who can easily learn the stuff he said a lot of companies they want the best programmers they don't care about the people themselves or their personalities they just want the best programmers this company flipped all of that and is looking for good people who love to learn are easily teachable and don't have attitudes so we talked things went really well I still had the coding exam but I got the job despite not really being qualified as an srre I was a developer but they were looking for good people who were eager to learn and weren't toxic to be around a bad attitude or lying could imply an immediate elimination from a election process lying too I always recommend the book How to Win Friends and Influence People it's one of those books that everybody should read to have better relationships and life that happens to be a book we're just finishing up in the Travis media Community it's a good one you should read it before we get to Lesson Four quick intermission what should a junior mid read to become a senior here are some fantastic resources to grow as a senior developer I'll put links to these below because this article is a member only article some of you may not be members but they're really good you could use AI to simulate an interview here are some websites a programmers should visit but these community-driven road maps are really neat just wanted to mention it real quick if you need a road map for learning some technology let's say you want to learn JavaScript just go down here click JavaScript roadmap takes you to a site called Road map. sh JavaScript and you just start from the beginning so introduction to JavaScript what is Javascript history of JavaScript once you're done with that you move on to all about variables you learn about variable declarations hoisting and you just continue to go down the line until you know everything about the language use this tool to go deeper with the language as we mentioned in lesson two lesson four is what about my coding skills so far we've mainly been talking about communication skills knowledge skills being able to carry on a technical conversation we often think we just need to know all the algorithms and they'll love us but that isn't the case it's both and often we tip the scales more on the technical stuff for lack of the communication stuff but we do need the coding skills so this author recommends lead code I think everybody's recommending lead code premium I bought lead code premium some months ago it was a great decision to land my current job on your way you'll discover interesting math Curiosities patterns and optimizations from other users not an affiliate I have no incentive to tell you this that's just what he recommends simulating an interview from a big company can also be useful to understand how they're structured lesson five the hard but understandable truth this is very important you simply may not be the right profile for the company it's not you it's me right no seriously quit beating yourself up because you sucked everyone sucks at the coding interview I actually have a really old video that's a bit cringey about when I really bombed in interview in the past I'll put a link to it above even after reading a lot of material practicing every day and having a lot of experience you could be rejected because you're just not the right profile for the company so lesson five is that you may do great at the interview you may be expecting to land the job and then you get the bad news but you have to remember that it may just be that you weren't a good fit for that role nothing to do with your skills nothing to do with you personally but that company has a profile certain profile they want to fill and maybe you just weren't that the only things you can expect from yourself are resilience persistence those are not only the skills that will secure you a job in the future but they also are the main skills we expect from a senior engineer if you found this video helpful give it a thumbs up consider subscribing to the channel and I'll see you in the next video thanks for [Music] watching

Channel: Travis Media

Views: 18,059

Keywords: coding interview, coding interview preparation, software engineering, coding interview questions, faang interview preparation, software engineer interview, coding interview tips, programming interview tips, senior developer coding interview questions, travis media, first coding interview tips, medium article

Id: oKQcDjxsOvg

Length: 10min 57sec (657 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 06 2023