WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:00:04.620 --> 00:00:05.640 Colin: Welcome to Build and Learn. 00:00:05.640 --> 00:00:06.540 My name is Colin. 00:00:06.690 --> 00:00:09.630 CJ: And I'm cj and today we're talking about getting hired. 00:00:09.777 --> 00:00:13.394 Colin: That's a pretty important topic these days with a little bit of a 00:00:13.394 --> 00:00:15.284 twist in the economy that we're seeing. 00:00:15.870 --> 00:00:20.280 Unfortunately a lot of people getting laid off or maybe even looking for their 00:00:20.280 --> 00:00:22.695 first engineering role in the industry. 00:00:22.695 --> 00:00:24.915 So we figured we'd break it down this week. 00:00:25.395 --> 00:00:28.237 CJ: Yeah, lots of folks are I've seen tons of layoffs, but I've also 00:00:28.237 --> 00:00:32.297 saw, like the jobs report was showing that we're at pretty good unemployment 00:00:32.302 --> 00:00:33.667 rates, at least in the United States. 00:00:34.076 --> 00:00:37.256 But there was this like great resignation and also there's this 00:00:37.256 --> 00:00:41.876 like meme about our generation not staying in jobs for super long 00:00:42.251 --> 00:00:42.611 Colin: Yeah. 00:00:42.611 --> 00:00:43.691 Or quiet, quitting. 00:00:44.081 --> 00:00:46.431 CJ: Yeah, quiet, quitting, all of these different things. 00:00:47.031 --> 00:00:50.509 But yeah, at the end of the day, if you want a new job that can make you 00:00:50.509 --> 00:00:54.807 happier or make you more fulfilled or make you you know, more financially 00:00:54.807 --> 00:00:59.048 stable, there's lots of tips and tricks that I guess that we've figured out 00:00:59.048 --> 00:01:01.178 maybe over the last couple decades. 00:01:01.628 --> 00:01:05.368 And I'm excited to learn about your story and your process for getting hired. 00:01:05.540 --> 00:01:06.210 Colin: Awesome. 00:01:06.380 --> 00:01:06.560 Yeah. 00:01:06.560 --> 00:01:09.020 Before we do that, you just got off of vacation. 00:01:09.020 --> 00:01:09.610 How'd it go? 00:01:10.310 --> 00:01:14.340 CJ: Oh my gosh, this was the longest vacation I've taken in a long time. 00:01:14.902 --> 00:01:19.252 It was almost three weeks and we did that episode about burnout and 00:01:19.252 --> 00:01:21.322 taking time off and PTO and all this. 00:01:21.352 --> 00:01:24.290 And so I was like, okay I really have to follow 00:01:24.320 --> 00:01:25.070 Colin: Walk the walk. 00:01:25.340 --> 00:01:27.704 CJ: Yeah, lock the lock and do follow our suggestions. 00:01:27.709 --> 00:01:32.714 And so I deleted Slack and I logged out Gmail and I logged out of the 00:01:32.714 --> 00:01:36.714 work Twitter accounts and so I was getting like zero notifications 00:01:36.769 --> 00:01:39.511 about work for three weeks or so. 00:01:39.511 --> 00:01:41.916 And gosh, It was glorious. 00:01:42.234 --> 00:01:45.133 Colin: I was wondering because I think you must, do you schedule some 00:01:45.133 --> 00:01:46.693 of your content releases and stuff? 00:01:46.693 --> 00:01:49.479 Because I was like, CJ's this is not work stuff, but I think it was 00:01:49.479 --> 00:01:52.719 your personal YouTube channel that was like dropping shorts and stuff 00:01:52.934 --> 00:01:53.444 CJ: Yeah. 00:01:53.619 --> 00:01:57.729 Colin: I was like, is CJ actually working or is he taking time off right now? 00:01:58.348 --> 00:02:02.251 CJ: I had recorded a giant series over the course of a week, and then 00:02:02.251 --> 00:02:04.471 I was dripping that content out over. 00:02:05.141 --> 00:02:09.131 Several months, and I do have shorts that are in the bag through December, 00:02:09.341 --> 00:02:14.081 so we're recording this in October, and every Friday through December, you'll see. 00:02:14.291 --> 00:02:16.241 You should see a short pop up, but 00:02:16.421 --> 00:02:19.031 Colin: See, and I mean, even this podcast, we were just talking 00:02:19.031 --> 00:02:23.081 about how we, so the way we record is we try to record every week. 00:02:23.531 --> 00:02:27.611 And then we release every other week, which means that we have a very long back 00:02:27.701 --> 00:02:31.841 list of episodes that we can put out and it allows us to take time off, right? 00:02:31.841 --> 00:02:34.541 Like we didn't record for three weeks and the show still went 00:02:34.546 --> 00:02:35.951 on and it still got released. 00:02:35.956 --> 00:02:38.266 And you know, we've got some travel and some conferences 00:02:38.266 --> 00:02:40.546 coming up and it's very nice. 00:02:40.546 --> 00:02:45.163 Like I've been doing podcasts where it feels like you're under the gun to record. 00:02:45.373 --> 00:02:47.203 And you're like, oh my God, we gotta get an episode out. 00:02:47.203 --> 00:02:48.133 We gotta get the recording. 00:02:48.493 --> 00:02:51.178 And it's just nice to have that backlog of episodes. 00:02:51.418 --> 00:02:55.528 It does make for some timey, yme, like when we mention certain dates 00:02:55.528 --> 00:02:58.168 or conferences we're going to, the episodes don't always come out 00:02:58.168 --> 00:03:01.916 before those events, but you know, it's an archival of our history. 00:03:01.921 --> 00:03:02.366 It works. 00:03:02.921 --> 00:03:03.581 CJ: Exactly. 00:03:03.641 --> 00:03:03.881 Yeah. 00:03:03.881 --> 00:03:06.706 And I think like it's to the benefit of everybody, right? 00:03:06.706 --> 00:03:09.585 Like it's it makes it so that we don't burn out. 00:03:10.335 --> 00:03:12.345 Because we're going at a sustainable pace. 00:03:12.705 --> 00:03:16.184 And it also benefits you know, the listener because you can actually like, 00:03:16.663 --> 00:03:20.143 continue listening to a podcast because we didn't record five episodes and 00:03:20.143 --> 00:03:22.033 then, you know, fizzle out or whatever. 00:03:22.033 --> 00:03:24.595 So hopefully it's a win-win all around 00:03:25.195 --> 00:03:28.075 Colin: Yeah, I just found a new podcast that I like binged. 00:03:28.075 --> 00:03:31.974 And then of course, like the last episode I listened to was like, 00:03:31.974 --> 00:03:33.804 this is gonna be our last episode. 00:03:33.809 --> 00:03:38.034 And I was like, oh no, I just found this and it was still binge worthy. 00:03:38.039 --> 00:03:40.195 And I'll try to link to it cuz we're gonna talk about a little bit 00:03:40.195 --> 00:03:42.322 of it today, but pod fading is real. 00:03:42.382 --> 00:03:45.142 It happens to content creators, definitely podcasts. 00:03:45.142 --> 00:03:49.222 I think people think it's just super easy to jump in and do this, but it's 00:03:49.519 --> 00:03:51.109 like working out or doing anything else. 00:03:51.109 --> 00:03:55.633 It's like consistency is key and We talk about atomic habits and James Clear a 00:03:55.633 --> 00:04:00.103 lot, but there's the whole idea of you fall to the level of your systems and 00:04:00.103 --> 00:04:03.357 we have a system where we can have a bad day and the system is always there. 00:04:03.362 --> 00:04:05.187 We can have a bad week and the system's always there. 00:04:05.225 --> 00:04:09.425 I think we can take some of that system and build a system out for getting hired 00:04:09.485 --> 00:04:13.738 and thinking about how you putting the reps towards getting a job, whether 00:04:13.738 --> 00:04:17.975 it's, your first job in the industry or maybe you're looking to change 00:04:18.005 --> 00:04:22.116 roles whether it's the same ladder or a different one, if you wanna 00:04:22.116 --> 00:04:24.562 become a manager or a product person. 00:04:25.154 --> 00:04:26.294 We're gonna dig into that today. 00:04:26.703 --> 00:04:31.038 CJ: As part of the context for this episode and the framing for it, We're 00:04:31.068 --> 00:04:36.858 mostly gonna focus on getting jobs as web developers, but some of these concepts 00:04:36.858 --> 00:04:40.185 will be applicable no matter, you know what job or role you're looking for. 00:04:40.386 --> 00:04:44.586 Colin: And I would say we're also, we were gonna do an episode on hiring, 00:04:44.586 --> 00:04:46.326 getting hired, and engineering levels. 00:04:46.326 --> 00:04:49.926 We decided to turn this into three different episodes, so we're gonna 00:04:49.926 --> 00:04:51.546 focus on getting hired today. 00:04:52.056 --> 00:04:55.056 Then we'll flip the table because we've both done hiring 00:04:55.061 --> 00:04:57.306 as well and do the hiring side. 00:04:57.911 --> 00:04:59.891 and then we'll jump into engineering levels. 00:04:59.891 --> 00:05:03.791 I think freelancers and smaller agency type developers are probably not as 00:05:03.791 --> 00:05:05.156 familiar with engineering levels. 00:05:05.574 --> 00:05:07.667 But we can dig into that and expectations. 00:05:07.667 --> 00:05:11.248 And you know, why I think levels are a really good thing. 00:05:11.248 --> 00:05:12.628 I think some people don't really like them. 00:05:12.658 --> 00:05:15.828 But we'll have a whole episode where we can talk about the pros and cons of 00:05:16.218 --> 00:05:17.778 trying to put people in a little box. 00:05:17.924 --> 00:05:22.184 CJ: When you were changing jobs just recently to get hired at 00:05:22.184 --> 00:05:23.892 Orbit what was your process? 00:05:25.072 --> 00:05:28.582 Colin: I guess some background, I've mostly worked in either 00:05:28.587 --> 00:05:32.776 my own companies or freelance contract to hire type things. 00:05:32.786 --> 00:05:38.048 And so I, at the time was working at another startup that was winding down. 00:05:38.663 --> 00:05:39.833 Wasn't really looking. 00:05:39.833 --> 00:05:45.473 So I think that this list that we're gonna talk about today is useful if I, you know, 00:05:45.983 --> 00:05:50.183 found myself without a job through a layoff or a riff or something like that. 00:05:50.294 --> 00:05:53.123 And I needed to like bounce back quickly and it's like, where do I start? 00:05:53.255 --> 00:05:56.764 But for me, usually what I do is I compile a list of. 00:05:57.166 --> 00:06:00.900 Tools, apps, companies that I like, love to use every day. 00:06:00.987 --> 00:06:05.978 In part because almost everything I use has been built by some developers, right? 00:06:05.978 --> 00:06:09.608 And so I'm like, if I like using this thing one, I'm gonna have, I think 00:06:09.608 --> 00:06:12.818 I'm gonna be able to speak well to it in an interview because I use it 00:06:13.358 --> 00:06:17.338 and, I don't know that you get fanboy points, but knowing it in and out 00:06:17.338 --> 00:06:20.618 is only going to help in interviews and you can get a sense of the 00:06:20.618 --> 00:06:22.248 culture behind the team that builds. 00:06:22.248 --> 00:06:24.286 You can see how their support works. 00:06:24.286 --> 00:06:29.185 Like you, it's very easy to almost interview them just by using their tool. 00:06:29.185 --> 00:06:30.559 And so that's kind of where I start. 00:06:30.841 --> 00:06:33.954 With the case of Orbit, I was not a user of Orbit yet. 00:06:33.954 --> 00:06:38.444 But I had friends who went to go work there and, you know, at the 00:06:38.449 --> 00:06:42.470 time, orbit was hiring developers and it was kinda like I, I know for 00:06:42.475 --> 00:06:45.646 a fact like we would have sourcing events in orbit where we would. 00:06:45.961 --> 00:06:51.031 Go through our own social networks to look for people who were looking for jobs. 00:06:51.098 --> 00:06:53.018 mining our own network to find people. 00:06:53.023 --> 00:06:57.535 And shout out to Erin for being the one who brought me into, literally into orbit. 00:06:57.769 --> 00:06:58.819 CJ: Bringing you into orbit. 00:06:59.479 --> 00:06:59.899 Yeah. 00:07:00.575 --> 00:07:03.377 Before I decided to join Stripe, I was working at a startup. 00:07:03.377 --> 00:07:04.397 I was pretty burnt out. 00:07:05.347 --> 00:07:07.644 and Stripe reached out. 00:07:07.694 --> 00:07:11.894 And that kicked off a whole job search process where I was like, okay, if 00:07:11.899 --> 00:07:15.952 I'm going to consider changing jobs, obviously Stripe is has it been on 00:07:15.957 --> 00:07:17.479 my top 10 list for years and years? 00:07:17.539 --> 00:07:21.300 But if I'm gonna make the, a shift away from this other 00:07:21.300 --> 00:07:23.190 job, then I want to try and. 00:07:23.521 --> 00:07:25.946 Increase my optionality as much as possible. 00:07:26.006 --> 00:07:30.161 And so I'm gonna look at and interview at and try to get offers at as many companies 00:07:30.161 --> 00:07:34.244 as possible at the same time, so that I can have the most optionality basically. 00:07:34.842 --> 00:07:37.542 Colin: But you weren't looking until that happened, right? 00:07:37.572 --> 00:07:41.472 You had an inbound request and then you're like, I wasn't looking, but 00:07:41.472 --> 00:07:43.902 now I'm thinking about looking. 00:07:43.932 --> 00:07:44.322 CJ: Yeah. 00:07:44.352 --> 00:07:44.562 Yeah. 00:07:44.562 --> 00:07:48.013 It was like one, you know, one you have an off day and someone says 00:07:48.013 --> 00:07:50.893 something like to you on Slack and you're like, you know what? 00:07:51.463 --> 00:07:52.393 Yeah, sure. 00:07:52.723 --> 00:07:53.383 I'll respond to 00:07:53.503 --> 00:07:54.953 Colin: Let's see what else is out there. 00:07:56.593 --> 00:07:56.983 CJ: Yeah. 00:07:57.616 --> 00:07:57.946 So 00:07:57.946 --> 00:08:01.793 Colin: like you have a list though, that you've kept in terms of a top 10 list of 00:08:01.793 --> 00:08:03.513 companies that you would wanna work for. 00:08:04.028 --> 00:08:07.808 CJ: Yeah, and very similar to you, it's tools and apps and companies 00:08:07.808 --> 00:08:09.668 that I've used or liked to use. 00:08:10.118 --> 00:08:14.468 And for me, I really like this, the niche space of like 00:08:14.468 --> 00:08:16.988 developer tools and API products. 00:08:17.378 --> 00:08:22.778 And so the list isn't like super, super long, but also like on top of that, I. 00:08:23.738 --> 00:08:24.038 I don't know. 00:08:24.248 --> 00:08:31.093 There's, you know, Netflix is always one, one of the list and Dropbox and there's 00:08:31.093 --> 00:08:33.845 a bunch of things that I use every single day where I'm like, okay it would be 00:08:33.850 --> 00:08:36.885 pretty cool to work at this place, or it seems like it'd be cool to work at this 00:08:36.920 --> 00:08:39.890 Colin: I have some friends and we joke about it cuz some of them have been at 00:08:39.890 --> 00:08:43.790 almost all the fang companies and we joke about them being like the infinity 00:08:43.795 --> 00:08:46.190 stones on like the Infinity gauntlet. 00:08:46.190 --> 00:08:49.473 It's okay, you've got Netflix, it's the red one, you've got 00:08:49.983 --> 00:08:51.313 Facebook, that's the blue one. 00:08:51.504 --> 00:08:54.693 and they're just kind collecting all of them and they've also spent like 00:08:54.693 --> 00:08:58.023 a good deal of time at each of those companies before they moved over. 00:08:58.023 --> 00:09:01.107 But it is good to have a list of, I would say, like what 00:09:01.112 --> 00:09:02.817 companies you'd wanna work for. 00:09:02.936 --> 00:09:06.776 Because when you're looking, there's gonna be no shortage of jobs out there. 00:09:07.106 --> 00:09:11.203 So really knowing like what you're gonna enjoy, you know what's the company 00:09:11.203 --> 00:09:14.503 stage, how many people are on the team. 00:09:14.661 --> 00:09:15.572 These are things that you may. 00:09:15.858 --> 00:09:17.478 To know just by using their tools. 00:09:17.478 --> 00:09:19.240 So you might have to do a little bit of research. 00:09:19.311 --> 00:09:21.891 You might get inbounds like you did through LinkedIn. 00:09:22.050 --> 00:09:25.720 Sometimes it's a recruiter, sometimes it's directly from a hiring person. 00:09:26.215 --> 00:09:28.915 You might be in a Slack group or a Discord group with other 00:09:29.211 --> 00:09:31.113 industry folks conferences. 00:09:31.113 --> 00:09:32.763 We've talked about conferences in the past. 00:09:33.153 --> 00:09:34.383 Another great way to get hired. 00:09:34.383 --> 00:09:37.563 There's usually like a, who's hiring and who's looking to be 00:09:37.563 --> 00:09:40.730 hired board at a conference so you can put your stuff up on. 00:09:40.774 --> 00:09:43.368 that's a little bit of the networking aspect of it. 00:09:43.544 --> 00:09:43.859 Sure. 00:09:43.859 --> 00:09:46.439 Going to a conference might cost you something, but you could probably 00:09:46.439 --> 00:09:50.278 find some scholarships or things to go to, like a rails conf and then 00:09:50.278 --> 00:09:52.378 just get into where the people are. 00:09:52.383 --> 00:09:52.808 Yeah. 00:09:53.143 --> 00:09:53.983 CJ: Yeah, exactly. 00:09:53.983 --> 00:09:59.880 And I think the whole, I mean, so in earlier when you said that 00:09:59.880 --> 00:10:01.410 Erin brought you into orbit, right? 00:10:01.410 --> 00:10:06.540 That was like you using your network and like leveraging your network into a job. 00:10:06.720 --> 00:10:09.425 And so I think this is actually very common. 00:10:09.824 --> 00:10:10.689 One of my students. 00:10:11.964 --> 00:10:14.724 Worked at my vr and that's how I got connected to my vr. 00:10:14.724 --> 00:10:15.514 And that was a job. 00:10:15.644 --> 00:10:19.364 My wife just started a new job and when she was looking for these support 00:10:19.364 --> 00:10:22.994 roles, I was like, oh, let me connect you with some other people who I 00:10:22.994 --> 00:10:24.704 know who do these support things. 00:10:24.704 --> 00:10:27.499 And so I was like, oh, it would be great if you had like a call with 00:10:27.499 --> 00:10:29.567 Lindsay our, you know, our shared friend. 00:10:29.966 --> 00:10:32.666 From here in Reno and I was like, oh, if you, what if you like met up with 00:10:32.666 --> 00:10:36.286 Lindsay just to ask about like how tips and tricks for how to get a job. 00:10:36.286 --> 00:10:40.426 And Lindsay knew about a Slack group and so then she joined like this Slack group 00:10:40.426 --> 00:10:43.826 and then like through the Slack group there's, yeah, there's all of these 00:10:43.946 --> 00:10:45.296 different opportunities that come up. 00:10:45.301 --> 00:10:48.156 And so it really, like networking is a super power. 00:10:48.161 --> 00:10:51.087 And I think you know, in bus, in business school and stuff, they're 00:10:51.087 --> 00:10:53.217 like, oh, you know, networking is so valuable, this and that. 00:10:53.217 --> 00:10:56.707 But really at the end of the day, if you know people. 00:10:57.592 --> 00:11:02.833 and they work at companies and they have a positive image of you in their head, 00:11:02.838 --> 00:11:05.503 and they're willing to have a coffee chat with you to just tell you about 00:11:06.013 --> 00:11:09.253 what it's like to work at that company, but then also maybe refer you in. 00:11:09.613 --> 00:11:11.473 Then that's a huge leg up. 00:11:11.607 --> 00:11:14.907 Colin: Yeah, we actually, we have a cool Slack group that we'll mention at the end. 00:11:14.907 --> 00:11:17.938 So if you stick around for the end of the episode, we'll be sure to 00:11:17.938 --> 00:11:19.931 give you some details on places. 00:11:19.931 --> 00:11:24.608 Cuz when you talk about it's who, you know, it sounds a little bit like nepotism 00:11:24.608 --> 00:11:29.692 and things like that, but it's more Because we're in the same community, I'm 00:11:29.692 --> 00:11:31.612 going to give a little bit more weight. 00:11:31.672 --> 00:11:31.882 Right. 00:11:31.882 --> 00:11:35.269 It might be a community or like the support Slack that you're talking about, 00:11:35.599 --> 00:11:38.539 where it's like people who gravitate towards being in the support community 00:11:38.539 --> 00:11:41.843 are probably also doing a bunch of extracurriculars to level up their 00:11:41.843 --> 00:11:44.963 skills and therefore we wanna hire outta that Slack community because 00:11:44.963 --> 00:11:48.293 they're just higher quality leads and candidates and things like that. 00:11:49.838 --> 00:11:54.378 If you don't have an existing network, you don't have to have gone to school 00:11:54.378 --> 00:11:58.062 with these people or, you know, all these things that you hear about oh, we've 00:11:58.062 --> 00:12:00.942 been, you know, like you hear a lot of the startups, you're like, we all went to 00:12:00.942 --> 00:12:03.342 the Stanford together, or whatever that. 00:12:04.102 --> 00:12:07.132 Does happen, but it's not the norm anymore. 00:12:07.162 --> 00:12:09.982 Like we talked about traditional and non-traditional backgrounds, 00:12:10.432 --> 00:12:13.882 that's not necessarily the case, like the Slack that we'll share later. 00:12:14.032 --> 00:12:18.412 You don't have to necessarily know the person super well, but they still know 00:12:18.412 --> 00:12:22.466 that by you being a part of this community that again, you're going to be like 00:12:22.526 --> 00:12:26.100 the one of the top, you know, candidates for them if you're even looking. 00:12:26.100 --> 00:12:31.386 So for me, I was trying to decide do I want to go get a job again or go back 00:12:31.386 --> 00:12:35.586 down the freelance rabbit hole or, you know, do something like fractional, you 00:12:35.586 --> 00:12:37.876 know, tech engineer, something like that. 00:12:38.231 --> 00:12:42.851 It was timing and Erin was, you know, insistent and it turned into interviews 00:12:43.245 --> 00:12:43.965 CJ: Yeah, totally. 00:12:44.655 --> 00:12:47.805 I think the other thing is that if you don't have a network and you don't 00:12:47.805 --> 00:12:51.919 have a list of companies and you don't have these inbound requests, then you 00:12:51.924 --> 00:12:53.929 can do cold, you can do cold outreach. 00:12:53.929 --> 00:12:57.409 And what I mean by cold outreach is just like finding jobs to apply to. 00:12:57.409 --> 00:13:00.455 And we've got a whole bunch of, job boards and communities that 00:13:00.455 --> 00:13:01.775 will mention a little bit later. 00:13:01.775 --> 00:13:04.895 But basically just finding those jobs that. 00:13:05.555 --> 00:13:09.125 Posted online, the job description is online and usually there's some 00:13:09.125 --> 00:13:13.535 way to apply through whatever, it's like a level, I can't 00:13:13.540 --> 00:13:15.735 remember the like levels.co thing? 00:13:16.095 --> 00:13:16.365 Yeah. 00:13:16.370 --> 00:13:18.105 Or like green, yeah. 00:13:18.105 --> 00:13:20.805 Greenhouse and all these different like tools. 00:13:21.135 --> 00:13:23.061 I know LinkedIn has a quick apply. 00:13:23.061 --> 00:13:25.401 Indeed has quick apply like all these different places, right? 00:13:25.401 --> 00:13:27.812 But what I have found is that if. 00:13:28.562 --> 00:13:33.183 Are resorting to cold outreach, then it becomes a numbers game where 00:13:33.183 --> 00:13:37.413 like you just have to apply to like just a ridiculous amount of places. 00:13:37.614 --> 00:13:42.854 That is one way that you can get your foot in the door is just like spray and pray. 00:13:43.094 --> 00:13:47.324 Apply to a hundred places and get your, get an entry level job. 00:13:47.324 --> 00:13:49.544 Get something started where you can start to build a. 00:13:50.009 --> 00:13:53.129 Build relationships, build partnerships with other companies that you're 00:13:53.129 --> 00:13:57.599 integrating with or working with, and that will be the start of your 00:13:57.599 --> 00:14:00.912 network that you can then use to build into like your next role. 00:14:01.344 --> 00:14:04.413 Colin: And you'll see this a lot too as you've been in the industry longer. 00:14:04.443 --> 00:14:08.733 Like we all, we'll use the orbit analogy here, like we literally will be in 00:14:08.793 --> 00:14:12.183 each other's orbits, whether we're working at the same company or not. 00:14:12.573 --> 00:14:14.703 We may end up at the same company like you and I. 00:14:14.733 --> 00:14:18.633 Were like never working together for a long time, and then we interacted 00:14:18.638 --> 00:14:21.543 together on a bootcamp and there's like all these interactions that 00:14:21.548 --> 00:14:25.143 then ended up turning into us working on the same project together. 00:14:25.473 --> 00:14:28.053 And then now, you know, we'd split off and you went to Stripe. 00:14:28.053 --> 00:14:29.733 I went to Orbit, and then who knows? 00:14:29.793 --> 00:14:30.783 You know, what's next? 00:14:31.146 --> 00:14:35.614 There's a phrase in startups and raising money where when you're going out to like 00:14:35.644 --> 00:14:41.187 VCs if you want advice, ask for money and if you want money, ask for advice. 00:14:41.457 --> 00:14:43.683 This can apply as well to jobs. 00:14:44.027 --> 00:14:46.487 Like we were mentioning about coffee chats and things like that. 00:14:46.492 --> 00:14:50.121 It's like you can just reach out to a company and ask them, do you 00:14:50.121 --> 00:14:52.701 just wanna have an informational or something like that? 00:14:52.971 --> 00:14:55.911 And it turns out they might be looking for the kind of person. 00:14:56.326 --> 00:15:01.565 That you're looking to get hired on as and you know, asking for advice, going 00:15:01.565 --> 00:15:05.370 in without these stakes of you don't even need to think about algorithms and 00:15:05.520 --> 00:15:06.900 practice interviews and stuff like that. 00:15:06.900 --> 00:15:10.386 You just asking for advice and then they might be in a place where they're 00:15:10.391 --> 00:15:11.847 looking for a person like you. 00:15:13.022 --> 00:15:16.892 If you go in looking for a job, they're gonna probably give you 00:15:16.892 --> 00:15:19.231 advice, you know, the other way around. 00:15:19.630 --> 00:15:22.090 Which is also good, like you're gonna get information that you 00:15:22.090 --> 00:15:24.100 can use in your job search either. 00:15:26.665 --> 00:15:29.965 CJ: So when, one of the things we talked about was inbound, where like a recruiter 00:15:29.965 --> 00:15:34.315 reaches out to you, and I think a lot of your inbound depends on sort of 00:15:34.320 --> 00:15:39.385 maybe the search engine optimization of your social profile, your LinkedIn, 00:15:39.865 --> 00:15:43.735 even like your GitHub profile, your web, like your personal website where, 00:15:44.335 --> 00:15:49.495 you know recruiters are gonna have some search query thing where they're 00:15:49.495 --> 00:15:53.589 saying I'm looking for a web developers that are based in, The United States, 00:15:53.589 --> 00:15:56.169 but not San Francisco and not New York, 00:15:56.219 --> 00:15:59.969 Colin: Which is really interesting cuz remote work has changed so much that 00:16:00.219 --> 00:16:02.581 it's interesting try to find people. 00:16:02.581 --> 00:16:06.241 Cause I've been getting inbound from people who are in Tahoe and Reno 00:16:06.241 --> 00:16:08.806 and it's like, I don't know that I really, I mean, it doesn't, to me 00:16:08.806 --> 00:16:10.846 it's not a benefit that they're here. 00:16:11.457 --> 00:16:12.160 Like Cool. 00:16:12.400 --> 00:16:13.720 Great to know that you exist. 00:16:13.720 --> 00:16:18.166 And the one that I got that was a stranger one was, that was, The name 00:16:18.166 --> 00:16:20.026 of the founder was in the subject line. 00:16:20.026 --> 00:16:22.909 It was like a founder name company. 00:16:22.969 --> 00:16:25.759 And I was like, I have never heard of this person before, so why would 00:16:25.759 --> 00:16:27.952 I ? And it's just okay, cool. 00:16:28.012 --> 00:16:31.327 And it turned out they were like a famous founder from 00:16:31.387 --> 00:16:33.097 the early Silicon Valley days. 00:16:33.102 --> 00:16:33.437 I was like, I. 00:16:34.447 --> 00:16:38.976 I don't know that tactic's gonna work these days if they aren't like, the head 00:16:38.976 --> 00:16:43.266 of either Stripe or Dropbox or something that we've actually heard of today. 00:16:44.756 --> 00:16:46.873 CJ: I mean on both ends of this, right? 00:16:47.143 --> 00:16:50.487 Whether you are trying to get hired or you're trying to hire somebody, it is a 00:16:50.487 --> 00:16:53.217 giant exercise in sales and marketing. 00:16:53.577 --> 00:16:57.119 And so you'll see the recruiter emails that they're sending you are all just 00:16:57.217 --> 00:17:01.816 okay, how can I ab test this copy and this subject and, you know, as 00:17:02.101 --> 00:17:05.251 Colin: I literally wanted to be like, who the hell is this person as my response, 00:17:05.251 --> 00:17:06.901 but I just didn't respond at all. 00:17:07.336 --> 00:17:07.756 CJ: Yeah. 00:17:07.951 --> 00:17:11.551 going back to like your LinkedIn, your social, your website, your whatever. 00:17:11.551 --> 00:17:15.321 Like I would say it is important to have these reviewed by folks. 00:17:15.441 --> 00:17:18.951 Just, you know, people are gonna be critical and they're gonna nitpick 00:17:18.956 --> 00:17:21.711 and you're, you wanna make sure that you're putting your best foot forward. 00:17:21.711 --> 00:17:25.251 And so having someone review it and help you with, you know, spelling 00:17:25.251 --> 00:17:28.971 mistakes and grammar and, you know, just cleaning up and making sure that it's 00:17:29.061 --> 00:17:33.681 positioned well so that you end up with the role that you want is important. 00:17:35.091 --> 00:17:37.311 Colin: What's like when you go to apply for a job? 00:17:37.341 --> 00:17:40.454 I think it's an unfortunate reality that we still have to do this, but what 00:17:40.454 --> 00:17:44.564 are the two primary things that you have to submit when you apply today? 00:17:45.044 --> 00:17:48.584 CJ: Yeah, I mean, I think it's the resume and the cover letter, right? 00:17:48.584 --> 00:17:49.244 Like cover 00:17:49.394 --> 00:17:52.554 Colin: bit harder to do spray and pray when a cover letter is involved 00:17:52.644 --> 00:17:54.689 because you gotta craft it. 00:17:54.979 --> 00:17:56.510 CJ: Going back to the top 10. 00:17:57.220 --> 00:18:01.900 I actually made separate resumes and separate, like cover letters, 00:18:01.900 --> 00:18:05.530 like everything was customized and tailored per company, and 00:18:05.530 --> 00:18:07.150 it's based on the job description. 00:18:07.150 --> 00:18:10.480 So I'll look at the job description, pull out the keywords from the job description 00:18:10.750 --> 00:18:14.680 and use like whatever translation that was to whatever I had on the resume already 00:18:14.980 --> 00:18:18.820 to make sure that it aligned as perfectly as possible to the job description. 00:18:19.360 --> 00:18:23.124 And yeah, that, that was, you know, high conversion. 00:18:24.144 --> 00:18:28.014 Colin: For a lot of these companies that have a lot of applicants, 00:18:28.224 --> 00:18:32.737 unfortunately, they can't read all of the resumes, what they will use is some 00:18:32.737 --> 00:18:37.331 of these applicant tracking systems to identify keywords, pull out keywords. 00:18:37.691 --> 00:18:40.481 There's some people who I've seen have made resumes and they're like 00:18:40.481 --> 00:18:43.483 graphic designers, and they'll include all the logos of all the 00:18:43.483 --> 00:18:46.873 apps that they know how to use, but they don't have the word in it, right? 00:18:46.873 --> 00:18:50.893 It's like you want, if you want Photoshop and Illustrator to pop up, you better 00:18:50.893 --> 00:18:53.293 write those out as words, right? 00:18:53.293 --> 00:18:57.853 And still you can have a beautiful design, but a lot of these ATS systems will pull 00:18:57.858 --> 00:19:00.043 out all the text and throw away the pdf. 00:19:00.463 --> 00:19:03.800 And you can read it later if you want, but it's just the text. 00:19:03.800 --> 00:19:06.080 So all of the pretty stuff is gonna go away. 00:19:06.350 --> 00:19:10.220 And then they can say, give me everyone who's mentioned go lang and Photoshop 00:19:10.280 --> 00:19:12.410 as their two things that they love. 00:19:12.769 --> 00:19:16.519 And then now you take like thousands of applicants down to a couple hundred, 00:19:16.939 --> 00:19:20.419 and then they're gonna maybe review those by hand and then reach out. 00:19:20.419 --> 00:19:23.801 So like you said, like it's a little bit of SEO in your resume, 00:19:24.251 --> 00:19:26.561 tuning it to the job description. 00:19:27.536 --> 00:19:33.137 Maybe if you're applying to Netflix and you have experience, at your local, 00:19:33.477 --> 00:19:36.897 pet store, probably not a relevant information to put on that resume, right? 00:19:36.897 --> 00:19:41.477 So make it relevant if there's holes in your job history that just 00:19:41.482 --> 00:19:45.214 make sure that things you can explain yeah, you know, I worked at Pet store 00:19:45.214 --> 00:19:48.094 while I was learning to code and I just didn't feel like I should put 00:19:48.094 --> 00:19:49.444 that on this resume type of thing. 00:19:49.819 --> 00:19:50.059 CJ: Yep. 00:19:50.469 --> 00:19:53.049 Colin: But definitely put down things like your boot camps or your 00:19:53.049 --> 00:19:55.449 trainings, projects that you've built. 00:19:55.659 --> 00:19:57.309 Those kinds of things are super important. 00:19:57.979 --> 00:19:58.279 CJ: Yep. 00:19:58.369 --> 00:19:58.849 Totally. 00:19:59.239 --> 00:19:59.359 Yeah. 00:19:59.359 --> 00:20:02.812 I would say if you're very early and you don't have. 00:20:02.918 --> 00:20:07.598 Job experience as a software developer, instead of putting your job experience 00:20:07.598 --> 00:20:11.828 working at wherever you worked before, Starbucks or whatever, I would put 00:20:11.888 --> 00:20:16.388 each of the projects that you've built on your own and anything that 00:20:16.388 --> 00:20:17.948 was interesting about those projects. 00:20:18.144 --> 00:20:21.443 Oh, I solved an n plus one query here, or, I did this interesting 00:20:21.448 --> 00:20:26.443 caching thing over here, or I deployed it to this really fancy place. 00:20:26.873 --> 00:20:30.293 So yeah, highlight, highlight the work that you've, in those 00:20:30.293 --> 00:20:32.033 side projects as if it was a job. 00:20:32.033 --> 00:20:34.523 Like I think that's a good way to highlight your skills. 00:20:35.228 --> 00:20:37.598 Colin: So you also put here cleanup social. 00:20:37.658 --> 00:20:38.528 You wanna explain that a 00:20:38.723 --> 00:20:39.263 CJ: Yeah. 00:20:39.263 --> 00:20:43.811 This maybe pertains a little bit more to my specific role as a developer advocate, 00:20:44.366 --> 00:20:51.626 and that is that like your social profile is representative of like how you will be 00:20:51.626 --> 00:20:55.736 presenting content related to the brand. 00:20:56.546 --> 00:20:57.146 In the future. 00:20:57.146 --> 00:21:01.436 And so if you have a bunch of stuff on there that has, profanity or if you have 00:21:01.436 --> 00:21:06.485 a bunch of like political hot takes or if you have a bunch of, stuff that is not 00:21:06.485 --> 00:21:10.101 related to, a professional atmosphere. 00:21:10.674 --> 00:21:12.804 At Stripe we have this thing called the front page test, and 00:21:12.809 --> 00:21:15.144 that is like whether or not. 00:21:16.179 --> 00:21:18.249 You would be comfortable with something being published on the 00:21:18.249 --> 00:21:21.279 front page of the Wall Street Journal or whatever, the New York Times. 00:21:21.969 --> 00:21:22.419 Yeah. 00:21:22.419 --> 00:21:26.208 And so if you look at your social media and you have I don't know, things that 00:21:26.208 --> 00:21:29.808 you just wouldn't be proud of, then you can go back and delete all of those. 00:21:29.905 --> 00:21:34.183 Colin: I mean I treat even text messages and things like the front page test of 00:21:34.568 --> 00:21:36.188 you know, especially we've been seeing. 00:21:36.768 --> 00:21:40.518 Very famous people's text messages and threads being leaked lately, and 00:21:40.518 --> 00:21:43.098 it's like a little cringy, thankfully. 00:21:43.098 --> 00:21:44.298 Nothing too bad, right? 00:21:44.328 --> 00:21:47.808 Just some cringe, which I'm sure we all have in our text threads and stuff, 00:21:47.808 --> 00:21:49.397 but that's a good thing to think about. 00:21:49.397 --> 00:21:52.277 I think there's, this is interesting when a lot of people right now, will put in 00:21:52.277 --> 00:21:56.280 their profile my views are not, expressed by my employer and things like that. 00:21:56.640 --> 00:21:59.684 But you're right in a job like yours where your Twitter kind 00:21:59.684 --> 00:22:01.937 of is your work and you also. 00:22:02.177 --> 00:22:06.257 You know, non-work things there, but it's very not curated. 00:22:06.257 --> 00:22:09.707 Like you're still bringing yourself to work and showing up and things like that. 00:22:09.707 --> 00:22:12.697 And maybe there's some social networks that aren't public facing that are, for 00:22:12.697 --> 00:22:14.257 friends and family and stuff like that. 00:22:14.287 --> 00:22:16.327 But definitely something to consider. 00:22:16.391 --> 00:22:19.361 I would think of this as also just looking into the company's culture 00:22:19.366 --> 00:22:23.312 too, is like look at their social presence how they show up in social. 00:22:23.492 --> 00:22:25.170 A lot of companies have this job page. 00:22:25.705 --> 00:22:28.375 That's trying to sell you on all the perks and the culture 00:22:28.375 --> 00:22:29.278 and all that kind of stuff. 00:22:29.297 --> 00:22:31.777 And again, maybe even going and looking at some of the employees 00:22:31.782 --> 00:22:35.927 socials to go see, just like how they show up at work and online 00:22:36.692 --> 00:22:37.362 CJ: Totally. 00:22:37.762 --> 00:22:37.942 Yeah. 00:22:37.942 --> 00:22:40.275 I would say if you don't want to clean up. 00:22:40.725 --> 00:22:44.115 Or if you don't wanna tie it at all to work, then don't put it on your resume. 00:22:44.512 --> 00:22:47.922 Colin: Yeah, or maybe make it private too so you don't necessarily have 00:22:48.182 --> 00:22:52.102 to hide, but don't point it out as the first link on your resume. 00:22:52.301 --> 00:22:54.701 So let's just assume we get through the applicant tracking 00:22:54.701 --> 00:22:57.287 system and we get first interview. 00:22:57.827 --> 00:22:59.927 What are we, what are you gonna do here? 00:22:59.932 --> 00:23:02.037 Now as you start to think about preparing for, I. 00:23:02.712 --> 00:23:04.992 CJ: So I always assume that every. 00:23:05.732 --> 00:23:10.489 Phone screen is going to have a technical coding component to it. 00:23:10.849 --> 00:23:14.550 There's always gonna be a chance that you're gonna share a screen and someone 00:23:14.550 --> 00:23:17.820 is gonna throw an algorithm question at you and you'll have to code live. 00:23:17.820 --> 00:23:21.570 And so I always prepare, even if it's just for the phone screen, I always try 00:23:21.570 --> 00:23:26.340 to prepare the same way, and that is to be ready to write some code live in front of 00:23:26.340 --> 00:23:28.800 somebody, whether that's on a whiteboard. 00:23:29.430 --> 00:23:30.660 Which is not fun. 00:23:30.840 --> 00:23:35.380 And I think less of that is happening now that we're all remote . But yeah. 00:23:35.966 --> 00:23:40.346 The, yeah, I think prep, prepping for the Google interview was really 00:23:40.351 --> 00:23:43.821 intense because I know that they're really adamant about making sure that 00:23:43.821 --> 00:23:49.183 you have error handling and, you know testing and like all this stuff, like 00:23:49.213 --> 00:23:53.353 even in your whiteboard code, which was like super, super intimidating. 00:23:54.283 --> 00:23:57.523 Anyways, so yeah, like I would say trying to go through a bunch of 00:23:57.523 --> 00:24:02.857 algorithms, practice and you know, practicing interviews with friends. 00:24:02.857 --> 00:24:05.887 So just jump on a call and have your friends just throw a couple softballs 00:24:05.887 --> 00:24:10.417 at you just so you can sort of loosen up and get comfortable with talking 00:24:10.422 --> 00:24:11.987 about code in front of other people. 00:24:11.987 --> 00:24:16.427 In my role right now, I do a ton of live streaming and a ton of just like recording 00:24:16.427 --> 00:24:19.607 with my editor open, and so I'm pretty comfortable talking as I'm writing code, 00:24:19.607 --> 00:24:24.497 but if your day to day job is writing code, With your mouth shut and your brain 00:24:24.497 --> 00:24:28.110 going, and you're not actually saying these words out loud, then it can be 00:24:28.110 --> 00:24:33.511 uncomfortable to say oh, you know, right here I'm gonna use the I don't know, 00:24:33.691 --> 00:24:35.701 facade pattern to do blah, blah, blah. 00:24:36.031 --> 00:24:40.304 So it can be, yeah, it can be tricky to just whip those words out. 00:24:40.823 --> 00:24:42.913 Even though you kind know them in your brain. 00:24:43.978 --> 00:24:46.745 Colin: Yeah, and we'll talk more about what the hiring person 00:24:46.745 --> 00:24:50.484 is looking for when you're doing those things in the next episode. 00:24:50.489 --> 00:24:53.990 But um, you know, there's things like, you're talking about live, live coding 00:24:54.260 --> 00:24:57.080 We've done in at Orbit a project that. 00:24:57.780 --> 00:25:02.190 It's more realistically like what the work looks like, which is we're giving 00:25:02.190 --> 00:25:06.750 you like five different potential features to implement and we gave you. 00:25:07.580 --> 00:25:11.811 A new Rails app that already has a bunch of stuff and has a broken test 00:25:12.081 --> 00:25:13.654 so that we can see how you think. 00:25:13.928 --> 00:25:15.458 But we'll talk about that in the next episode. 00:25:15.458 --> 00:25:17.899 A little bit more about what are they, what are we looking for? 00:25:18.259 --> 00:25:22.232 Are we looking for you to drop like, you know, pattern names and be the most 00:25:22.232 --> 00:25:25.191 brilliant person or are we just looking to see how you think and all of that? 00:25:25.742 --> 00:25:27.002 I like to research the company. 00:25:27.002 --> 00:25:30.992 We mentioned this already, but like you don't wanna really be on an 00:25:30.992 --> 00:25:35.481 interview and not know what they do or what the job description is, right? 00:25:35.481 --> 00:25:38.961 So I don't think this is gonna be the case as much with web development jobs, but 00:25:38.961 --> 00:25:43.847 if you do there are some services that will mass supply you to a lot of things. 00:25:44.207 --> 00:25:45.477 So if you get an I. 00:25:46.022 --> 00:25:49.772 Make sure you spend a little bit of time going reading, finding out, again, 00:25:49.772 --> 00:25:54.782 stage where they at, what do they make, what languages, what stacks do they use? 00:25:54.787 --> 00:25:59.372 Are they hiring for you to know the stack already or are they open to 00:25:59.372 --> 00:26:03.212 you moving sideways into from Python to Ruby or whatever it might be. 00:26:04.247 --> 00:26:04.547 CJ: Yeah. 00:26:04.547 --> 00:26:08.057 And I think also some companies will publish like a culture deck 00:26:08.087 --> 00:26:12.617 or at least like some principles or values or these kinds of things. 00:26:12.617 --> 00:26:14.357 And those can be useful going in. 00:26:14.687 --> 00:26:19.136 And I've even seen that be a pop quiz question oh, hey, you 00:26:19.136 --> 00:26:20.246 said you looked at our website. 00:26:20.246 --> 00:26:24.694 What can you name like two of our 10 values or whatever probably, 00:26:24.694 --> 00:26:26.014 I don't know, hard work and 00:26:26.569 --> 00:26:28.639 Colin: I'll just list the Burning Man principles. 00:26:29.014 --> 00:26:29.404 CJ: Yeah. 00:26:29.404 --> 00:26:31.924 The burning Yeah. 00:26:32.389 --> 00:26:32.689 Colin: Awesome. 00:26:33.199 --> 00:26:37.226 So I think the thing that most people dread in interviews is you might have 00:26:37.226 --> 00:26:41.966 a phone screen, you then might have a project, but there's this idea of 00:26:42.378 --> 00:26:46.740 algorithm grinding and I think this is like, it depends on the jobs and 00:26:46.740 --> 00:26:50.310 depends on the companies, but things like hacker rank and leet code, like in 00:26:50.310 --> 00:26:52.170 some cases when you do have a job that. 00:26:53.430 --> 00:26:54.210 Thousands of applicants. 00:26:54.390 --> 00:26:59.612 Just your hacker rank or your leet code score is gonna be what's used to separate 00:26:59.612 --> 00:27:03.242 you from the bottom half so that they don't have to go through all of those. 00:27:03.242 --> 00:27:06.842 And so have you had to do any of these in your searching? 00:27:06.956 --> 00:27:07.646 CJ: Yes. 00:27:07.766 --> 00:27:08.396 And. 00:27:08.801 --> 00:27:14.789 I have seen where some companies will have partnered with leet code and so as 00:27:14.819 --> 00:27:18.089 instead of a phone screen, they'll be like, do these three leak code problems. 00:27:18.089 --> 00:27:21.223 And if you don't score high enough, then you just don't make it to the next level. 00:27:21.793 --> 00:27:26.002 In the past I've done like just a ton of these, but for fun I just think 00:27:26.002 --> 00:27:27.311 they're really fun to go through. 00:27:27.923 --> 00:27:31.781 The other thing that I would say is if you have the opportunity to write, 00:27:32.366 --> 00:27:37.689 Even just like the most basic automated tests even if your test is just run 00:27:37.689 --> 00:27:43.249 the function call and then assert based on the output of some input, then you're 00:27:43.249 --> 00:27:45.139 automatically gonna like win points. 00:27:45.139 --> 00:27:48.968 And something that I like to do before going into an interview is making 00:27:48.968 --> 00:27:54.827 sure that I have memorized the rspec, like shortcuts so that I can run an 00:27:54.827 --> 00:27:59.240 rspec test in the same file so that I can just say okay, I want my runner. 00:27:59.420 --> 00:28:02.601 And then at the bottom I'm just gonna say rspec.describe do, and then 00:28:02.606 --> 00:28:06.291 write my automated tests so that I can just run them immediately. 00:28:06.321 --> 00:28:09.591 That way when you're writing your solutions to your algorithm, 00:28:10.041 --> 00:28:13.531 then you have immediate feedback and you can move much faster. 00:28:15.766 --> 00:28:17.956 Colin: And then it also shows the hiring manager that you write 00:28:17.956 --> 00:28:19.786 tests first, whether you do or not, 00:28:20.341 --> 00:28:20.581 CJ: Yep. 00:28:20.761 --> 00:28:21.361 Exactly. 00:28:21.451 --> 00:28:22.051 Exactly. 00:28:22.431 --> 00:28:25.911 Colin: They're like, Ooh, I don't actually do this usually, but it's gonna help here. 00:28:25.971 --> 00:28:28.318 It's oh, this is where tests are useful. 00:28:28.782 --> 00:28:29.922 So yeah, we mentioned hacker rank. 00:28:29.922 --> 00:28:30.852 We mentioned leet code. 00:28:30.882 --> 00:28:32.782 I really like one called exercism. 00:28:33.345 --> 00:28:37.602 It's very mentor driven, so you can go through different paths for each language. 00:28:38.137 --> 00:28:42.007 And then you can actually sign up to be a mentor or have your code mentored 00:28:42.280 --> 00:28:44.960 essentially reviewed by someone and they'll give you tips and things. 00:28:44.960 --> 00:28:47.850 So there's definitely a grind and you're gonna go through the easy ones, 00:28:47.850 --> 00:28:49.350 the moderate ones, the harder ones. 00:28:49.620 --> 00:28:52.140 It's just good to get exposed to a bunch of different things. 00:28:52.140 --> 00:28:53.817 It just makes you a better programmer. 00:28:53.947 --> 00:28:58.357 I was trying to do a little experiment in our, we have a local developer meetup, 00:28:58.357 --> 00:29:02.977 slack, and I was trying to post like daily code problems there and I just 00:29:02.977 --> 00:29:05.257 forgot some days and then I fell off. 00:29:05.287 --> 00:29:06.997 Kind of like pod faded there. 00:29:07.257 --> 00:29:07.677 CJ: Yep. 00:29:08.017 --> 00:29:11.497 Colin: it was fun to do just because it's like I don't, most of our jobs are not 00:29:11.497 --> 00:29:16.297 actually generating like an algorithm or inverting a Petri and stuff like this. 00:29:16.297 --> 00:29:16.537 Right. 00:29:16.957 --> 00:29:19.987 But knowing how to do it, cuz it's probably gonna be on an interview. 00:29:20.624 --> 00:29:21.396 Is important. 00:29:22.012 --> 00:29:24.433 So just a fact of the job. 00:29:24.433 --> 00:29:27.805 And you have a mention here of cracking the coding interview 00:29:28.255 --> 00:29:32.456 book which is cracking the coding interview.com from Gail McDowell. 00:29:32.849 --> 00:29:34.379 I have not read it, but have you. 00:29:34.930 --> 00:29:39.748 CJ: This is a good one that will again, go through a bunch of algorithms 00:29:39.748 --> 00:29:43.550 and data structures, but also we'll talk through Amazon is gonna look for 00:29:43.550 --> 00:29:45.080 this and Google's gonna look for that. 00:29:45.080 --> 00:29:47.163 And you know Facebook might look for this. 00:29:47.463 --> 00:29:51.813 And so it's, yeah, it's one of those books that I'll read probably 00:29:51.813 --> 00:29:55.962 every time I'm going through the hiring process just to stay fresh. 00:29:56.543 --> 00:29:56.693 Yeah. 00:29:56.693 --> 00:30:01.477 Another great resource is this interview cake interview cake.com. 00:30:01.657 --> 00:30:06.485 This one is a paid resource, but I, yeah, I've paid for it twice now 00:30:06.490 --> 00:30:10.338 because every time I go through the hiring process, they'll give you 00:30:10.338 --> 00:30:14.208 like, here's the interview question, and then you can sort of reveal. 00:30:14.958 --> 00:30:17.868 Hints or sort of like parts of the answer as you're going. 00:30:17.868 --> 00:30:21.918 So if you're like not sure how to proceed with some dynamic programming 00:30:22.248 --> 00:30:25.008 exercise or something, then it'll be like, oh, try this or try that. 00:30:25.368 --> 00:30:26.448 Or, what about this? 00:30:26.538 --> 00:30:30.888 And so in, in a real interview, as you, if you get stuck or if you have 00:30:30.888 --> 00:30:34.218 questions, it's really important to like also be comfortable just 00:30:34.218 --> 00:30:35.958 asking your interviewer for tips. 00:30:36.438 --> 00:30:41.394 And so that I think feels a little bit more realistic towards what 00:30:41.399 --> 00:30:42.624 a real interview is gonna be like. 00:30:42.674 --> 00:30:46.024 Colin: What I like about that too is if you're not sure how to think out 00:30:46.024 --> 00:30:50.699 loud, Those hints almost help you think about how to approach the problem. 00:30:50.699 --> 00:30:54.989 And if you get good at deconstructing a problem and then doing that live on an 00:30:54.989 --> 00:30:58.799 interview, again, we'll talk about it more, but like that proves to me that 00:30:58.889 --> 00:31:03.269 how you think and how you approach the problem, which usually ends up being more 00:31:03.269 --> 00:31:05.339 important than having the right solution. 00:31:05.339 --> 00:31:08.069 It's like we know you're gonna get there if you had enough time, but 00:31:08.429 --> 00:31:09.689 I'm really curious how you think. 00:31:10.279 --> 00:31:11.299 So yeah, those are resources. 00:31:11.299 --> 00:31:14.333 I think I might even just join that interview cake one cuz I was 00:31:14.333 --> 00:31:17.033 reading through it and like some of the algorithms and like just 00:31:17.033 --> 00:31:20.603 examples are like things I've been trying to brush up on in general. 00:31:21.083 --> 00:31:22.444 And it just helps to do that. 00:31:23.255 --> 00:31:27.020 I think once you get through that, you're gonna have probably some other 00:31:27.020 --> 00:31:31.958 interviews around like meeting with potentially the team that you're gonna be 00:31:31.958 --> 00:31:34.238 on, and then potentially their manager. 00:31:34.238 --> 00:31:37.842 And then like usually the last interview is someone that's like in people ops 00:31:37.842 --> 00:31:42.162 or depending on how big the company is, the ceo, cto, whoever that might be. 00:31:42.546 --> 00:31:45.057 And they're like just the last thumbs. 00:31:45.927 --> 00:31:48.207 You've gotten through the, are you a serial killer? 00:31:48.237 --> 00:31:52.287 Questions with the phone screen and gotten through your algorithms 00:31:52.287 --> 00:31:55.137 and now it's really just making sure there's a culture fit and you 00:31:55.137 --> 00:31:56.967 know, having the final sign off. 00:31:58.107 --> 00:32:01.317 CJ: Okay, so some places will have really interesting interview. 00:32:01.725 --> 00:32:02.535 Cycles too. 00:32:02.660 --> 00:32:06.902 As part of the job that I'm in now, we actually ask people to come in 00:32:06.902 --> 00:32:10.772 and do a presentation because a lot of our job is presenting content. 00:32:11.072 --> 00:32:13.622 And so we ask them to come and teach us about something 00:32:13.622 --> 00:32:14.522 that they're familiar with. 00:32:14.522 --> 00:32:17.522 And so that maybe that means you have to like, prepare a deck or you 00:32:17.522 --> 00:32:20.072 have to prepare like a live coding thing that you're gonna show off. 00:32:20.495 --> 00:32:24.322 I've also seen interviews for if you're applying for like a sales. 00:32:24.536 --> 00:32:29.114 Or a solution architect or like a sales engineer or even like a partner engineer, 00:32:29.264 --> 00:32:33.762 these kinds of roles might, you might end up in a in a role playing scenario where 00:32:34.073 --> 00:32:37.475 okay, I'm gonna pretend that I'm the client and you are the partner engineer 00:32:37.475 --> 00:32:40.436 and I'm coming with like a bunch of issues and now we're gonna present those 00:32:40.436 --> 00:32:42.281 issues and you have to solve them for me. 00:32:42.468 --> 00:32:47.799 I also ha as part of joining this company, there was a writing exercise 00:32:48.099 --> 00:32:53.099 and it was like a let's it's, it was just like a persuasive writing 00:32:53.099 --> 00:32:56.006 exercise, so that's like another potential thing that you might see. 00:32:56.006 --> 00:32:58.166 So lots of different kinds of interviews. 00:32:58.166 --> 00:33:01.286 I think the ones that people get stuck on are most hung up on are 00:33:01.286 --> 00:33:02.516 the live coding ones, though. 00:33:02.666 --> 00:33:07.261 And so I would say, yeah, the resources we've added here should be pretty solid. 00:33:07.804 --> 00:33:08.220 Again. 00:33:08.220 --> 00:33:08.340 Yeah. 00:33:08.340 --> 00:33:11.700 Going back to these communities too, we've got a bunch of 00:33:11.700 --> 00:33:12.840 communities that you can join. 00:33:12.840 --> 00:33:16.860 I think this is like sort of a hack to getting a job is like knowing where to 00:33:16.860 --> 00:33:18.970 hang out , where other people are hiring. 00:33:19.510 --> 00:33:24.897 So Colin and I both work remotely and so I think a lot of these are 00:33:24.987 --> 00:33:26.457 leaning a little bit more remote. 00:33:27.072 --> 00:33:28.834 But yeah there's a ton here. 00:33:28.834 --> 00:33:32.044 So what, actually, I don't know what this top one is. 00:33:32.044 --> 00:33:33.184 Rand's Leadership Slack. 00:33:33.500 --> 00:33:34.360 What's yeah, 00:33:34.460 --> 00:33:38.060 Colin: Yeah, so the Rand's leadership Slack, I don't remember his background, 00:33:38.060 --> 00:33:43.329 but he wrote a book called Managing Humans the Art of Leadership and the 00:33:43.329 --> 00:33:45.309 Software Developer's Career Handbook. 00:33:45.970 --> 00:33:49.292 This slack is amazing no matter what stage you're at, because 00:33:49.322 --> 00:33:51.242 there are Slack channels for. 00:33:51.622 --> 00:33:54.752 Every level, there's like director level Slack channels. 00:33:54.752 --> 00:33:58.622 There's entry level slack channels, there's remote jobs channel, there's 00:33:59.259 --> 00:34:00.984 specific region jobs channel. 00:34:01.452 --> 00:34:04.795 I've been hanging out in a lot of the staff engineering ones just because I'm 00:34:05.281 --> 00:34:10.686 heading that way on my ladder and just being around the community of people and 00:34:10.686 --> 00:34:12.521 seeing what things people are posting. 00:34:13.123 --> 00:34:15.793 But what's nice is that like the quality. 00:34:17.908 --> 00:34:22.588 of job posts of opportunities or even an opportunity, again, like I said, 00:34:22.593 --> 00:34:24.598 like just offering advice to people. 00:34:24.958 --> 00:34:28.858 They might then reach out later when they're looking for somebody to hire. 00:34:29.173 --> 00:34:33.328 And so it's one that, there's so many channels I would not advise joining. 00:34:33.543 --> 00:34:38.674 All of them like I'm in like a running channel and then a bunch of staff ones, 00:34:38.674 --> 00:34:40.273 I'm in a Dungeons and Dragons channel. 00:34:40.530 --> 00:34:44.236 There's literally, it's just lots of very leadership minded people in there. 00:34:44.686 --> 00:34:47.247 Highly recommend there's a, we'll put a link in the show notes 00:34:47.247 --> 00:34:48.877 with how to get invited to that. 00:34:49.327 --> 00:34:53.139 And then there's a bunch of reverse job boards where instead of a job. 00:34:53.769 --> 00:34:59.449 Being posted, you're being posted and or being sent out to a list of companies, 00:34:59.459 --> 00:35:01.133 that are paying to have access to that. 00:35:01.553 --> 00:35:01.872 Rails. 00:35:01.872 --> 00:35:07.708 devs.com is one that I'm blanking on his name right now, but he's 00:35:07.708 --> 00:35:09.868 very involved in the rails world. 00:35:10.088 --> 00:35:11.208 CJ: Joe Masilotti? 00:35:11.228 --> 00:35:11.588 Colin: is. 00:35:11.588 --> 00:35:12.278 Yeah, Joe. 00:35:12.966 --> 00:35:16.926 And so I think a lot of rail devs specifically, so it's like a very niche 00:35:16.926 --> 00:35:21.246 job board where it's rails specific, but there are probably things like data 00:35:21.246 --> 00:35:26.411 scientist ones and you know, whatever insert job that you're looking for there. 00:35:27.581 --> 00:35:28.061 CJ: Totally. 00:35:28.121 --> 00:35:28.331 Yeah. 00:35:28.331 --> 00:35:29.711 And then we've got remote. 00:35:29.741 --> 00:35:30.221 Okay. 00:35:30.226 --> 00:35:35.171 This one is like a bigger grab bag of different kinds of roles 00:35:35.171 --> 00:35:36.474 that are all remote roles. 00:35:37.045 --> 00:35:40.522 This was a place where we found a lot of potential. 00:35:41.069 --> 00:35:44.717 openings for Nicole when she was looking for a remote job. 00:35:45.077 --> 00:35:47.027 So that is, is really cool. 00:35:47.027 --> 00:35:51.058 And I think this might be based on the same folks as the nomad list, 00:35:51.448 --> 00:35:54.791 which is okay, you can work and live anywhere you want in the world. 00:35:54.791 --> 00:35:56.754 And so this was like the job board version of that. 00:35:57.308 --> 00:35:59.888 We work remotely.com, another great one. 00:36:00.368 --> 00:36:00.578 And. 00:36:02.018 --> 00:36:06.278 The Hacker News on the first of every single month, there is a 00:36:06.278 --> 00:36:11.457 who's hiring post, and you'll just see like tons of threads of okay, 00:36:11.457 --> 00:36:13.437 here's my company I'm hiring. 00:36:13.767 --> 00:36:17.487 It's, you know, we're remote friendly or we're not remote friendly and 00:36:17.487 --> 00:36:18.609 this is what we're looking for. 00:36:19.093 --> 00:36:21.733 But also the Y Combinator. 00:36:22.513 --> 00:36:25.753 Y Combinator has their own job board for any of the YC companies. 00:36:25.753 --> 00:36:31.351 So if you go to y combinator.com/jobs, there is listings for all of the 00:36:31.351 --> 00:36:33.241 different YC companies that are hiring. 00:36:33.467 --> 00:36:38.057 This is definitely one of the places I would go because when 00:36:38.057 --> 00:36:42.965 you're looking to get a job at a small startup It can be really fun. 00:36:42.965 --> 00:36:45.065 You can learn a ton, you can wear lots of different hats. 00:36:45.065 --> 00:36:48.335 You can, you know, enjoy the scrappiness of a small team. 00:36:48.335 --> 00:36:53.402 And one of the things that you wanna make sure of though is that your company 00:36:53.402 --> 00:36:58.682 is somewhat vetted, like the startup is somewhat vetted and why Combinator is, 00:36:58.712 --> 00:37:00.752 you know, a well respected incubator. 00:37:00.752 --> 00:37:03.878 And so they're gonna do some of that vetting for you. 00:37:04.208 --> 00:37:05.408 I've also used. 00:37:05.408 --> 00:37:11.663 seeddb.com, which is basically just like a giant database of all the 00:37:11.663 --> 00:37:12.983 companies that have had funding. 00:37:13.283 --> 00:37:16.052 And so you can it's not just Y Combinator, but also Techstars 00:37:16.052 --> 00:37:17.175 and all the different startups. 00:37:17.405 --> 00:37:20.705 So you can go down all the accelerators and look at all the companies that 00:37:20.705 --> 00:37:24.455 they've invested in, maybe can sort by like when they were founded and 00:37:24.455 --> 00:37:27.405 how much funding they have, and then check out their job boards. 00:37:27.405 --> 00:37:30.345 So that's like another great way to just go and find like tons 00:37:30.345 --> 00:37:31.545 and tons of companies to apply. 00:37:32.510 --> 00:37:33.050 Colin: Absolutely. 00:37:33.050 --> 00:37:36.890 Yeah, we didn't talk about it much, but I would say this falls under the doing 00:37:36.890 --> 00:37:38.750 the research of the company, right? 00:37:38.755 --> 00:37:41.660 Because even on the who's hiring Hacker News, you'll sometimes find 00:37:41.660 --> 00:37:45.880 these companies that are one person, sometimes an I, you know, a business 00:37:45.885 --> 00:37:49.310 person who wants to hire for equity with a little bit of money on the side, 00:37:49.310 --> 00:37:52.280 and it's like really depends on where you're at in your stage of life and 00:37:52.280 --> 00:37:54.110 how much of a gamble you want to take. 00:37:54.110 --> 00:37:55.040 But having. 00:37:55.890 --> 00:38:00.430 Companies that have just come out of YC or have just raised around, it means 00:38:00.430 --> 00:38:04.930 that some other people have said, yes, there's some sort of traction, something's 00:38:04.930 --> 00:38:09.160 going on here that, signals that it's, this is, maybe a place you can go hang 00:38:09.160 --> 00:38:12.123 your hat for a while especially in the early days, you might actually be 00:38:12.123 --> 00:38:15.682 one of those founding engineers on a team that turns into the future stripe. 00:38:16.222 --> 00:38:16.842 Things like that. 00:38:16.842 --> 00:38:17.652 So it really depend. 00:38:18.477 --> 00:38:22.197 Where you're at in your career also might depend on your kind of personality. 00:38:22.197 --> 00:38:23.487 Do you wanna be in a startup? 00:38:23.487 --> 00:38:26.037 Do you wanna be at a Microsoft GitHub? 00:38:26.337 --> 00:38:27.507 Whatever that looks like. 00:38:28.109 --> 00:38:32.300 So yeah, hopefully those will help you out in, if you're looking to get hired. 00:38:32.750 --> 00:38:35.331 Some tips, some tricks, some places to, to get started. 00:38:36.501 --> 00:38:36.951 CJ: Totally. 00:38:37.041 --> 00:38:37.311 Yeah. 00:38:37.311 --> 00:38:41.066 And I think also, like if you are having a hard time getting through 00:38:41.066 --> 00:38:42.506 to that first phone screen. 00:38:42.866 --> 00:38:45.866 I'd be down to look at your resume and your like, website 00:38:45.866 --> 00:38:46.903 and social profile and stuff. 00:38:47.020 --> 00:38:50.011 Yeah, feel free to hit us up on Twitter. 00:38:50.476 --> 00:38:52.426 Colin: Absolutely happy to do it the same. 00:38:53.146 --> 00:38:55.156 So thanks for listening this week. 00:38:55.413 --> 00:38:58.472 Next week we're gonna be talking about the other side of the table and 00:38:59.055 --> 00:39:00.555 what it looks like to hire people. 00:39:00.555 --> 00:39:02.985 So maybe you're a developer that's been doing some of the 00:39:02.985 --> 00:39:04.155 interviews and some of the hiring. 00:39:04.155 --> 00:39:05.655 We'll talk about that a little bit. 00:39:06.255 --> 00:39:10.905 And as always, you can head over to build and learn.dev to check out all 00:39:10.905 --> 00:39:13.935 of our links so you can reach out if you want us to review anything. 00:39:15.140 --> 00:39:18.140 Maybe one day we'll get like a Discord community together or something so that 00:39:18.140 --> 00:39:21.890 we can have yet another place people can hang out and get jobs and things. 00:39:21.890 --> 00:39:22.658 But yeah. 00:39:23.013 --> 00:39:23.523 CJ: All right. 00:39:23.913 --> 00:39:25.383 That's all for this episode, folks. 00:39:25.563 --> 00:39:26.073 Thanks again. 00:39:26.073 --> 00:39:26.853 We'll see you next time. 00:39:27.518 --> 00:39:28.058 Colin: See ya.