Why is there so much animosity towards coding interviews? — Why are we here? Recently, I interviewed with about a dozen companies (large and small) just to see what was out there and make sure I had a good sense for my market value (most software engineers should probably do the same every 2–3 years?). As I went through the process I did the…

You did the thing! You prepared well, you crushed the interview, and now you have a job offer. The recruiter says, “Congratulations! We’re so excited at the prospect of working with you. Here are the details of the offer… We’ll need an answer within 48 hours.” Here’s the thing. Most…

Several hundred hours of practice, and one job at a top Silicon Valley company later — In December of 2017, after one year of working full time as a software engineer, I decided that my general coding skills (specifically data structures and algorithms) were pretty weak and needed an overhaul. I wanted an excuse to spend more time practicing Java (at the time, my daily work…

What an internship and the video game “League of Legends” taught me about learning software — The first web application I ever wrote was during the summer before my senior year at university. I had just landed an internship, and was told that I and my fellow intern would be working together to build an application for the company’s Investor Relations team. We were told to…

I was 21 years old when I started my first full time job. All of the sudden, I went from almost zero financial responsibility to being responsible for managing a steady income. On top of that, I had these sticky things called student loans! I hadn’t given much thought about…

What follows are two stories, some lessons learned, my regrets, and my goals after my first two years working as a software engineer. University and the Workplace It was 2015 and I was a student at the University of Florida. During that time, I studied under a professor who, for what was probably the…