How I got my dream job as a software engineer at Meta.
Hi, my name is Shahed. I’m from Tulkarm, Palestine. I’ll be starting my new job at Meta in London soon. I’m the youngest girl in my family and at first, my father wanted me to become a nurse! It’s funny how you meet people who help shape your path. For me, there were many of those situations and I have many people to thank for helping me get to where I am today.
Starting in high school, I took a beginner programming course using Scratch. I was really into it. My teacher told me I would be excellent at coding — she was the first person to influence my path.
In my senior year in high school, I wanted to pursue medicine to become a pharmacist. At the end of the year, the village where I live brought graduates from different fields to talk to us. After speaking to a pharmacist at the event and finding out what medicine entails, I didn’t feel it was for me. Then, I spoke to a computer scientist, and I felt that the way he was describing computer science would allow me to become the best version of myself. After speaking to him and my older siblings, it was confirmed — that computer engineering was for me.
My Manara Journey
I heard about Manara from two of my friends who were enrolled in the program. We were all at Palestine Technical University Kadoorie together. They would tell me about the opportunities Manara’s participants were getting and I would come home and tell my dad that they were getting internships and full-time jobs at Google and Amazon. He would ask me when it was my turn. I always laughed replying that I didn’t think I would ever get into Manara as my friends were into competitive programming and their level was much higher than mine. My dad ended up passing away in April 2021 and the last thing he asked me to do was to join Manara, so I gave it a shot. It took me 2–3 hours to apply and to my surprise, I was accepted.
During my time in Manara’s program, I met many influential people. Mazen from Meta and Mirna from Goldman Sachs were my mentors. They were there step by step giving me advice and helping me develop. Diana from Google, Laith from Meta, and many more. I’m so thankful to everyone who helped with mock interviews. I don’t know how Manara gets so many great mentors. They’ve built such a great community — everyone is really amazing. In my first or second meeting with Mirna, I was so shy with my English that I wouldn’t say anything until she asked me something first, and my sentences were short. Over time, my confidence grew and I would speak a lot more, and I have to thank Mirna for that. There is Ayham too. He did a great mock interview with me once and he still keeps in touch with me on Linkedin. He’s been following my journey and asks how things are going from time to time. I really didn’t expect this.
I literally had a team of tech professionals guiding me and encouraging me — the support I received was incredible. Before my on-site interviews, I had a couple of mock interviews that did not go well. The last mock interview prior to my Google on-site with Diana went really, really bad. Due to some pressure, I wasn’t in a great headspace and mentally I was really disappointed with myself. The 45-minute mock interview I was having with Diana turned into a 1.5-hour counseling session. I started crying at the end of it. She taught me breathing exercises to help calm myself when I felt like my nervousness would take control. I really gained so much confidence from her. When I got my offer from Meta, she was one of the first people I told as I had to thank her for all her great advice and support.
My advice
Don’t underestimate yourself. If you fail for some reason, it will be a learning experience. I never thought I would be able to get to Meta. It took only 2–3 hours to apply to Manara and this has turned into getting my dream job!
