Welcome back to my blog and thank you for taking the time to read post #4. This week I was able to get my hands dirty and apply what I have been learning through reading documentation and watching tutorials. Working with React Native and Firebase has been a great learning experience and watching our project come to life has been incredibly rewarding.
Although the purpose of this blog is to document my journey through the CS 467 Capstone course, I want to deviate from this topic and dedicate this blog post to my first experience with interviewing for technical roles.
Since I started my computer science journey in March of 2020, my goal was always to land a software engineering position in a big tech company. The problem was that I had no idea how to accomplish this. At that point I had no idea about the format of technical interviews or what Leetcode was. However, I did know that the more I knew about computer science and its key concepts, the better position I would be to accomplish my goal.
Therefore, as I mentioned in a previous blog post, I audited Berkeley’s CS61B and learned about data structures and algorithms, almost accidentally learning perhaps the most important skills needed for tech interviews. Additionally, I was able to build a couple of personal projects that involved data structures and algorithms, which enhanced my understanding of the topics.
Fast forward to early August, I was admitted to OSU and immediately started applying for software engineering internships. I knew that the best route to accomplish my goal of working as a software engineer at a big tech company would be through internships. This would give me an introduction to the industry, help me gain valuable skills and enhance my resume.
To my surprise, about a month before my first quarter at OSU started I received my first online assessment from Coinbase. Having never taken an online assessment before, or even heard of them, I searched online to see how I could prepare. To my relief, most of the advice I read was related to reviewing data structures and algorithms. I already know about these concepts, I thought, this should be easy. With a naive sense of confidence, I opened the Hackerrank assessment and started reading the first question.
As soon as I finished reading the first question my confidence completely faded away. I had no idea how to answer the question. I moved on to the second question, read the instructions and realized that it was harder than the first one. Ultimately, I tried my best and submitted my answers that passed a minimal amount of tests.
Of course, about a week later I was informed that I did not perform well enough to move on through their interview process. However, instead of being disappointed about the outcome, I took this experience as a learning opportunity and started learning more about online assessments and technical interviews. I bought and started reading Cracking the Coding Interview and created a Leetcode account. What followed were many late nights practicing problems and learning about problem solving techniques, which ultimately paid off.
In order to keep this post short, I’ll stop my story here. However, I do plan on writing about the next part of my journey, which was applying and interviewing for more software engineering internships. I hope you can join me then.
Thank you for reading and I’ll see you next time.
Rod
