My first internship/job:
I got my first internship in early 2014 at a national CPA firm in San Francisco.
This is the view from our office window
It was a very exciting experience because that was the first time I apply my school knowledge in a work environment. Although I was not successful in converting the internship to a full-time job, it was very helpful for me to land a full-time job at another CPA firm. The internship was very fast-paced as we work 60 to 70 hours per work for two different customers. Eventually, at the end of the internship, I was able to provide what the team needs for issuing the audit report I have had about 5 years of experience working as an operational auditor, During that time I got increasingly interested in reading/testing software, our internal audit team had to work with corporate security team to address cyber security problems. In my current role, I can now spend the majority of my time reading and testing software, including writing unit tests.
Technical interview prep:
The major problem I have with the technical interview is having enough time to come up with a solution. It feels like it takes me hours to do a homework problem but then companies are asking us to do it in minutes. The DS and algorithms courses helped put me in the right mindset to practice Leetcode, but they’re not necessary to start practicing. I am also working on the LeetCode problems with easy/medium difficulty. I found the graph algorithms problems particularly helpful for the tech interview. I got two interviews finished the first rounds, still waiting for the results.
Future Career :
Because I had experience working with the cyber security team as an internal auditor. I have grown very interested in security engineering. Currently, i am taking CS493, and right now we are at the Postman GitHub API testing section. The homework was originally very confusing to me as the study material in the exploration does not explain how to do the homework. I have watched numerous youtube videos on how to test API using postman. I think it is very helpful for me if I were to pursue this field.
