How to escape the interview horror: talking good old expertise and teamwork

It’s best to forget that you’re in an interview (in a good way): simply focus on helping the interviewers to see that you’re smart and can get things done

It is as hard for the employer to find a developer, as it is for a developer to find a job. Yet, don’t worry about any other candidates they might be looking at, since most of them wouldn’t be able to program for their life. If you can successfully write a loop that goes from 1 to 10 in every language on your resume, can do simple arithmetic without a calculator, and can use recursion to solve a real problem, you're already ahead of the pack. This week, we talk about more curious things: the minds of people who interview you. What are they looking for, and how do they make sure what they find in you and other candidates is what they need? It comes down to two things - checking that you’re smart and get things done. That’s why any interview conversation usually breaks down into two themes - technical skill and teamwork. Like to help this blog going? Tell your friends about it, like and share the post. Check out the full blog post here:

How to get your first software developer job

People who are interviewing you have to listen to many, many other candidates - it is as hard for the employer to find a developer, as it is for a developer to find a job

You need to find a job to get software development experience, and you need the experience to find a job. A Catch 22? Well, not exactly. For one thing, development as a profession changes so much overtime that anyone who works here ends up learning, unlearning and re-learning things. And for another, coding culture differs from company to company, and it is going to take months for anyone, regardless of their experience to start knocking out valuable, production-ready code. This is why your chances of getting a job are not as bad as you might think. All you need to show them is that you have an open mind and easy to work with. As for specific skills, these will skyrocket once you’re positioned in a company where you’d be spending 8 hours a day coding, surrounded by experienced colleagues.

Why Elon Musk’s Neuralink isn't as bad as you think

Figure 1. Neuralink: undergoing brain surgery for every upgrade is going to be slightly trickier than getting a new model of iPhone

Think of the computer sitting on your desk in front of you. You fire it up, you launch your email software, you use its interface to create an email to your boss saying you’re at home sick. Well, you’re not at home sick, in fact, but sipping your bubble tea in a nearby cafe, busy catching up on your favourite tech blogs. Doesn’t matter. Yet think about the relationship you have with the machine at this moment. At every moment of sending that email you are perfectly aware who you are, and by looking at the computer interface you can tell whether the machine is receiving your cues when you type the text in. You can tell that you manifest your behaviour by clicking the “send” button on that email client, and that’s where your action ends, and machine action begins. In a way, there is a certain established pipeline of intention coming from your brain, to your physical movements that gets translated by the interface into the machine commands. These commands then convert into electrical signals, and so on, all the way to the electric signals generated by synapses in the brain of your boss. She’s inevitably getting upset to hear about you being sick and perhaps a little annoyed about the project deadline being missed today.