Not sure about you but the source of my procrastination was perfection and the failure of fear. Time and time again I still have to train and remind myself to focus on progress over perfection. I've gotten a lot better at this and have been better at adopting a growth rather than fixed mindset.

Why do you think you procrastinate? If you reframe the problem, maybe you have enough motivation, but your blockers are stronger than your motivation?

Software Engineer @ Meta

Trisha

In terms of comparing yourself to others, it's hard to tell how much of it is something you can work on and how much of it is your friends are still working on their social skills and compassion.

I generally have pretty high self-esteem and that in mind, I've come across people who are really annoying in that they talk about their own accomplishments and it feels like a competition. It brings out a competitive and jealous side of me that I don't like. On the other hand, I love it when I'm around supportive people who support me, and as a result I'm genuinely happy for them when they do well.

It's very well possible that your new grad, software engineer friends don't have the best social skills and they get really defensive around you which triggers you to become defensive as well. Or, maybe even since you're the competitive one, you're the one that brings it out of them and they're reflecting that energy back to you. Being able to externalize things is generally my MO (modus operandi) for handling negative emotions.

Another way to frame it is instead of comparing yourself to others -- how can you be nice to them and make them feel good so that you can be a part of their successful network? Imagine meeting someone when they're just getting started, and 5 years from now they're doing even better than before and the company you keep is a reflection of your own qualities, plus having that network will open future opportunities for you.

Backend SWE

I did chemical engineering and Exxon mobile had their pick of interns. They basically sort by GPA in descending order, and yeah they lose out on great candidates but they still get good enough ones.

Interviews aren’t about finding the best candidate, they’re about finding the first candidate that’s good enough to extend the offer. It’s like the secretary problem but where the people interviewing don’t want to spend more time interviewing since that takes away from coding and their actual jobs.

At competitive companies, recruiters are so busy that there are a few initial filters in place to auto reject candidates. Sometimes that means resumes that have irrelevant experience or ones that are badly formatted—if you were a busy recruiter why would you read something that isn’t thoughtful of your time? Im not sure how much resume feedback youve gotten but I recommend you continue to get resume feedback 

I read somewhere and was told by my Meta recruiter that if you’re interested in a team, you should let the hiring manager know. There’s no need to play coy like during the interview process.

And you're allowed to officially switch teams after a year of being at Meta.

They usually have different recruiters so it’s fine to apply to all 

BUT don’t use the same resume for all positions. They’re clearly different positions so you should update your resume to tailor it toward each role. When talking to new grads who don’t have much nor varied experience, that’s why recruiters say to only apply to one because it forces you to think about which one your resume is the best fit for 

“& it’s not hard” could we please remove that from our vocabulary when giving advice?

As someone who did a coding bootcamp, I thought about doing an interview prep bootcamp but I knew ultimately I just needed to put in the hours studying and I wasn’t sure if the structure from the interview prep bootcamp would actually help me focus and study


 
Below is what worked for me:
Watching videos on neetcode pro to understand DSA
Hello interview DSA to understand leetcode patterns and practice leetcode problems 
Having interviews on my calendar which pressured me to prepare for them. I also used leetcode premium’s company specific interview questions lists 

Fto the course isn’t opening in mobile and I don’t see a search option for courses 🥲YI 

Thanks for linking the courses and for framing it as making yourself a person that people enjoy helping! 

I’m onboarding and I’m scared to ask questions (esp since my team has a 0->1 feature launch next week…). I wanna bother people in a way that doesn’t make me feel like a bother, so understanding how to do that in an interesting and respectful way is super relevant to me as well.

If he tells you to figure it out yourself that probably means he doesn’t know the answer / doesn’t have strong thoughts on it. If we were coworkers and you asked me how to mix purple paint I’d go into a 5 minute description but if you asked a coworker who’s not a painter they’d probably tell you to look it up yourself.

If that mentor is no longer a fit, chances are you both sense it. You can have a meeting with them and ask “hi thank you for all your help, I know youve been pretty busy and I’m wondering if we’d like to put our mentoring sessions on pause? I enjoy our sessions so please reach back out when you feel youre ready, and in the meanwhile I’m going to meet other people I can mutually learn from.” So you formally off board with them.

Afterward or in the meanwhile, you can ask your manager for another mentor. If you ask your manager before you off-board let your manager know youve yet to have that meeting on <a specific future date> so that they don’t spill the beans before you do.

Outside of formally asking your manager, I would also request 1:1s with people in your org and ask them about the work they do. If you like them, at the end you can ask them for regular occurring sessions with a termination (eg “meet weekly for a month” and then cross the bridge of continuing or not when you get there) where you can pick their brain and also help be a rubber duck for the things they’re working through. For example, the fact that I’m thinking thru and writing out a response to this has reminded me that I can also set up 1on1s with people in my org and forage for mentors that I have initial rapport with that I’d like to develop.

In my opinion, a mentorship is where there’s a primarily flow of info from one person to another but both should be learning and benefiting from the session. As a mentee you should be an inspiration and share your perspectives as well, and be their ear to their ground. Daresay canary in the goldmine lol.

Even at the Taro meetup, I shared what the current team match process looks like at Meta with Alex and Rahul so they can stay up to date with my position.

Onboarding

Fostering Mentors

I can’t view my activity / posts I’ve commented on from my profile on mobile so this is a workaround 