When I applied at Uber I had little to no interviewing experience. Almost all of my jobs (I was a freelancer) were referral based. People had either worked with me before, or knew me from my open source contributions. Applying at Uber felt like a way to prove myself... I wanted to know how I held up against a talented group of engineers. The interviewing was an extremely intense process. First a remote coding exercise, followed by a full day of 6 back-2-back interviews, 2 on systems design, 2 on coding, and 2 fit interviews. Very. Intense.

When tackling problems, there a a couple techniques that I apply. Some of them are big, some are small. A big differentiator in my way of working is based on the need to innovate. This need is not consistent across a project of company, it often varies quite heavily. Finding out this level can be tricky, but doing so has made me a very effective software engineer. I’ll try to explain why that helped me and what I do different per case.

There's currently a duo (a senior and an apprentice) installing a new boiler in our apartment. It's just a joy to hear them work. They're doing all the steps together. Sometimes the apprentice leads the way and sometimes the senior does. It's so inspiring to see! 🤩 here's why: Each step in the process seems to be discussed briefly before starting. Some steps the senior asks what needs to be done, this forces the apprentice to make a decision based on their own insights. If needed the it's corrected, sometimes reasoning behind the decision is asked.