career preparation cpsc 436i -...
TRANSCRIPT
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CPSC 436ICareer PreparationJeremy Goh
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A little about me
● BCS '15● Co-op at a local startup, internship at a big company● Software Engineer working on product in the Bay Area
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1. Motivation2. Options3. Timelines and Planning4. Getting Noticed 5. Getting Over the Bar6. Making the Most of It
Overview
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What should I do with my life?
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● We all want to be happy● Work takes up a significant amount of our lives● Tech is booming and there are lots of options● Some jobs are better than others and we want to make
adjustments at the least costly stage● Internships and Co-ops are great for validation
Why does it matter?
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Two Ways to Start
1. Motivations2. Possibilities
What should I do with my life?
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ExerciseTaking turns, talk to the person next to you about - Why you decided to do a computer science
degree- What you'd like to do after and why
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DiscussionSo why are you all here?
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What motivates you?
- Money- Prestige- Social- Learning, Interest- Life (Not work)
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- Humans are unique because they can be forward looking- We're not very good at it though
- In choosing your motivations, you're making assumptions- Hypothesize, Test, Validate
- We should validate our assumptions that our motivations are correct and then that our chosen course fulfils them
Are these the right motivations?
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Assumptions
I want to make the most money I can. I'm going to work at company X which offered me the most amount of money
Assumptions:
- Money will make me happy- The cost of doing that job will be outweighed by the benefits- Working at company X will truly make me the most money
- What about promotions and career progression?- What about learning which might enable you to get a better paying job elsewhere?- If you get compensated in stock, what about stock trajectory?
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Motivations - Resources
- Resources- How Will You Measure Your Life, Christensen- Designing Your Life, Burnett and Evans
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Options
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- Roles- Domains- Companies
Options
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- Attend career events- Networking events, Meetups, Eventbrite, Piazza,
Conferences- Grace Hopper
- Your Network- Careers Sites (Indeed, Hired, StackOverflow, LinkedIn)- Google
How do you figure out your options?
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Common Roles
- Software Engineer- Backend- Front-End/User Interface Engineer- Full Stack- Systems- Mobile- ML
- Product Manager- Project Manager- Data Scientist- Academia
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- Work with a Data Scientist to opportunity size a new feature- Pitch the project to the Product Manager and work with Designer and Content
Strategist to come up with mocks- Product Manager coordinates strategy and resources/dependencies with other
teams- Build the feature
- UIE/Mobile Engineers build the client- Server/Full-Stack Engineers build the API- Infra/Backend/ML Engineers work on backend
- If it's a highly technical project of significant duration, a Project Manager may help manage timelines for the entire team working on it
Roles - Building a feature (1)
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- Work with Data Scientist to ensure we're logging the right information and tracking success metrics
- Work with QA Engineer to get feature tested- Launch feature/Start a test- Product Specialist triages bugs to be fixed- Data Engineer builds pipelines for quicker/easier/cleaner analysis of data- Work with Data Scientist to determine if feature was a success
Roles - Building a feature (2)
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- Startup vs Tech Giant- Hardware vs Software- Gaming vs Finance- Differences in
- Structure- Compensation- Learning speed- Tech stack- Culture- Career Progression
Domains and Companies
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How many of you are thinking of doing co-op or an internship?
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Co-ops/Internships are a great way to validate assumptions
- Company: Will this student be a good employee?
- Student: Is this job (role/domain/company) right for me?
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- Co-ops- Typically 4 or 8 months long- Part of the Academic program- Applications needed- Structured (timelines, workshops, reviews)- Curated job postings- Check-ins
- Internships- Typically 8 to 12 weeks long- Self driven
Co-ops and Internships
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- Talk to other students who have interned/done co-ops at the company- Are you doing actual work?
- Freshman and Diversity Programs- Facebook University, TwitterU, Microsoft Explore
- Pipeline for getting a full-time offer- Summer before your graduate
Things to Keep In Mind
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Full Time Positions
- Ideally you've done co-ops/internships before you get your first position- If not, you might have difficulties
- proving your experience- ensuring this is the right job for you (it's a lot more costly to get the job wrong)
- Don't worry about getting it 100% right the first time. - Nothing is that permanent anyway
- Some of the biggest tech companies have average tenures of 2 to 3 years
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Timelines and Planning
What do I do and when?
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By Year
- 1st/2nd Year: focus on building out core skills and getting some industry experience
- Getting to grips with CS fundamentals- Building side projects and your resume- Getting your technical internship/co-op- Attending hackathons
- 3rd Year: apply for internships at companies you'd like to work at full-time- Fall: Start applying for summer internships. Prep for coding interviews- Summer: Intern at a company you'd consider working for. Try and get a return offer
- 4th Year: apply for full-time jobs or making the most of school + life once you've found something
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Deadlines
- Co-op- Publishes their own set of deadlines
- Internships- Deadlines vary but summer internships recruiting can start as early as September and finish by
the beginning of December!
- Full Time- Generally involves more interviews than co-op/internships- Companies will likely fly you down for the interview- Try to land a job before you graduate. Start looking in the Fall
- Recruiting process can take more than a month- Can be sped up if you have deadlines
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Process and Purpose
What does it take to get a job?
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Application Process
1. Applicationa. Resume/Cover Letterb. Direct vs Referral
2. Recruiter Screena. Phone screen
i. Behavioral/knowledge based
3. Phone Screena. Technical/Coding
4. Onsitea. Multiple interviews (coding, behavioral, maybe system design)
5. Offer!
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Company's Perspective
- Bad hires are expensive- Market is competitive- Hire as quickly and efficiently as possible
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You're Interviewing the Company Too
- Would I want to work with these people?- Is their recruiting process well-thought out and challenging, or arbitrary?
- Smaller companies might focus on practical skills (e.g. build a clone of Reddit)- Larger companies focus on the academic but still technical (e.g. write an algorithm that does X)- Recruiting for technical roles should be technical
- Do they already know what I'm going to work on?
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Strategizing
- Get as much (relevant) experience as you can as early as you can- Be realistic
- Cooling off periods (6 months to a year after interview or onsite fail)
- Use companies you are less interested in (but would still work for!) to warm up - Does not apply for co-op positions
- Your last co-op/internship should ideally be at the company you want to work for
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Company: How can I filter out as many candidates
as possible?
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Resumes
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- Tell a story about why you're a relevant candidate- School, Degree, Graduation year
- Letter GPA
- Previous Professional Experience- Technical Skills and Side Projects- Work Authorization- 1 PAGE
Resumes - Structure
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- Active vs Passive, Your Role- Measure Impact- Don't be overconfident or undersell yourself- Be unique
- Don't use the same class projects that everyone else is writing down
- BE CONCISE!
Resumes - Wording
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ExerciseWrite out a section of your resume for your project
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Cover Letters
- May or may not be required/read- A chance for you to add (a little) personality and sell yourself- Show that you've done your research
- Personalize it to the company and for the role
- What can I do for you and why do I think I can do it?
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Google receives three million applications a year and hires 1 in 5000
How do I stand out?
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Getting Noticed - Hooks
- It's all about people- Referrals- Connect with Recruiters
- Career Events, Hackathons, LinkedIn- Networking
- Your Background- School, previous experience
- Technical skills- Hackathons
- Prizes- Coding Competitions
- Often sponsored and run by big companies (e.g. on Kaggle)- Side Projects
- Open source
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Custom Hooks
- Tailor your hook for the company and role- This should be reflected in how you present yourself in the entire application
process from cover letter to resume to interview
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Standing Out with Side Projects
- Not the same as a class project- Should demonstrate your interest and ability outside of the classroom- Does not need to be novel
- You can take inspiration from some impressive sounding tutorials and make them your own- e.g. build a Reddit bot that follows you around the site and upvotes your comments
- Leverage interesting APIS- Use Google's Cloud Vision API to auto-blur offensive user generated content
- Ideally open-source and accessible- Only list things you are able to talk about
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ExerciseThere's a recruiter for your dream role at company X, how would you introduce yourself?
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Connecting with People - My Experience
- Got an interview because the recruiter knew someone who worked on the same project I was interning on
- Got a co-op position after meeting with hiring manager at a tech talk and standing out during the interview
- Got fast tracked to an interview because I had won a hackathon prize and an engineer helping out at the hackathon referred me
- Got a job offer because I messaged a recruiter on LinkedIn
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Connecting with People
- How to Win Friends and Influence People, Carnegie- Career Events and Hackathons
- Introduce yourself, be friendly, have your resume- Have a sales pitch or hook
- Meetups, local tech scene- The Vancouver tech scene is pretty small
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Go do a hackathon already
- Great way to build your technical skills and network- Connect with recruiters that might not normally visit UBC and get more 1:1 time- Build out your resume
- side projects- prestigious hackathons and prizes
- MLH
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Company: How do I ensure this
person can actually do the
job?
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Interviews
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Types of Interviews
- Non-Technical- Behavioral/Situational- Tell me about a time…- Helps determine if you're a good fit, have problem solving skills, can work with others
- Technical- Does this person have the technical skills to do the job- Can they write code?- Where most people fail
- Both require preparation!
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Non-Technical Interviews
Two types:
1. Recruiter phone screena. Optional, takes place after the resume screenb. Typically short and surface level. Used to filter out candidates
2. Behavioral/Culture Fita. Can be combined with a technical interviewb. To see whether you would fit in with the company, if you share the same values
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Recruiter Phone Screen
- Typically 30 minutes or less- Used to filter out candidates
- Can you speak English?- Have you done some research into the company and role?
- Make sure you know what the company does and have a reason for why you want to work there!
- Do you have some basic qualifications for the role?- May involve some knowledge questions
- e.g. What are some of the primitive types in Java?
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Behavioral/Culture Fit Interviews
- Every company does this differently- Some focus on situational questions (big companies) while others just seek to
get to know you and your interests (startups)- Situational questions often reflect the companies values and take the form of
- "Tell me about a time when …."
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Technical Interviews
- Typically involves coding on a whiteboard or in a collaborative editor online (e.g. google docs, collabedit, coderpad)
- Some startups might have you build something or pair program- Tests:
- Your ability to solve a problem using CS concepts: data structures and algorithms- Your ability to translate thoughts into code
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Technical interviews are terrible
- But they're the least bad of the bad options- They're standardized
- Software engineers should have a background in data structures and algorithms
- Mostly binary- Can you write code?
- Some companies will be sticklers for syntax, others will be fine- Use pseudocode if needed
- Can you work with others?- Have you done your homework?
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What questions will you be asked?
- Depends on the type of job you're applying for- Hardware will involve lower level language concepts
- Tests knowledge of CPSC 221 and 320- Questions vary by company but generally fall into specific themes and
categories- Highly technical interviews for companies like Palantir or high frequency trading firms
- Resources- Programming Interviews Exposed, Mongan et al- Cracking the Coding Interview, Laakmann McDowell- Glassdoor.com- LeetCode.com
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What language should I use?
- Whichever one the company lets you- Whichever one you're most comfortable with and will get the job done
- Inputs/Output- Reading/Writing to files- Bit Manipulation- Collections- Sorting- Classes
- Safe choices: C++, Java, Python
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Outline of a Coding Interview
45 minutes to an hour long
1. Intros2. Maybe some behavioral or warm up questions3. Coding Question4. Clarify + Propose Approaches5. Code6. Test7. Complexity Analysis + Discussion8. Iterate9. More questions
10. Wrap up11. Your turn to ask questions
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Approaching a Problem - 1
- Clarify- So if the input is X then I should get Y- Are there any constraints?
- Does this all need to fit in memory?- What can I expect of the input?
- Do I need to check for malformed input?
- Identify approaches- What domain does this problem map to?- What algorithms might be useful?- Does this look like something I've seen before?
- Discuss and get buy-in from your interviewer- If they seem sceptical then you may be on the wrong track
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- Code- Stub out functions for implementation later (either the tedious ones or the ones you're not sure
about yet)- Use pseudocode if you're not sure about the exact API
- Test your code- Run through some sample input
- Analyze the Complexity- Space/Time tradeoffs
Approaching a Problem - 2
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Some Examples
- FizzBuzz. Print out numbers 1 to 100, except if divisible by 3 print "fizz", by 5 print "buzz", by 15 print "fizzbuzz"
- Return the most common letter in this string- Determine if any two numbers in a list add up to a target number
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ExerciseDetermine the most common letter in an input string
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Volunteer
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Your turn to ask questions
- Interviewers typically leave a few minutes at the end for you to ask questions- Do your homework and ask a question that shows your interest- Think about how your question might be perceived- Good questions lead to discussions and conversation which can make you
more memorable- Sample questions
- How do you typically decide what projects to work on?- I heard you're releasing a new product built in language X, why did you decide to use that
language?- What do you like most/least about working here?
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Interviews - My Experience
- Failed a lot at the start but improved with practice- Prepared extensively
- Leetcode- Time investments vs Academics
- Big company: Failed in the last round for an internship but got a reach out for full time and then landed a job offer
- Rejected a company based on my experience interviewing with them
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You've got an offer, now what?
With incomplete information, how do you choose the right job/co-op/internship?
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Offers
- Plan your application and interview timelines so that you get your offers within the same timeframe
- Ask for deadline extensions or earlier interviews if needed- Negotiate
- Does not apply for co-op and less so for internships- Know what you're worth, do your research
- You can't always see into the future- Write down the assumptions your making and validate them based on the information you do
have- e.g. You'll learn a lot working at company X. But is that the case if all their previous interns do is
refactor code?
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Offers - My Experience
- Co-op: I chose between two jobs. I preferred the startup and the pace of working + culture over a more established company
- Internship: I chose a big company for a different experience and its brand recognition over a startup
- Full-time: I chose a company which offered me flexibility to find the role and domain that worked for me rather than the one that offered me the most money immediately
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It doesn't end here
How do you make the most of your new position?
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Preparing For Your New Role
- Co-ops/Internships are great for getting your foot in the door and getting a full-time offer
- Who doesn't want to start a full-time position off on the right foot- Make the most of your new role by
- Asking ahead of time what stack they use and if there are any technical resources you should read through
- Figuring out what you want to achieve with your new role- Determining what expectations the company has of you and how they are assessed
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Traits of a Good Engineer
- Productive- Writes a lot of code (or as much as is needed to get the feature done)
- Quality- Doesn't make the same mistake twice- Writes code that adheres to conventions and internal style documents- Tests their code
- Independent- Knows when to ask questions and get others involved
- 15 minute rule
- Initiative- Does things without being asked, seeks to make the product and codebase better
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- It's a process- Preparation counts- It's totally worth it- People matter (a lot!)- Fundamental problem solving
skills never go out of style- Have a life- Re-evaluate your direction from
time to time
Making the Most of It
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Questions?