How ‘little changes’ helped me psychologically in my FAANG journey.
As the hiring and the hikes has mounted up breaking all time records in IT companies, its time to have some motivation and try to make use of such opportunities in your career.
I used to code but never got upto where I could crack companies interview such as in Goldman-Sach, Amazon, Adobe and Google. But I didnt know what to do about it and continued to chill and thought that somehow it would take care on its own in future. And I continued to work as I had been.
But whenever I got a chance to interview in any of my dream companies, I usually felt unprepared and even if HR were ready to give as much time as you want before interview, I did not know how much time would I want?
I was practicing , not daily , but in few days I would try to solve some ques on Leetcode. Even then , I cannot make before interview, that how much time do I need or how to not feel overwhelmed in interviews or what to think in-order to be less anxious?
I just didn’t know.
Below I will go sequentially to some of the ‘little changes’ that helped me to shape for interviews:
- Written Notes : (Not detail notes) I came across article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/note-taking-tips-interviews-milad-naseri/ (by Milad Naseri)[1]. These notes were created from Cormen. I had already read it as course curriculum, but after reading this article, I too wanted to create notes of it. I did not created for all the chapter and all theory, but just the important algos and few chapters (intro chapters, heapsort, quicksort, tree, divide and conquer, DP) .
Believe it or not, but these notes always helped me to be on my tips just before interviews or whenever I was off coding practice. Initially it took me like few days to create it, but after that, by the time I reached 2nd or 3rd revision , I would skim through it in mere 30 min. [Chapters I mentioned, these were pretty sufficient topics although others you may include , but let the revision time not go more than 1.5 hr. else you may not even initiate to revise it 😋. Latter I also added, pseudo code of some classic DP problems)
2. Two great advices : First -Apply for jobs when you least need it. Second -Think as if you are a Google employee, and when you are trying to approach a problem in practice, how would be your attitude towards a problem.
Will you try to think of yourself more smart and capable to approach a problem or will you try to attempt and if not able to , then analyse where you could go wrong in your thinking process or how will be your attitude if you are stuck in something … things like these. Thinking yourself as what you what to become, helps you to make some psychological decisions as that person and prevent imposter syndrome.
3. Try all possible ways : When we get a coding problem, we start to think about its possible solution. But most of us, don’t start to code it out, being unsure that the logic we are thinking would not work. And then after some time into thinking we check hints or editorial and then actually start to write the code. We try to save us from writing wrong code. This behavior tells that we are afraid to code a solution that will not work and are afraid of rework.
At the 2009 IOI in Plovdiv, the then 14-year-old Gennady Korotkevich said of his success, I try various [strategies], and one of them is the right one. I am no genius. I am simply good at it [2].
So do not be afraid to try out what you initiated to think. Type down the code; if you find that it would not work or needs to change something, do it, and type it again; if you think that the entire logic needs to be changes, do the whole change again. Don’t be afraid of the fear of failing. It will help in long run to be not lazy when coding out your thoughts.
4. Get comfortable with writing ‘long’ codes : In continuation of above point, it also happens that we see the problem and thinking that it will require more than 15 to 20 lines of code, could be a tedious task and as a result you avoid typing out the code. But in order to prevent yourself, from preventing to attempt and type the code for a problem, you need to become comfortable with typing the code. Just like you write your thoughts on word doc and if any paragraph is not correct or need to be re-written, you don’t hesitate to do it. Similarly, you must get comfortable with typing out the codes (in leetcode IDE say) also and have an psychological attitude that expects that the code will be a long one most of the time.
Don’t keep yourself in habit of typing a very short and optimized codes in the very first attempt. Because most of the time you will be starting with brute force and with multiple reworks make it optimized.
5. Don’t think it as your last chance, even if it is : When I was given a chance to attempt First round that is Online Assessment(OA) Round by one of a great firm. I was ecstatic but during the hrs of OA, I was overwhelmed with the feeling of anxiety as it was my first time encounter with such major firm. Although this feeling stayed, every time I encountered such opportunities.
To overcome such cases, you might need to be psychologically strong. And by ‘temporarily fake thinking’ (as I call it) that — its one of many chances, (even though you are extremely unsure of future chances), and try to attempt it just as any other mock test. And thinking that even if result are not as desired, you will have many chances in future. By this way, I was to some extend not thinking of the consequences while giving OA, and brought myself into ‘false belief’ even if future is not very full of oppurtunities. Ultimately, your goal should be to reduce stress and anxiety atleast in the actual hrs of the test. And whether you achieve it by ‘fake thinking’ or any other method for those moment , its up to you.
6. Stay in Present : This point , helped me to change the way I use to go into interviews. When I get any opportunity of job interview, and knowing that there will be 3 rounds to expect minimum; in the first round, we all are bit nervous and if we fail here, we stop there. But if we succeed this round and then one more, you reach into Round 2, this time you will have more nerves thinking that only this round more and cause you don’t want to lose the opportunity if you made it to this far.
I like to watch tennis and sometimes follow the tennis player, Rafael Nadal from Spain for his mentally strong and composed attitude in many great matches. In his autobiography ‘Rafa — My Story’ , he mentioned that after losing 2007 Wimbledon Finals against No 1, Roger Federer, where he was close to winning multiple times, and when he reached the finals again in 2008 , again against Roger, he mentally stick to a rule — one game at a time — and not think of any past mistake or future moment even of he is one ball away from championship. And that year he won the most dramatic Wimbledon Finals for the first time and ended Federer’s record winning streak there. One more similar example in Naomi Osaka.
Just same, when you reach any round, no matter which round you are in, be it first, second or fifth, think that it as your first. And not just saying, but I used it to go through entire 4 rounds interview process and failing in last round and then again another 4 round interview by other [company] and then other. Although such thoughts are inevitable, but try stay in present as much as possible.
So these where my observations and small change in mindsets that I learnt from various great people I follow. And used it to develop myself into a better problem solver professionally and work on my nerves during actual pressure environment. The anxiety can be due to thinking of success even before achieving it, like in final round and just being one point away from victory.
But goal is not achieved until achieved.
Happy coding 👩🏽
Reference :
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/note-taking-tips-interviews-milad-naseri/
[2] https://znlive.com/gennady-korotkevich
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