🎙 About the episode
Meet Hussien Khayoon 🇨🇦! Hussien is a Full-stack engineer with almost a decade of experience. Currently, he works as a Staff Software Engineer at Shopify. He is also a Bootcamp Mentor at Springboard, and, as you can guess, he's very passionate about helping new developers land on their feet. In this episode, Hussien will be your mentor.
Hussien and Alex will help you feel confident and teach you a couple of things that can help you land your first coding job. They explain why is the interview process at big tech companies as complicated as it is and tell you what you do about it. Hussien shares his approach to both interviewing and being interviewed, as well as his take on bootcamps vs. universities. By the end of the show, you'll hopefully feel more inspired to learn to code, start applying for jobs, and navigate your new role - or at least figure out how to assess if you need to study more.
🔗 Connect with Hussien
⏰ Timestamps
- How Hussien started coding - it wasn't without struggle (01:29)
- What's the difference between solving a math problem and a coding problem? (04:31)
- The problem with the way coding is taught at universities (06:02)
- Is there any prestige in getting a degree? (08:20)
- Programming is vast: do you have to know everything? (12:40)
- Elitism and gatekeeping in the coding community (15:48)
- Is learning to code similar to learning a language? (17:38)
- Interview processes at big companies: why are they the way they are? (18:13)
- Does LeetCode make you a better developer? (22:36)
- Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and learning to code (23:09)
- Are big tech companies doing interviews right? (24:55)
- Coding is just half the job (25:59)
- What a mentoring session is about (30:00)
- Companies are changing the way they hire + Hussien's approach to being interviewed (33:37)
- What do coding students need (35:49)
- Why do companies hire people who aren't perfect yet? (39:09)
- Your career has three stages (42:03)
🧰 Resources Mentioned
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