andher

Finally! I've been using the assistants api in building an ai mock interviewer (https://comp.lol) but the responses were painfully slow when using the latest iterations of the gpt-4 model. This will make things so much more responsive

I've been doing side projects for a bit, and they've been a combination of things I think are just cool and relate to hobbies I like, or solve some kind of problem I'm having, or are cool things I've seen other people talk about (either twitter or in person meets or something)

The one I've been working on for a while is solving PITA leetcode style interview prep. I just don't do well in prepping without some kind of mock environment. To reference from a previous comment I made:

" I'm building https://comp.lol. It's AI powered mock coding interviews, FAANG style. Looking for alpha testers when I release, sign up if you wanna try it out or just wanna try some mock coding. If its slow to load, sorry, everything runs on free tiers right now. I really dislike doing leetcode prep, and I can't intuitively understand the solutions by just reading them. I've found the best way for me to learn is to seriously try the problem (timed, interview like conditions), and be able to 'discuss' with the interviewer without just jumping to reading the solution. Been using and building this as an experiment to try prepping in a manner I like.

It's not a replacement for real mock interviews - I think those are still the best, but they're expensive and time consuming. I'm hoping to get 80% of the benefit in an easier package.

I just put a waitlist in case anyone wants to try it out and give me feedback when I get it out

Gonna apologize in advance about the copywriting. Was more messing around for my own amusement, will probably change later"

That makes more sense. I do think if you add a 9-5 to it its nearing impossible.

Were you doing your masters along side your work?

In any case, this is heartening to see. The majority consensus seems to be you can either be a good dad, or pursue lofty goals, but not both because of the time commitment required for each.

TBH I'm looking for successful examples of parent founders (founding when they had a kid, and not when the kids were grown), particularly in the realm of vc backed ventures (even indie would make good examples, but there's a slightly different dynamic). I haven't found any good examples yet, and I don't know if that's because people don't talk about being a parent while pursuing other goals, or its something people don't do,

Interesting. So from what I'm understanding, in your experience it is impossible to pursue goals for starting a startup or escaping the 9-5 once you have a child (or at least in the first several years of having a child?), and the 'correct' course of action is to accept that your goal is to provide and raise a family as your priority?

George Hotz is always so interesting to watch, although I watch the youtube video after more than live

I'm not junior anymore, but something not mentioned which I've found useful is in-person networking. But for me in person networking wasn't so much of "I'll go meet people and ask for an interview", but rather going to places to learn / talk about technical stuff I was interested in, and getting to know people doing the same things. Unfortunately, it helps to be in a place where these kinds of events happen, so tech hubs etc.

I've also searched for recruiters for a company on linkedin and messaged them directly, in addition to cold applying. Helps sometimes.

It also helps to be prepared to interview at any times, especially if you're looking at startups. So being on top of your system design (maybe not applicable at 1.5 years) and coding game.

I'm not a fan of leetcode (and maybe as a fe person you don't actually get asked it much?) but using some roadmap to learn it while applying is really useful, doing mock interviews etc. Neetcodes roadmaps are pretty good, and I'm building an AI mock interviewer at that _somewhat_ should help in doing 'mocks' (not as good as a real mock though but I've found it great for learning).

It's at https://comp.lol/. Sign up if you want to try it out. Sorry if the last part sounded like an ad, no real pressure to try it but I've had some interest from folks interviewing. Best of luck!

Yeah, I agree, the scenario is totally different in an actual pressure situation, I've fumbled so many easy questions. I don't necessarily like leetcode style questions as the standard for the industry for interviewing, but its still a reality and, from what I'm noticing, becoming more difficult in terms of expectations.

Thanks for signing up, will send out an email once its ready to take for a spin!

I've built several things! These include bots for code generation that you can tag onto issues, q&a on text etc.

The thing I'm working on now is AI mock interviewing. It's basically scratching my own itch, since I hate leetcode prep, and have found I can learn better through interaction. To paste a blurb from an earlier comment of mine:

I'm building https://comp.lol. It's AI powered mock coding interviews, FAANG style. Looking for alpha testers when I release, sign up if you wanna try it out or just wanna try some mock coding. If its slow to load, sorry, everything runs on free tiers right now.

I really dislike doing leetcode prep, and I can't intuitively understand the solutions by just reading them. I've found the best way for me to learn is to seriously try the problem (timed, interview like conditions), and be able to 'discuss' with the interviewer without just jumping to reading the solution. Been using and building this as an experiment to try prepping in a manner I like.

It's not a replacement for real mock interviews - I think those are still the best, but they're expensive and time consuming. I'm hoping to get 80% of the benefit in an easier package.

I just put a waitlist in case anyone wants to try it out and give me feedback when I get it out

Gonna apologize in advance about the copywriting. Was more messing around for my own amusement, will probably change later

I haven't read Nation but I till now Guards! Guards! Guards! has been my favorite. Its been a while since I read Discworld, will have to pick up nation

Yup, I intend to finish it. I've heard The Dark Forest may be the best in the series, so looking forward to the next one.

How are the Murderbot books? I've been intending to pick them up

I started SICP last year but haven't gotten anywhere close to completing, mostly because of competing priorities.

Siddhartha is great book, I read it years back and it sparked my interest in other works of Herman Hesse.

I read The Phoenix Project a while back and really liked it, have been intending to pick up the The Unicorn Project for some time now. Did you think just the audiobook wasn't better or in general it wasn't as good as The Phoenix Project?

It is very good. The gesture recognition, the eye tracking, video quality etc are great. The immersive video demo is outstanding, the immersive env are great, the spatial videos and photos (captured from the device) look amazing, although at this stage of the device you probably wouldn't have it on all the time at memorable moments to capture video.

It is heavy. Not 'my head hurts' heavy, but 'fatigue sets in after a while of wearing heavy'. Untethered battery life isn't amazing, but I doubt this is something you would take too far from your home / office setup (at least in its current form). There is some slight latency in the pass through camera feed but its not a dealbreaker.

It needs to get lighter, but I think the future will move in this direction. I don't think 'drop the phone' moment is right around the corner (although we're getting there), but I could be reaching for a vision pro, mouse, and keyboard for work in a not too distant future.

I'm building https://comp.lol. It's AI powered mock coding interviews, FAANG style. Looking for alpha testers when I release, sign up if you wanna try it out or just wanna try some mock coding. If its slow to load, sorry, everything runs on free tiers right now.

I really dislike doing leetcode prep, and I can't intuitively understand the solutions by just reading them. I've found the best way for me to learn is to seriously try the problem (timed, interview like conditions), and be able to 'discuss' with the interviewer without just jumping to reading the solution. Been using and building this as an experiment to try prepping in a manner I like.

It's not a replacement for real mock interviews - I think those are still the best, but they're expensive and time consuming. I'm hoping to get 80% of the benefit in an easier package.

I just put a waitlist in case anyone wants to try it out and give me feedback when I get it out

Gonna apologize in advance about the copywriting. Was more messing around for my own amusement, will probably change later

I'm someone who hasn't used Next.js a lot, and started building some projects with it (so I don't have a very nuanced opinion).

In general, I don't use the app router because I find it has little benefit as compared to the added complexity for my use cases (mvps / smaller projects). I've been bitten a couple times by not understanding the usage patterns and just making stuff "use client", so I just started using page router again.

I assume with more complex projects it helps, but I haven't experienced it first hand

When I was an IC on a team I didn't care too much about my colleagues daily updates, but I cared about the interaction we got from being able to meet and talk. This was pre-pandemic so it was nice to get together in the morning for 15 mins.

When I was a TL for a team I did care about what other people were working on, and I appreciated being able get that interaction.

As an EM I do care about what you're working on but I have many ways of knowing that...mostly I appreciate everybody getting a chance to interact with team mates for 15 mins. I've gotten a much wider view of what people's need with respect to cohesiveness and interaction are, particularly in a remote first world, and people do benefit from having these interactions. Cohesiveness has increased, people reach out more, and for my new grad hires its given some structure and opportunity to get to know others.

Like anything else, it may not work for your team, or the process may be too heavy handed to be useful. I didn't always have stand ups for my team, and like many other ceremonies its dependent on the teams constitution and lifecycle

Thanks! I really like Julia's blog, I hadn't seen those entries before!

I found "The Phoenix Project" a great read, although the learnings there were things I had picked up from places I had worked at. Haven't read "The Unicorn Project" yet but it's on the list.

Thanks for the concrete example, I can relate to this much more. It seems much harder to know, when interviewing new teams to join, whether this particular kind of skill set would be useful or valued, as opposed to being an expert in some technical niche.

Yes, I had the same conclusion about careful project picking and greenfield projects did seem to hold more promise than others. I've found that its kinda hard to get on prominent greenfield projects as one of the founding members though, without some 'in'. Many of the ones I've looked at, by the time they start staffing publicly, have picked a bunch of the staff level folks via networks. My experience might be narrow on this though.

Do you have a good way to identify and question your assumptions? You're right in that there's learned patterns that have worked well in situations which I'll keep applying moving forwards, although I do try to enumerate the trade-offs. There's probably blind spots there.

Instead, find people who ask good questions (those with the least experience often ask the best ones) and be open to exploring those questions together. It's hard

Great call out. Tangentially, if I'm being honest, not knowing answers to basic questions makes my insecurities surface, definitely a character flaw to work through.

Thanks for the reply, this reframing of the question is insightful. I'm definitely more in the camp of generalist backend with some political savviness, because I tend to enjoy collabs and getting things out more than a technical deep dive. This leaning does make me question the utility of my skills vis a vis the more technical depth that a lot of folks acquire working in focused areas of interest. I guess I hadn't thought of politically / generally effective as an archetype for higher level eng positions, especially since that seems harder to translate when moving to new teams and companies. Folks have described the 'T' engineer as the most desirable shape for eng, and I assume the depth in that T is some particular tech niche or stack that you should be building out to grow.

Feel free to email me if you'd like to chat more

Appreciate this.

Thanks, that's a great point and reminds me of the 'quantity trumps quality' parable[1]. I've found necessarily more of my time goes in reviewing code, reviewing design, setting up collaboration and proposing work (vs being able to ship more code). Any good ideas on dealing with this change in the nature of work that has to be done at more senior levels? I've also found, as I ship features fast, I don't always retain all the new stuff I learn until I've touched it a couple more times. Maybe this has something to do with how I've been learning, but any suggestions there?

[1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/quantity-always-trumps-quality...

Ah interesting. Did you have plans to monetize from the start, or was it a side-project initially? Were you aiming at growing a project to become a larger product?

Tangential: How'd you decide on starting the project? Was it related to work? A tool you built out of general interest?

Wow, this is some amazing stuff! Congratulations!

A masters is not geared towards making you a good programmer. There may certainly be a significant amount of programming involved in completing projects and homework, but they don't translate into being an effective programmer at the workplace. If, like me, you spend all of your masters doing research, you could potentially be programming a lot but the requirements are not the same as the industry, and the skills don't directly map to being good at programming in the workplace. Doing research is geared towards providing you with a framework to ask the right questions and search in a structured manner for possible solutions. It also isn't true that the most talented programmers choose to do a Masters. I've seen programmers of all abilities in these programs.

Thanks for your reply!

You are right in stating that GTech/UTA/CMU encourage a 3 semester graduation, and Stanford, Princeton go for a 2 year max. In fact, the minimum credit structure per semester is such that you will necessarily have completed in 2 years and graduate.

The reason I was allowed to have a lower credit per semester was because I was employed as a research assistant (which is usually for PhD's and is not granted to masters students who are expected to do courses), which makes it so that if I just maintained my status and did not overload courses, I would graduate in 5 semesters.

My question was on the fact that I could graduate in 4 if I wanted by taking an extra course this semester( I could have in 3 but that would have led to either compromising on the quality of my studies or of the research). However, as outlined above, I worry about whether this is the wisest thing to do or not.

Again, thank you for replying to this, it really helps. I have the skill set to get through programming interviews, and a couple of publications to show that my time in research has not been wasted. I was worried though, whether it would still be seen as a sign of not being proactive / being slow or uninspired.

I hope I don't come across as arguing, I was just giving a view of my situation. Thank you for replying!

Hey dalke, thanks for the reply!

I've started looking for jobs and am in the middle of interviews with a bunch of companies.

I also didn't come in on a thesis track and a thesis is not the end goal of the program. I started research out of interest in learning applications of my studies and mostly to get funded by a lab and avoid out of state tuition.

The norm in my program is to take 4 semesters, since its a general masters it places requirements on the breadth of your studies as well. Hence, I did study machine learning, and even did research in it in my first semester. However, I got funded completely by a different research lab working in a different area of AI, and since education is expensive I went with that.

Between research and completing the course requirements for other areas (h/w, systems, theory), I've had limited time to actually use or learn anything more in that field.

Also, it does serve as a delaying tactic since, as I pointed, I can't stay on this visa without a job and while I'm on the lookout for jobs, I might end up taking one that I'm not totally into.

In your eyes, do you think a wiser strategy is to try and get a job right now and graduate this semester?