A Developer's Survival Guide To Technical Interviews

Hey there,

I hope you are taking advantage of the winter days to brush up on your technical skills.

Today I wanted to talk to you about something you probably hate.

Something all developers hate.

That is… technical interviews.

Interviewing is one of the most painful experiences you will have to go through as a developer.

What makes the interview process so hard you might wonder?

Well for one, you will have to answer hundreds of random questions about your past, your tech stack and God knows what, just to get ignored.

And when you get the interview, you will have to expose your code and yourself to interrogation techniques similar to the FBI...

Even if you pass the live coding challenge without getting a heart attack…

What comes next is a System Design interview that will push your technical understanding to the limit (and your nerves).

By the way, this will be nothing like the code you work with every day, forget about that. It will be things they think you should know, at least in theory.

Finally, don't forget, even if you do a great interview, you might still not get the job…

After mentoring over 180+ software developers during their interviewing stages, I can tell you there are a few keys for you to survive the interviewing process and emerge victorious with a job offer that matches your worth as a developer.

Here you go:

1. Mental fortitude - when you start interviewing manage your own expectations. You might go weeks working late in the evenings and the weekends without getting much back. Don’t get attached to the outcome. Just keep going. Until you get it. You can also find a community to support you.
2. Numbers game - most developers I chat with do around 1 to 2 interview processes per week. That’s fine if you want to land a job in 2024! If you want to get that job sooner than later, you will need around 5 interview processes per week. I am not kidding. Why? Many of those processes will end up without you getting an offer. But Dragos, I don’t have time for so many interviews... Which brings me to the second point…
3. Focus - if every week you are interviewing for a different position or technology, no wonder you are failing those interviews. Don't do a frontend interview today, a backend one tomorrow, and a data engineering one the day after. Stick to your specialization! Is much easier to solve 1 problem than 5 at the same time.
4. No emotions - learn to move on fast. Don’t fall in love with one company, one team etc. Only if they reciprocate! Bogdan and I like to say, don’t play the hand, play the table. Once the interview is finished or the call is over, move on to the next opportunity. If they come back to you fine, if not you will be already talking to other companies.
5. Teach people how to treat you - you will get ghosted and disrespected. When they tell you “we will get back to you” but they never do. And you waste days waiting for an answer, thinking about that opportunity. Time to take back your power. So when they tell you they will get back to you, just say “Cool, when exactly do you think you can get back to me?”. “Could you please do it within the next 3 working days as I am also interviewing with other companies and my situation can change quickly? Thank you”. Say this even if you are not in the process with other companies (which you should be!)

I could go on, but that’s not the point of this post.

Apply 3 out of these 5 principles and you will be better than 95% of developers there jumping from call to call and asking themselves what doesn’t work.

You might ask yourself, but what about the technical part?

That’s for another day…

Of course, everything I outline here is easier said than done, particularly when you have a full-time job or a family.

That is exactly why programs like Software Mastery exist.

We’ve done all the work for you. We know exactly what you need to do and to say, we know when you need to do it and to say it. We have proven templates and processes that you can use all along the technical interview process and we will give you feedback before you even get to the interview so when you get there you are 150% prepared and you nail the whole thing.

The average pay raise for the developers in our community is 50% with many of them doubling their salaries in the first 3 months of the program.

We will teach you how to pass technical interviews with ease, and how to deliver with confidence at a whole new level.

The choice is yours… Apply here to see if you qualify!

Take care,

Dragossurvival guide to technical interviews

p.S. Are you interested in joining us? February might be the best time for you as in the following weeks we are offering a special offer that we won’t be able to keep for a long time. We can only onboard around 5 to 8 people every month. And my calendar is full again! So apply here now and let’s make 2023 your best year yet as a developer!