Hey Reader, Two weeks ago I posted: build your exit on day one. This is the day it paid off for me. I had joined Flipkart a few months earlier. I was not looking. I was still learning where things were. A Google recruiter messaged me on LinkedIn. Then called. Would I interview? They offered me two months to prepare Most people take it. I had a reason not to. I had a medical procedure booked about three and a half weeks out. Recovery would take time, and I was not going to cut it short for...
17 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Over the last two weeks I posted how WhatsApp works, in four blocks. This is what I see when I ask someone to build it in an interview. I sit on the other side of that table often. What follows is a composite. Not one person. A pattern. It does not matter what I ask Design WhatsApp. Design a parking lot. Design a URL shortener. The question changes. The failure does not. The candidate nods. Then, inside the first two minutes: load balancer. Database. Cache. Queue. Each word is...
23 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Tuesday's post had a template. Four columns. This is the 1:1 where I first used it for real. Early 2024. A tech lead on my team wanted the next level. Let's call him Harry Potter. Not his name, obviously. But Harry was strong. The kind of engineer you hand the hard thing to and stop worrying about it. Harry believed he was ready. I did not. The worst place a manager and a report can be Not a bad rating. A gap between what each of us thought was true. Every 1:1 after that would...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Welcome back to Guided Growth where we talk about the skills that accelerate your career beyond just writing great code. Last week LinkedIn invited me to a roundtable with the team that builds Hiring Assistant (LiHA). That is their AI agent for recruiters. Prashanthi Padmanabhan (VP, Engineering) and Nithya (Director, Engineering) walked us through it. I went in expecting a product demo. I came out with a to-do list for my own profile. Two things they said stuck with me....
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Welcome back to Guided Growth where we talk about the skills that accelerate your career beyond just writing great code. Last month I hosted a meetup in Bangalore. Engineers from PhonePe, Goldman Sachs, Dell, Deloitte. Some with 2 years of experience. Some with 12. One on a career break, fighting her way back in. Different companies. Different levels. Same question. "Where should I invest my learning time?" It came in different costumes: "Should I stay or switch?" "DSA or system...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Welcome back to Guided Growth where we talk about the skills that accelerate your career beyond just writing great code. Last month I interviewed someone who solved every question I asked. Clean code. Good structure. Explained the approach before writing it. I wrote "No Hire." Not because the answers were wrong.Because I couldn't tell if this person could think or just prepared well. Here's what most candidates don't know. After your interview ends, I open a form. At Google it was...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Welcome back to Guided Growth where we talk about the skills that accelerate your career beyond just writing great code. This is The Unwritten Rules #4: a 4-part series where I share the career rules that exist but nobody shared them with you. What do you think matters MOST in the final interview round? Coding skills System design depth Cultural fit Communication skills I wait until the last 10 minutes of every interview. The candidate has done their coding round. Their system...
4 months ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader, Welcome back to Guided Growth where we talk about the skills that accelerate your career beyond just writing great code. This is The Unwritten Rules #3: a 4-part series where I share the career rules that exist but nobody shared them with you. What do you think matters MOST in the final interview round? Coding skills System design depth Cultural fit Communication skills Last month, I gave two candidates the same debugging problem. A piece of code with a subtle concurrency bug....
4 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Welcome back to Guided Growth where we talk about the skills that accelerate your career beyond just writing great code. This is The Unwritten Rules #2: a 4-part series where I share the career rules that exist but nobody shared them with you. What do you think matters MOST in the final interview round? Coding skills System design depth Cultural fit Communication skills Last quarter, I interviewed 11 candidates for a senior backend role. I asked all of them: "Design a URL...
5 months ago • 1 min read