Proving your Culture Fit
Interviews are designed to evaluate you on two things - Core competency and Culture Fit and to be honest, both are equally important. Core competency is what most of us prepare for, but what about the
This edition of the newsletter contains two quick write-ups about
Proving your Culture Fit
What not to say during interviews
I have also shared 3 super-interesting articles I read this week along with a paper that I am reading over the weekend. Thank you once again for reading this edition of my Newsletter, now without further ado, let’s jump right in …
By the way,
Being hands-on is the best way for you to learn. Practice interesting programming challenges like building your own BitTorrent client, Redis, DNS server, and even SQLite from scratch on CodeCrafters.
Sign up, and become a better engineer. [plus, you get a 40% off]
Proving your Culture Fit
Interviews are designed to evaluate you on two things - Core competency and Culture Fit and to be honest, both are equally important. Core competency is what most of us prepare for, but what about the other?
A couple of coding tests and system design rounds are enough to test the skills. However, evaluating cultural fit is ambiguous and subjective. When I interview someone, I look for the following three things
enthusiasm for the role,
how pleasant it will be to work with with him/her, and,
attitude and behavior under a pressure situation
The above pointers hold for more companies and interviewers, but the list is not exhaustive by any means. To demonstrate that you are a culture fit for any company, I would highly recommend you to
research the company, role, and team, well
listen before you speak
never interrupt the interviewer
disagree, but with respect and humility
emphasize collaboration and demonstrate genuine curiosity
acknowledge that your past achievements were the team's success
show enthusiasm for the company's mission and goals.
Remember, for any pointer you put forth, back it with some situation or incident from your experience; keep it short and crisp. The most important gesture, end the interview by thanking the interviewer for his/her time. It might just tip the scale in your favor.
No matter if you are an exceptional engineer, if you cannot be a team player, the company would be happy to part ways with you. Nobody wants to work with a genius jerk.
By the way, I made a blunder in one of my Google interviews and got a strong no for that round. But, given that I got a strong yes in other rounds, I got in; but that's the story for some other time.
You can find this post on my LinkedIn and Twitter; do leave a like.
📹 Video I posted this week
This week I posted DragonflyDB does not use HashTables but DashTables to hold the data - a deep dive
Are HashTables really the best data structure to hold KV data? DragonflyDB re-imagined the core storage and implemented DashTable which made things 415x faster 🤯
This was one of the key design decisions and attention to detail that made me go deeper into the nuances. I did a deep dive into this data structure to understand the key differences and how are they able to get a massive boost in performance.
All of my learnings and the entire deep dive are compiled in a video. This will change the way you look at Data structures and their implementations. Give it a watch.
🧠 Paper I read this week
This week I spent reading Stage: Query Execution Time Prediction in Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift accurately predicts the query execution time, and this week I am reading a paper from them talking about how they achieve this.
An interesting by-product of this is how it improves the average query execution latency by 20% given they very precisely know what's going to happen and can minimize cold start issues. This paper was published in SIGMOD'24, hence this is very new and something Redhift is currently using in production.
You can download this and other papers I recommend from my papershelf.
What not to say during interviews
Most people tend to vent about a frustrating work experience during a job interview. No matter what, you should never bad-mouth your ex-employers, here's why ...
Whenever I asked people about their work experience, most of them shared negative experiences claiming to be brutally honest. I realize people do this for 4 reasons
they want to justify their decision to leave
they are eager to express their frustration
they hope this would make the interviewer more sympathetic
they want to showcase how much they value a better environment
No matter how valid these feelings might be, expressing them in a professional context can have severe consequences, some of them that I have observed being brought up during debriefing
showed a lack of maturity
suggested inability to handle conflicts and difficult situations
suggested inability to challenge constructively
indicated that they might bring negativity to the organization
shows that you are almost always on a flight risk
One of the biggest consequences of this is how this behavior can damage your reputation. Remember, our industry is very small and after a decade of experience, almost everyone is your 1st or 2nd degree connection. So, be mindful of how you conduct and operate. Whenever you are talking about your ex-employers, make sure
you focus on positives, learnings, and growth
mention challenges as learning experiences
if you are discussing a conflict, just mention your role
if someone is asking about negatives, just redirect the question
Although, your technical skills are crucial, but your ability to work well with others and handle challenging situations professionally is equally important. Like I always say, remember, nobody wants to work with a genius jerk.
You can find this post on my LinkedIn and Twitter; do leave a like.
📰 Interesting articles I read this week
I read a few engineering blogs almost every single day, and here are the three articles I would recommend you to read.
Thank you so much for reading this edition of the newsletter 🔮 If you found it interesting, you will also love my courses
I keep sharing no fluff stuff across my socials, so, if you resonate do give me a follow on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and GitHub.