Wrapping Up

[00:00:00]
>> You made it. You are as mentally exhausted as you would be during a real interview, except with less judgement from the interviewer. Just kidding, I've been secretly judging you all this entire time. All right, so what now? The results. These things are binary. Either you pass, or you didn't pass.

[00:00:25]
Odds are, you're probably gonna fail. I still say this, even after this, even after doing many, many interviews, and giving many, many interviews, I still say interviews are half luck. I do, that's just the way it is. Sometimes you're just gonna get the right question on the right day with the right Interviewer, and you're just in your groove, feel like, I know this.

[00:00:46]
I know how to implement a sleep function because I've thought about this before. I know how to implement debounce. And you'll just have it. You're in your groove and you know it, and it feels so good. Sometimes, it's just not your day. They ask you every question we didn't cover, every question that you couldn't possibly know.

[00:01:00]
Or it's just a bad question, or you get up there and you freeze. It's okay, you're not a failure, that happens. I have failed many interviews, I've probably failed more interviews than I've passed. I've tried to get to 500 but yeah, it's tough. It's all right, you're no less of an engineer, and it's a hard ego blow.

[00:01:20]
But it's gonna happen, just mentally prepare yourself for it. And if you pass, hey, maybe I'll do a short course on how to negotiate your offer. That's always the fun phase. When you can increase your salary by like 50 grand, maybe more if you're good at negotiating, maybe some stock options.

[00:01:37]
Maybe some nice vacation time. That's the good times. That's what you wanna get to. You want that positive stress. Like, what if I could squeeze them for ten grand more? That's a good time. If you failed, that's okay. What you can try to do is ask for feedback.

[00:01:52]
A lot of companies are cagey with feedback, I think it's a lawsuit thing, they don't want to get sued or something like that. But hopefully, if the company's good, they'll give you some feedback. They'll say, hey, you know what? You aced CSS, you aced HTML. Some of your data structure's though a little weak.

[00:02:07]
I would come back and study those. That's good feedback. Remember, there's winning and then there's learning. Now, if you're the interviewer and you say, hey, I really like this person. They were fantastic. They didn't quite have the depth of knowledge that we're looking for. That's gonna happen, too.

[00:02:24]
Not everybody you interview is gonna pass. That's just the way it goes. So as the interviewer, I really encourage you to give feedback. I definitely encourage you. If you interview for my team, and you have the phone screen, I always write up, it takes a bit of time, but I always write up, hey, here's the pros of what this person did.

[00:02:42]
Here's where they didn't succeed as much, but they're welcome to come back and try again. And that's helpful, cuz if I just say no, no what? What didn't I do right? That's not helpful to anybody. If you really like them, invite them to reapply. Give them feedback. Say hey, if you come back and work on, I don't know, your CSS a bit, I think you'd be an ace for this position, but we need you to show a little bit more depth there.

[00:03:06]
I know someone, they applied to Netflix three times. Failed two times, got through the third time. Third time, they aced it. That's the kinda people I wanna work with, people that are dedicated. And like I said, you're probably gonna fail at some point. It's okay. If you gave a good experience, a positive experience, and you were helpful on the way, you helped them, they didn't get stuck anywhere.

[00:03:30]
If they did get stuck, you really helped them out. You invite them to reapply. Engineering, especially front engineering, is a really small world. I can throw out some names and you probably all follow them on Twitter or something like that, because we all know the same thing. It's a small universe.

[00:03:43]
So don't be a jerk to people who are interviewing with you. You will probably see them again and they'll remember you. And stay in touch. If you really like someone and you feel like they have a lot of potential, stay in touch with them. Reach out every six months to say hey, you want to reapply?

[00:03:58]
The worst thing that happens is you get rejected. There's no cost. Other than your ego, there's no cost to that. All right. So that was interviewing for finance. Great job everyone, you all made it. We're all a little tired. I'm a little wired, had my green tea. Feeling good.

[00:04:17]
But you made it through the end of the day. Now, again I can't guarantee that all these questions you'll see perfectly examples, you'll see like exact replicas. But you'll probably see some similar problems along the way. And it really helps if you follow along how to break down that problem and try to understand what are they trying to get at.

[00:04:35]
I'm trying to understand this person understands promises or they understand like how to iterate the DOM, things like that. And don't focus so much on getting the right answer, talk about how you got to the solution. That's probably the most helpful advice I can give you. Thank you.

[00:04:49]
>> [APPLAUSE]