This advice assumes you're already in the interview loop, in which case, I would min-max your focus towards gathering intel and preparing for your interview.

Here are some high leverage activities:

1. Check Glassdoor for interview questions. Look at the most recent feedback. Figure out what problem types you might face, and then practice those questions for your upcoming interview.
2. If no good info available -&gt; do a cold reach-out to someone on LinkedIn and grab feedback on the type of questions you might get asked e.g. is it LC style, design-based? Ask for the difficulty level of the question(s), and what things you should look out for to best prepare. You can also ask them how they prepared to best succeed for the interview itself. Make your request as direct as possible to make it easier on them to answer.
3. For behavioral questions, have a list of common questions/scenarios that you'll be asked, and record yourself answering them. Continually refine your answers down to the essentials, and make sure they're purposeful. Things to think about:
   1. Why are these questions being asked of you?
   2. What signals are the interviewer looking for?
   3. How familiar are you with your resume? If someone drilled down on each bullet point, and asked you to clarify/justify your experience, how would you address them?
   4. What type of person are they looking to hire for i.e. what archetype are they looking for? How does your story fit in with their envisioned role? Can you exemplify the role they are seeking to fulfill -- by demonstrating relevant example(s) of what you would do if you were in XYZ situation?
   5. How should you best answer their question to best highlight your impact/value based on what they are looking for?

At the end of the day, behavioral questions are meant to:

1. Mitigate risk on their end
2. Select for certain behaviors/attitudes that would bring value to the team.

It's really meant to proxy "what would it be like to work with this person?" and "could I sustainably do so given the way they carry themselves?"

Sometimes it also means, does this person carry characteristics that would embody the values at our company? -- your answers should reflect this.

Hope this helps.

Software Engineer at Statefarm

Jian Kuang

Here's how I increased the momentum I had by applying a combination of soft and technical skills to rapidly unblock myself.

If there are diminishing returns from figuring out the problem yourself, you should probably ask for help. But before you do that, here were some questions that I asked myself when I was blocked:

- What are my knowledge gaps?
- Are there low hanging fruits to reduce the knowledge debt as much as possible before I make the ask?

Your mentality should be, how do I make it as easy as possible for another person to help me? This might involve doing some homework before asking any questions. You want to rapidly map out what you know vs. what you don't.

Keep in mind, the person helping you is often far removed from your comprehension gaps. They're not a mind reader, so your goal is to clarify what you don't understand to make it easier on them. After all, it's much harder to help someone who doesn't know what they're searching for than to help someone that does. The way to receive effective help is by reflecting on the problem(s) you're facing.

Here are some things you can do before you make the ask:

### Part I: Gain Self-Awareness By Doing Your Homework

- Skim through methods to gain a high-level understanding
- Command-click through methods to gain a comprehension of execution flow
- Run the program/service while printing log statements to gain insights about service behavior
- Git blame code to see which coworkers could help you
- Keep track of important questions as you explore — sometimes you might run into conceptual gaps, other times there are procedural gaps in how to set up the environment, etc. Batch the questions you plan on asking to save as much time for your coworker.

At some point, you're going to hit a wall in terms of what you can figure out vs. what you can't. Regardless, try to do things efficiently, and don't spend too much time here. Just having a list of questions alone is already enough.

- In any case, figure out your knowledge gaps as quickly as possible. During your meeting, clarify these gaps by asking everything that you're missing (things you couldn't figure out yourself), as well as any potential popup questions that might show up during the conversation.
- The quicker you pay down the knowledge debt, the faster you develop an understanding, the faster your code velocity. This all equates to having higher confidence at work.

I liken this process to exploring an RPG game — you traverse through the world, and the relevant parts of the minimap light up as you explore new territory. Over time, you get familiar with locations you explore and remember where to go when you need certain resources. Likewise, when you're having the conversation with your coworker, you want the minimap to reveal itself as much as possible, and you do this by asking as many questions as needed to bridge the gaps of your understanding.

By now, you should have a much better understanding, though, you might run into problems still. There are situations where requiring additional help from the same peer is necessary, especially if you want to be more efficient, and you do that by asking even higher quality questions.

As such, the next part is learning how to ask high quality questions while retaining knowledge and mitigating knowledge loss.

### **Part II: Knowledge Retention and Asking High Quality Questions**

There's really no point in asking questions if you're not growing from them. Asking questions has a time cost, and you want to make sure it pays off. A good outcome from asking questions means:

1. You have high knowledge retention, and you're able to replicate your understanding through application
2. You never have to ask the same question twice
3. If you do ask a question, it's always different, with the intention of further deepening your understanding.

If you apply this correctly, your questions should increase in quality, as well as your depth of knowledge. Here are some tips on how to maintain high knowledge retention while being valuable to your coworker:

- (1) Do not write notes during a conversation. Writing notes prevents you from paying attention. You'll be too focused on keeping track of everything that is being said. It also prevents you from engaging in higher-order learning where all the knowledge retention occurs.

  - Instead, record and track relevant discussions and upload videos to a service like Loom where the audio can be transcribed to CC.

  - You can search for key terms like "ProcessA" in the search box of the transcript to jump to relevant timestamps.

  - You can even write efficient notes (after the discussion) like so: \[timestamp\] + link to loom - processA

    - This way, you quickly review how ProcessA is done instead of needing to write extensive notes about ProcessA itself.

  - Additionally, Loom prevents you from needing to ask the same questions twice -- you can review the vod at a later time -- and this gives you more bandwidth to pay attention during the conversation

  - In short, focus on learning while you let Loom handle the knowledge tracking for you.

- (2) Reflect on your understanding, especially if your knowledge foundation is weak, and get validation from the other person before moving onto the next topic. You want to make sure you're not developing false knowledge, and since your goal is to build knowledge as quickly as possible, focus on clarifying your understanding and learning as much as possible through active engagement.

  - If you don't confirm your understanding, you're wasting your coworker's time. There's a time cost for them to teach you, so you owe it to them to learn what you don't understand.
  - You can do this through reflection, repeating in your own words what you think they are saying, and getting feedback to see if you're going in the right direction.

- (3) Ask relevant follow-up questions to further increase your knowledge depth around a given problem. This effectively enhances the depth of your knowledge tree and increases your knowledge retention, thus making your understanding more nuanced and easier for active recall.

- (4) Lastly, if your coworkers are too busy to help you right now, explain the problems/questions you have via Loom, batch them together in one video, and then asynchronously send them to your coworker.

  - In doing so, you don't have to set up a meeting, you provide visual context to help your coworker understand the problem you're facing, and you give them an opportunity to respond when they're available to help.
  - Also, explaining the problem yourself gives you the additional benefit of gaining a deeper understanding of what you don't know, and sometimes you can even "rubber duck" yourself out of the situation to come up with a solution.

Most of the tactics above are best used in a remote working environment. Some might not be applicable in all scenarios but try to implement what you can.

### **Part III: Giving Back**

Assuming all went well, you were able to rapidly unblock yourself and finish the project/deadline. If so, it's time to give back to your coworker. After all, they invested a good amount of time in helping you grow, and you were able to take your learnings to implement some awesome things. This is a good moment to give shoutouts so upper management is aware of their impact, and to share about your accomplishments as well.

Your coworker will not only feel thankful, but will be more willing to help you in future circumstances -- especially because of your proven track-record for success, and your ability to learn very quickly. Your reputation will improve and others will see you as a potentially worthwhile investment.

All in all, capitalize on giving back and people will help you succeed.

Hope this helps!