Hey. It's 2025. You can just ask your IDE questions now.

Use Cursor IDE and chat with your code. Use the Agent Mode.

Currently GPT-4o and Claude Sonnet 3.5 are two of the best models because the do no have capped usage, they are fast, and you can upload screenshots into the chat text area to better understand UI concerns.\
\
The best model will change over time. Keep an eye on the [lmarena.ai](http://lmarena.ai) and other leaderboards.

Staff Software Engineer @ Guideline

John Vandivier

My four tips are, in order:

1. Use the Snowball Method
2. Go ahead and bomb
3. Mind your finances, timeline, and health
4. Use cognitive reframing

**Use the Snowball Method**

Do not target a single company. Target collections of companies and group them by tier. Start interviewing with Tier 3 companies to get practice before taking on harder interviews later. Bombing a Tier 3 interview is fine, and if you don't bomb and get an offer it will act as insurance against Tier 2 failed interviews and lowball offers.

**Go ahead and bomb**

We know passing and failing are possible. That shouldn't be a source of anxiety. The source of anxiety is not obtaining your preferred role(s). Now that you are using the Snowball Method, you should line up some Tier 3 interviews and they should not be your main target roles. In this safe situation, feel free to bomb. It won't hurt your overall job search outcomes at all and it is likely to improve them because you are accruing interview experience.

Bomb as much as you want! It feels less bad each time and your anxiety will lower by exposure. Make sure that you take away a learning from each and every mistake. Then, it wasn't really a mistake was it?

**Mind your finances, timeline, and health**

Ideally you have savings so that you are not in a timeline crunch.

Some people are in a timeline crunch. That's why this is my third recommendation rather than my first. If you got here, great, you can afford to sleep, eat better, exercise, hydrate, and spend a little extra time with study in order to prepare for interviews. This is a great luxury and it will greatly reduce your anxiety. Don't consume excess caffeine.

As part of health: Do also mind your self-talk and your social group. Make sure self-criticism is reasonable and constructive. Make sure there is substantial positive self-talk as well. Make sure your peer group is similarly saying healthy things, or else change your social context. Find better groups online, like Taro, or in real life.

If you can't afford these things then don't feel bad: Go ahead and take the Tier 3 offer that you got. Save up and ride it out for 6+ months then give a proper job search a go. Don't feel bad for performing in a suboptimal way due to anxiety subject to constraint. Just do the best you can for now and prepare for a better job search later.

**Use Cognitive Reframing**

If you've gotten this far and done the prior things then there is nothing you should be anxious about. You may have butterflies, jitters, and feelings you associate with anxiety, but you can honestly know you cognitive reframing: "These feelings I have are feelings of excitement! This is my version of the Olympics!" If you are properly safeguarded and ensured, you only have the possibility of improving your situation by interview, so it's a source of positive excitement and risk but not loss or danger. How could you lose something you don't already have? Don't assume your right to the job you are interviewing for. Make sure to appreciate and value the opportunity.

Even if you fail, it will be a source of growth, as were those Tier 3 interviews! There is no permanent "Won't hire" decision. There is in the worst case a cool down at one company, but you aren't targeting a single company right? So don't get down on yourself. Even if you fail final rounds at two companies, the third isn't subject to the same pattern if you are growing each time. So don't assume you will fail. That's not only an example of harmful self-talk which causes reduced performance, it's also an example of negative extrapolation and poor analytical or statistical thinking.

I'm heading to a final loop at Stripe. The main tips that I've found so far by talking to Stripe ICs are:

1. that the loop and even culture is pretty Amazon-like except there's a debugging round and coding is more applied less leetcode-ish (and the culture is slightly more bottom-up or "organized chaos" compared to amzn)
2. it's so Amazon-y in the culture that you can even refer to Amazon LPs at behavioral time and that's viewed as OK (better to refer to Stripe principals, but if you can't remember, the other works)
3. In particular, customer obsession is a shared top value. In Stripe's terms "**Users first"**
4. Stripe uses AWS under the hood so they are largely aligned on sys design as well
5. Absolutely do plug if you have used Striped as a user, even if in a non-commercial context like a side project
6. They've been focused on cost efficiency recently, so signaling skill there is a big plus. This may change over time (more generally, try to hear about what's top of mind for your target team and signal skill there).

Senior Software Engineer at Upstart

Ask your team and org-mates. Try to take less PTO than average within your org, while at the same time encouraging the org culture to informally adopt a healthy minimum time off policy.

I encourage team leads to advocate for informal mandatory minimum time off in their org. This is one of the tactics I used at Upstart to improve our org culture! I encouraged 1 week per quarter in particular, although I'm not sure this is empirically optimal. It just felt like "a significant amount" and people bought in.

Bonus points if you can get a Director+ to announce agreement at an all hands!

Do four things:

1. Learn to use [Search Techniques](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHQiJ3kq52M). It sounds like a simple two-word phrase, but undervaluing this is single biggest mistake you can make in trying to becoming a high-productivity engineer. All software, all architecture, all social skill, all knowledge acquisition is downstream of searching techniques.
2. Learn to use your tools. Start with your IDE and multiple AI assistants. Use GPT-4. Use Copilot. Add Prettier in VS Code and the other extensions to make sure you have linting, formatting, syntax highlighting, version control support, and support for containers or whatever things your team is using.
3. Learn time management and social techniques. Three specifically:
   1. Calendar Blocking. Our code jitsu works best when single tasking. Multitasking is a productivity killer. Block your calender.
   2. Timeboxing and Escalation Procedure. You say "My goal is to become extremely efficient at coding. I want to build a reputation as someone who is able to deliver tons of high-quality implementation and products very quickly." You need to realize the first sentence isn't the key to the second sentence. You need to learn how to escalate quickly and to the right people when you hit a wall. This is going to include soft skills. You need to be able to communicate well to motivate others to help you and so they can understand how to optimally help you once they are motivated.
4. Practice, practice, practice.

My top-line recommendation is that you should accept this offer, but read on for some nuances and caveats.

Here are the four main reasons I think you should accept this offer, in no particular order:

1. If your main concern is employability, I can tell you as someone with a Ph.D. in economics with a focus on employer perception: It's difficult to find a better signal to future tech employers than having experience at both Microsoft and Meta. This decision is likely to pay dividends as a signal through the rest of your career.
2. This decision is also likely to pay in the immediate future. If you are going to Meta L+1 from Microsoft you should be earning more. If the comp is lower than your current comp, you should be able to easily negotiate that up.
3. If you applied to Meta then you already have some intrinsic interest in that company and/or in leaving Microsoft.
4. If you are in tech with a true passion for tech itself, you will be able to learn interesting things by going to Meta that you would not learn by remaining at Microsoft in perpetuity. Given that you will eventually go somewhere else for the sake of tech exposure, Meta is one of the best places to go.

#### The Soft Skill Gap as a False Difference

I also want to discourage you from choosing to work at Meta for the purpose of soft skill development. You called out a WFH comfort zone, and while I'm sure you in fact have such a comfort zone, I want to emphatically discourage you from using this in a cost-benefit analysis of Microsoft vs Meta. I emphatically disagree that remote work is causing your soft skill gap. There are other ways to develop that skill group even while fully remote.

#### Caveats and Nuances

1. If you have offers from other Big Tech companies, then you may not want to choose Meta. The main reasons 2 and 3 would be deflated in this case, and you could use Meta's offer to negotiate a better offer elsewhere. Example: If you received an offer from Google.
2. If you do not have a genuine interest in technology itself, then going to Meta will be a bit less interesting. Maybe you are fine spending a whole career at Microsoft. There's nothing wrong with this, it just depends on your personality and goals.
3. If you can use the L+1 offer to obtain promo and better comp at Microsoft, then the incentive to leave will be reduced. Strongly consider main reason 3 to determine whether this consideration is decisive: Why are you wanting to leave Microsoft? If you can cross all of the reasons off of your list, then maybe you shouldn't leave after all. In general, when people write such a list they won't be able to cross everything off. In general, when people get an external offer that is countered by their current employer, even if they accept the counteroffer they will leave within 2 years.

Hey Alex! I recommend these:

https://www.ladderly.io/blog/2023-12-01-top-job-boards

> Engage with the Community...Check if the project has a community platform like Discord or Slack

This is one of two keys. "Discord Driven Development" is a prime contribution model in 2023+. The second key is: You actually need to care about the project. Tips for that:

1. Build something you are passionate about or that solves a real issue for you. It's not true that you need to contribute to large existing codebases to make a "legitimate open source contribution." If you build something you are a contributor. You can make your own backlog and grow your own community. That's not less impressive than the alternative, it's actually more impressive.
2. Contribute to a project that you already use and love, or alternatively: Use the project you are considering contributing too. You will understand the technical pain points, implementation approaches, and high-value added features much more effectively.

With those two keys, everything else will sort itself out. Specifically, when you talk to the community to understand what they actually want and one of two things will happen:

1. They will be awesome (Wow thanks so much for being willing to help! Here's what we're thinking, or did you want to propose something? We can even get on a call if it helps.)
2. They will not be awesome (Slow or no response, elitist or grumpy or unwilling to mentor - "this is too complicated for you" etc)

The second outcome is also great: You have learned to go elsewhere. Don't get stuck in the pitfall of trying to contribute to a specific project.

Another minor tip that I'm surprised not to have seen elsewhere is to keep an eye out for GitHub issues labeled "good first issue" and try to get involved in Hacktoberfest or FreeCodeCamp which are both OS-noobie friendly.

It's worth checking out the OS 101 guide from Open Sauced:

<https://opensauced.pizza/blog/open-source-101-a-beginner's-guide-to-getting-started>

I also maintain [ladderly.io](http://ladderly.io) which is open source and we have a bunch of open issues:

<https://github.com/Vandivier/ladderly-3>

> I want to treat my job search like a 9-5 job, where half the work day is spent building meaningful connections, applying strategically, and interview prepping...how I can refine the best way to begin my approach. What do you all think I can do?

This is an optimal strategy at a high level. Here are some tips to refine into the details:

1. Participate in communities across three community archetypes: <https://github.com/Vandivier/ladderly-slides/blob/main/docs/ENDORSED-COMMUNITIES.md>
2. Ensure you have a high-quality portfolio and resume. Your portfolio will be fine with as few as 3 projects it's not a volume game. Indeed has a free resume scanner. Make sure the ATS properly parses your education and years of experience.
   1. Through your job search feel free to A/B test changes. Make sure not to change it so rapidly that you can't get a reliable signal.
   2. Ceteris paribus, try to keep your resume to one page, black and white, standard fonts, no objective statement, hit major technical keywords 2-3x each.
   3. When spellings vary, consult Google Trends, eg "Full Stack Developer" not "Fullstack Developer." Treat your resume as an SEO game.
3. Leverage easy apply features and quality job boards to apply to 50-100 job posts per week if you are optimizing for rapid standard placement.
   1. Don't target a single company. Build bargaining power with authenticity and competition by targeting a company archetype that you care about by tech stack, industry, or a combination.
   2. If you are going for Tier 1 companies in particular, and willing to have a slower placement rate, reduce the application rate and focus on upfront networking to generate a referral.
   3. Social network at every company you apply to. Prior networking is ideal, but post-networking is also fine. Use demonstrated networking scripts and target the main three job families for contact: <https://github.com/Vandivier/ladderly-slides/blob/main/docs/NETWORKING-SCRIPTS.md>
4. Obtain over 500 Connections on LinkedIn. At this point LinkedIn just begins to show "500+" connections and the marginal opportunity benefits from network size diminish greatly. Ideal growth to this goal will be a natural side effect if you are following steps 1 and 3.
5. For DSA prep, see the Ladderly Leetcode Kata: <https://www.ladderly.io/blog/2023-11-25-leetcode-kata>