Career Advice About PayPal

Often I read articles from different industry practitioners & company blogs. While reading, I usually highlight & take notes. But organizing them in a way that groups similar together & makes the article easily searchable for future reference is pretty hard.

I'm curious, what's a good practice you guys follow? What kind of tools do you use for it?

Basically what the title says. Market seems really bad right now for entry level and junior engineers. Any tips on how to become a better applicant and stand out?

I work at a startup hiring senior software engineers. I have less than 1 year experience but I was asked to take technical interviews. I explained that they have wide skill set and I might not be the best person to interview them. They told me it's not a problem and that I can ask them questions related to what I already know.

So I interviewed a PayPal software engineer today and he has 6 years of experience. I've asked JS/TS specific questions like "here's a sample code, tell me what's wrong with it?" and I noticed that the candidate couldn't answer these questions. He started to get defensive and said that I shouldn't be asking these type of intricate questions given that it's easy to resolve the problematic code by relying on code editors' intelligence or simply googling the bug. In the end, we gave him a DSA question which he solved in 15 min.

I want to hear opinions of engineers here because I was expecting a senior engineer to know the "gotchas" of languages they have experience with and not just be good at DSA. I know it's important to have confidence in interviews, but is it okay to straight-up tell the interviewer to not ask language specific questions? Is asking language specific questions not the right way to evaluate someone's knowledge?

I'm a recent college graduate who started my first job a couple of months ago. Recently, Amazon reached out to me for an interview, and I decided to go through the process to explore my options. I'm fortunate to have received an offer from Amazon, but now I find myself in a predicament.

Work at my current company (paypal) has been going well so far, there are parts that definitely could be better but overall the project I got has a high scope (working with more cross-functional teams and leaders) and allows me to sometimes present to people at a much higher level than I am at.

The offer from Amazon comes with a slightly higher salary. However, compensation isn't the primary factor for me in making this decision. My main goal is to become a better engineer by gaining access to strong mentorship, engaging in challenging projects, and building a strong portfolio early in my career.

Eventually, I do see myself leaving my current position for a reputable, faster paced startup or a large company that is known for excellent mentorship and the development of young engineers. While I'm uncertain if Amazon itself meets these specific criteria based on conversations I've had with recent graduates working there, Amazon's strong brand name and its engineering opportunities could potentially lead to more opportunities aligned with my goals.

Would love feedback on this decision and let me know if some parts need more info.

I have an interview with PayPal next week for a Senior Software Engineer role. Since many of the PayPal engineers in Taro are currently unavailable, I'm posting here for advice.

The interview consists of four rounds: coding, system design, object-oriented programming (OOP), and behavioural questions. While I am confident about the Software Engineer 2 level, I view this Senior role as a more ambitious challenge.

Initially, I was hesitant to ask for guidance, but after reviewing "Acing the SE Interview," I gained some confidence and decided to reach out. Any insights or advice on preparing for these rounds would be greatly appreciated.