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You have to do a systems design interview and you have no idea what that means? A systems design or architecture interview is a conversation about how to build a software system given real world assumptions about scale, constraints and tradeoffs. Typically this means drawing boxes for components like load balancers, web servers, databases, caching layers, etc. and describing how they work together to deliver the desired service. There is no right answer! What matters is how well you can talk it through.

The software industry’s usual approach to interviewing and hiring is terrible. I’m keeping an evergreen list about problems that exist and what people are doing about it. Also, see my own long-form article, Interviewing Engineers. The list is roughly alphabetized by title, with a few short notes to remind me about key points. Suggestions for additions are welcome! - A Technical Hiring Process (Dave Rolsky) * More interviewers in the room, fewer interviews overall * Homework followed by 2nd round pairing on homework - A Walkthrough Guide to Finding an Engineering Job at Slack

What does it mean to lead when you don’t have coercive power to get your way? Good managers are often good leaders. But managers don’t have to be good leaders to get their way because they have authority to make decisions unilaterally. What if you don’t have that authority? Perhaps you’re an individual contributor. Perhaps you are a manager, but want to show leadership when you’re the junior person in the room. In both cases, you lack the authority that comes from coercive power.

I think tech industry hiring is pretty broken. If you feel the same and are looking for inspiration, I’ll tell you what I did differently when I was a hiring manager at MongoDB. Caveat: I don’t claim this only way to interview. It’s just something I tried that I think is better than the typical way it’s done. Take my ideas if you’d like, but do your own experiments and see what works for you.

Welcome back! In part 1 of this article, I said: > I think tech industry hiring is pretty broken. If you feel the same and are > looking for inspiration, I’ll tell you what I did differently when I had the > chance. Part 1 covered my philosophy about interviewing and I described changes I made to the hiring process: - Using promotion criteria to guide hiring criteria - Having the hiring manager do the first interview - Saving synchronous time for interaction, not coding - Using take-home exercises as part of the initial screen I also gave examples for effective non-technical interviewing.