Speaker 2: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Develop Yourself podcast, where we teach you everything you need to land your first job as a software developer by learning to develop yourself, your skills, your network, and more. I'm Brian, your host.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: . Today on the Develop Yourself Podcast, I'm talking with my buddy Zubin about interviews everybody's favorite topic. Most junior developers think interviews are about proving you can code, behind the scenes what managers are often asking themselves is.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Can we trust you? And today I wanna pull back the curtain a bit on what really goes on when we're doing the hiring fresh from the horse's mouth, zup. And I know you are currently doing some
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: interviewing
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: now, aren't you? Okay. What has that experience been like?
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: What's it been like right now? 2025, trying to hire developers.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Well, since the last time I did it about a year and a half ago, a lot has changed. Mainly ai,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Mm-hmm.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And so it's really hard to actually get a meaningful signal. Can this person actually program? Or is this person vibe coding their way into an interview? How [00:01:00] much of this is real skill? How much of this is the AI did it for me?
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And I know people say like, oh, if the AI can do it for you, then why do you need to interview them? Well, here's, here's why. Because the AI can do simple things for you. And when you are, when you are a candidate, chances are, and you're not actually a software engineer already, professionally, chances are you're doing only the simplest things.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: You know, you, you're sort of skimming the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. And we need to find a real signal. For the same reason, Brian, that in the Inner Circle program, you and I now require people to do their basic design exercise without ai. And,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Without
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: we've seen in the last three months the number of people saying, okay, we really don't know as much as we thought we did.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Like every single student is now saying that, and we. Pulling out the, the fact that AI makes you think you're better than you actually are. And if you're not that good, you're not gonna cope in a real world environment. 'cause most of the time, for most of us, unless we are in really new startups that is building a lot of greenfield stuff, most of the time we walk into an established code base.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: I think you mentioned this in, in develop yourself recently, where there are [00:02:00] hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lines of code already written. And the AI is not gonna be able to help you work with that. It's just not, you know, so, yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Diminishing returns. This is an interesting one because I had almost the exact opposite experience during an interview of where the person says, you know what? Keep cursor on and we want to see how you code with AI assisted tools. And you're, but I know that's not the case for a lot of other companies, especially larger companies.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: You work, you work at a much larger company. I don't have a lot of experience
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: we we're okay with that, but that's not the only basis on which we get the signal. Of course, we expect people to use the tools, but we wanna know you're using the tools responsibly, intelligently, and where you are in control. Which means we first, because the multiple rounds of technical interviews.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Right? And so you will have some rounds where, you know, we don't, we are gonna just talk to you about stuff without any AI. We are just gonna talk to you about what you wrote. So the, AI piece could have been before that. It's not that it's no ai, it's, there's a round to handle for where all you know is ai.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: [00:03:00] It'll come out. We will extract that signal out, you know, that all you know is through the ai. Yeah. So it's, it's definitely we need to be using that as part of the tools.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah, I, I was a little bit surprised actually, my interview. I thought using AI would make it easier, but. In many ways it made it more difficult because when I either rejected or accepted code, the CTO who was on the line who knows, who knows a lot more than I did, was like, well, why did you, why did you reject that? Why did you accept that?
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: that actually looked like it would've worked. Like, what was the, what was the point of you not accepting it? Like, oh,
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Like that
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And then I was defending my opinions and, and we, we had some disagreements about what I could have done. I, I ended up getting the
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: but it was a, it was a really interesting interview.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: I actually really enjoyed it 'cause it was more discussion rather than like, hands on keyboard and me. Coding in front of
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: But, but back to the interview process that you're doing I think there's, there's so much misinformation about like, what we're looking for in interviews. We've talked about this a little bit in previous shows, like the idea that we're just looking for like code robots. What's something that you're looking for in a candidate when you're doing the technical portion of the [00:04:00] interview? Like, we can start there and we can talk about the behavioral part too, but during the technical piece, like what are you looking
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah, during the technical piece, we are basically looking for someone who knows how to think about a problem and who's collaborative enough to invite opinions on their approach, discuss it intelligently, present the pro pros and cons. You know, engineering is a place where. You know, people are very opinionated.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Now. I know a lot of junior devs are like, Ooh, you know, I want my code to be scalable and clean code. Right? But.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Mm-hmm.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: respect. I don't believe most people actually know what that means, because that's a never ending continuum. What's clean for me may not be clean for you. What's maintainable and scalable for me may not be maintainable and scalable for you.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And some people are really very advanced at that, and as a beginner, I don't know if that's gonna help. So I think a, you know, a lot of what we look for is can you actually approach this intelligently, or my heuristic, my sort of shortcut is. Can I trust that this person will get the job done? And if they cannot, in that instance, when I delegate [00:05:00] it to them at work, will they ask the right questions such that they're reasonably likely to figure it out, or I can trust that they will escalate correctly to get the help they need.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Like these are three really important parts of it, you know.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Back to the trust thing. That is, that is, it seems obvious. To me now after failing so many interviews and I, I'm just a paranoid person, I interview honestly too much. Like you're, you're kinda my therapist off the show, right? Can I call you sometimes like, oh, zoom and, oh, should I jump ship? Should I go to, you're like, Hey, you know, calm down.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: But I, I interviewed too often and everybody knows this about me, that knows it's in my personal life. I have to calm down. But I've done so many interviews and gotten a, a decent idea, I think, of what
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: in them from this point. And you're right, it's, it's about this trust thing. How do you. What did, what should candidates know about, like showing that in an, like how do you, how do you create trust through an interview with your interviewer at a high level?
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Look, this is a really hard one. So I just recently finished a this week with Aline Lerner from [00:06:00] interviewing.io. Right. And this sort of came up. Yeah. In fact, I'll connect you with her 'cause I think she'd be great to have and develop yourself as well if she's open to it. But you know, 'cause she's got, she's done what, 200,000 mock interviews and interviewing.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: I like the amount of data they've got is incredible.
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zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And now mainly big tech. Right? Mainly it's big tech. So,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: She was a developer. She's she switched into she became a chef for a while. Then she switched into engineering, then into, you know, recruiting and now runs this business for the last 10 years, which has done amazing stuff with data.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Right. And what we talked about is
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: most people don't only think about it from the candidate's point of view. Oh, if how many? Because that's what YouTube and Instagram will tell you. Oh, it's data structures and algorithms. It's this, it's being able to invert a tree. Now Alene has recently contributed to the latest edition of Beyond Cracking the Coding interview with Gayle Lakwell.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Right. So they've rereleased that book Yeah. With a whole bunch of movies.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: the book.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah. And she's very kindly agreed that, you know, some students from Parsity Inner Circle gets a special offers and stuff from them.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Nice.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: [00:07:00] is great. Excuse me, I seem to have choked in something. But you know, she, so she, so she and I were talking about this and most people think about it from the point of view of the candidate, whereas what the actual hiring manager wants to know.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And this time, like every other time I've hired, whether it's in tech or in the law, whatever it is, I'm reminded that the hiring manager is actually desperate for somebody that I would really want to fill the role right now if I could. Right. I.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: But the challenge is there's, there are lots of applicants, there's not enough time.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: 'cause you have to do your day job. There are multiple rounds. So this is an expensive process and you kinda have to do the due diligence and you're really just hoping that the candidate comes in and just does a great job. Now, what does a great job look like to meet, and this is what Aline and I were talking about, different interviewers have different styles and many, many, this is the sad thing.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Alene talks about this beautifully. Many people don't like interviewing and they become terrible interviewers. They're not incentivized properly, they're not [00:08:00] interested, or, or they just find it a real imposition on their time. You're gonna struggle with an interview like that, but if you have a good interviewer, they're going to be someone who's very vested in hoping that you will do really well, and they'll keep helping you.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: They'll keep nudging you. They will interact with you and they won't care if you didn't finish the problem perfectly. What they'll care about. It's how far along you got, how you thought about it. Like, this is what happened to me when I was said Google, one of my tech rounds. 'cause I had three or something.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: I didn't actually finish the problem. I knew how to do it, but it was 40 minutes. It was a complicated enough problem and I spent so much time talking about the edge cases and it wasn't an IDE, it was in a Google doc. No formatting. Right? 'cause
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Mm-hmm.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: you've done these loops too, so you have to talk to the interviewer.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: You have to show them that you would have finished this anyway, but you were so thoughtful in your approach. That's kind of why you ran outta time. If you ran outta time, or if you didn't run outta time, you were still very thoughtful in your approach. You were collaborative, and a good interviewer will want to see that because most real world problems are not gonna be done [00:09:00] quietly in a silo.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: You're going to need somebody else's help. Like the entire time I was at Google, I constantly needed other people's help, right? That's normal even in my current job. I constantly need other people's help. 'cause there are pockets of knowledge across the organization. So if you don't collaborate well that, how do you trust someone who doesn't collaborate properly, who operates in a silo in silence without sharing, you know, stuff like, so
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: It's awkward too. Imagine an interview where the, where the person's just
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: I know
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: like
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: silent and yeah, and they can hear you breathe into your, you know, into the microphone and you're just waiting for you.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: It's horrible. It's, it's not a good thing. So I think that's one way for people to show trust. The other way for people to show trust, I believe with a good interviewer is to say. If you don't know the answer, don't make up stuff. Like I have interviewed people over the years where they'll just make up things.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Right? And you, and you ask them, you like, and you're sort of leading them with the question saying, so if you do this, it's gonna speak to the server and you know, it's not, you know, that's not gonna happen. And they're like, yeah, yeah, I think that's what's gonna happen. No, don't do that. Just say, I'm not a hundred percent sure.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: I believe it would, but it could be wrong. I would look it [00:10:00] up. If that's the case, I would do this. If that's not the case, I would do that. You know, especially for system design, like don't make up stuff, you know.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Oh my God. Yeah. Oh, I used to make up stuff in system. Oh, this is embarrassing. I would just like rattle off like my memorized system, design one and two, the books I read from Alex Zhu and try to just. Parrot them back and think that the, if I get the right order of this incantation, like it's some sort of magic spell would just like hand me the, the job and yeah, it didn't work out.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: I'm, I'm embarrassed by a lot of those interviews, but yeah, you know, don't do that because I remember doing interviews for mostly junior candidates, so I did a ton of junior interviews actually. Are you doing any
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: lately for these roles or are these
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: No, no. Mainly junior. Yeah. It's mainly well, you know, yeah. Like the zero to three, which is what we consider to be junior. Yeah. Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: That's pretty junior. Yeah. But you know, I've, I've, in, even my interviews with seniors aren't wildly different, but the, what I noticed a lot was what you're saying is this trust factor can really get broken with junior interviews because you're right. Like I, we want to see you
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: [00:11:00] Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: quote unquote. We want to, we wanna obviously fill the role that we're not here to like deter you.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: We, we invited you in, we're taking. Hours of
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: we're during our day job, which I think a lot of people don't realize. There's not much training on interviews either, if there's any at all. And most times, in fact, at the small companies I've worked at, there's been
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: It's been like, Hey, are you able to interview today?
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: What, what do you think you're gonna ask 'em? Okay, cool. I'm gonna
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Okay. Meet you at lunch, and then we'll like do
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And then you go in there and that. And it's this super arbitrary, very subjective thing, and that those aren't good, but that's the reality of interviews. But what I remember asking candidates, junior developers, was like, questions that I, I obviously know the answer to.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: I mean, we know the answer already, and they would just make up something. And I'm like, you're, you're breaking the trust here. It's much better if you say, I like you said, I don't know. Or I'm gonna, I could probably figure that out. Or, here's my understanding. I'm not sure if that's right. It's, it just like,
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brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: it just ruins the relationship
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah, and it kills the trust and you know, you don't get a second chance to reestablish that trust [00:12:00] again. Another thing that Alina and I were talking about is that ultimately interviewing is kind of sales, you know, both the candidate and the organization. In an ideal world are selling to each other. And you just think about it, like, I remember I just had to get a this old dead tree in my front yard cut down.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Right? Something as trivial as that. And I like interviewed three landscapers,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Mm-hmm.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And I had no basis to know whose chainsaw was the best. I wasn't inspecting that chainsaw, you know, I wasn't looking at the truck. I wasn't, I I was just asking them, what do you think needs to be done? How much do you think this is gonna cost and how, you know, are you gonna clean up after yourself?
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Are you gonna retrieve it? What are you gonna do with the, you know, that kind of stuff. And based on the quality of their answers, I either trusted them or I didn't trust them. You know, it's as simple as that. Either one, making eye contact, they were giving me dodgy answers, they were being grumpy, irritable.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Or the ones who were giving me thoughtful responses and saying, well, here are options. Those are the ones I ended up going with. Like the ones who were more conversational, I ended up going with, right? Because I wasn't, I wasn't gonna inspect that chainsaws. I wasn't, I, what do I know about a chainsaw?
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: O of course [00:13:00] that, yeah. Right. Have you, have you ever had this happen? Have you ever interviewed somebody that was really, really smart? Like good on paper, excellent technical skills, but just like not great personally
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: All the time.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: per and.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: All,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Then like, what, what do you do in that situation? Like, do you say, you know what, like, we're gonna go with them and, and I think I know the answer, but I'm curious,
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: yeah. So
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: what, what do you, how
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: this happened a lot when I was, and because like you said, I, I tend to work more on the sort of big tech side so far. Like at Google for example, I. In most of the companies I worked with, even outside of, of engineering when you reach a certain level of scale, there's, there's always clear process and, and rubrics, right?
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: They're matrices that you sort of evaluate multiple dimensions with clear instructions on what. You know, not good, good, great, outstanding. What, what, what does it look like in that dimension? Right? And so there are these matrices. So you, you, you know, okay, so it's trying, it's trying to reduce arbitrariness, that's what the matrix does.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And so when you have one of those very often [00:14:00] they are, you know, technically very sound, but not able to collaborate, not able to communicate, will struggle in culture. Now, you know, Google, for example, has multiple runs, is like, there's a, and there's a, there's an.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: there's the culture
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah, and Googley-ness, this is an explicitly.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Sort of inchoate, slightly unclear term, which is will they fit here? Which is a partly intuition based thing. Partly personality based thing, you know? And that's important, like that's important in every organization that I've been to when, when teamwork becomes important, where it's of a certain size.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Now that wasn't my interview for my first dev job when there were four and a half people as one per part-time person, right there, there wasn't, it was just a conversation of coffee here, debug this for me, and let me see if you can code, if you can debug this, right? But for the bigger organizations, there are matrixes and you have to sort of.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Evaluate that, and you, and these aren't public documents, so you have to basically work out, it comes down to this, it's exactly what Aline and I were talking about. It's a buying decision. And so therefore we have to give them the certainty that they want us to be part of the team. And [00:15:00] that's a multi-dimensional thing.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Quite simply comes down to this, do we wanna work with this person? Do we want this person to come into our team, into our home and be part of this family? You know, it is that.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And especially on a smaller team. On a smaller team, it's even, it's so much more
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Oh my God.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Like back before the pandemic, we, you know, this, we, we were going in office interviews. Lunches. This was a big thing at startups in San Francisco. Every, every startup I interviewed at was like, let's get a team lunch. And that was a big deciding factor. And if, if the team lunch didn't go well, I've seen that
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: There was a, it was a no go. It was just like, we're too small to take a chance on somebody that's really, really smart, but could corrupt the culture and destroy
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Culture, it's too expensive.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah,
Hey, I hope you're enjoying this episode. Now you know that I own an anti bootcamp with my buddy Zubin, an ex Google software engineer. If you're interested in not just learning how to code and you know it's gonna take more than three months, I. And you're serious about making a transition into a career in software, and you wanna work with people that have done it before and are currently working in senior plus levels.[00:16:00]
Join me in Zubin at parity.io/inner-circle. You can learn all about our philosophy, how we approach learning, how to code and switching careers in a much different way, and how we have so much gosh dang success. If you're interested in being one of the few people that works for us this year, go and apply at pars.io/inner-circle.
And now back to the episode.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: so, you know, since you worked in slightly smaller, you know, most startup-y sorts of places, if someone were to say, what's the most important thing, you know, if it's not coding, what's the most important thing? Do you think there's actually a most important thing? Or do you actually think objectively it's really a basket of things that you're looking for?
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: What do you think?
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah, it really is the, the I I I look at just like a general bucket of things. You kind of needed to start up, like you need to show grit. You know, the ability to obviously have technical ability autonomy is a
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Huge.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: You're trying to figure out is this, can this person be autonomous? What are their expectations to this is why I think a lot [00:17:00] of. Engineers from larger companies often don't do too well at really small
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: when it's like very nebulous what your, what your
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: what you're gonna be doing. Your coding skills don't have to be necessarily the best at
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Correct.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Like that. You can be pretty mid it in many places and, and get in at a small startup.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And as long as you tick some other boxes, I mean, for example. My background with running Pars was actually a huge reason why I got an offer at the last startup I was
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Right.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: one of the reasons we got you was because of this. You know, I definitely wasn't the best software engineer on the team. I was probably one of the worst.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: On this particular team, I was with some really, really top-notch people from
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: and they were all what I considered much smarter than me, but but I was honestly better at them at some things like
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yep.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: I, I understood how to do some marketing. I could help out with landing pages and marketing and also recorded videos for
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yep.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Like I'm still on their landing page. I believe of some of the videos that I was editing in my spare time. So I was working on all these different fronts and that, and that's a hard thing to
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: So, and it, it really, it just varies from startup to startup, you [00:18:00] know, I think the, the current one I'm at, they don't want me doing any of that stuff.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: I'm more of a technical lead at the
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: and and what you said there, right, Brian, it varies from startup to startup. It varies from job to job. Like how would you explain that to a candidate who is in a position of such uncertainty that they want a single formula? I. How would you explain that to them? That you know?
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: It's, it's hard and I do see that there are some, like PR I, some practical things like during an interview you, you probably should do like I for one like it. I think juniors especially have this problem who's probably listening to this show. They come into an interview and they're coding in front of somebody like you or me.
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brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And they're thinking, I'm not as technical as this person, so I'm going to almost diminish myself during an interview.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: gonna try to avoid rejection and I get it right. We all wanna avoid rejection, and I speak to smarter people than myself every
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: and I still, I still talk to them as if I'm
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: yeah,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Because I want to enable the trust factor. When I'm coding in front of somebody, I want to like speak speak my mind and, and show them like, I'm gonna teach [00:19:00] you basically through my coding what I'm doing. I'll, I'll explain things as as if they
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: yeah,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And this can lead to good dialogue, conversation, and the likability
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: a hundred percent.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: This is one of those things you can know, react and type script and JavaScript, Python, go whatever. And you can understand system design. One of the hardest things to do is teach people the likability thing. I struggle with telling people how to do that. You're, you definitely have pinpointed that, and that's one of the reasons why we have people on camera so much at parity, like weekly, they do
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: We, you, you encourage that a lot. We, we love to see the videos. I know it's one of the hardest things
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: The likability factor is so hard. What do you tell people that are, that you know are good people, but they're coming across unlikeable on camera. How do they fix that?
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: it's you. The only way you fix that, because I, I, I categorize that as a communication problem, right? Because. Even if you're a good communicator in that what you're saying makes sense or what you're writing makes sense. If people don't like you, they will shoot the messenger. That's kind of the way the human world works, right?
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And so
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: we've gotta accept that reality, [00:20:00] unfortunate as it is for what it is, and you just got to identify what it is that makes you come across that way. And. Systematically make changes and it's not gonna happen overnight. And yes, it's another thing on your plate that you need to fix. Yes. It's, you've gotta treat it right up there with, if I don't understand, you know how to do recursion and I'm gonna practice it.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Well, this is something you need to practice over and over again, which is why we get students in, in the inner circle to do the weekly videos, to answer different questions, to teach different things.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Mm-hmm.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: because then when it's game day and they're at an interview, most of that stuff is muscle memory. I. It comes,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yep.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: you know, without thought.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: That's not where the effort is going. The effort is completely focused on the interviewer and, and here's the other thing that I tell people is again, Aline and I were talking about this, most people will fail interviews. That is just normal. You know, I know Brian says that he's failed a ton of them. He's not the only one.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: We've all failed on them. In fact, we.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: everybody does. Yeah.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: [00:21:00] You have to, and so if you think having one or two or three interviews, again, Alina and I talked about the data is very clear on this. If you think having one or two, three interviews is enough, it's not. If you don't know how to generate two to three interviews per month, you need help.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: I'm just being really direct about this, right? Because you will fail the vast majority of them, and if you don't know how to improve, then you will repeat the same mistakes in the next one, and you will run out of opportunities before you get successful. It is just like anything else in the world. You need the reps and you cannot simulate, I don't care how much lead code you do.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: In fact
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Mm-hmm.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: she said leetcode is not a simulation of the real interview. You know, now they offer an. But people think it's, yeah, they offer an AI interviewer. And now as part of, you know, and I'll sort of link to that in, and, you know, in my podcast, and I'll send it out to the students as well, but
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: it's there.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: For, for people who want to try out a bunch of problems, there's an AI interviewer that is interactive that is meant to simulate the back and forth. And even [00:22:00] that we'd acknowledge is. Maybe 70% of the way there, but the remaining 30% is Game day is different. Game day is always different 'cause the environment is different.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And that's why we get our students to keep practicing every as much as we can. Simulate, we'll simulate. But there is no, there is
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Mm-hmm.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: ultimately, no matter how much you do, spend time playing Guitar Hero when you're on stage and the band's and the band is live. It's a different experience. And the only way to practice that is by being on stage with the band live.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: There's no other way to practice that bit, you know?
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: man, I wish I was in inner circle back in the days. 'cause I, I learned this just through trial and
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: and at some point, I don't know what clicked in my head to, to tell me I need to start explaining things on camera. Maybe I learned it from an article. I don't know where this came from, but once I did that, it was like something clicked. I immediately figured out the gaps in my knowledge. I'm like, I can't explain this. I thought I knew Recursion. I don't know how to
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: a hundred percent.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: I thought I knew prototype inheritance. I can't explain prototype inheritance on camera. I'm like, oh my God, I don't, I don't know as
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And that led me to all sorts of cool rabbit holes and helped me and reinforce my [00:23:00] knowledge.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: I. And I've made hundreds of videos now that have never seen the light of day and have helped me tremendously in interviews. 'cause I would have incredible anxiety during an interview And and now, and now I just don't. I mean, enough reps, like you said, and something unique becomes mundane after a while.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And you develop an intuition for it. So again, I. I learned this stuff back in 2003, 2004, when I was a junior beginning lawyer and I was doing trial work is my client's future, and my livelihood depended on me being able to convince a complete stranger sitting on a bench about the facts of my case.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Right? Like that is, and the consequences are huge. You know, people could lose.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: It's
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: actually.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: crazy.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Their life, their livelihood, their
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: things. Yeah. Irretrievably. And so you take it really seriously and you're like, okay, just because I understand what's going on here, can I communicate in a way, not just can the words come outta my mouth, but can it be understood in a way that's persuasive for the audience?
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Like that's what real communication is not what you say, but what gets understood, right, [00:24:00] which is what we teach, you know, people in the inner circle now is be understood, be communicate the signal. You know, you know what you're talking about and this is how things should be. And if you're wrong, say you're wrong.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: That's totally fine. That's absolutely okay. And then commit to fixing it
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: It's better than the opposite. Yeah. It's better
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: so much better because trust comes. We've all made mistakes. Now I will say that another reason why you need, you know, multiple interviews per month is, again, as Brian said, most companies don't have great training for it.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Most. I don't know of any company that incentivizes good interviewing. There's no consequence of being a bad interviewer. That's the reality, right?
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah,
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: so,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: it's terrible.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: yeah, it's terrible. And so therefore
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: they, you can show up on the day, be a terrible interviewer, and nothing's gonna happen to you. It's somebody else's life that gets messed up.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: So by having lots of interviews, you increase the odds that you're going to find a good interviewer. And it doesn't matter how well you perform, if you have a bad interview, it doesn't matter how much you know if you have a bad interview, who doesn't like you? Or my personal pet [00:25:00] peeve, which I even saw unfortunately at times when I was at Google a couple of times from other interviews, is the interviewer, without realizing it has a bit of a prejudice.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: They're interviewing you
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Oh
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: to know. Do you know what? I know that's the wrong standard for an interviewer. The right standard for an interview is, do you know what we expect you to know to be successful in this role? You don't have to know what I know. Do you know what is needed to be successful in this role?
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And a lot of interviews will fall into the trap of Oh They should have known that. But why? Because I knew that. But that's not the standard.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: yeah,
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: The standard is do they need to know that for the role or could they figure that out for the role? You know? And if you don't have multiple interviews, you'll get stuck.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Right. I see that all the time. It's not just in, in, in software engineering. I've seen this in the law a lot. I've seen this in management a lot, a lot.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: it's so annoying. I remember asking you know, we, people were bringing up questions to ask and when panel I was on, and there were these really just like. [00:26:00] weird beneath the surface, JavaScript trivia. I'm like, this is just coding trivia. Like,
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yes.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Like also, if they answered all this correctly and we hired them like they're gonna be writing React code, like it does this matter at all.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And of course we obviously, we hired some, some of the wrong people using that strategy really bid us in the end. Yeah, I think this is, that's one of the biggest like things I wish more people knew that. Your interviewer probably doesn't have much training at all. You know, you get to take some of these things with a grain of salt.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: The worst mistake I see people make is they fail an interview and then they'll like use that singular experience to like, to determine what they should do for like all their next interviews. Like, oh my God, they asked me, you know? About prototype inheritance and JavaScript, and I failed. Now I gotta go study all the JavaScript trivia to make sure I never fail again.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's one random person in one random interview you did. You cannot like extrapolate that to the rest of these random people you may interview in the future. And I'm like, don't, please don't
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: No.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: to this,
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: In fact, one of the,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: [00:27:00] one thing you take away, don't do that.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: yeah, please don't do that. In fact, just this week when, when I was doing the accountability review for one of our students,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Mm-hmm.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: they had an interview where. The, the error that showed up in the console was, you know how when you're working with Js o in, in or even JavaScript objects in in, in JavaScript, and if you, if if there's a circular reference, there's that error that comes out with the word circular in it.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Have you ever seen that yet? Right.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Circular dependency. Yeah.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And so I think Correct the circular reference, that era, and they sort we're going down this rabbit hole of trying to understand that. I'm like, no, no, you. You don't need to understand that. You need to understand why that happened and then
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: know where to look in the code.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: 'cause that's just a JavaScript stack trace you. That's not actually anything tangible. Like it's someone who wrote the language that way, right? Like you're not gonna be able to change that. Understand where it's come from. It's come from some JavaScript object or a JSON you know, string somewhere has a reference that's, you know, a bit circular.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: It's endless, it's deeply nested, you know, beyond what the, what the,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: [00:28:00] Mm-hmm.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: can handle. And so I'm like, look at the class of problem, don't look at the, the error and try to understand everything about the error message. Instead, understand where the error message got thrown and then understand that class of problem there, because, you know, then you'll be able to reuse that knowledge in other interviews.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: But they, you know, understandably, they were getting really thrown by this because they couldn't solve it.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: of
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: But you know, again, that comes from experience. That just comes from experience, you know?
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: That's the thing. Yeah. And I, I feel bad when people do that 'cause I'm like, it, it can ruin the rest of their interviews. Then they, then they overindex on one type of
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: they think, and then they get to the next interview like, well now I gotta ask the lead code question. Well, Brian never, Brian said, no one asked that.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And now I got that. Well that means my next interview was involved. You know, nothing but lead code questions.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And it's funny, this
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: let,
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: stuff happens in s and algorithms too. Like everyone's obsessed with program, but it.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Oh my god.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: I didn't even touch dynamic programming when I was going for my interviews. 'cause I'm like 93%, the old are 93% that I'm not going to be using that or whatever the number was. [00:29:00] Right. And Alina and I talked about this, she like, yeah.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: When social media says this is a really hard thing, this gets asked que sure. Maybe it got asked once in the last 20 years.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah. One time or something like, yeah, if there's a knapsack problem, I'm like, well,
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Correct?
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah, like Recursion is gonna come up almost certainly in all your FANG interviews. That's probably the most
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: But yeah, don't these random, obscure dynamic
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: It's so weird. Which, what's the one you said?
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: I mean, no, I'm just saying like fear cells, so you do something that increases fear. People are gonna click on it, people are gonna watch it. People are gonna obsess about fear cells, but the data tells you something quite different.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Before we, we end this, this is a weird one. are you silently judging people on when they're interviewing that people that people probably don't think about?
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: What are some things you might silently be judging
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Man,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: about?
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: it's, it's a hard one because I've been, I've been trained so hard on the bias thing, but, there's so much training, I gotta Google on the bias thing, which I'm glad I did because you, you just don't realize how biased you actually are. But I would say, I, I would invert this question as what is the thing that people under index [00:30:00] on that could have, especially in smaller organizations where, you know, you nailed it right at the start, man.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: You, you used the word likability. Like I, I think like, like if, if you set someone's radar off, and it may not be your fault, it may just be the dynamic between you and the interview.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Mm-hmm.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: you set someone's radar off, they're probably gonna find another reason without even knowing subconsciously they're gonna find things to nitpick on, you know?
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: And I think that's, that's the human thing. We wanna, we wanna come up show, to show up to work and work with people we like. That's the.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Thi this is true. Or I mean, yeah. People kinda realize this at some point. I mean, I've been, I know I've been unlikable, at least at a few
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Oh
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: could, I could
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: I could feel it. I made a joke that I thought was
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yes,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: and it didn't, I.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: yes,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Or, you know, or I said something, you know, that was wrong.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And instead of giving me grace, the person obviously is like, you should
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: yes.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: kind of feeling. I'm like, okay, I've,
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And that's okay. You're, you're gonna
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: totally.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: not liked everywhere you go. I, I did meet a guy, I think I've shared this before. The guy, he said he failed a [00:31:00] hundred interviews and I was like, there's no way.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And I, and I got on the, on the mock interview with him and like, oh,
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: I see why. Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And I'm like, you, you are
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah, yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: on an
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: just quiet. And people was like, what does that mean to be unlikable? he, he cut me off and I was trying to explain things. He's like, hold on just a second, just a second.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: I think I almost have it. I'm like, oh, that's not, that's not what I want to hear when I'm trying to give you some advice. Like, I'm, the
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: you know, there's a dynamic here and I'm trying to help
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: yeah,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: saying, no, I don't want to hear it. And then he was sitting in silence.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: I said, oh, do you mind sharing what you're doing? He's like, well, I'm just trying to think.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: yeah,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: okay,
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: yeah. It's a
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: this
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: leave me alone. Yeah. No, it's, it's not, that's not a collaborative interview. And I, I, I will say that I've faced that as well my entire career because in the sense that I. I think what makes me unlikable or definitely jarring for a lot of people is that I'm, I'm fundamentally very high energy sort of person.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Brian, you know, this,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Mm-hmm.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: I'm quite exuberant. I smile a lot. I crack jokes. I'm very, I'm quite extroverted socially and,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: [00:32:00] Mm-hmm.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Both in the law and engineering, the surprisingly similar people don't necessarily like that, you know, especially
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: I could see
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: if they're more of the introvert type or they, they find the energy too contrary to theirs.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: know I've started off on the wrong foot and you know, then I can start sober up during the call. But then I'm also changing who I am now. That's not something I necessarily. Do too much. I may try and tone it down a bit, which is fair. But at the end of the day, if I'm an, if I have sort of an extroverted personality and they don't like that, that's gonna be a fundamental problem.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: But then that's me also assessing their fit for me, you know? And, but that's a likability, right? I may not be likable to team of quiet introverts whereas I could be a bit raucous and I can be a bit mischievous at work and maybe that's not gonna fly, and that's fine. I.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah. That, that's a, that's a good thing too. I think that's something we didn't really touch on, but yeah, it, it's, it's a two-way street in many ways. I, I get it. You know, people want to get the interview, they want to get the prize. It's also, you know, in some ways you have to learn to be yourself enough.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And if you're, and if that's going to be completely antithetical to the people you're [00:33:00] interviewing or just be such a mismatch that it's not gonna work, then maybe it just
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Maybe it's wrong for Yeah, and you know what? Being likable you, you'll know. If you're really honest with yourself, you know, whether there you, you would like you if you weren't you, you know,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: That's a good one.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: you'll know. You'll know. You'll know there are things that need to change. Yeah,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: So, so to, so to end off, put yourself on camera. If you don't do anything else, start recording yourself, answering some of these freaking questions. Don't over index on, you know, the one interview you
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: no,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: and what else, what, what's some last parting
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: well think about everything from the hirings. Manager's point of view because that's actually what kind of counts and it'll help you get much closer to where they're at. And you'll, you'll signal that because I know as a candidate, it's, we are all trained to obsessively think, oh, I need this job, or I need this interview, or I need to do well, and you know what your idea of well is may be completely different from what their idea of well is. And you can absolutely ask them that you, you know, you should be, again, Elene talked about this. Like this is, that was a really good episode now that I'm thinking about it. Like, she [00:34:00] talks about asking questions if you wanna postpone things you know, 'cause you need to postpone the interview to get better prepared.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: You can do things like that, but also ask people, what kind of interview is this? We keep telling students in the Inner Circle program like.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Oh my
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: They're nine to 14 different types of technical interview. Please find out what kind it is. And people still,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Find out what you're doing.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: you know, people still don't do it because they're like, oh, I wanna be likable.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: I don't wanna ask too many questions. I don't wanna ruffle further. Feather am, am I being too Bo? No, you are entitled to say, Hey, if I'm gonna spend an hour of my life at three hours in my life in this thing, what is this saying?
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: What kind of
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yes.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Yeah. What is
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: You know?
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: it's crazy that people don't ask that. I'm like, that's actually the number one thing. That's maybe the one thing you should take away. What kind of interview are you walking into? 'cause you have no clue. You, it's like flying blind. It's like, why?
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Why would
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Totally. And you know, you,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: How can you win? How
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: you can't, especially when the game could look deceptively similar, you could walk into a snooker tournament and think it's billions and lose because you know, this is what I keep telling the students. I'm like, just 'cause there's a green table and there's acoustic and there's a, there're balls.
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Doesn't mean it's the same sport. Know the sport, [00:35:00] you know, know which one you're walking into,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: Oh
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: you.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: That's funny because I don't know the difference between snooker and billiards. Yeah. But imagine like blasted lead code for three months and walking into the interview and they're like, cool, let's do
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah,
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And you're
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: exactly what? Let's react. I am reacting. That's what I'm doing.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: no. Yeah. Oh man, always good. Always good talking to you, zoomin. I hope people got some good stuff out of this 'cause yeah, interviews are such a emotional and technical game to play and but there are ways you can quote,
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Yeah.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: So, yeah. Check out par of D oh slash Internet Circle if you're interested in becoming one of the few people that work one-on-one with us.
brian_1_05-25-2025_153840: And other than that, we'll catch
zubin_1_05-26-2025_083840: Gotcha. Next time.
Yeti Stereo Microphone-7: That'll do it for today's episode of the develop yourself podcast. If you're serious about switching careers and becoming a software developer and building complex software and want to work directly with me and my team, go to parsity. io. And if you want more information, feel free to schedule a chat by just clicking the link in the show notes.
Yeti Stereo Microphone-7: See you next week.
