Seth Raphae was a student in middle school when the pandemic hit. That’s why he and his friends as well as all the students around the world were forced to use different kinds of applications such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, etc. One of the problems Seth faced was being frequently late to his Zoom classes. Not only that but, during the period of adjustment, teachers stored links to their classes. For Seth, it was a mess full of Google docs and spreadsheets. Seth, now 14, says:
“All my teachers were pretty understanding. It was a hectic system, and it was really hard to find Zoom links.”
The blooming coder, Seth found a tech-driven solution to his problem. His idea has evolved into LinkJoin which is a web app that stores and automatically opens Zoom links. That the user will “never be late again” to a virtual meeting. Now Seth aims to turn that concept into an honest business. Seth, a high school freshman based in Walnut Creek, Calif, commented:
“I could not find anything else that exists like this to automatically join meetings at the right times. Reminders are just really easy to ignore. I’ll get a notification maybe five minutes before my meeting, and it’ll just sit there and not do anything. LinkJoin interrupts whatever you’re doing and says, ‘Join this meeting. In fact, it’s already opening, so better get on it.’”
When it comes to the Code…
Being at home during the pandemic, Seth was given time to explore his interest in coding. That’s how he wrote the original code for LinkJoin in Python and shared it with his friends, each one of them running the program locally on their computers. Seth recalls, adding that he asked his mom to sign him up for a proper Python class in the summer of 2020:
“I thought, why not use this prior programming knowledge that I’ve never used? I finished it super fast and really took a liking to it. In a way, the pandemic really fostered my coding skills, and I’m glad to have the time to dedicate to it that summer and the months leading up to it.”
Seth created the first iteration of LinkJoin in January 2021 and built the website himself, incorporating elements written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. A friend offered to design the graphics, and he made the web app publicly available around March. He still managed to garner about 650 sign-ups before the school year ended.
Since then, Seth has added even more changes. Users now can disable links from opening automatically, they can sort them and even add notes to meetings if they would like to do it. Seth is planning to include adding premium features like text or email reminders, for a monthly fee and licensing the service to schools.
While schools are reopening for in-person classes, Seth still sees a use for his app一even beyond students. In his opinion, even after COVID-19 goes away there will still be a lot of virtual schooling so that’s why he is hoping his school would agree to adopt LinkJoin. Seth hopes that he could help people be more productive and focused on their work.
]]>BUILD THE HARD SKILLS
Get in the habit of regularly doing code challenges. It’s a much more effective way to prepare for coding interview questions than trying to cram a bunch of studying in before the big day. It’s important to schedule time each day to attempt at least one code challenge. You’ll get better at solving them, and you’ll also get better at outlining your process and speaking to it. A few great websites to help you practice code challenges in varying degrees of difficulty include LeetCode, Codewars, and AlgoExpert.
These code challenges help build the essential hard skills you need to perform well in a coding interview technically. If you’re applying for a mid-level position as a software engineer, you’ll want to feel pretty solid with these types of practice problems in your interview preparation. If you’re gearing up for your first technical interview as a junior engineer, you’ll want at least some exposure and practice with these.
DON’T FORGET THE SOFT SKILLS
Mastery of coding challenges is only half the battle in coding interview preparation, so don’t forget the soft skills. Throughout the entire interview process, including the technical coding interview, there are a lot of things that interviewers are looking for besides your ability to code. These other skills have to do with how well you communicate your thought process, collaborate, talk about the problem at hand, your leadership skills, your drive to learn, and generally speaking, how nice you are. Soft skills are often overlooked by candidates and can be deal breakers for a lot of coding interviews.
A company that’s worth applying to will want candidates that have strong soft skills, sometimes moreso than hard skills, because they show how well a person can grow within the company and develop those hard skills over time. This is especially the case for junior software engineers.
When you practice your code challenges, see if you can buddy up with someone and take turns doing mock interview. Practice talking through the coding problem as you work, asking questions, giving each other hints here and there, and revealing your ability to lead, collaborate, and persevere through the coding test.
ACKNOWLEDGE MULTIPLE SOLUTIONS
This is the “cherry on top” for an interviewer: a candidate that’s not only skilled enough to work through the problem and has a personality that fits the company culture but can also defend their solution and mention alternative approaches. This shows that you’re not just going with what you were taught or what you read online, but that you also acknowledge that there are multiple solutions to the same problem and have considered which is most appropriate for a given context.
As an interviewer administering a coding problem, I would prefer to see the simpler solution over the best solution, as it will give me more time to talk with the candidate. Now, if that candidate can also suggest alternative approaches and defend why they selected theirs, that’s an instant win. Bravo!
An example of this might be a challenge where you’re asked to system design a search function for a video streaming app. You might use an inefficient algorithm for the sake of quick implementation during the job interview, but then mention a more appropriate algorithm that would otherwise be used in real life. Speaking of algorithms…
STUDY YOUR ALGORITHMS AND DATA STRUCTURES
This goes hand-in-hand with the hard skills but deserves its own section. You don’t need to be a master of computer science to ace a coding interview, but there are some standard algorithms and data structures that you should feel good about referencing, or at least mentioning and talking about. For instance: