So right now I have around 6 yoe and recently took my first senior role in August of last year. As many of you know, not all years of experience are created equal. That is to say 2-3 years of my first two jobs sucked as far as training and projects go. Learned a lot, but nowhere near as much as some new grad’s first years at FANG (or MANG). Not only this but I never took initiative to take on as many leadership roles on projects as I should have in my first few years. In a way Ive coasted at times. With that said, Ive never been pipped or come anywhere close to it. All of my managers have given me good marks and all that. At many points, I was the most knowledge on my teams and led my teams on day to day stuff (not necessarily on large projects). I have a few projects under my belt but none of them were in environments with high throughput so I dont have that sexy “implemented scalable solutions for massive high volume app” bullet to share during senior interviews. A second skill I feel Im not expert level at is mentoring, luckily I have had the opportunity to work with a jr engineer in the last year and have always stepped in to help her when she got stuck and do the same for the rest of my team but I feel like that might not be in sufficient when it comes to “checking the box” of “prior experience mentoring jr engineers”. It feels like Ive just barely started to bloom as a senior and for that reason Im feeling really insecure about my upcoming interviews, mostly around the behavioral and leadership ones. I expect most managers or staff engs I interview with are going to dig at this. For what its worth Im putting in a huge effort to LC and system design. One nice thing about having 6 yoe is that I have worked in a ton of environments with different stacks and design patterns, so I expect that to help during system design beyond my current prep. I also dont have a ton of interesting stories about cross team communication and collaboration. I like to think Im a good communicator and do well when it comes to managing my relationships with people for whatever that is worth. I need to leave my current company (for reasons outside anything mentioned here, mostly shit pay and feeling like I have more potential to be unleashed) and most applicable roles appear to be senior ones. I have around 7 calls next week, so Im starting to feel the weight of this all more and more everyday. How can I stop being so insecure about this situation? Should I just go in “fake it till I make it” style and hope for the best? Should upsell myself at the risk of someone digging deep and calling my bluff? Any advice blind friends? TC 145k
This is not a one time opportunity for you. Go with the mindset that this round of interviews are practice run. So even if you don’t get any offers (or desired offers) your main goal will be to get better at interviewing. And that will happen for sure after you interview at 7 places. What difference will it make for another 6 months? If you go with this mindset, you will perform better, and if you do land up with your dream offer that’s just a bonus in this round.
Yeah, good way to look at it for sure (btw I have had 4 diff jobs, haven’t been at the same place for 6 years) I
I am in same 🚢 with you