This is great! The only thing I would say is missing is some talk about API Gateways. Which is something you want to do at the beginning of a project and not after.
I write regularly about security, programming, and several other topics at http://robertheaton.com/ . They’re detailed, offbeat, and very funny. I’ve broken several high-profile privacy abuses, most notably:
I write the Steve Steveington Chronicles, in which you and your good friend, Steve Steveington, exploit weird security and privacy edge cases in the internet:
Shouldn't the brown-eyed people kill themselves on day 101? Or are they supposed to reason that they, and they alone might have some other coloured eyes.
I was about to reply "nonono it's not a date rape joke" but then I realised that the word "violent" in "violent sexual abuse" means it actually could easily be taken as one. I only meant to joke about receiving unpleasant messages on a dating site, which is probably not fun, but I think is generally OK to joke about. On the other hand, date rape is not OK to joke about. I've changed "violent" to "aggressive", which I think keeps the same tone I was going for but removes the ambiguity.
Obviously I would say this, but the Stripe process was really enjoyable, rapid and well thought through. It was clear that everyone really cared about making sure that you were able to really show your true skills and abilities. The team is great (and obviously just got 5.8% more great when I joined) and really happy to answer any and every question you might have.
So I strongly recommend. Although I would say that.
wow, just upvoted your helpful reply. Can I ask what/how to prepare for the Stripe interview? Looks like cramming algorithm questions is not going to work. And it looks like, through your and OP's experience, Stripe is looking for people that are cool to work and hang-out with, self-motivated, and can write clean code.
That sounds about right! Greg's Quora answer pretty much covers everything, and I'd say that there's not much you should particularly do to prepare other than to keep getting better at what it is you do anyway and to chill out. pc specifically said to me that the primary thing he cared about was that people were able to show how good they actually are, and that everyone feels they got a good crack at the whip and didn't get screwed over by a weird question or not preparing some specific thing or anything like that.
I am actually the OP :), my email address is in my HN profile and feel free to email me with any more questions!
If I was guessing, I'd say that I very consciously made my CV/cover letter/blog "intriguing". I'm an OK programmer, but at the moment my strength is probably that I have a diverse list of fairly wacky and mostly unrelated other stuff that I've done. I think this meant that a lot of companies who would otherwise have passed straightaway were at least curious enough about the guy on the other end of this application to talk.
I should point out that after a Skype or 2, most of said speculative companies did realise that whilst founding a clothing company that makes sweatshirts with pictures of fruit on them is cool, it doesn't really help you write Clojure when you don't have any functional programming experience ;)
Of course, it could just be something boring like the fact that companies really need Ruby guys at the moment.
No, haven't tried that. I don't think it would work for me though. I'm a night owl by nature, and I tend to do my best work at the end of the day, as opposed to the beginning.
I find that doing something related to what you're doing is probably the worst thing you can do. Let's say you run your specs and 5 of them fail. You fix #1 and then re-run the spec, then go and fix #2 whilst waiting to see if your first fix is good. You will end up juggling and trying to fix multiple bugs at once, which is a recipe for failure and sadness.
I strongly endorse just staring at the screen whilst waiting.
Link: https://robertheaton.com/2020/04/06/systems-design-for-advan... HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23904000