The Self-Taught Computer Scientist

Chapter 18 Next Steps
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Once your LinkedIn profile is up- to- date (and your résumé is, too), it is time to start networking. 
I recommend picking five to ten companies where you are interested in working and reaching out to 
recruiters or other team members at those companies. Companies often have a shortage of engineers 
and offer referral bonuses to employees who refer engineers, so if you are qualified for the position, 
they will most likely be happy to hear from you.
You can also use a resource like Meetup.com to find groups who get together to network and meet 
new people, or you can directly apply for jobs using websites like Angel.co or Indeed.com.
How to Prepare for a Technical Interview
When it comes time to apply for jobs, eventually you will need to pass a technical interview. You 
should give yourself plenty of time to prepare for it. There is no steadfast rule, but I recommend that 
you give yourself at least two to three months to prepare. It also depends on how competitive the 
companies you are applying to are. If you are applying to one of the FAANG companies (Facebook, 
Amazon, Apple, Netflix, or Google/Alphabet), it is not unheard of for hopeful engineers to spend six 
months or more preparing for their technical assessments. If you are applying to a startup, on the 
other hand, you may be able to get away with preparing for only a few weeks.
I recommend dedicating at least a few hours a day to solving problems on LeetCode, one of my 
favorite resources for preparing for technical interviews. It has hundreds of data structure and algorithm 
practice problems as well as solutions.
One of the hardest parts about technical interviews is the unnatural environment they take place 
in. Usually, when you are programming, you don’t have someone standing over your shoulder evalu-
ating you. Programmers also are not used to solving problems in short time periods. Nevertheless, 
these artificial constraints are what you will face in a technical interview. Competitive programming 
is the best solution I’ve found to prepare for coding in this type of environment. Competitive program-
ming is coding as a sport. You compete against other programmers to solve computer science problems. 
It is the best way to prepare for a technical interview because it prepares you for the unique conditions 
you will be facing: solving problems under time pressure. When I did competitive programming to 
prepare for a set of technical interviews, I performed significantly better than in previous times when 
I only prepared by practicing problems on my own. You can try a website like Codeforces when you 
are ready to try competitive programming.
Once you’ve used competitive programming to get used to solving challenging technical problems 
quickly, you should try a few mock interviews with a software engineer, ideally someone who has 
conducted an interview before. If you can’t find a friend to help, you can try hiring a software engineer 
on a freelance platform like Upwork or on Codementor. You can hire an experienced software engi-
neer on these platforms for around $30 to $60, and spending even a few hours practicing a mock 
interview is an excellent investment.

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