Tech interviews and how to cope with them

‘The recruiter will call you back soon’ told me the fourth (and last) interviewer I spoke with after a long day interviewing at the Microsoft campus.

I was pretty psyched about getting an offer and moving to Redmond. I wasn’t desperate (I think) but I definitely was a Microsoft fanboy willing to change his entire world to work there. I had decided to tell the recruiter that although I preferred a position related to developing Word’s ultimate new feature, I was willing to take pretty much any job there.

‘Let’s go straight to the point – I accept your offer’, I practiced many times with a mirror. You can imagine my disappointment when the recruiter didn’t call me back, didn’t pick up my calls and didn’t reply to my emails.

Though I am not a black belt at interviewing in big tech companies, I have had my share of reality checks:

You had me at ‘hello’. I found that getting an interview with the Tech titans requires a lot more than building a nice resume and submitting it through their careers web page. I don’t think I am overstating when I say that this worked for me once in a hundred times. On the other hand, having someone internally refer me worked more often than not and reaching out to recruiters through LinkedIn also turned out to be a pretty good option. But by far the best way to get these companies’ attention is to be already in the club – once I joined Microsoft, other companies started poaching me.

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Facebook created a mess trying to take on Snapchat

If you use Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp, you have probably noticed recent updates that allow you to share a picture that expires after 24 hours.

Stories, Shared Days, or Status, all different names for the same feature across 4 different apps. This is what they look like side by side:

Facebook is trying to suffocate Snap by flooding every app they own with the one thing that made Snapchat special.

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Why did you stop posting on Facebook?

Many of my friends have stopped posting on Facebook. Some have uninstalled the app and others even deleted their accounts.

They are not posting on Twitter either, and the more ephemeral Snapchat hasn’t reached critical mass among my closest friends.

Instagram is the only place where I still get a glimpse of the most intimate side of the people I love the most, but I’d say only 20% of my online friends actively use it.

What causes someone to stop sharing on social media? Is it a natural part of being over 30? Or is there an actual problem with the platform? Talking to 12 of these friends, I learned that there are several groups.

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On Leadership

What is a leader? What traits do I want to make sure I have as a leader? What has my experience taught me so far? I’ve been trying to answer these questions and have been thinking about what leadership means to me.

Even though the dictionary defines a leader as “the person who leads or commands a group”, I do not believe that this simple definition is the same thing as being a true leader. A person that merely uses their “power” to intimidate others into getting things done is not a leader. Likewise, a person who uses fear to motivate people into getting things done, or walks over people in a selfish attempt to achieve a goal, is also not a leader.

So, what qualifies someone as a great leader? Let’s start with a fact, and one that many leaders refuse to acknowledge; there are no perfect leaders. We are human and we have weaknesses. We are human and we have strengths. The key is to spot the differences between the two, understand the pros and cons of both, and be a leader that is balanced.

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I broke Facebook

I’m sitting on a train, on my way to Whistler, and I decide to check Facebook. I’m hoping to see what my friends did last night, or what their plans are for Thanksgiving, but this is what I see:

I don’t see almost any personal posts, or pictures that help me connect with my friends, with the people I love. Isn’t that Facebook’s mission? Instead, I get irrelevant stories.

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This is your tech bubble in Seattle

You wake up with fake sunlight from your Wi-Fi-enabled lamp and you reach for your smartphone before you even open one eye. After checking that you finally reached 90% of sleep efficiency, you start your morning ritual through your social media apps.

A few more ‘Clinton has already won the Elections’ news from your Facebook feed remind you that November 8th is finally tomorrow. You walk to the bathroom with a sense of accomplishment: you retweeted a couple of anti-Trump news articles that a friend shared.

The smart toothbrush congratulates you for not missing any teeth 3 days in a row and you jump in the shower while listening to OneRepublic’s ‘Future Looks Good’, how appropriate!

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On Risk Taking

“I wish they would lay me off so I can take time off”, “I would love to live abroad but it’s just too much of a change”, “I thought of that idea first, I wish I had done it myself” and “That seems too hard” are some of the things I’ve heard friends and myself say so many times. Changing is hard, I know it, but why do we live “hoping” and “going with the flow” rather than doing? What are we afraid of? I don’t claim to know the answer but this blog post has some of my thoughts on how I try to approach taking risks.

The first thing is that each of us live in a comfort zone. It’s easier to deal with the known than with the unknown. It is easier to just go with the flow and let chance and others take decisions for us. This begs the question, why do we let this happen though?

We are afraid of failure. Failing is hard, and when you fail, you KNOW you fail. In Silicon Valley, failure is part of life and it’s encouraged. Only by failing we get better. People always talk about trying things and failing. However, there is still a big stigma in failing. In particular this is very strong in cultures like mine (I’m Mexican) where failure is synonym for loser.

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On Learning

Before I start, I apologize for not writing in the past almost two years. I’ve been on a pretty busy adventure and I promise to make up for it. This post will be one of the first of a series of posts not on technology itself but more on my thoughts about how to live in the world of technology.

The technology world only has one constant: change. In the past ten years though, change has accelerated at an incredible pace thanks to the Internet, crowd sourcing collaboration (aka open source) and an economic system that has allowed engineers to take risks. Even though this rapid change is amazing, it’s really hard to keep up with the rate of change but change we must.

Ever since I was a child I’ve been curious about things. I like to explore new things and learn about them. Either learning how to make computers do things, how to make a mercury thermometer or how wine is made. Reflecting about this topic I even found it interesting how I am more interested on the making-of movie add-ons than the movie. My curiosity is broad and has led me to continuously challenge myself to understand the world as a whole rather than its parts. We usually live in a bubble and learning things outside our bubble helps us be better every day.

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Will Nintendo switch fortunes with the Nintendo Switch?

Last week Nintendo finally unwrapped their super-secret project NX. We finally got to know the name of the new console and got confirmation of when we will see it in stores. The name is Nintendo Switch and it will be hitting stores in March 2017. Many rumors and predictions were right!!

Unfortunately, Nintendo did not release a lot of details about the console other than a very short video about some of the key concepts behind it. In a nutshell, the new Nintendo Switch is a hybrid console, but you might wonder what do I mean by hybrid. Simple, it will be a portable console (think Nintendo 3DS) and a home console (think Wii U) bundled in one unique device.

switch

For years, I have thought that Nintendo was going to push for this hybrid idea, after the first time I saw the Nintendo Wii U, back in September of 2012 I thought: wouldn’t it make a lot of sense if I could take the tablet (controller) part of the Wii U everywhere I wanted and not be constrained to just my home? Then Nintendo broke news about the company merging their handheld and console divisions. Obviously, I started dreaming about a possible console that you could take with you anywhere you went but when you come back home you can easily dock into your TV and keep playing. That concept is exactly what was shown in the video for the Switch! Nintendo is basically making my dream come true.

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How iMessage joined the ‘fun messaging apps’ club

Waiting for my delayed flight to take off, I came across Phoneys, an iMessage sticker pack with some controversy.

Phoneys allows users to cover friends’ messages with stickers that look like a real message. In less than a week, it became the #1 Top Paid and #1 Top Grossing iMessage app. Here’s how it works:

Of course, Apple noticed and asked Adam, the developer, to update it so that users don’t get confused or think that their iPhone has been hacked, otherwise the app would be taken down.

With iMessage on iOS 10, Apple tried to create a fun experience that can compete with Snapchat, the king of fun messaging.

A very clever way of doing this was… well, letting others actually do it and lure them into a new iMessage app store (following Facebook’s steps with Messenger).

I find fascinating how Apple simplified and streamlined the creation of stickers for iMessage. Anyone can create a fun experience (and sometimes a cash machine) with a good idea and a few nights of work.

Fun messaging apps are the next gold mine: emojis, stickers, GIFs… the best way of increasing the variety and quality of options is to let 3rd party developers do it. How long will it take for Snapchat to open its own app store?

Adam is now debating what to do with his “stupid little sticker pack”, as he calls it. To him, I’d say: enjoy the viral ride and start thinking of the next great idea, you sure know how to monetize it.

You can read his full story in Medium.

Image via Adam Howell