Emma Bostian - De-Coding the Technical Interview Process

Throughout my college degree and the first several years of my career, I was constantly bombarded with people telling me I wasnt good enough and that I wouldnt make it as a software engineer. For a long time, I let their words deplete my self-confidence. But somewhere along the way, I decided to pick myself up, study my ass off, and prove them all wrong.

I began my coding career in 2012 during my Sophomore year of college. I attended Siena College in Loudonville, New York, and after declaring a computer science major with a business minor, I was on my way to becoming a software engineer.

During my Junior year of college, I completed a six-month internship with IBM in Poughkeepsie, New York, where I automated the installation of WebSphere Application Server on z/OS using Python. During my internship, I met my future manager, who would bring me down to Austin, Texas.

After graduation, I picked up and moved to the south, where I joined the IBM Spectrum Control team. In my first year and a half with IBM, I focused on front-end development. It was a difficult few years as I studied Java and back-end development throughout college and was duly unprepared for the real world.

I focused my first year and a half on web accessibility. Still, I wanted something a bit more alluring than enterprise storage systems, so when I was presented with the opportunity to join the IBM Systems & Transformation design team, I jumped.

I cherished my time working with the design team and learned many skills that aided my career. I learned UX and visual design skills, I worked with IBM Support on a Salesforce support solution, and I worked with WordPress and PHP. But my most notable, and my favorite project, was with the quantum computing team. I single-handedly developed the IBMQ Network website using Vue.js, and that felt damn good.

Three years after beginning my career at IBM, I resigned, sold everything, and flew my two cats out to Germany, where I started a new role with LogMeIn. In my first year with LogMeIn, I worked on the GoToMeeting product team, but Ive worked on building a design system from the ground up for the past year and a half. This was the same year my career took off. I started my blog, spoke at numerous conferences across Europe, the UK, and the United States, created three courses (two with LinkedIn Learning and one with Frontend Masters), started the Ladybug Podcast, joined JS Party, and more.

Throughout the past five years, Ive had countless technical interviews.

Most of them were flamingly horrible, but most recently, I passed my Google technical interviews and accepted my dream job with Spotify in Stockholm, Sweden. I cannot believe Im sitting here writing that I successfully passed a technical interview with Spotify. I am utterly proud of myself.

This book is the culmination of my learnings throughout the past five years.

When studying for my interviews, I struggled immensely to find resources that would help me achieve my dream job. Even with a computer science degree, I had trouble grasping algorithms and data structures concepts. I read Cracking The Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell several times, each time frustrated that the solutions and concepts were written in Java.

Because I couldnt find the resources I needed to succeed, I wrote my own.

The code examples throughout this book are in JavaScript. While many of the concepts well discuss will be conceptual and relevant for all software developers, I am a JavaScript developer and will dive a bit deeper into web technologies.

This book will not be a deep-dive into HTML, CSS, or JavaScript but will touch on all the topics you should study before a technical interview. However, I will provide resources to learn more about these technologies and concepts.

The Interview Process