LeetCode Troubles And Working On Soft Skills As A Developer

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all right what is up I'm going to go to LinkedIn for a question here so thanks very much for sending this one in um it says hope all is well I'm a mid senior software engineer based in Brazil and currently exploring opportunities abroad well I'm confident my day-to-day problem solving skills I find algorithmic interviews so like Elite code style questions they point out challenging and I also want to strengthen my interpersonal skills do you have any advice on approving both and then they have a a sort of a followup question on H1B visas I'm not I'm probably not going to talk about the Visa stuff and um especially because even for me like I'm not even on an H1B so I'm probably going to park that part for this conversation but if you have questions that you want to answered leave them in the comments

and of course if you have something uh that you want to you know keep private and add more detail you can do as this person did and message so on LinkedIn it's just going to be Nick centino and on any other social media platform just look for Dev leader that's my main YouTube channel has content just like this except it's not a stream of Consciousness it's more polished edited videos so that and tutorials so with that said let's dive into this I've made a few videos on this kind of stuff already in terms of um lead code and stuff like that so when I was thinking about how I want to answer this uh I think it's going to sound kind of maybe like silly or like uh oversimplified I guess but if you want to get better at lead code you got to practice

it uh it's kind of like anything else like uh I think for most people you just have to put time in and do it but it's kind of unfortunate because like this person's calling out I find Al Al can't speak find algorithmic interviews like those on lead code challenging and this is kind of uh the interesting point here which is like it's basically an interview based thing almost exclusively there's people that like to do um you know Elite code style stuff they find that it helps them think through and problem solve that's great but I think that there is such a little conversion of from lead code to like building uh software applications and services and just overall software development it's like a very very specific skill set and um this is why it's kind of challenging I think for some people especially if you

like this person's saying I'm confident my day-to-day problems solving they they're already Aid to the senior level software engineer so it's not like they can't develop software they're probably pretty good at it that's why they're at where they're at but the reality is when it comes to things like lead code um your your dayto this is my opinion at least of my experience day-to-day work in terms of building software doesn't really translate well to lead code and then the inverse as well if you're just really good at lead code it doesn't necessarily translate well to building soft software now there will be people that absolutely disagree with this and that's totally fine I'm just giving you my opinion I'm giving you my experiences that's why this is my channel where I make Vlogs on this stuff uh because I'm just sharing my experiences I have

absolutely seen people that um and I've had friends especially at of University that are very good at getting set up to answer Elite code style questions they have they practice this kind of stuff they're very good at thinking through like problems like this looking for tricks and optimizations and they they study like crazy I find like Elite code style questions it's not an exact um parallel but a similar one similar enough that I want to mention it um I I've said before on other videos like I'm not very good at taking exams like if you ask me to go build a project I could I would feel very confident doing it it's almost like I don't care what you tell me to build I know I can go build stuff but if you were to sit me down in an exam and then try to

quiz me on like information uh I generally struggle with that and it's like it's be I think for a couple reasons one is I get nervous doing it I kind of you know draw blanks and stuff that becomes a becomes a bit of a bit of a vicious cycle and then the other thing is like I don't I don't practice doing that and that's like a way of thinking and recalling information and stuff like that so I think like lead code kind of like taking exams I've seen people where they it's almost like they they cram for an exam except they're like blasting through lead code and they get very good specifically at doing lead code and being able to recall this kind of stuff I think it works very well for interviews especially where you have to do lead code style questions which is

unfortunately more places than I'd like but it's kind of the the reality of it I'm hopeful that this kind of stuff changes over time but my general advice to this person is if you're finding like I am a engineer that can write software or even if you're not yet in the industry the same stuff applies you have to go practice it when I was applying to Big Tech after I left a startup prior to Microsoft um and even for like I'm an engineering manager and even for my engineering manager role I set aside time for the period that I was applying and just basically was grinding code questions during those time intervals um so I would set aside time for lead code style questions for system design questions and for behavioral interview questions now for me my behavioral interview questions as an engineering manager would

probably carry the most weight because that's most of what my job will be coding questions for me would carry the least weight generally and system design would probably be up there in terms of like gauging technical um and kind of thought process on stuff because engineering Managers generally aren't diving right into the code but might be helping more with architecture and guiding teams so how I have to approach interviews certainly looks different but I still had to go grind lead code and at that point i' had been programming I had done 10 years of professional software development and eight of those years as an engineering manager IC hybrid so like that's 10 years into my career and I still had to go grind lead code um so I'm just trying to share that with you because if you're if you're the kind of person who's

like kind of nervous about like having to go for interviews you're like oh I don't know how to do lead code and that's kind of the thing holding you back like I'm just telling you like yeah that's it's probably going to be hard but it's something that you can absolutely practice um there's like dog hair floating around in my face and I can't see out of my left eye and then my other well you guys haven't seen my dogs um one sec cuz one kind of snuck in I'm not sure if I can turn the camera around for this but give me one sec I got to unplug stuff and try to get you guys to see lla who's my my older dog she's I think she's 10 this year um but hey this is a this is what happens when we're not commuting ready

here's Lyla where you going lla no okay camera shy I guess um but yeah if you if you have to like if you have to go for interviews I would highly recommend that you practice lead code I think that if you're if you're anticipating that like hey I've been building software should just be easy like it's probably going to be a bit of a rude wakeup call um or you might apply to a place where they're not asking you lead code questions that's great in my opinion because I don't think that they translate really well into anything useful um but that's been my experience um okay the other part that this person was asking about was aside from the the Visa stuff which I'm going to skip was strengthening interpersonal skills and there's a couple ways I could try to answer this because I don't

know if they mean in terms of how they're interviewing and like showcasing that or truly working on them um interpersonal skills are again like any other skill you have to practice them and I think sometimes I think a lot of software developers are in software development because they think that uh like naturally they're probably going to be spending more with computers versus people and that's more comfortable and I get it like I'm super introverted you may not know that but like I'm very introverted the fact that I can talk to a camera here uh it's just because I've been practicing doing it for a couple years now like I've made I think 450 YouTube videos so it's easier for me to talk to a camera I can actually speak in public now but um in terms of like peopling spending time with people I'm an

engineering manager and if I do a day of one-on ones I literally have to sleep at after work because I am so exhausted it's so much energy out of me so interpersonal skills are things you have to work on um and it's kind of like it's extra unfortunate if you are more introverted because it's probably going to feel like it's more work so in terms of answering from the behavioral interview side of things like if you're just trying to if the person's asking about how do I showcase interpersonal skills that's going to be your behavior interview so what I would recommend is what you like the framing for this in terms of practicing is I would think through different um sort of highlights or low lights uh of your career so far projects you've built different uh accomplishments uh things like that different yeah different

projects and uh I'm trying to think what's the other word like it's not necessarily just code you've built but like maybe you were responsible for helping putting processes together whatever like sort of General accomplishments and things like that I would try to come up with a list of those things I would try to look through example behavioral interview questions and try to come up with what is the question actually like trying to get out of you what is the interview like why are they asking you that because I can tell you in behavioral interviews we're not trying to like get you to you know uh defend why postgress was the best database it's it's it's not like we're not talking about the technology we're trying to see how you were navigating like hey if you wanted postgress and someone else wanted something else we don't

care which one you picked it's not like there was a right or wrong answer we care about how you approached this you know potential conflict how did you get byy in how did you like how did you navigate the situation it's even potentially more interesting if there's like a dynamic in terms of tenure and um you know seniority so like we're interested in exploring how you navigate these things that's the behavior part um so for this person if it's interpersonal skills how do these uh get showcased and interview it's those types of questions so I would write out a bunch of different uh scenarios that you've been through High lights low lights have them kind of listed uh I would write out a bunch of example questions and then I would go through this exercise of trying to see like hey if I needed to

answer this question could I walk through this scenario and could I sort of uh take parts of that story to really highlight how I was exemplifying that so yeah cool you worked on a project and you were able to deliver um you know really important feature for a product and on the right timeline you got to lead that part great cool but like technology and product part aside because that's not really what they care about when they're interviewing you um was that an example where you were demonstrating like leadership team collaboration uh were there interpersonal conflicts that came up you know then you can leverage that one as an example to kind of walk through um and I would just kind of go through example questions and scenarios like this uh ideally I would recommend if you're like me have a couple of examples and

that way if you blank in the interview you're not panicking and going oh man like I know I have one for this but nothing's coming to mind because it's if the good one is escaping your mind at least you have a backup scenario that you can walk through so I think that's my recommendation for that I will mention that I do have a course on on dome train for uh behavioral interviews so if you're interested in that I think it's uh like six hours long it's a between myself and Ryan Murphy who's uh someone I partnered with to make the those career-based courses so uh that does a really big deep dive on it again that's domet tr.com uh there's sort of career courses listed there you could search my name there um that has a lot more information but what I just told you

is like one of my main takeaways that in terms of practicing that stuff and trying to be more effective at answering those because so many software Engineers I don't blame you because I think this way too someone's like tell me about a project when we just want to go talk about the technical stuff that's the cool part to us but then we miss the fact that like someone's trying to to extract some information from you about how you work with other people so that's my tip there outside of interviews this is the kind of stuff that has to be practiced so uh I would make more if you're finding like I don't have time where I'm like talking with others much like maybe you want to periodically set up a a oneon-one could be once a month to talk to someone more senior on your

team try mentoring people trying to uh build up empathy and understand where they're coming from right you'll practice patience you'll practice empathy you'll practice understanding you'll practice your communication that way um so I think that's a couple of examples there where that's either someone that's more senior than you for could be one-on ones could be anything and mentorship opportunities I think are one of the I don't want to say the best but like they're a really good way in my opinion if you have capacity for it you may find this very frustrating because you haven't yet yet built up patience you haven't yet built up good communication but like that might be a good thing to try and you'll quickly see like are there areas where I'm kind of struggling like in my interpersonal skills um but if you're already overwhelmed with work and you

try to take that on as well it's probably going to be a little bit crappy for you um I would try to make sure that if you have things uh roles like product owners you know people that might be less technical hands on the code uh carve out time to have conversations with them right try to understand like what they're trying to do like what do they need at of you as an engineer how can you be more effective working with them I think there's lots of opportunities that are literally just talking with people and I'm not saying hey go change all of your schedule to be just 100% meetings but try to find these opportunities and create them if they don't exist because if someone were to reach out to me just as an example and they were like hey Nick like could I

schedule 30 minutes with you to chat with you about like how I could be more effective in terms of getting you what you need because I just want to understand your role and like how how we work together and I just want to make that more effective I would say yes to that like you know if if I'm working with someone and there's an opportunity to work better I'm not going to say no to that so um I think there's a bunch of stuff like that you can try doing um inter like if you're finding yourself in conflicts and things like that one of the things that I always tell people is like step one is just keep calm uh it's way too easy if you're finding that there's friction that um that we get heated we want to defend things but like often what

happens is we're missing the point we're just trying to say no no I'm right I'm right you're wrong doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong it matters that you're arriving at a solution you can move forward so um try to deescalate things like that like we don't need to be like fighting about it it's not it's not the who part it's about you know the what and why to move forward um I would say too though if you're having if you this isn't just about practicing if there's challenges so if this is kind of a repeat thing or you notice something's lacking try to have a conversation with your manager about um you know if they have observations about this kind of thing depending on whatever the scenario is if it's uh repeated and uh if you're working at this kind of stuff in a

timely way so say you uh were able to navigate a conflict and your manager was sort of aware of it um maybe like take that opportunity to the next time you're chatting with your manager to say Hey by the or message them after or something to say hey by the way like uh I think that I navigated that pretty well do you any like feedback or observations on what I could do better um because then you can start to get a bit of a feedback loop that way um you could ask at Microsoft we have something called perspectives that people can write for each other and they're transparent to the manager usually people write these and they're very much just like good job you're the best um which I think is nice but it's like it's also kind of little value but when you get

constructive feedback I think it's great and some people are worried oh your manager is going to see that I'm giving you constructive feedback or if you get constructive feedback you're like oh no my manager is going to think I'm terrible but that's not the case like everyone has things to work on and if someone one of your colleagues is highlighting hey by the way like this is an area that I think you could improve in and here's how I think that could happen that's just an opportunity for you I think people frame this stuff so much like a oh no I'm going to get on for it but it's like if someone's telling you something they think is going to help and then you're able to if you believe like if you also agree with that and you're like hey I could try doing better

at this you're only going to get better like that's going to look even better to your manager if you're able to demonstrate hey I got feedback on this I took it to heart tried to do something about it um and if you don't agree with it maybe that's something you can have a conversation with your manager about get their perspective on it so this might be something if you don't have it formally you could still reach out for feedback and even having those conversations is interesting because number one you're practicing interpersonal skills number two if you do get feedback receiving feedback is about being like interpersonal skills how do you handle that feedback what do you do with it so those are a handful of different options but the point is that these are things like that you need to practice and be doing and

this is why I always highlight things like soft skills for software Engineers because there are so many clear opportunities to practice technical skills but when people find themselves in a situation where they're saying Hey how do I work on my soft skills it's almost like I don't know what to do but really it's just about being a person just sometimes you have to be a little bit more proactive about it um I think that's it though I really wanted to get lla on the camera but she's being super shy so I'm going to see if I can get her to turn around she's like hiding in the corner you g to say hi lla she's pretty cute I think that's it though folks so thanks for watching I hope that's helpful I'll see you next time and lla also says bye even though she's hiding

take care