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Activities: what questions do you have about the activities that a software developer does on a daily basis?
- How are projects devided in larger group in terms of scope of work to be looking at in a days time?
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Environment: what questions do you have about the overall environment and culture of this workplace?
- What level of diversity does the company have and how do they try to tailor their products to a diverse user base.
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Interactions: what questions do you have about the team at this company? What do you hope to see in your interactions during the shadow?
- How large are teams structured and what is used for communication during projects.
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Objects: what questions do you have about the code or the product?
- How much division is between working on back or front end. Is their a seperate design team for creating the graphics and layout ideas.
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Users: what questions do you have about how the company interacts with their users?
- How much user testing is done and how are user stories made.
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Activities: what was engaging to the person/people you shadowed?
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People introduced themselves with pronouns which I loved.
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Environment: what did you notice about how they talked about the culture and environment of this company?
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Seems to have a bit of a fun atmosphere with a donkeycorn mascot.
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Interactions: what did you notice about your interactions with this person/people?
- There was clear communications and some joking that was very comfortable and made culture seem so important. Following questions about the hiring process they also spoke a lot about how culture was emphasized so much.
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Objects: what did you learn about their approach to code and/or product development?
- Tech Stack:
- Vue/Nuxt
- PHP backend but more recently C#/.Net core
- Javascript with Angular/Typescript/Ionic
- Site on ADO
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Users: what did you learn about their approach to their users?
- They broke down users into two groups both customers and technichians. They broke teams to deal with both of these as well as understand the needs or growing needs of the users.
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What are your main takeaways from the shadow? How will you use this information to help you with your job search strategy?
- There was a fair amount of information about the job interview process. Which helped me realize that there are a lot of variables going from one job to another. They also showed that passion for the company doesnt always equate to passion on a team.
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Tech Stack:
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Vue/Nuxt
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PHP backend but more recently C#/.Net core
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Javascript with Angular/Typescript/Ionic
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Site on ADO
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Pick a successful project and write about it with the STAR method (What was the situation/scenario of the project? What was the task/target of the project? What action steps did you take? What were the results?):
- A project that I am particularly proud of is an early project from the Turing school that took place at the end of our first 6 weeks of classes. My knowledge at the time was limited to javascript css and html in its base forms and we were assigned to create a project called slapjack that mimiced a simple card game being played by two users. Something that I was growing to really focus on at the time was the accessability for applications and to think about users of different abilities. As I built the project I kept in mind the use of screen readers and made it a goal to dynamically change alt tags on played cards to that a screen reader could narrate the game for the user.
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Write about a time you failed and what you learned from that experience:
- When I had just finished my basic training and advanced training in the army at Fort Gordon, I returned to Colorado to join a unit stationed in Aurora. I was in good physical shape from the training time in Georgia and had grown a bit lazy when it came to practicing for physical fitness tests. I failed my first test at the new unit and was a bit shocked to find out how difficult it was to run at the higher elevation. I took it upon myself to practice more and be more preparred when trying to accomplish something to look at all possible factors that could come up even if I have succedded in the task before. I passed my follow up test because of this change of habit.
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Write about how you’ve approached working with a team using a specific example:
- During our sectod 6 week section of school at Turing we were assigned a group project in a team of three. I was put with two very capable students and we were assigned a project to refactor a simple fitness page. Working in a group and drawing my experience from my army background we started off very slowly and took time to makes sure that we knew what we were working with and that everyone understood things before beginning work. This prep time made the flow of work very smooth and ensured that with checkins on understanding that we could colaborate in a growing team.
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What other stories will you prepare to share?
- I want to try to draw on more than my army years though it is a large portion of my carreer. I think for questions on conflict or even time management I can give examples from my time in positions at an LGBT leadership club. This will allow me to emphasize my passion for diversity as well as provide strong examples of working with variety of personallities.
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Do some research into your top companies’ tech stacks; what do you already know? What can you compare to your own learning? What do you need to learn more about?
- I know pretty well how to use react but could easily prepare and research more about the add ons to the framework. I hope that I can dive more into testing with it. As a think I do not know about I want to look at Graph API and back end management as based on my conversations with the people at handshake that is a skill they want more of their front end team to understand.
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Using this interview prep resource doc, pick out at least 3 resources you will use to prepare for interviews as well as 3 behavioral questions you could practice: