Appetizers

Starting with some basics.

 Fun Starters

Getting to know the human side.

 Main Course

A quick deep dive into the day-to-day job.

Tell us about yourself and your job.

Hey, my name is Eduardo and I work on the Assessments team at LinkedIn as a backend engineer! I focus on implementing the business logic that makes our products tick and how we store data. Go check out our skill assessments! Our data shows they significantly improve your odds of being reached by a recruiter :)

How did you end up in your field? What do you like about it?

I've always been interested in computers and figuring out how things work. I think the most interesting thing is the wide range of things you can do with a computer without changing the physical hardware. Just change the bits (Programming)!

What does a typical morning look like on the job?

I typically check my email/slack first thing in the morning to see if there are any updates on any production issues or development priorities. Twice a week I'll participate in a standup meeting with my team to talk about what I worked on the last few days. This helps us support each other and stay in sync on issues we might want to focus on. Then I just program!

Cool, then what does a typical afternoon look like?

Sometimes I have meetings or pair programming sessions. Occasionally I'll get messaged regarding a production issue. Sometimes these can be easily fixed with a rollback or turning off a feature. Other times the sky is falling and we gather in a "war room" kind of meeting where we try to investigate a serious issue impacting our customers. However, most days I just get to program while collaborating with teammates using slack.

What types of projects and meetings are you involved in?

Work is mostly developing new features for some initiative, fixing bugs in our code that are affecting customers, or just refactoring our codebase. Most meetings are for syncing with teammates, others are for designing a solution or system. In the most unlucky cases, you'll find me in a "war room" meeting scrambling with other engineers to find a nasty bug affecting a large portion of our customers.

Who do you collaborate with within meetings and projects?

I work with product managers, data scientists, designers, and reliability engineers. We all use our skill sets to translate ideas into concrete initiatives that can help us improve our products.

 Dessert

Now for some juicy insights in the tea room.

What's the most challenging thing about your job?

Debugging large-scale distributed computing systems.

What are some characteristics that can help someone succeed in your role?

Learn fast.

Any advice on how to stand out and get hired for those just starting off?

Code! Build an app, get really good at LeetCode, gain any kind of software development experience you can. And of course, show off your knowledge on LinkedIn using skill badges you can earn by taking skill assessments!

What's something that surprised you about your job?

How awesome and fun everyone I work with is.

What do you see your next step being?

Building the next tech unicorn!

Any last thoughts, advice, or recommendations for someone who wants to do what you do?

Just get started! Don't worry too much about the right tool or project. Just enroll in a class or follow a Youtube tutorial and build on it. Don't even need to pay for one. There is plenty of free content in the form of university courses posted online, entire curriculums you can find on GitHub, and amazing youtube creators.

 Drinks

Chat more over coffee or tea?