CodePath at SXSW EDU 2022 - The Next Generation: Tech Students Discuss Work

Good morning everyone how are you is south by your first in-person conference after maybe two and a half years yeah same here we’re gonna have a wild time right awesome well let’s get started well thank you so much for joining our panel and the next generation tech students discuss work so today we’re just going to have a conversation and we’re here to really feature the future voices of tech what inspires them the challenges that they’ve encountered and also the resources that have aided their success I think we can all agree that the last two years have been really disruptive for college students across the board we went from 2020 coveted massive campus shutdowns internships being rescinded and then 2021 lots of ups and downs and now lo and behold where we’ve entered a massive hiring frenzy I think just last week the wall street journal published an article about college students now being at the center of bidding wars for talent for internship positions and I think for those of us who are in tech and education we are feeling a lot of pain as well as excitement right so I’m really thrilled to feature our future voices and really dive into our conversation my name is emily chong I’m the vice president of marketing here at CodePath we are a national education nonprofit that’s focused on diversifying the nation’s most competitive software engineering roles and on my panel we’ve got kat keim she is a cs student at oregon state university kat is also interning at zendesk as well as a couple of other places which we’ll talk about later and to her right is anthony pena he is a cs student at florida international university anthony also just moved to san francisco two weeks ago and he’s now a software engineer at square so really thrilled to just amplify two very brilliant and accomplished individuals shall we get started all right let’s do this okay so let’s first talk about your background and why you decide to enter the tech industry to begin with so anthony I’m going to start with you first you once said in an interview that ever since you were in high school you told your mom that you were going to work at google maybe you want to share like why why you said those words yeah I remember in high school I wanted a gaming computer I got into games but it was too expensive to just buy a computer I had the bright idea I told my mom okay on black friday let’s go to tiger direct and buy all the parts and I’ll build it it’s a lot cheaper she said yeah but the thing was I didn’t know what I was doing but I don’t know how to build a computer so we got the parts and I looked up a youtube video how to build a computer and when I put everything together I was like okay finally I got to press the power button and it didn’t turn on I was like oh my god what did I do small mistake the power in the power switch on the back wasn’t off but I pressed it again and it worked and I was like okay like what like I just put parts together and it worked and then that’s what really that’s how I got curious and wanted to get into tech that’s when I was like okay I know I want to do something with computers later on and then I got interested in software I was like I mean okay I get it that turns on but like how is this thing running like who built this like okay it’s a software and I could download more stuff and build stuff like it feels so interesting to me and I told my mom I was like one day I would be a software engineer at google and at the time I was like actually that that sounds like too complicated and too hard for me I’m not smart enough and then I just the reason why I said google was because it had the it has that like how do you say this it has the fame for like being one of the hardest companies to get into and only the smartest people work at google and stuff so I told my mom I was gonna do it and that’s what my goal is and that’s why I decided to pursue a career inside that’s so great to hear and I love the ambition and the optimism that you just articulated what did your mom say when you said all those words to her at first she was okay like she didn’t really like pay much attention to it but now past two or three years she has been like okay now I get this why and she knows how hard it is to break into tech so she’s super happy all right kat I’m gonna shift over to your story okay emily so you I I think when I looked at your linkedin profile you actually went to uc san diego to begin with and then you majored in economics and then it looks like you went back to school and now you’re studying cs at osu can you tell us the twists and turns of your journey yeah so I am a postbac student I’m not a traditional student because I already did the whole school thing before and I did econ because dropped out of engineering and econ’s you know the closest thing to engineering so your parents don’t get too mad at you and so once I graduated I got into content marketing which is a cool field but I always felt like I was overworked and underpaid and I worked I know I did the whole marketing agency thing and you know there was a point where I was looking at how hard I was working and looking at how hard the developers were working and I felt like I mean yes they were working hard but I felt like because their skills were so special you know and and not everyone could do what they could do like they had a better work life balance they were able to you know negotiate their their pay more whereas like I felt like I was just getting assignments dumped on me over and over without that same level of respect and so I was like oh you know that’s cool like technology that seems cool like I wish I could do that and once I was going on a flight back home I live in the bay area and I was sitting you know next to a facebook engineer just happened to be sitting next to him and you know we’re like drinking and chat and stuff and like talking about what he does and I was like oh gosh I wish I could do what you’d do and he’s like just do it what he’s like just do it you want to do it just do it and I was like wow okay maybe I’ll just do it and so you know shout out to the random white guy next to me injecting his white guy confidence into me and so yeah I was just like you know I’m just gonna do it I’m just gonna do it and so that’s how I got him to tag just do it all right so the motto of the story is just do it and just like that we’re in tech yeah like elwood’s like what like it’s hard all right well let’s talk about the journey right because I think we all know it’s not just do it and then miraculously we’re at squares and desks yeah it’s a lot of blood sweat lots of tears what surprised you and this question goes out to both of you what surprised you when you first started studying cs I think what surprised me was I I don’t know I had this like thought that college I would be able to get my computer science degree and then get a job shortly after what surprised me was that how difficult it is to get into tech and pass these interviews and and land a job it’s super difficult and challenging and it’s emotional like it’s taxing emotionally and it’s it’s very difficult it’s what’s the most challenging did you have any role models or anyone showing you the way not until I think I found CodePath so throughout my three four years and I still haven’t graduated but ever since I’m a senior now and throughout those four years of being at school no we didn’t have I I didn’t have like that support system or role model or mentorship to any and no one showed me the way of like this is how you do it and this is what it takes so it was pretty difficult not having that support system for sure cat maybe if you want to chat about sort of your what surprised you when you went down this journey so when I started tech I definitely knew it was going to be difficult but I think I was shocked at the level of competition between students and not just the level of competition but and you know we’ve chat about this before there’s there there’s an interesting weird underbelly of tech that tends to be a bit misogynistic tends to be a little bit racist and I think it’s because you know I think generally competition is is very healthy I think the level of competition I think that tech has especially in the online anonymous forums can bring out sort of an unhealthy side in people and so for me it was very what surprised me was was that aspect of tech and how important it was to have communities to sort of like shield me from all of that yeah when you talk about the community I’d love to unpack that a little bit did the two of you ever feel like you belonged in tech from day one and did you ever waver in that sense of belonging that’s a loaded question anthony why don’t you go first no I since the beginning I don’t think I belonged in tech and honestly there’s still that thought of it now there’s always that thought like am I good enough to be in tech and be an engineer where I’m making products that impact millions and people throughout the world so no I the short answer would be no I didn’t feel like I belonged in tech and it’s still kind of surreal to me that I’m an engineer I had a big company that impacts millions of users throughout the world yeah so intellectually I know like obviously I belong in tech right like it’s who doesn’t belong anywhere I think though for me as you know a woman a woman of color it’s even if you intellectually know this like obviously you belong in tech it’s it’s hard when you don’t see a lot of people that reflect you in the places you work and you know even just putting that aside you know the the competitions and I know we’re going to talk about technical interviews in a bit but like even if you put in all the hard work sometimes the process is so so intense that you you question yourself you’re like oh wow like maybe maybe I’m not like you know the google engineer after all or maybe I’m not like this person after all but like I I do know that I belong in tech but there’s definitely moment I have my moments sure sure I mean I would say given that one is a software engineer at square before even graduation and now that you’ve been interning at places like zendesk and intuit you have earned your place in tech fair and square so let’s just yeah get that out of the way yeah imposter syndrome’s real okay so let’s talk a little bit about technical skills and what you’ve learned so coincidentally both of you engage with co-path first by taking our android mobile development course and built some really cool applications one our demo day competitions why why did you want to learn mobile development why did you want to learn android for me it was so I got introduced to CodePath in the middle of the pandemic and this was a point in my life where I started realizing that in order for me to break into tech I need to put at least six seven eight hours a day to study and prepare for these technical interviews and it was I would apply apply and I would get confirmation emails and not even a response back or anything and then I remember seeing the email from CodePath saying co-clap brings free course to florida national university and I was like okay I could take this android development course that’s project based work on some cool apps build cool things and I could put it on my resume in it and it shows that okay here are some things that I’ve worked on and built and that’s the reason why I decided to enroll in the android development course I wanted to I thought it would help me in the long run to showcase myself as a better candidate is it common for college students to develop apps and have a portfolio and show it around to different employers during interviews be like look at this cool android app that I built and shipped no unfortunately no that’s one of the issues with breaking into tech is that when the courses that you take majoring in cs as my university really the only time you build a project or work on something is on your last semester before you graduate but by then by that time it’s too late you can’t really find internships now you have to look for full-time roles but then you’re going against everyone in the world trying to get that same software engineering job and it’s really competitive especially if you don’t go to like a top cs school and you don’t have eight hours a day to study and dedicate you know coming from a low-income community I had to work full-time while going to school full-time and really I wish I had any more hours a day to study but it’s it’s not easy yeah for sure cat what about you why did you take our android course yeah yeah like anthony I I was definitely looking for a way to build my resume and stand out I’ve you know I’ve done this process before I was a a university student before graduating at the tail end of the great recession so I’ve had the experience of having a college degree and people like okay so why should I hire you like because I have a degree yeah well so what does everyone else you know and so I’ve had that process and so I knew coming in like like anthony said we’re competing not just against people or in a city or in the nation like against other people in the world and so you have to stand out and so I was definitely looking for a way to to do that and specifically android because andre not sure if everyone knows powers a lot of different devices not just mobile phones but gosh cars you know things and so I thought okay like this can make me pretty competitive because I wouldn’t just be necessarily a mobile device engineer if this is the path I wanted to go into but I could do other things too yeah for sure I mean I think android how many billions of users I don’t know but it’s a lot fair enough so being able to say I built this and it’s impacting billions of users it’s a pretty bold statement yeah for sure okay I want to shift over to okay so when you’re in college you’re building your skill sets and then it sounds like both of you also had to figure out how to like build your community find your tribe and now let’s talk about the technical interviews because I think for folks who are not in the tech industry don’t necessarily understand what obese those are so for example like I majored in marketing and when I was interviewing I only focused on behavioral interview questions I did a little bit of consulting and you know solve some random puzzles like count how many traffic lights there are in the city of austin which to this day I still don’t understand why people would ask those questions but anyway we’re not talking about that but let’s talk about the interview and the reason why I have my phone is on reddit which is where many cs students congregate someone posted a comment this morning saying I love learning computer science but I’m struggling in data structures and algorithms and it has killed my confidence I had a technical interview for an internship and couldn’t figure out a way to solve the problem I was presented unfortunately right now I have very low confidence in my abilities and I don’t know if I’m cut out for the industry so let’s talk about this what is the technical interview it’s a monster so to when I landed my internship at square I interviewed for many companies well not many but the ones that responded and I failed all of them because it’s it’s you have 30 minutes to answer these two questions and it’s not like there’s a formula for these questions that you can apply this formula for and you’ll be good it’s there’s so many different questions that they can ask you it’s nearly impossible to know it all so you have 30 minutes to digest the question think about it you have to say your thoughts you don’t really have time to sit there for five minutes and think because the interview is expecting you to to talk and share your thoughts as you’re doing this and it’s just mentally exhausting when you have someone looking over shoulder like but do you know how to do this do you know how to do this and that’s just one interview but the whole process if you get if you get a technical assessment so you apply you’ll get a technical assessment to see if they want to put you through the interview process that’s hard as well and then once you’re in that interview process you have to go through like three four of these interviews and then like two more behaviors so in total for my internship that’s where I I did those about five or six interviews and I was like oh these things like after each one of us I know I was never gonna stop just never gonna stop and it’s it’s super long difficult and it’s just like emotionally taxing when you have someone just oppression here and honestly it also depends on the person you get you might get lucky and you get asked the question that you’ve seen before but these questions is not it’s not an easy thing to just on the spot come up with a solution and explain why and do everything and while you’re coding it’s also it takes time yeah so if you’ve never gone through and like a software engineering hiring season I will I will lay it out for you step by step so you have a bunch of companies that you apply to that you want to apply to okay cool the first thing that they do is they send you an online assessment and an online assessment is basically where you have 45 to a minutes to an hour to answer three to four algorithmic puzzles like hey we’ve got two linked lists you know merge them and sort it or I don’t know something something random kind of kind of like imagine like three you know math essay questions in a row and you have to complete for you know within an hour and if you pass that then you get invited to the first round of a technical interview where you get like you know anthony said you answer a couple of questions in front of a person and if you pass that then you can you know go into another technical interview where you do you know two or three questions and if you pass that then you do another one and you’re not just doing one but depending on how many companies you apply to you’re doing so many of these and so it’s like over and over and over and over and in between them you’re getting rejection you know emails if you’re getting them at all and so it’s just a very grueling process of doing these puzzles and interviews over and over and over and so for that reddit post like I I almost feel the like pain of my my eye ducks like trying because like I feel I feel that person it’s very it’s a very intellectually and also emotionally intense like you’re getting intellectually beat up like every every almost every day and it’s all one season so like the peak hiring season is from like august to like november I mean you can get hired any time of the year but that’s the peak one so you’ve got like three months to like go through all of this and oh your classes yeah you’re gonna fail all of those you know like because you’re doing this intense process and so it’s like you’re trying to keep your gpa up you’re trying to get a job you’re getting all of these rejections so you’re trying to keep telling yourself and looking in your mirror like hey you can do this you know like it’s it’s a very tough process and that’s if you know about the process a lot of these people who take the you know data structures and algorithms classes they don’t know that the interview questions have nothing to do with day-to-day software engineering this these are like random puzzles and so you know if you’re lucky you have a chance at solving them but if not you know if you’re just if you’re just going to class doing you know staying in the books and then going home you don’t really have a clue of what to expect and so it’s just it’s so overwhelming and thank you for sharing that that that definitely sounds traumatizing for sure yeah is this something that what like does your university prepare you for this say like on day one or does is there anyone who’s telling you okay you’re you’re going to take these courses at school and then eventually you’re going to have to get ready for a technical interview process and it’s going to be a b and c is there anyone who so that’s a solid no I rarely met any student that has had a career center that knows about this process like like intimately and is well versed enough to actually give sound advice on how to how to go through it if I didn’t do the CodePath like interview prep program like I really don’t know how my how my career trajectory would have been like okay and then one more question so and I think you had hinted at this already cat but those interviews do they have anything to do with your jobs now no like absolutely not I remember so I was talking to one of my mentors and he was a manager at playstation and I was explained to him the concept of dynamic programming and I was explaining don’t worry about it’s not relevant I was explaining like the concept of dynamic programming to him because it’s like a topic that comes up often in interviews and he just looked at me and then he just burst out laughing and he was just like never in my career have I ever had to use that in any of our engineering programs and you’re talking about playstation like a company who has to make software that’s very quick very responsive has a lot of angry users if their product doesn’t work and he’s just like what so no that’s the answer okay okay we’re gonna get into that there’s definitely a disconnect between industry university student experience for sure all right so let’s talk about both of your experiences when we look at your resumes your cvs both of you despite the peaks and valleys that you have encountered you’ve worked at the top companies I mean anthony your cv says you’ve worked at meta amazon I guess not google yet but you know almost almost and cat zendesk into it so how did you do it given even with all these challenges honestly I I don’t know how I did it if it wasn’t for CodePath really you guys were the ones who showed me the path and mentored me and taught me the set of skills that I needed in order to break into tech because without it without qualifying my university when my professors weren’t going to teach me it seems like universities and the tech industry you’re not really on the same page so yeah like because of the CodePath course that I took I was able to stand up it all started after I built this application and I went to this national devil day and my friend and I were able to land first place and we were super proud of that and then shortly after I remember seeing a job posting that said be an android ta for facebook university I was like oh okay I’ll apply I don’t think I’m gonna get it but you know why not and then shortly after I went through the interview and the next day someone reached out and said oh by the way like you pass like you know you can be a ta and that position wouldn’t tell it was teaching facebook interns android development and and helping them debug and go through like their projects and stuff and to me that was like crazy I was like I can’t believe I’m teaching like helping interns learn android especially like at facebook that’s like facebook super huge how did you feel when when you landed that role it gave me more confidence because before I had that thought like like it’s too difficult like I don’t think this is for me but after doing that I was like huh I think you know I might be good at this I think I could break into tech and then from there after doing that I kept applying to places getting rejected failing interviews and then one day I saw square posting it said mobile android development internship I was like okay I’ll fly and then from there I was like another interview let’s see if I pass it this time and after like six seven interviews throughout the process I landed the internship and my internship landed ended this december and I did well enough that they wanted me back and I started full time actually last week and that only that’s only possible because of kotap showing it away and teaching me the set of skills that I needed to in order to pass these interviews well congratulations I am so proud of you cat what about you I actually forgot the question I’m sorry so the question was you’ve interned at places like dundas into it you also just receive an offer from another prominent tech company so undisclosed company yeah yeah so definitely the CodePath interview prep program helped me get through it like you know I spent a lot of time talking about how grueling the technical interview process is and it is and I think so having the interview prep program is great right that the information’s there etc but I think the part that really helped me was having that like community so you know part of the the interview prep program is having a mentor and then you have like your pod you’ve got other students too and so as you’re going through the program or not the program the hiring season you get to share what’s happening will not only share what’s happening with your other pod mates but also get reassurance from your mentor too like I always love telling the story about how into it you know it’s again it’s a very stressful process and you know I was doing the technical interview and I was answering you know the question correct and I was like okay cool I’m actually doing this and then you know my my interviewer is like you have 10 minutes left and I still had a whole question to like go through and I was just so stressed and so like exhausted from everything that I was typing and I couldn’t think straight and like tears were coming down my face during the interview I was just like typing and crying and just like not sobbing but like clearly like not okay and yeah still got an offer but I was able to like you know share that like experience with my mentor and he was like look we we all go through it we all we all have our moments where it’s just like it’s a lot and so I think having the that community having the support the information is great but also having the support of people who’ve been through the process who’s just like hey don’t worry just just keep pushing like you’re gonna get there like that part is just so valuable yeah so I assume in the audience today we have some folks who are either hiring leaders or working on some form of project or policy to affect the how we recruit how we build workforces what would the two of you say in to our audience in terms of what can they do to support students like you who come from I would say perhaps non-traditional backgrounds right with the optimism to launch careers in tech but then perhaps not knowing how difficult the journey is what can folks here do for you I would say that most companies that the most like when just deciding to hire someone or not they always look at the technical interview like your performance during this interview the most but that’s not really what makes a good engineer because like kat said earlier it doesn’t have anything to do with like the day-to-day job you know I don’t go to work and reverse the linked list or try to like balance the graph we’re building stuff and to put the most to focus on just the technical interview part I think that’s it’s not fair and it’s not the way to hire great talent really we should look at other things like how you work with others your creativity stuff like that because there’s some students out there that are working full-time don’t have the luxury to just go to school full-time and then study technical interviews after like for example from my junior year I worked eight to five at subway doing it and then I had classes from like six to ten and then to have to wake up the next morning at seven to go back to work really there’s no time left for me to study and does that make me a bad engineer because I don’t have the time to focus on technical interviews trying to keep grades up and all that stuff no I think I bring other stuff to the table that other people don’t and I think just focusing on that is you’re kind of not including others into this it’s a text that should be included very well said cat excuse me yeah just like parroting what anthony said like I think the emphasis on technical interviews but like technical interviews only is just so short-sighted like there are a lot of companies that even sort of try to play as if the technical interview can substitute the behavioral interview because well you’re talking during the technical interview so that’s our assessment of how you would be as a co-worker and you know I sort of mentioned the sort of weird toxic underbelly of of the tech industry that sort of like swept under the rug the people who foster that sort of toxic behavior they do well because companies focus so much on the technical interview that there’s really no filter for people who aren’t great to collaborate with aren’t great communicators aren’t great at making sure they’re documenting things well for the next person behind them like I have a friend who’s a manager at a software company and in their interviews like they do a mixture of technical but also behavior and they have a hiring policy that’s literally no and so they they filter for that because if you have someone on that on your team you know who’s toxic and they communicate in a way that’s toxic like it affects the whole environment and I think you know I think some companies are popular or infamous I should say for the way that their workers treat each other and so I think for for companies like you have to focus on other things aside from just the technical interview and that’s how you develop you know a more diverse and collaborative working environment for educators I would say I know a lot of educators mean well but I definitely think that there is a disconnect between what actually happens in the hiring process and the traditional hiring process like I think you know connecting more like intimately with the like the tech companies would be would put them in a decision where they’re better to able to help students like you know I love my career center at oregon state they’re great they mean well but the work that they do although well-intentioned isn’t necessarily effective in terms of preparing students to go through the hiring process with confidence absolutely all right I want to take this time now to perhaps open it up for our audience q a and see if anybody wants to ask a question yes mhm yeah that’s a great question so yeah I was with I was in a pod with my peers I say peers like I’m a non-traditional student so like everyone in my pod was like 10 years younger than me but it was cool so but in terms of like studying with your competition in terms of how that dynamic was I would say that CodePath does a really good job of like encouraging the the belief that these are your peers I mean the simple fact is even though you are competing with these people there’s so many jobs so like it’s like yeah that’s your competition but not really it’s more like your partner and I think if you’re able to treat like you can think of other schools as a competition which I love doing I go to oregon state which not a lot of people know and so it’s like listen I beat I beat a berkeley kid okay you know like I beat the stanfords I beat the harvard it’s like I’m here along with them and I think not with each other you’re not competing with each other you’re competing with them you know like they’re your partners to get to where you want to be so I could see how that could be competitive but it really doesn’t need to be and it definitely wasn’t with us for our CodePath pod so work with the competition and beat the system is really I mean sure or make other people make some unknown face your competition I’m I’m a low income kid you know like I I’m from oakland like you know I I went to public schools all my life and so it’s a very special talent of mine to be like guess what private school kids I’m here and anthony you participated in our class and engaged in that pod format too right yeah yeah like kat said really you might think of it that these students are essentially your competition but I mean the environment that we’re putting essentially you’re just working together to achieve the same goal like kat said there’s there’s a lot of opportunities that the chances of you being in the same company are high like we can both make it to square or any company so really you didn’t really see it as a competition in that setting that we were putting yeah and next year I’m going to be asking anthony for a referral so if they get into the company that you want to go to don’t worry next time they can just give you a referral any yes yeah so the way that CodePath the way that we run the technical interview class is we separate students based on their levels their backgrounds into groups usually no more than five or six students and then each group is assigned to a mentor we recruit mentors from all over tech most of them are software engineering professionals who want to give back to to the community so we have folks from like uber google facebook lyft working with these students over the duration of 12 weeks every single week twice a week right twice a week helping them solve or mentor as they solve for these data structures and algorithm problems so it’s pretty intense but I think as we can tell it’s really important to help everyone build confidence yeah my shout out to my mentor william chang from capitalone such a great guy you know he was with us the whole time you know her like answered our questions like late at night when we’re like oh my gosh I failed this like what do I do like answering questions and when we all got job offers I don’t even know if I like told your team this but he sent us individually like ubereats like gift cards 50 bucks a piece like out of his own pocket like it that level of support I was just like amazed and it really like without his help I don’t I don’t I don’t know how my my hiring season would have went anthony how was your mentor I was looking enough to have tim lee as oh wow just having that person supporting you and guiding you through the process there were times where I felt the interviews and they would check up and I felt bad I didn’t want to like disappoint that I didn’t want to turn oh I felt the can but when I failed you know he picked me right back up and said keep your head up keep going learn from this this is what you got to focus on and you know I did just that and shout out to tim for mentoring me and it’s it’s invaluable when it comes to like that course that CodePath gives to mentor students and show them here are the resources that you need and this is how you crack that interview one thing I will add is these technical mentors are actually the hardest for us to find and not surprisingly some of them don’t enjoy the experiences themselves because it brings back the memories of when they themselves had to go undergo the technical interviews others will do it because it feel to them it feels like they are also leveling up their skill sets too and it keeps them on their toes so it’s a really interesting dynamic when we’re talking to the mentors and we’re recruiting them yeah I asked william I was like hey are you going to do it again and he was like I had a great time with you all and it was really fun this will be the last time it’s because it’s it’s intense and even for me like knowing the process and going through the process like I help you know incoming students as much as I can but when it’s hiring season I have to go offline because it’s such an intense anxiety driven and even though I’m not going through what they go through exactly like for me it’s just like reopening that wound and it’s just like you guys are going to do great any other questions from the audience yes yeah so interestingly enough I actually did a technology program in high school so I went to oakland tech and that was the first like inaugural program for tech bridge which is to get women into technology and in terms of your question like is it too early to expose people or students I would say like yes and no so yes it’s too early to expose to like this very specific niche like interview process like definitely don’t do that let them be kids don’t don’t expose them to that but that being said I think techbridge did a great job of exposing us to engineering thinking so like you know hey let’s build a bridge out of toothpicks like it was more like general engineering not necessarily technology or like hey we’re gonna pull apart this toaster and like try to see if we can put it back together you know just more like how to be think like an engineer how to you know collaboration working in a group maybe like projects that for sure hackathons you know for sure as far as this niche like we’ll we’ll expose that to college students yeah I’m on the same boat as I think it’s too early to say hey this is a technical interview process that should come later on but yeah I think that’s actually one of my goals is to go back to my high school and actually introduced them into like electives that introduced them to engineering and tech and I would focus on like fundamentals and stuff like that because there’s a difference between knowing how to program and how many languages how many programming languages you know because if you know how to program something or how to solve a problem it doesn’t matter what language you do it you can search okay how do I do this in this language and that’s kind of like in our day-to-day job your search you’re googling stuff searching stuff like okay this is how I do it let me try it this way but you have to I think if you expose them early on to how to creatively think and solve problems engineering-wise then I think high school would be the like I wish I took a tech elective in high school yeah I so what you said about that actually makes wants me look I am inspired to add more you would be surprised how like this is weird to say how little coding you do as an engineer like people have this like idea that like oh I’m an engineer I go into my desk and I’m just like non-stop like that cat gift like that it’s actually not like that like coding is the last thing you do first you have a problem and you solve it and then you design a solution and then you know you meet with all your people and you know stakeholders whatever and then once you’re done and you have everything then you start coding and then you code for a little bit and then you’re like hey look at this little thing and then you you show that and they’re like oh no I hate it and then you go back and you redesign and then you code you know like it’s coding’s like such a small piece of that it’s more like how to build how to solve problems oh that is my phone I’m so sorry and I think exposing students to that is like a really good idea thank you so much so funnily enough that’s a a meme song coding every day perfect timing because you’re not coding so to answer your question co-pap primarily focuses on serving college students because I think hopefully through this conversation you can tell even though there is interest in pursuing a career in tech there are so many challenges that students like anthony like kat and counter and from our perspective we feel that there is just not enough organizations or if we just zero in on supplementing the college experience with our programs then we’ll be able to intervene and help more students enter the tech industry and not only attain entry-level jobs but really become the best software engineers that that we need that said we are rolling we are rolling out an intro the software engineering course this summer that is meant to act as a bridge program between high school graduates going into college cs and part of the reason why is because one thing we did not get a chance to talk about today is many intro courses at the universities are designed to weed out students unfortunately and so especially if you’re a minority if you’re a woman you have an 80 chance of dropping out during your first two years so happy to chat about that how do we balance like preparing college students for technical interviews without normalizing that process is the typical interview because you’re trying to break out of the cycle and for context of work yeah that’s a hard one because at the end of the day the technical interview I think is here to stay yeah and not only is it here to stay it’s getting it’s getting worse actually and so like you I think something I try to do at my at my school is so you know CodePath has their pro like program you know not everyone gets into CodePath and so for the people who don’t get into CodePath I’ve been doing a thing where we like follow codepaths like observer course it’s basically the course you just don’t get like the mentorship and the pause and stuff like that and so what I try to do with my fellow students is really like really like push this idea that the technical interview is like a mental exercise a thought experiment like try to separate yourself from the you know the intensity and stuff like that and like really just think about like what we’re doing right here solving problems with friends like try I know it’s hard like try to pretend that this is your buddy that you’re just like you know solving problems with and I think if you can work on reframing it like trying to remove the pressure and intensity from it that helps because as much as we want to remove the technical interview I think that personally I think that companies are very invested in the technical interview because it’s easy like you you have a million students that are trying to get into you know this fixed amount of positions throw an online assessment at them like I I think because it’s easy and it doesn’t require a lot of resources on their end you know from the online assessment point and then like technical interviews like just you know a little bit of time out of engineers day like here and there I think I think they’ve sort of dug their heels in and I don’t as much as I want to as an industry to move away from just the technical interview I feel like we’d be doing a disservice if we didn’t still teach to it because it’s because it’s here I hope that answered your question