2025 EES Alumni Takeover! CodePath Success Panel

Welcome. Welcome back to the second day of the Emerging Engineers Summit here at CodePath. Now, I don’t know if you missed yesterday.

If you did, there’s a lot that you missed. But, today is just going to be more more information, more insightfulness, and more opportunities for you all to build your community. If you don’t know who I am, my name is Bobby Dorlus, but they call me Bobby D, and I’m your host for the remainder of this event here.

But, the cool thing that I want to bring up is some of the sessions that we had yesterday. We had Pluralsight, we had Apple, and we also had a TechCrunch talk there. I had, you know, a good conversation, you know, a shameless plug about scaling AI, and I want you to check out the talk because it seems like I was really hitting some gems.

But, beyond that, what we have planned for today is some insightful conversation with some of our alumni here at CodePath. Let me read you throughout some more information what’s going to happen throughout the day, and definitely, we hope that you had an amazing first day full of learning, full of inspiration, and making some new connections. Remember, your network will be your net worth.

That’s one of those punchlines. That energy that we carried from yesterday, we’re going to carry forward to today and beyond. Well, today is all about building on the momentum, more skill shaping and sharpening, and more meeting people that I hope you meet people that you haven’t met before, and more chances to lock in with this incredible community.

We have a quick reminder. I know you’ve seen the link for it. I know you’ve probably seen some barcodes, but surveys.

We want you to fill out the surveys because that gives us insights into what we’re doing well and maybe I might be able to pull up for another time. We’ll see. We’ll see.

And definitely want you to check out the networking lounge, company booths, and keep your eye on the schedule so you don’t miss any type of event or opportunities that matters to you the most. Now, to the main event. To kick things off, we’re going to be shining a spotlight on some of our core members here and family members of CodePath.

This is our alumni success panel. These are folks that have walked in your shoes and now they’re doing big things in the tech industry. First up, we’re going to have Sebastian.

Now, he was born and raised in the Dominican Republic and now is a full stack engineer at Google working in the CICD space, proud FIU grad, and a proud CodePath alum. Next, we have Senzita, a recent data science graduate who currently partners or is a part of the Northrop Grumman Pathways program. She is gaining hands-on experience through the rotational program they offer and then now is a data analyst in her role.

She first discovered CodePath in college and completed several internships and continues to grow her skills while encouraging others to stay consistent and curious. And finally, we have Martina, software engineer at Goldman Sachs, passionate about fintech and AI. She’s building real-world solutions that combines technology, creativity, and precision.

Proud CodePath alum, here she’s going to be sharing her journey and growth and resilience. We’re honored to have our guests and why don’t we just have a big round of applause. Let’s have Sebastian, Senzita, and Martina come to the stage and give them a round of applause.

I throw them in the chat. I want to see all the round of applause for them coming on the stage. So, first of all, thank you all three of you for, you know, spending your time with us and talking and giving us some insights to our community here for EES 2025.

And I do have our first question that’s already lined up for us. And I believe this is going to go to Sanzida. The first question that we have is what motivates you to pursue a career in tech and how did CodePath support you on this journey?

Yeah, so I don’t know if anyone likes detective shows or is a little mister likes mystery, but growing up I love detective shows and mystery. So I’ve always been fascinated when you saw like the big break of a case with someone from the tech tech team and they like wrote some lines of code and they solved the case and that just showed me growing up how impactful and powerful code could be and it just drove my curiosity of how a single line of code in like Google Calendar for example can help organize your life every day and make you productive or just help you stay on top of your life. So it made me want to pursue technology, but like a lot of you guys probably you guys don’t know which side of tech you want to be a part of and that’s where CodePath helped me a lot.

In college I took the iOS development course growing in my sophomore year, I believe and it made it made me feel impactful and showed me that iOS development was powerful, but also showed me what iOS development was and I just kept on getting curious throughout throughout college and let that curiosity help me figure out what to pursue in tech and welcomed me to tech the tech industry. That’s awesome. And and definitely hearing your journey and how it started, I guarantee you there’s some of our attendees in the audience that started the same way.

Now this next question is for Sebastian. Sebastian, how did you become or how did you balance CodePath coursework with your other communities that you had going on either in school or also in work. Yeah, thank you Bobby.

I actually have both. So, I was in college kind of studying full-time. I also had work responsibilities.

You know, you got to pay the bills. I think I had a couple strategies. One of the main ones is actually kind of always treating CodePath as like a regular course in college even if you’re not getting college credit for it.

So, I would actually just maybe set up my schedule in a certain way where I would know, okay, I’m taking these CodePath courses. So, I don’t want to load up and maybe like heavy courses all at once. So, I wouldn’t have like a physics, programming, and you know, CodePath.

So, kind of scheduling not even just near term but also like looking ahead a couple semesters and trying to set yourself up where you have, you know, enough time to really give your all to these courses cuz at the end of the day I feel like, you know, making it in tech now it’s not just about going to college. You have to, you know, develop your skills outside of it. So, yeah.

I think that that was one of the main strategies. That’s what’s up Sebastian. And and this is something I always encourage mentees and and definitely big shout out to you all that are already here is that supplemental education is what’s going to open up opportunities for you and you can definitely see the value with the alumni we have today.

Martina, we have a question lined up for you next which is were there any tough moments or things that you wish you known early? What would you have done differently as a student? Yeah.

So, hello everyone. Thank you so much CodePath for having me here. I would say that something that I didn’t emphasize enough that when I was a student was network.

As Bobby said earlier, network is your network and it’s very important who you create connections with especially when you’re in in The college people that you go to school with and you network every single day, those will be the people that will help you the most in your career later on. So, create those connections, especially with your professors. Make sure that you stay in touch with them even after you graduate because those people will be the one that will help you the most after that in your career.

You’re going to have mutual background, mutual stories from college, and these are the best moments for everyone. So, later on in your career, whenever you need help or you need a reference, those will be the people that you can turn on and you can ask for help or advice. So, I would say network, network, and also use Codepath.

This Codepath is a gem for networking. There’s so many incredible people here. Make sure you stay in touch with them even after your course finishes or when you get a certificate from here, always go back from where you started, keep in touch, and yeah, just keep everyone around you.

Yeah, and and Martina, just to double-tap into that, would would there be anything that you would do different as a student? Yeah, I would network more as I said, and I would be in touch more with the people that I majored in. This was something that I was lacking a little bit in my early career.

So, that’s why I want to make sure that people who are watching us now don’t do my mistake, and they keep their network around them. Oh, for sure, for sure. We all got to learn from each other, and that’s what’s being part of this community, right?

Senzina, I have another question for you. And first of all, congratulations on your new role. Tell us a little bit about it.

So, Northrop Grumman has a pathway program. I highly recommend it looking into it if you guys are graduating soon and don’t know specifically where you in tech you guys want to fall into. It allows you to rotate around different teams and be with them for a year and learn a little bit about that team’s domain, what they do, and what that role requires.

So, I was first in database admin where I learned a lot about servers, what DBA does, and now in my current role, which has been 4 weeks, I am a data analyst, which is very exciting, very different skill set, but you learn so much and hopefully my next role will be cybersecurity if I’m able to chat with the cybersecurity team and learn a little bit about a little bit about cybersecurity, too. That’s what’s up. And in the chat, I want you to give her a round of applause.

We always want to celebrate everyone that’s able to climb this ladder and even, you know, into different roles. But one thing I wanted to double tap in is is how did you actually secure that opportunity? So, it was a lot of like as Martina said, networking.

So, I was the president of the Society of Women Engineers in my college at NYIT and I was exposed to that these professional organizations have conferences that you can attend during your college and I was able to attend one and just network that with a lot of recruiters. I learned from these conferences how to craft a perfect elevator pitch, which I have perfected from attending it, and just going to a lot a lot of career fairs within my school. I think something that a lot of students, my I did it my first year, was not utilizing the career center.

I was up today with every event they had and tried to attend it. And for the conference in my master’s year, I was able to network with an Abercrombie recruiter and got interviewed on the spot and from there. And I Conferences are really hard to find, so I really recommend going to Eventbrite.

There are like free networking events usually in New York City. That’s where is where I’m from, so I would go to a lot of networking events there or even reaching out to LinkedIn your alumni. They might know a lot more about the company.

They might be recruiters and you can just get a little bit more information about it and possibly get be able to get interview. Did that. And and I know we’re talking about how to get into the door, but I want to talk about like what it’s like being on the other side.

So, what are some of the challenges you encountered when you were transitioning from, "Hey, I want this opportunity." Now that I actually have this opportunity. There is a lot. Corporate world is not like school anymore.

You have a lot more deadlines. You can have a project surprise you at a 3:00 p.m. On a Tuesday and it’s due at 5:00 p.m.

So, it’s a lot of like hustling, but also leaning into your teammates and your manager about asking a lot of questions and really being good with your time management. It’s was something that I thought I perfected in college, but in the corporate world now it’s something that I struggle with. Definitely it’s difficult, but I think a big resource to use is really your team.

Making sure you’re vocal with your team and really help I’m a I like to write my task every day, so I use a planner and I also use Google Calendar to block out time to focus. So, those resources really help me a lot to get adjusted to the corporate world. And really, asking questions.

No question is too dumb. Every question you ask is just helping you learn a lot more and understand your company’s culture, their terminology, what words they use for different everyday words you might hear like in a different domain or industry, and just keep going with learning and being curious. That’s what’s up.

That’s what it’s about. I I caught a few gems in there. And definitely focus time, calendar management, there’s no dumb questions, and definitely leaning on your team for development is something that I always encourage.

So, so much so much great nuggets there. Rewind after we got this recording so you can go catch these gems. I got a question for you, Sebastian.

And And first of all, big shout-out to you, Sebastian. You’re you’re over at Google holding it down, but you’re actually on a team that’s managing CI/CD. Could you tell us, especially for the audience member that may not know what CI/CD is?

Tell tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, sure. So, CI/CD kind of stands for continuous integration and continuous delivery or deployment, depending how your team does it.

Google kind of practices like the continuous deployment, which is where there is no step between delivery and actually the code going out to production. Nobody has to like approve, so it’s continuously being delivered automatically. So, do you have kind of the CI part, which is continuous integration.

This is where you know, new changes are always being kind of put through and tested, and you don’t have to like manually manage any type of release or building out releaseable units. And then the CD part, which is actually when the code goes from like a built binary to the the world, essentially. So, the Google infrastructure will make it available for people.

Specifically right now, I’m working within the emergency action space. So, there’s three main actions that usually can happen. You can, you know, identify an issue in production, and let’s say you want to roll it back, so roll back to like a previous known good state.

There’s also abort, and you can actually combine like aborting with rolling back, so you want to stop the releases and change production. And then there’s the last one which I’m focusing on now is cherry-picking, where essentially you have an issue, you have to identify the fix, and now you want to actually get it into production as fast as possible because like the release cycle kind of takes maybe a week for for a binary to kind of make it through different deployment stages. So, yeah.

Insights, and and thank you so much Sebastian for breaking it down because what you’re giving the audience here is a behind-the-scenes on how a program and application gets moved into production. But, one follow-up question that I have here is what skills and knowledge from CodePath has been most valuable in your current role? Yeah, I think definitely I the the the web track for me was really valuable as long alongside the technical interview prep.

So, let’s say for the web track I took, you know, 102, 103. And that really prepared me for the front-end development side of my job right now. So, you know, even though we don’t use the same exact tech stack, so right now Google uses Angular and CodePath kind of teaches React, it’s kind of once you know one, it’s easy to transition into the other.

So, that’s something that I use daily, and then the other part is also just like group collaboration because a lot of the courses, you know, you have projects, you have pods. And that’s really realistic as far as like what you’re actually doing at your job. You’re not just like a single person coding away in a corner.

You usually have to collaborate with others. So, CodePath kind of really makes you actively do that in college, which is not something that necessarily your professors might be telling you to do. And it’s really a great opportunity to get a sense of what it actually takes to be an engineer, and also get like more well-rounded kind of product as well as, you know, actual implementation so you can kind of say, "Oh, we have this problem.

How do we go about solving it?" Maybe create some mocks, then actually start thinking about implementation, what tech stack. So, it really helped me get a whole sense of like development from like ideation, development, debugging, and you know, eventually deployment. So.

That’s what’s up. And and and thank you so much for for that insight. So, that those that are going through some of the courses can see the value of those courses in terms of how it’s applied in the real world.

Now, I heard you mention already one of them a misconception in terms of us, you know, as engineers we’re we’re doing it all our all on our own. And I like to emphasize that we work on more of a collective code base with a team. But, I’m wondering if you have any other misconceptions about working in tech that you’ve encountered.

Yeah, definitely. I think one of the main ones that I found it’s kind of like, you know, everybody just thinks that you have to be like the most amazing programmer in order to like work at a company like Google. But, in reality I feel like once you’re in like I’ve really leveraged like interpersonal connections and really making sure that I understand what people are asking me, understanding what is actually needed of me.

So, it’s not necessarily just the technical. Like, once you’re actually at the development stage, it’s more or less fairly straightforward to do. Like, it’s all about kind of the setup leading up to it.

So, like you have you know, kind of a product issue and then you’re looking for a solution. So, you have to really dig into like what is actually the issue and talk about maybe the trade-offs of implementing it one way versus the other. So, it’s not necessarily always just about being amazing at coding.

You definitely need to develop your own just like people skills in general. And to Martinez’s earlier point, that networking is really important, especially like to set yourself up in a way where you’re open to talk to people, open to collaborating. I think it’s been really important.

And I guess the the other kind of misconception I think that evident now is that, you know, a college degree by itself won’t necessarily land you the job at companies. So really I feel like everybody here who’s already like in CodePath and actively pursuing these opportunities, that’s what’s going to set you apart from the rest. Having strong projects on your resume, projects that actually you know, you collaborate with other people will help you stand out as well as just developing the skills that are needed to actually be on the job and work with others.

Oh man, those are some gems right there. And and definitely as I mentioned before, the fact that you’re here, I’m I’m so excited for you all that are attending. And and definitely next up we have Martina and and I want to shout out her also working at Goldman Sachs and definitely wanted to understand what would be your biggest lesson from your first few years working in tech.

Yeah, so I would say the biggest lesson is to be proactive and be curious. It’s very important that you show initiative earlier in your career and you show that you have problem-solving capabilities. It’s very important to know the why behind your job.

We as tech people might be able to work in very different fields all the way from banking to different engineering fields, but knowing why we are doing our job and building those feature or building different services, it’s very important to understand why and to know your users and the whole thought behind your job. It’s important to also ask a lot of questions. As everyone almost said earlier, there is not a stupid question, especially early on you would want to be like a sponge and get as many information as you can.

Ask questions, understand what even other people are working on, go make connections, understand and just take the best out of everyone’s experiences for yourself. Learn and just implement it in your work. Roger that.

That’s some great advice. And I actually have a little bit of a curveball question for you. So when when you first started in your role, obviously there were some things that you were worried about.

And now that you’ve been in the role and in the field, when you look back, what would be one thing that you were so concerned about that now is like, "Wow, why was I even worried about that?" Yeah, definitely. So when I started working in Goldman in the beginning, I was worried that I have never had experience in the financial or banking field. I didn’t know what a finance statement is or a capital statement.

So I would tell younger Martina to just stay there, work hard, ask questions, and just, you know, get to understand your job better. Don’t be scared. We are all like normal people.

There will be always something you don’t know. You’re always going to keep learning and improving yourself. So yeah, just keep learning.

For sure. And and this is this isn’t advice that I always give my mentees is like in in this field of engineering and technology, you’re going to have to continue to learn because whatever technology is working on a year ago, three, four years ago is already deprecated and you need to keep iterating. So thank you so much, Martina, to bring that to light in terms of one of the things you were worried about, but now that you really, you know, embrace it as you continue to grow.

Senzita, I have another question for you. So we we definitely talked about continuing to learning and growing and being passionate and in a professional in tech. How how has that journey been for you so far as you’re transitioning from, let’s say, DBA to data analyst?

It has been a challenge, for sure. The knowledge is a bit different. The programming language is a bit different, but a lot of it does does come from the fact that I utilize a skill set like of learning that I learned from college and internships and just keep on asking questions, taking a lot of notes, and really using the resources within me.

I a lot of companies have like a dictionary probably with like terminology or acronyms they use. And it’s two different fields. The DBA people and data analysts are doing two different roles completely.

Your clientele is different. So I have been really focusing on networking with my clientele as we’ve talked about, really getting to know what I’m doing to help them out, what how my job impacts them, and understanding what they need from me has been helping me understand what the problems I have and making sure I understand them properly, even if that means having two calls with them, three calls with them, and just making sure I grasp everything perfectly. Yeah, you got to use those resources you have available to you including your teammates and resources that are out there.

And when you’re in the field you have to be ready to learn and continue to iterate. Yes. You are learning every day and it’s something that just doesn’t go away, especially with engineering.

As you said, whatever the tech was a year ago, it changes today. So you’re keeping up with everything. So it is a lot, but I say being curious, learning, and really using your resources has helped me out adjust to two different roles, and I’m taking my time with them knowing that it will take I have a big learning curve and that tech is evolving every day.

So you to get can’t beat yourself up if it takes you a little longer than your other team members. Roger that. Roger that.

Sebastian, I have a question for your round strategy, habits, and tools. What what would you say helped you stay on track and stand out in your in your role? I guess I’ll talk about kind of before getting any type of opportunities.

I think the main thing that I had in my mind was always just like apply everywhere. I think definitely volume at this point is what’s going to help you kind of get your foot in the door. So this means just like finding out internship opportunities whether be through LinkedIn.

There’s also like GitHub repos. So constantly applying was definitely something that helped me get on track as well as the main other thing is just being curious about new technology or maybe something that you learn in class where you want to know more about or even just like exploiting things just like through YouTube like following channels that are in tech and can kind of give you snippets of new things that are going on. So I really kind of immersed myself within tech and just programming in general.

So that helped me kind of attain skills that I may not apply every day but I you know are good to have. And then kind of day-to-day I think one thing that really helped me is really tracking and writing everything down that you do. Even you know let’s say you’re doing during your during an internship and you want to actually like at the end of the internship you want to know okay did I succeed at what I was here you know sent to do essentially.

So at the beginning of you know it’s really important to really understand what is expected of you and where you have to get in order to have a I completely succeeded and oh maybe over deliver on anything. So like I personally keep a log of any any type of work I do every day like I’ll just keep a log. It doesn’t have to be very detailed it could be just like I ran the command that I ran.

And maybe like what I’m testing and really writing everything down so that in the future you can reference maybe oh what was that command I ran last week? Oh how what was this project? And the other side of that is that you can actually like show your manager show whoever is you know overseeing work that you’re delivering.

So that that really helped me on track stay on track. And this kind of stemmed from college. Like in college, I would also keep a planner like Zita does.

Really organize everything that I have coming up. It make sure that I do everything that I have planned. So, yeah, that that that that’s kind of my strategy from from few years.

That’s a great great great insights. And then especially, I like to call it the brag doc, right? Is like, if you think about it, it it’s months before you get promoted and then you go get go through the promotion cycle, you’ll be like, "Oh, what did I work on?

I can’t remember." So, that’s why it’s great to track this work and have it there so that you can brag about the things that you’ve, worked on and achieved. So big shout outs to you, Sebastian, and definitely everyone on the panel. I have my last question on my list, but I do want to encourage you all in the audience to queue up your questions.

I already got one or two in the queue right now, but I want you all to throw out the question, so so that we can really get some insights into what is really concerning to you as attendees for this event here. But Martina, before we jump into the audience questions, we we really want to make sure that we’re giving advice to the students preparing for the fall recruiting session. So, what what advice would you have for them?

So, yeah, I would say start early and plan your timeline. It’s very important that you have enough time to apply to as many companies as you can, but the important part here is whenever you get an interview with an HR or a tech interview, make sure you do your research before that. It’s very important that you go to the interview prepared.

You know who you’re going to be talking with. Have enough Make sure you have enough time to get those questions tra- trained, prepared, know how you might have prepared different kind of answers. Know you Basically, know your audience.

Know you’re going to be talking with. Research the company, understand what their issues were. Maybe go to the news, read some news for that company, what they did last, what are they the most interested in, and make sure you’re able to talk on these topics.

It’s very important that during the interview those people find a piece of their company’s culture in you. You want to stand out and the only way that you can stand out beside your tech capabilities is that you can fit in the culture of the company. And I would say that going prepared to an interview, it’s very important.

And to be able to do that is for you to have enough time to plan and prepare. So start early especially because companies when they start hiring in the beginning they have a lot more open positions. So you’re going to have bigger chance on getting and landing that internship than if you apply later on when they have fewer spots open.

Oh my gosh, that that was amazing amazing. So timing definitely, but another gem that I caught was doing your research about the company you’re applying for. I’m going to give you a quick story.

I remember when I was interviewing, I worked at Twitter so you know I’ve interviewed hundreds of candidates. I had a young lady, she came in and when it was that time where you actually get a chance to ask follow up questions like hey the interviewers like do you have any questions for me? And she was like actually I read this blog post about a product called Hadoop.

And I sat back in my seat and I was like oh my gosh, is she going to talk about something that I actually helped write? And let me tell you something, it changed her interview immediately as soon as we started to talk about it because for me it showed how much interest and passion she had. And yeah, she was an intern and eventually became a full-time employee off of that.

So Martina, thank you so much for giving our audience some insights into that it really does help when you have these conversations and utilizing resources that we put online all the time, like tech blog posts and things like that, cuz we’re we’re we’re we’re listening to see who’s more passionate than the other. So, I got a question lined up here from the audience. So, this is open to any of the panelists.

Feel free to double tap if you want to add some more value to it. But, the first question that we have is what’s one CodePath resource, apart from the classwork, which should be non-negotiable for everyone and why? Hot potato, go ahead and jump in.

I can add something. So, I remember when I was doing a CodePath course, there was this community where people were sharing their interview experiences. And so, what maybe mistakes they thought they did, and we were able to help each other to prepare better for interviews.

So, I think this was something that really helped me during my internship preparation. And this was completely something different than all the coursework that CodePath had. It was just a community that was formed because of that course, that we were help- able to help each other and lift each other up, even after an unsuccessful interview or a successful one.

Yeah, for sure. Any Anybody else want to tap in? Yeah, I can add something.

I think really building a connection with the people that are in your classes and maybe in your pod specifically. I know when I was taking courses, they would more or less put you with students that are within your your school. And personally, I built connections with people that I was able like after the course, you know, two semesters later, we had a class together.

And that we actually worked on like a kind of a final project together. And yeah, just kept in touch. You know, that person is now at Netflix, I’m at Google, so really making sure that you you follow up with people and once you find a good person that’s dedicated to the same thing that you’re doing, that you really stay in touch with them.

Yeah, one one one 100% and and guess what, Sebastian, just letting you know, if he needs to go catch a job at Netflix, he got the plug over there, right? So, make sure you keep these connections, keep building, and definitely taking the opportunity to develop that type of relationship. Now, I got another question lined up here and Sanziana, I’m going to put you on the spot to see if you can jump in the conversation here.

It says, "How did you all network, right? And what kind of networking did you all do that helped you get to where you are now?" So, I honestly, I was reaching out to people who were graduate alumni from my college, ask them to have a coffee chat or one-on-one to understand what their role was or if they were working in a company that I was interested in. So, I was very interested in all the FAANG companies, all the fashion industries, and marketing industry, like if there were tech and marketing involved.

So, I was reaching out to alumni within there, asking for coffee chats where I would ask them questions about how they get their role, if they can give me feedbacks on my resume. I think getting a lot of feedback on your resume can help you a lot to understand if you’re missing some things or if you should reword a bullet point, if you’re like not using a right action verb, really helping you helping you get what other people who are already in the industry would see and what they’re looking for. And then from there, if I got enough coffee chats with this person, I would ask them if they would be my mentor, and that’s where I got a lot of feedback on projects I was doing in college or I was able to talk to someone about imposter syndrome, technical like interviews, and ask them like for help, which helped a lot.

And then I would really go to the career center in my college and ask them if they had networking events happening, and I would try to attend them, and just like that would have my resume with me or business card, and ask them if I can chat with them. After sending follow-up emails were really helpful with networking cuz you really let them remember like, "Hey, like you had an impact on me, and I would love to chat with you later." And you never know if they could be helpful to your career later on if their company has an internship that you’re looking at or a role that you’re looking at when you graduate. So, that’s what I did, and really just asking questions, but also having your resume and doing those one-on-ones on LinkedIn really help a lot.

Use your resource like your alumni. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

For sure. And And Martina, I wanted to give you a chance to double-tap in here because you definitely brought up networking as one of the key things. So, how how did you build your network?

Yeah, so I definitely did I was part of the women in engineering part in my university. I did create a lot of connections there, but my most important connections were with my professors. I made sure that I have connections with them on a closer level than like just giving them my coursework and leaving the room.

They will help me a lot with finding good resources in preparation for interviews because my professors had some They were coming to teach in the university, but they also did another job at a tech company. So, they were on top of the game at that point, and they were able to give me a very good advice on how to prepare for interviews. And I also did use my Mhm.

University’s career site called handshake. There also I was able to find like internship openings and resources. Roger that.

Roger that. I’ve heard some really good gems here and definitely want to encourage you all to to listen in, write them down, and and obviously when you listen to this recording again, you can rewind. Another question that came in and I definitely want to see if we can get Sebastian to jump in on this.

It is a question about leak code, but the question is it came from Carlos. It says, "What was your technical interview preparation like? Did you do a lot of leak code?" Yes.

Yes. So essentially within Copath, you know, they have the technical interview prep track and I went through the 103, which is kind of the highest level, and I felt like that was really an amazing class because a lot of the the structure of the class is not necessarily just learning about the things, but actually solving real problems. So I think as long as you’re kind of actively working on solving problems and going through kind of like, you know, the the famous leak code lists of like the I don’t know, they call them like blind 75 or something like that.

As long as you’re trying to understand these patterns and you’re actually working towards them, it will help you long term, even if you don’t understand right away. But really just exposing yourself to a lot of questions is what I think will help you the most. Like once you identify the patterns, the actual questions will always be different.

Like once you go into a real interview. So it’s really just about the patterns, and I felt like TIP really helped me see a lot of those questions and work with other people in kind of like mock interview setting. So yeah, I think leak code is definitely a most a must, sorry.

And actively just do participate or you know, doing it weekly, I would say, that will help you long term. You don’t have to like go crazy like try to do multiple problems a day, but maybe a couple problems a week. That will, you know, help you a lot.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Keep keeping the knife sharp. Now, just a follow-up question to this and just for my insights, how much in terms of your role are you using some of the same skills that you develop, you know, practicing leak code?

It actually I was surprised. Like let’s say during my internship last year at Google, I one of the the main thing was like visualizing non-linear leases. So essentially it’s like a tree, like a bi- an airy tree.

So it actually involved like recursively essentially rendering HTML into the page. So I did like a I I I did like a DFS algorithm to actually do it. So it applied really heavily, I would say, for that project.

Day-to-day the main data structures that I use are just like hash maps, hash sets. And maybe some binary search. So not nothing too crazy day-to-day, but you need you need to get through that in order to have the the golden ticket in.

Exactly, right? The the golden ticket in. But it sounds like it’s in terms of scope of day-to-day isn’t as broad as what leak code is pushing us to do.

But definitely I’m going to encourage you all if that’s the hustle, y’all got to stay on the hustle, too. So just know that behind when you get to the your job is going to be a different type of game. And and actually Martina, I’m going to throw this at you also cuz you’ve been, you know, at it for a little bit is how do you feel in terms of like the amount of leak code that everybody prepares for versus what they actually do in their day-to-day?

I feel like the leak code preparation is a lot more hard work than what you actually use in your day-to-day job. I do completely agree that we do use some of the knowledge that we gain while preparing with leak code. But yeah, I I say our day-to-day job is a lot more easier and laid compared with like LeetCode preparation.

Yeah, yeah. I I don’t know if every day you’re going to be rewriting the search binary to, you know, But, like I said before, it’s definitely an opportunity for you to showcase your skills, so I do want to encourage you to continue sharpening this that skill. One one thing I want to jump back into with Senzina is a question that we have here is What did you What What did in your process of applying stand out and make you stand out from the crowd?

Because I know that there’s a lot of people applying for this program, let’s say at Northrop Grumman. How did you stand out of the crowd? Honestly, I think it was me understanding what Northrop Grumman kind of did and how I was interested, so I related it to how Northrop Grumman is also part of space industry, and I I love the moon.

I have a ritual when it’s a full moon, I make a manifestation. So, I talked to the recruiter about that, and she remembered and she was like, "Oh, like why do you do that? And how is it related to tech?" Or she was really trying to connect it to technology, and I just talked about how I always want to analyze like space and like see how you can use tech in space, and I think that just made me stand out there a bit.

So, I would say bring your personal interest in of how the job could be connected to your personal interest or how tech is connected to your personal interest. That kind of made me stand out. Definitely made an impact cuz she would reach out to me whenever it’s a full moon now.

I’m like, "Did you make a manifestation wish?" and what was it? So, that’s what I did, but I also think it was a lot about the project. So, I included a lot of projects I did in college and really talked about that a lot how I was collaborating with team members.

We were using Agile methodology. So, using a lot of terminology that a a of companies use, like my company use Agile. So, me knowing what that process was really made me stand out compared to other candidates and how I was able to collaborate with teams and how we were able to problem-solve together, work together.

So, your people skills really does matter a lot. And being able to explain your project. So, I talked about my master’s project and my senior project at NYIT and how why we picked that, how like me and my team members, it really came from my different interests in different industries and we all were talking about our different interests and we just combined it to an app.

So, my senior project was about using Myers-Briggs personalities to create a dating app and we use like AI with that, recommendation system, some machine learning and that just caught their eyes cuz it was stuff that is currently trending in the industry and they would want candidates who have that skill set. So, if you have projects that are using skill set that are really trending in the industry right now, which is AI, generative AI, prompt engineering, it makes you stand out a lot more because that’s the skill set they’re looking for. So, being really up-to-date with the technology and using it in your class projects and talking about it helps you stand out to can like to recruiters and bringing your personal touch in it, too.

And and thank you for throwing in some insights into like where the industry’s heading, especially with that two-letter word called AI. And actually, I’m going to throw this at Sebastian. How much AI are you using or how much AI is impacting your work?

How do you feel about AI? Yeah, it’s definitely I mean, the hot topic now. Like if you if you want to stand out right now, I would say like AI agents is like very hot and seems to be like kind of the future of businesses using AI and currently like let’s say last week at Google, we had an org, what they call a vibe coding week.

So essentially, the whole org, maybe like 10,000 people, were encouraged to use AI tools, whether it be like agentic tools or like, Gemini. Also like Gemini CLI. Alongside just like general chatbots, things like that.

And it was kind of like a competition and leaderboard. So, you would get points if you actually like submitted code that was marked as like AI kind of partially generated. It didn’t have to be like fully AI generated, but during the journey of developing the code, you either ask like an AI like questions about your code or maybe something that you can prove.

So I would say right now, it’s very pushed very heavily and we’re using AI very heavily. Not necessarily always to write code, but just to develop ideas. And I think of it as like another person to bounce ideas off of.

Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re bad, but it’s up to you to kind of help and improve essentially. So, like, you get a problem, you get a response, and then there’s like the feedback up and down, and that can eventually make it where the AI is a little bit smarter. But yeah, I would say it’s very, very important, and it’s very, very hot right now.

So, definitely like, if you’re not using like, Copilot or, Gemini CLI, I know they have like AI assist in Google Cloud. So, those tools and can really help you develop your skills, and, we’re heading towards like an AI-centric world as far as like development. So.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And and and big shout-outs to the Google plug over here.

Martina, I wanted to throw the same question at you, too, to see how Goldman Sachs is using AI, or is it something that, it is hasn’t been implemented yet? Yeah. I think AI is also going to be a big part of, the tech world, and the tech in GS.

It’s definitely a tool that is going to help us. I don’t think it’s completely going to replace us. I don’t think AI has that many capabilities like the real software engineers.

But I think it’s a very helpful tool especially about architecture and like reviewing PRs and making sure that the code that we write is very good and maintainable. I think AI has a lot of benefits that people have not yet realized. I think it comes into a best time and a best place and I’m sure that everyone is going to use it in the best way possible.

Yeah, for sure. For sure and and and I hope you all are listening in in terms of what the industry is heading in towards the use case for this new tool called AI and definitely want to encourage you all to double tap on learning and developing. Remember that this is what we talked about is like you got to keep iterating and and this is the next one up.

So I do have another question here but I I I actually want this question to kind of line up for each of you. You’ve all have definitely answered it throughout our conversation this afternoon but I I really want to make sure that you all can embody just thinking about when you were a college student and more specifically the question is is what’s one thing you wish you had known early in your college journey that helped you succeed in tech and Senzina, you’re your first up. Wow, on the spot.

I think I really was reflecting. So when you’re in the career field now like you like Sebastian said you’re taking notes of what you like the impact you made with your project and setting out goals. I wish I did that earlier in my college journey where in my classes I wrote down the goals or what I’ve learned in it so I can like reflect on it or at least refer to it when I am talking to recruiters.

And really I wasn’t the best at using LeetCode. I kind of sucked at studying at it every day, but really maintaining a habit of reviewing it and really focusing on my weak points and reviewing those concepts. That’s something that I do right now where if I’m struggling with a technology, I’m writing it down and taking the time to review it to get better.

And I think if I knew that earlier on, it definitely would have helped me out a lot more, especially with technical interviews and made me feel more confident when I go into those interviews. What do you mean on the spot? You That was a great answer.

Sebastian, I’m going to throw it at you also. I’m going to read the question again. It’s what’s one thing that you wish you had known earlier in your college journey that would help you succeed in tech.

Yeah, I guess the main thing for me is that I didn’t really understand the whole process of like getting internships, doing technical interviews, what LeetCode was. So, as as soon as I kind of started to understand and getting got myself exposed to these things like, "Oh, I maybe should be doing these things." So, I think everybody here already kind of has a head start. So, you’re already actively pursuing opportunities.

Which I think will really help you long term. But yeah, just realizing that like, "Oh, maybe I should really focus trying to get an internship, applying." I didn’t really understand that whole cycle of like, "Oh, what even is an internship actually?" I didn’t know about them. So, that would be the big thing and then just kind of like practicing LeetCode.

And pretty like when you’re in school, pretty much like every week, every couple weeks. And just slowly working towards getting better. That that that I would have really could have used back then.

So, yeah. Roger that. Roger that.

And Martina, I’m putting you on the spot too, I guess. But the same question is is which What’s one thing that you wish you had known early in your college journey that would help you or that helped you succeed in tech? Yeah, I would say planning and starting early.

I was a person who was a little bit procrastinating in the beginning. And in tech you don’t have that time. Everything is moving fast, everything is growing.

You have to be on the top of your game if you want to be successful. I learned that the hard way. So, I would say if you want to be always prepared and updated with the latest news in tech and technologies, make sure you get informed every single day and you learn something new every day.

In college I would say we have a lot more time to read and learn new things later than later on when we start our full-time jobs. Use the time that you have in college to learn and get better in tech. Learn different languages, learn new technologies, try to get your portfolio as big as you can.

So, later on when you step into the career in your career, you’ll be prepared and able to start working on different projects and to be more flexible in your work. And this is your college time is the time when you can prepare about this. Roger that.

Roger that. And thank you all three for for giving our audience some insights in that perspective of where they’re at and basically in the same shoes you were in you were in before getting into tech. We’re getting close to the end, but I do have one more question.

It looks like it came from Joy. And I’m going to kind of break this up in a little bit because I think this will give each of you an opportunity to talk a little bit about the interview process and more specifically how many applications would you say that you applied before you actually landed your role. And Sseninde, I want to see if you get a chance to jump in on that one.

I I should I feel like I forgot the number. It’s been like a year too. I think it was a probably about 100.

I use Notion to track my applications. Really try to be organized with it of like trying to tailor my resume to and cover letter to each company of understanding it. It was a lot before I landed a role.

I think what helped a lot for me was having face-to-face conversations with the recruiters. So if I could attend a career fair or networking helped a lot. And it does dismotivate you a lot if you see a lot of rejections, but I I’m going to say like it’s hard out here right now.

Like there is like tech is such a booming industry. There’s so many applications that you really have to be just motivated and really just remember like do it with your friends. Like have a buddy that you can feel confident with where you can talk about these struggles helped a lot for me.

And really just remembering that just curious to pick industries that you like or internships that you’re interested in and really try to somehow attend a fair or send a conference around your career fair. It makes you feel a bit more confident with yourself and it makes you feel motivated to keep it going. But it is a kind of like a number game before I landed this role, but having a buddy helps you a lot.

Talking to your classmates, your professors help you feel confident and you just have to like keep on going. Yeah, for sure. And and Sebastian, I hear the number game is kind of what a lot of people are mentioning.

How how do what’s your opinion about that? It’s definitely true and I I kind of said it in the past where it’s like the the amount of kind of leak code and applications that you do will kind of offset the the amount of luck you’ll need during an interview. So, like the more you apply, the more you prepare, like it will help you tremendously.

I I mean, to get my first internship, I probably applied to hundreds of jobs. And you know, I kind of see it as a positive. Like every I still get rejection emails about an internship I applied, I don’t know, last year, 2 years ago.

So, at some point, I kind of just realized like this is the natural course. I think definitely to Zita’s point, like having your resume well tailored was That was another thing that really helped me. And nowadays, like with AI, you can really make your resume like well polished.

Definitely use like some standard like template, like Jake’s Jake’s resume template, or something like that. But yeah, I guess the rejection a day keeps the unemployment away, or something like that. So, definitely don’t get discouraged by getting rejected.

And then, you know, just build yourself up, keep building up your skills, keep applying. That that would be my advice. Roger that.

And then, Martina, that the same question, but this time and I’m not trying to talk about rejection, cuz I hope it was the first shot and you got into Goldman Sachs. But if not, how did you deal with rejection, so that when you did get a chance to shoot at Goldman Sachs, you made a bucket? Yeah, I would say every rejection is a step to your internship.

Don’t let get let it get you down, because you got rejected. You got rejected, because you were not the right person for this position. Meaning that the right position is coming for you.

It is definitely a numbers game. We said that so many times, but rejections are going to come. This is something that you have to be prepared for.

Just set your mindset to think about it as something normal, something that happens to everyone. You’re not less than someone. Your job and your perfect position is coming for you, but it’s just going to take time and you just have to be consistent.

You don’t have to give up and I’m pretty sure that all of us and everyone who are here right now, the fact that you are part of the CodePath community means that you are someone who is willing and it’s capable and it’s a very good like a good professional in the tech world. So, rejections have nothing to do with what kind of professional you are, but it’s just a step closer to your next job. Oh man, that’s that’s gems right there.

Gems, gems. Now, we are at our last question and I first of all want to say thank you to all three of you for opening the the the books on what your journey has been before you got into what it is right now and definitely continue to inspire the next next round of engineers, but more specifically and this is going to go one more time around and Sans Sansita, we’re going to start with you, but what would be the top piece of advice cuz there’s a lot of advice we threw it on the table today that you would give to the emergent engineers joining us today? Use your community.

I It helped me a lot using my community, talking to them about the interview process, internships, school, not topics I didn’t understand. It makes you feel confident that you’re not alone and you guys are definitely not alone. Talk and like having the mindset that it’s so hard to me so long to have the mindset that every interview you have is just a practice run until your perfect interview.

The company your perfect company’s out there, so every rejection is the company losing an asset and the right company will gain you. You just have to have that mindset of learning and it’s a redirection and having the community there to help you feel confident and supportive is something that will help you a lot during your early careers and you’re entering the engineering field or tech field. It makes you feel more confident and feel like you’re not alone.

Roger that. Roger that. And I heard a bar or two that you dropped in there.

Kind of being an asset. If they miss it, they miss it, right? Yes, my mentor told me that when I was going through interviews and she was like, it’s a practice run.

You You’re an actor. This is just your You’re performing until you get your perfect acting role and you need to remember that. They’re You have to think of rejection as they’re not a good fit for you and that’s what they’re telling you.

So, the right company will accept you because they’re a good fit for you. So, it’s really making sure it’s a perfect match and it takes time to get that mindset, but once you just keep on telling yourself that every morning, every before every interview or chat or submit an application, you’ll get there. Roger that.

Roger that. Now, Sebastian, you’re up next. So, what advice would you give to to the emerging engineers that are joining us today?

Yeah, I guess I’ll keep it short. We have a couple minutes. I would say definitely not not paid to say this, but definitely go go apply to a CodePath course and set yourself up to follow a track.

I recommend the TIP track and the web development track. Those two are really really great. You will get a lot of experience and get to build projects with cool people and keep in touch with them.

So, go go apply to CodePath courses. Roger that. And And Martina, the last one up.

Go ahead and give us some last words of advice here. Yeah, I would say learn something new every day. Try to improve yourself, work on yourself and as we all said, the best opportunity is going to come for you.

Keep learning, keep improving and yeah, take a CodePath class. For me. Inside the chat, I want you all to give them a big round of applause.

I want the emojis to blow up right now and definitely let everyone know how much you all have enjoyed the conversation here. So, let’s go ahead and give them a big thank you to all three of our panelists. And yeah, I’m going to close this out real quick on how today has been.

It was a It’s been an incredible opening session at day number two and a huge thank you to our alumni panelists for sharing their journey, their lessons, and encouraging us with all their information and experience. It’s inspiring to see the impact that this community can have full circle, right? They’ve all been up where you’re at and they basically come back around to continue to contribute.

Now, the day isn’t over yet. We’ve got more opportunities for you to build connections with companies during the booth times and diving into sessions hosted by Base 10, Google, AWS, and some great and ama- amazing ask-me-any- anything sessions later today. Make sure you check out the schedule cuz you don’t want to miss the sessions that matter the most to you.

And as always, we love feedback. Remember, feedback is what got your boy back here again. So, definitely, please take a moment to fill out the survey.

And yeah, this helps us shape what the sum- summit will be and definitely let us know what we’ve been doing really good in this experience cuz we’re really trying to set it up for those next ones up right behind you. So again, we want to say thank you so much for being here today and bringing the energy. It’s always always a great time hanging out with y’all.

Highlight your boy. It’s Bobby D.