Andy Abebaw

In between hunting for JR SWE roles I've been grinding the NeetCode Blind 75. Here are a few problems from the the last week. 1. Stacks: Valid Parenthesis: https://lnkd.in/epBvBiJm 2. Trees: Invert Binary Tree: https://lnkd.in/ehxynE2J 3. Linked Lists: Reverse Linked List: https://lnkd.in/euEfNhUp 4. Bit Manipulation: Number of 1 Bits: https://lnkd.in/eK53Y_Fe 5. Sliding Window: Best Time to Buy Stock: https://lnkd.in/e4sNu8D3 ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ My resume is good, my internships are good, my projects are good. The only thing left that will bite me in the ass are DSA questions during technical interviews. NeetCode has compiled 75 of the most popular types of questions that you might see in interviews. I'm playing the statistics and assuming that 80% of the questions I will see will be Arrays or Two Pointers. I'm not going crazy as I don't care about big tech. So this is what I'm doing. Check NeetCode for yourself here --> https://lnkd.in/eyuHH354 Picture is me in my office. 😆 #software #halifax #softwaredeveloper #blockchain

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Identity Immutability and .NET Interactive Notebooks Tulsa Developers Association In-Person Meetup! October 24, 2024 I got to attend the monthly meetup with the Tulsa Developers Association! This one was special! This one was in person at Tulsa University (and online)! Normally these are online meetings. I have that classic call center two screen setup! I can look up concepts on the fly on one monitor, while paying attention to the speaker on the other monitor! There was a lot to take in this month! Here’s what I learned: ⭐.NET has a cool new capability that lets us share ideas directly in code called .NET Polyglot Notebooks! They’re like Jupyter Notebooks, but for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code! ⭐There is something called “Identity”. Identity is how we say which object we are talking about, from the primary key in a database to the URL in an API. ⭐There is something called “Immutability”. Immutability means once an object or variable is created, it can’t be changed! It’s all or nothing! I had heard of this before, but with this talk, I got to learn about immutability’s impact! Like, all the properties stay there. Nothing is truly lost! Nothing is overwritten! ⭐There is an open-source library called Jinaga.NET! It was very cool to see this work as a microservice, and to see how all these different databases could interact with this microservice! ⭐Be careful with AI! It can be a helpful tool to guide you in the right direction in where to look for information, or it could be a harmful crutch that doesn’t truly help you. As always, this was such a cool way to explore and think about software! Thanks to Techlahoma Foundation for sponsoring this user group. Special thanks to Sean Whitesell for leading meetings like this! Sometimes concepts can go over my head and it can feel like I’m in too deep. But groups like Tulsa Developers Association are there to help people like me learn to swim! We just have to keep swimming! #TulsaDevelopersAssociation #Techlahoma #TechCommunity #SoftwareDevelopment #DotNet #IdentityImmutability #PolyglotNotebooks #TechMeetup #Immutability #JinagaNET #OpenSource #Microservices #SoftwareEngineering #AIinTech #CodingJourney #LearningInPublic #TechLearning #CodingCommunity #DeveloperLife #TechEducation #TulsaTech #BackendDevelopment #JupyterNotebooks #LearningTogether #DevMeetup #TechSkills #DeveloperMeetup #ContinuousLearning #DotNetCore #VisualStudio #VSCode #TechNetworking #SoftwareInnovation #LearningJourney #TulsaUniversity #TechFoundations #CodingConcepts #DevelopersNetwork #TechExploration #SoftwareConcepts #DotNetDevelopment #CodingInTulsa

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I just dropped the SECOND challenge for Coding with Callie's Deploy in Public cohort 🥳 Here's some fun stats...because why not 🙃 👏🏻 27 developers have joined the cohort (if you haven't signed up yet, that's okay! You can join the fun at any point. Everything is self-paced 🙋🏻‍♀️) 👏🏻 7 of those developers have submitted their social media posts proving they completed Challenge 1 👏🏻 15 Slack threads were made last week to ask questions, collaborate, share progress, and chat The first challenge was all about manual deployment by learning how to navigate the Amazon Web Services (AWS) console 🧗🏻‍♀️ This week, we're following the same deployment architecture...but we're using HashiCorp's Terraform to provision the required resources 🚀 Check out what the devs will be accomplishing this challenge 💪🏻🥹 #codingwithcallie #deployinpublic #secondchallenge

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Always hire a thorough SWE over a speed demon. …If you’re developing a mission critical system with 0 fault tolerance. But don’t assume quality is universally better than quantity. Launching a membership or a spaceship? Greenfield development or legacy code? 10 users or 10 million? Nuance matters. Sometimes a groundbreaking idea requires speed to market. Sometimes your system’s reputation can’t afford another 3 AM incident. Quality and quantity are 2 sides of the same coin. Learn to prioritize each when they matter most.

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I hate programming. Okay, you got me—I lied for a hook. I don’t actually hate programming. But I don’t love it either. Let me explain. I was just at #SXSW and it felt like every second talk was a pessimistic perspective of being replaced by AI. Now I didn’t get into engineering because I enjoy pressing the right keys in the right order. I got into it because I’m passionate about solving real-world, impactful problems. While we often glorify the technical craft and mastering specific languages, what truly matters is our ability to understand problems and creatively apply solutions. That’s where we can have a real impact. That's why I’m not worried about AI taking my job. I embrace these tools. The role is evolving — it's becoming much less about writing perfect code, and more about using technology to solve complex problems. The future of our work will be shaped by how we leverage our tools—human or AI—to make a meaningful impact in the world.

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What I have done next? . . . As part of my SWE Fellowship at Headstarter AI! In Week 2, I delved into Firebase, Next.js, and Tailwind CSS to create this Expense Tracker app. 💻 Despite the simplicity of CRUD operations, I gained valuable hands-on experience with these technologies, setting a solid foundation for my next project: a Pantry Tracker app. Meanwhile there are many speakers giving and sharing insights about their startup journey which makes us inspiring too. Looking forward to connect with them in-person soon in one of the IRLs happening in near future. Sajjaad Khader, Helal Chowdhury, Nabeel Alamgir🦄 and much more speakers are goldmine to the fellowship. Great shoutout to the Headstarter team, Yasin Ehsan 🚀 and Faizan Ahmed to making the impossible to possible by keep pushing and bringing such wonderful speakers to the community. Although it's a bit late, as I've been caught up with other commitments, I'm thrilled to finally implement and share what I've learned. Stay tuned for more updates! Check my portfolio here - https://lnkd.in/gUbq3JuW (Update: Integrated my Topmate profile to conduct coding interviews as well) #SoftwareEngineering #HeadstarterAI #NextJS #Firebase #TailwindCSS #fellowship

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SWE Interns ask others to fish for them. Junior SWEs ask for their own rod and reel. Mid-level SWEs ask which bait is most effective, then share their findings for the whole crew to steal. Senior SWEs ask about positioning the boat to find schools of fish which are actively feeding. Staff SWEs ask if they could reuse old nets to catch in bulk those fish already breeding. SWE Directors ask to scare fewer fish by silencing all motors and moving without a trace. CTOs ask if this body of water is the right one to fish in the first place.

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I created an app using Streamlit to help children learn to read with their sight words. It just covers nouns for now because they are easier to visualize. I was primarily motivated to help my youngest son with his reading. I had a lot of fun on the project and received positive feedback from some parents, teachers, and others I shared it with so far. It includes an image(generated with help from various GenAI tools) for three choices for each word and audio for reading the choice out loud using gTTS (Google text to speech). The app is at https://lnkd.in/gvpkvZtC and the code is at https://lnkd.in/gyeNi3wG Let me know if you find it useful or have feedback. If there is interest it could be extended to include more vocabulary. It would also be nice to include the history of each learner's words seen, and which were successful so it could incorporate a spaced repetition system approach to learning. #streamlit #reading #parents #genai

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I often get asked by young software engineers “Should I go to work for a startup or big tech”? While I believe the field of options for talented engineers has broadened to also consider tech roles in a “traditional” business or civic tech, my answer is usually that an engineer should try both early in their career to see what fits better for them. I think the route I took with startups first, followed by big tech is generally easier. This is because big tech tends to put velvet handcuffs on and a 15-level career ladder in front of you that creates inertia against trying out a startup. Once you are about 10 years into your career, recruiters will tend to pigeon-hole you as a “big tech person” or a “startup person” and it can be harder to switch things up. There are interesting things to consider about the work itself between startups and big companies. In terms of the work itself, it can be hard to predict what you will enjoy, which is why I say to try both. Startups tend to be chaotic with lots of pivots and changes. Every day is different from the last. As a technologist, you will learn the whole stack, and possibly many stacks. Often, there is no top-down mandate on technology choice, so individuals pick various things off the shelf and build with them. One peer in a startup told me that each part of their product was running on different message queues - RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ and Kafka all at once! If you are a front-end engineer, you may also need to dabble in UX and backend.  UX may get dragged into Marketing.  Everyone will lend a hand to get things done, even if it is not their specialty. But, maybe you will be building something completely new that will take hold in a meaningful way.  In big tech companies, things are more predictable. You work on longer time horizons to have a bigger impact. Many days are the same as one another. There will be prescribed technology stacks and patterns.  If you are a specialist, you have a chance to go very deep - maybe you will get to work on programming languages, frameworks, compilers, or custom silicon to solve a very specific problem of scale. You might find the chance to try out different roles or locations, but in a much more structured way than in a startup. The choice of company size may also center around how you want to optimize your life and career. Do you want to build wealth, rise to the C-suite? Do you want stability or is more risk more fun? Do you want to settle in one location, or see the world? How are your personal relationships and how do they fit into what you need or want out of a job?  Your answers will likely change over time. So, early in your career is the best time to explore and figure out your tech-company fit. For me, I jumped from a dying startup to a very established big tech company. But, over the years, I’ve found my sweet spot is somewhere in between. I enjoy the possibility to go deep and have a very big impact, but also the light chaos of hyper-growth.

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Onboarding flows have officially reached peak comedy! 😆 I mean, this list can't be complete, right? 🤔 We should probably consider adding something like: “Engineer turned goose farmer” 🪿 immediately after "i've suffered enough(10+ years) Because, you know, career paths can take some interesting turns! 😂 #softwareengineering #softwareengineer #devops

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"So, I have some news to share. I am now a Headstarter Software Engineering fellow. I will be building 5 AI projects in 5 weeks and as my final project, I will {your track ... see image below}. The part I am most excited about this fellowship is I will be able to build my { Choose 5 skills 1) Vision 2) Personal brand 3) Interview prep 4) Network 5) Project 6) Teamwork/collab 7) Deadlines 8) Presentation 9) Feedback 10) How to Sell} I look forward to sharing my progress and technical growth over the next few weeks. If you have not applied, apply with my unique link https://lnkd.in/dCPHbHcE Thankyou Yasin Ehsan 🚀 , Haris Baig, Maheen Asad and Areeba Anjum Dar for their support. #Headstarter #SofftwareEngineering #ComputerScience

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So, I have some news to share!! I am now a Headstarter Software Engineering fellow. I will be doing building 5 AI projects in 5 weeks and and as my final project I will {your track ... see image below}. The part I am most excited about this fellowship is I will be able to build my { Choose 5 skills 1) Vision 2) Personal brand 3) Interview prep 4) Network 5) Project 6) Teamwork/collab 7) Deadlines 8) Presentation 9) Feedback 10) How to Sell} I look forward to sharing my progress and technical growth over the next few week.

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The Holy Grail: How to Land a SWE Role at OpenAI 🚀 Breaking into OpenAI is no easy feat, but here’s a breakdown of their interview process (Advice from a Nora user who just did the interview process): 1. Introductory Call: • Be ready to discuss your work, academic experience, and motivations. • Pro tip: Use Nora’s Normal Mode (Intern Guys) to simulate a recruiter intro/phone call. It’s our most popular feature with over 2000+ mock interviews completed! • Bonus: Review OpenAI’s recent blog posts or research to tie your interests to their work—this shows initiative and alignment. 2. Skills-Based Assessment: • Prepare for pair coding, take-home projects, or HackerRank-style tests. • OpenAI loves LeetCode medium to hard questions—unfortunately, no ChatGPT allowed! • Tip: Practice common algorithms, problem-solving, and real-world coding scenarios. 3. Final Interviews: • Expect 4–6 rounds over 1–2 days, covering system design, coding, and behavioral questions. • Focus on optimal solutions, system scalability, and clear communication of your thought process. • Behavioral Prep: Structure your answers using STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result). OpenAI interviews are tough, but they’re not impossible. Prep, stay calm, and trust your skills—you’re more ready than you think! 🌟 #OpenAI #SoftwareEngineering #InterviewPrep #TechJobs #InternGuys #NoraAI

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🎉 Milestone Unlocked: 200 Days on LeetCode! 🎉 I’m thrilled to share that I've just hit my 200-day streak on LeetCode! 🏆 This journey has been full of challenges, breakthroughs, and plenty of late nights, but it’s all been worth it. Tackling data structures and algorithms daily has helped me think critically, optimize code, and break down complex problems. Whether it’s prepping for upcoming roles or simply pushing myself to get better, these 200 days have been a testament to persistence and growth. Here’s to continued learning and more milestones ahead! 🚀 #LeetCode #CodingJourney #ProblemSolving #GrowthMindset #Milestone

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I don’t care how “clean” your code is. If you aren’t coachable, you aren’t hirable. Last week, a SWE candidate got glowing remarks across all their technical rounds. Many of the interviewers thought he should be up-leveled. Then we heard about the behavioral. “He was pretty arrogant about Agile.” Silence. “Now that you mention it, he wasn’t very receptive to my feedback on his API design either.” More silence. “He’s super talented, but he’d require significant coaching.” The Hiring Manager chimed in: “Are we sure that’s going to be possible?” Finally, I came off mute. “I’d rather hire a coachable L1 with decent skills, than an arrogant L2 who can lap me in a code sprint.” No offer was given. We forwarded the candidate our honest feedback, hoping he might course correct and apply again 6 months later. He never responded. Understand: Feedback is the very soul of great software development. From both customers and teammates. If you can’t receive it, clean code can’t save you. --- P.S. I'm offering free 1:1 mentorship calls for select Junior SWEs in the industry who want help earning their first promotion. If you value feedback like I do and you're hungry to improve, find a time here: https://lnkd.in/eaKzTEux

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I just got accepted as a SWE Fellow at Headstarter AI 😍 Over the next 5 weeks, I'll be building 5 projects, followed by 2 weeks of shipping to 1000 users and presenting my work to an engineer. These 7 weeks will be exciting, as I'll hone both my technical and non-technical skills. I look forward to sharing my progress and technical growth over the next few weeks. #HeadstarterAI #SWEFellowship #Engineers #ComputerScience #softwareengineering #taleeha #fellowship #ai

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It can be a lot of fun to go back to the basics- as engineers, we get so caught up in using the latest frameworks and libraries that it's so easy to forget about good ol' HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I recently did a portfolio website for Ryan Griswold- he's a Los Angeles based Director of Photography who was in desperate need of an updated website to show off his recent work. We knew that we wanted the site to be clean, modern, and mobile responsive. So we took a look at some other DP portfolios for inspiration, decided which elements we liked, and I put everything together using only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Sure, everything here could have been accomplished with a library like React, but why add all that complication? The most challenging part was figuring out how to do the video embeds- Ryan had two different reels to show of his drone work and his "regular" cinematography work. Both are hosted on Vimeo, which is great, so the trick was to somehow get a Vimeo player to pop up and play whichever reel has been clicked. After much digging, I came across player.js, a Vimeo Player API. Then it was just a matter of creating an instance of the player, adding event listeners, and adding or hiding class names as necessary depending on which player should be visible. If you're a software engineer and you haven't revisited the basics in a minute, do it- I promise it's actually so much fun, and you'll realize how much you have learned since your first console.log("Hello World") ✨ ➡️ Check it out: https://lnkd.in/g-es-7Am #webdevelopment #webdev #sorftwareengineer #javascript #css #html

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Oye, mira. LinkedIn is a place to foster business connections and demonstrate our skills. I want to use this moment to transform this platform into a bridge builder, as well as a means to demonstrate how our struggles, our history, and systemic inequities impact Black, Brown, and visible minorities in ways that often go unrecognized in professional spaces. The reality is that the workplace is not immune to the injustices that permeate our society. For many Black and Brown professionals, simply navigating a world that was not built with us in mind can be exhausting, demoralizing, and triggering. We are often asked to show up, excel, and assimilate while carrying the heavy weight of microaggressions, implicit biases, and outright discrimination. Yet, our stories, resilience, and lived experiences hold immense value. They shape the way we lead, innovate, and connect with others. They teach us empathy, adaptability, and the power of solidarity. By sharing our stories and the truths behind them, we can begin to dismantle the walls that divide us in professional spaces, fostering a culture where diverse voices are truly heard, respected, and celebrated. Today, I challenge each of us to go beyond the surface-level commitments to diversity and inclusion. Let’s create spaces where we can have real conversations about the intersections of race, history, and the workplace. Let’s acknowledge how systemic oppression affects our colleagues of color and commit to being active allies—not just in words, but in actions. LinkedIn is a place where vulnerability is not met with dismissal but with understanding, where courage is met with support, and where our shared humanity becomes the foundation for real change. This is how we transform not just our businesses, but our world. #oyemira

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🛠️ Refresh, Retry, and Reintegrate: Lessons from Today’s Social Auth Journey Today’s challenge reminded me that software engineering is equal parts precision and perseverance. While integrating the NPM social auth package I’ve been working on into an application’s backend, I hit a snag—a function for refreshing access tokens was…............ MISSING 😬 Yep, my past self decided that “refresh tokens aren’t a priority” (spoiler: they are). 🫠 Here’s how the day went down: 1️⃣ Back to the Code Realizing the gap, I went back to implement the token refresh logic. This step is crucial for ensuring users don’t have to constantly re-authenticate, which is a cornerstone of a seamless experience. 2️⃣ A Memo That Stuck My manager had a solid reminder during this process: “Publishing NPM packages frequently isn’t ideal—get it right the first time.” Lesson learned: Thorough testing before shipping is non-negotiable. 3️⃣ Testing, Testing, and More Testing Before proceeding with the backend integration, I rigorously tested the package. API calls, token refresh, error handling—you name it. Everything needed to work smoothly to avoid patching chaos later. 💡 Key Takeaway This experience underscored the importance of building a culture of quality, even at the granular level of an NPM package. Small oversights can ripple into larger inefficiencies if not caught early. 🌟 The Fun Part Watching the “Sign in with Twitter” flow come to life after proper integration is always satisfying. Seeing the OAuth2.0 and PKCE magic work behind the scenes makes the debugging marathon worth it. 📢 For My Fellow Engineers If you’re navigating similar challenges with social authentication or want to geek out over OAuth flows, let’s chat! Whether it’s a DM or a comment, I’d love to exchange insights or help you streamline your integration. #OAuth2 #TypeScript #SoftwareEngineering #NPM

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