How SoloLearn changed my life?
First, a little background on Sololearn.
In case you are unfamiliar with SoloLearn, then it’s a popular app available for all web, Android and IOS users. It’s an awesome peer to peer learning platform for programmers of all levels and boasts of “the best online learning community.” Try it for yourself.
I thank my dearest friend Shuvam Anand who introduced me to this platform two years ago.
A little background on me.
I am a bachelor with Bachelors in Computer Science who joined SoloLearn two years ago. I was never the bright one and had an average academic background. However, in recent years, my curiosity has grown. I am also known by the username Morpheus in SoloLearn.
About the life changing event.
Starting today I would be working as a “Full Stack Developer” for a large IT company based in India called “Mindtree”. The position is invigorating and the project challenging. I will have to start fresh with my learning in a new professional development environment and catch up with a lot of things.
But this job opportunity is not the best part of this “life changing event.” Before I get to the best part, first, I will need to introduce my mentor and source of inspiration from SoloLearn, David Carroll, who made all this possible.
About David
He started his professional career with software development in 1996 without any academic background in programming. This was around the same time when Netscape launched JavaScript (one of my favourite languages). Currently, he is working as a Lead Software Engineer for a US based software company which has almost all the top 100 Fortune companies in its clientele. He also happens to be a moderator in SoloLearn.
When I started my solo-learning I was skeptic of whether this platform has any professional programmers, given the easy courses (Insider Tip: try course comments and challenges too before saying easy) and hilarious discussions (much more professional these days, thanks to mods) on the SoloLearn forum. However, to my surprise I found there are people in SoloLearn who have been doing professional development for decades and are true polyglots (although very few). David is one of them and it boosted my morale knowing I might get some great direction here. So, I ended up being a full time SoloLearner for a year.
He also happens to lead/mentor a software development team based in India and once he came to know that I am from India and looking for a job, he immediately presented me with an opportunity to join his team.
What fascinates me about the prospect of working with David is that “I am a knowledge hungry guy and I eat new programming concepts for breakfast daily and I have been eating healthy for about a year. Now imagine a guy eating new concepts for more than 2 decades and having that same hunger still.”
Now you know the best part of this “Life changing event” for me, it’s the opportunity to work directly under his supervision and mentorship.
Brief overview of my interviews for this position.
This hiring process was initiated with David presenting me as a potential candidate to the HR team in India. Then, began the interview rounds.
Initial Screening: A call from Mindtree with queries regarding my educational qualifications, specializations, any prior work experience and availability for a technical round.
First Technical Round: This started with the typical “tell me about yourself” dialogue followed by a 10 minute discussion about my last project. We then proceeded into technical discussions on topics like: OOP features, classes, C# namespaces, Angular Vs React, then React in depth.
In the final part of the interview, I was given the opportunity to ask questions. I asked about the project I will be working on; what challenges I should be expecting; and a few queries about the company environment.
Second Non-technical Round: This started with short introductions, then around 10–15 ethical questions on how I would handle situations while working with a software development team in a corporate environment.
Final Technical Round with David: Now this was interesting. I’ve had a dozen interviews already — rejected in most and selected in few. But this was a totally different experience.
So the interview started with brief introductions with David. I was a bit nervous and worried about my Indian accent. But the whole interview went quite well. It was exciting to have a face-to-face conversation with someone I knew from SoloLearn. However, since it was an interview, I kept my excitement suppressed and went forward with the discussion as professionally as possible.
Soon I was asked to share a little about my skills and what I’m familiar with. I went with Javascript and related frameworks. David never moved to the next topic unless he was sure about my knowledge in that topic. So, there were many follow up questions which made me proceed further with caution. I was able to answer many of his questions. When we reached the questions beyond my knowledge, he would occasionally give hints and correct me while, somehow, maintaining the overall atmosphere relaxed and tension free. The starting topics were based on my response to what I was familiar with and continued until we reached the limits of my understanding.
Then came the scary part, LIVE CODING TEST. It was an hour long coding test where I was being watched as I’m coding on a shared screen. My scare went away when I heard it was a simple FizzBuzz problem. I implemented it quickly and as nicely as possible. However, boy-o-boy, from then on there was a continuous iteration of new requirements and code refinements to be applied, one after the other. It was electrifying to see that simple code transform into something incorporating so many advanced concepts in JavaScript revealing much more about what I really understood and where I needed improvement. I was puzzled many times. But thanks to all those challenging discussions on SoloLearn pushing the limits of my JavaScript knowledge for a deeper understanding, I was well prepared and performed well. When he told me that we were out of time, it hit me that one hour had already passed. I was shocked by how quickly that hour flew by in our coding session. I will share details about the coding exercises in a follow up post. Until then, I’ll share that it was a thrilling experience for me!
My overall experience from this interview with David was “he starts super easy and, before you know, it gets really tough, really fast. You really think hard on the basics in his interview and I’ve never had an interview like this before.”
Result: Then, next Monday or so I got a call confirming my selection for this position, Best Diwali gift ever!
A few tips that helped me improve myself during my 2 year journey in SoloLearn.
- Follow good SoloLearners and read their code (read everyone’s code). When you don’t understand something about their code, use the comments section in your private codes to ask questions and be sure to tag them. I do this in my private codes to limit what appears on the feeds of my followers while tagging the person(s) I’m reaching out to.
- Participate in the Q&A forum and go to recent questions and try to answer them to the best of your knowledge. If possible, do some research for a much better answer. Even if your answer is wrong or incomplete, someone will correct you or provide clarification. The point is to follow the discussion until it’s crystal clear for all parties. It really helps to follow good SoloLearners because their answers to questions you’re not yet following will appear in your feed.
- Raise questions. If it’s programming related, it will never be stupid and you might be surprised by the answers. I don’t use the SoloLearn Q&A forum much for raising questions because I find my answers more quickly from other sources. But, in the beginning, the Q&A forums helped me a lot.
- Write codes and work hard to make it interesting to get more likes. More likes mean it’s more popular and will likely receive more feedback from others. Feedback from others help a lot to make this tiresome journey smooth and fun. I cannot say how happy my first COTD (Code of the Day) made me and motivated me to improve that code and my skills. Sadly, right now, only web codes are more interesting given the graphical nature and much better I/O interface.
- Most underrated tip: Participate in challenges, both timed challenges and challenges posted by SoloLearn and fellow SoloLearners. This will help you quickly accelerate your learning and help clear those more challenging technical interview rounds.
- For professionals, please show your skills here to give the rest of us insight on new levels of perfection and creativity for us to achieve.
Request to my fellow SoloLearners.
- Send me C# challenges, as the project for this job is heavy in .NET. I will be spending a lot of time in the coming months with C#.
- I would love to get your feedback and tips on my C# practice codes from SoloLearn as well.
Ending Notes
If you’ve made it this far in this post, then you have my heartiest thanks. For people unaware of SoloLearn, I hope this article was interesting enough for you to give it a try.
I will end this post with this note:-
