Schools are nominally about learning but actually about a whole of other stuff -- it's a non-goal to get better or revolutionize it, so that's the main blocker for actually getting better at teaching students.
Parents want their kids to get into college, admins want to keep the parents at bay, teachers are trying to get by, unions want teacher protections, etc. There's no QBR where people look at the stats and iterate.
Interviewing is a skill and via the right practice you can get better at it. I went down that path and got much better at it. Some things to think about:
- you can do practice interviews with peers, some people will be good and some will be bad. Anyway, record them, play them back, take notes on how to get better, and repeat.
- get a list of sample questions, all of them, and figure out through some thought what the best answer to each is, and then drill on that. I used Anki, made hundreds of cards
- learn about MECE and make your answers MECE compatible
YMMV but I was able to really make a leap via some deliberate practice over the course of a couple months.
Every company I’ve worked at in tech in the SF bay area has at a minimum been completely tolerant of LGBTQIAP+, to having dedicated employee resource groups, so these companies exist. My rec would be: not to bring it up in the interview, not because you are hiding it but because it is not relevant in that phase. Either pre or post interview you can check out the company to see if they fit.
Obviously giving life advice based on a couple paragraphs is a little suspect, but it sounds like you have some technical skills and are interested in security, so why not just go in for that? Some thoughts:
- security is really hot right now, my last role was a PM for security, many many companies have serious challenges in this area right now
- people who are in it really love talking about it, it would be pretty easy to talk to some people in the field and see what’s a good fit
- speaking of security, there are so many roles it’s hard to imagine that there isn’t a role for you. Some are really technical, some have 0 coding at all (like program management)
- nobody wants to hire a downer, so work on your confidence game. Or learn to fake it
- consider some certs or some other LinkedIn bait to get recruiters to contact you, applying directly seems like a waste of time generally
- think about your narrative, e.g. you aren’t lost, while you were working you realized that you were really into security and have spent the last X amount of time skilling up on it
- don’t worry about comparing yourself to others, just try to get a little better everyday
- think about how you can get 1% better today in security, and do it, then repeat
- same as above, but for interviewing, attracting recruiters, and also working on your headspace
- nobody ever follows this but use Anki to build skill mastery for everything
- if you are weak in an area but consistenly add in 50 cards a day then you’ll get good fast
That’s my take on it anyway. Good luck. The universe wants you to succeed. Hiring managers are hoping that you are the one that can solve their problems. Recruiters are rooting for you so they can get their bonuses, managers are rooting for you to make them look good. I’m rooting for you and I don’t even know you! And so on.
This is impossible to answer without more information. How much money do you need? What’s your personality like? Were there any programming adjacent roles you thought were interesting?
I feel very fortunate to have landed a non technical faang role early in the year. Simply applying never worked but when I was recruited I always made it to the final round if I wanted to. The whole process took a lot longer than before. I really recommend doing lots of mock interviews, drills, and other prep. Think 20 hours a week until you get the job.
In a business there are profit centers and cost centers. Life is better when you work in a profit center. Having worked in security this general rule applies.
As someone non-technical grinding interview prep has been a game changer for me. So I would say yes, probably. Figure out what questions could be asked, then practice via study, mock interviews, and Anki. There’s only so many questions they can ask, and if you practice them all and are fluid then you will be in great shape.
I worked on Birthday Cards, one of the apps listed out. Warms my cold pm heart to know that something I worked on was vaguely known about by high level Apple execs.
At the time it was hugely advantageous to have a native app linked to fb, I remember the week where we made it and released v1, we were the #1 app in lifestyle instantly.
What’s the issue with GDPR? If it is similar to other Apple products where data is collected / processed at the edge, then no more issues than anything else they do.
I had a tortured academic path - collected all the letters in high school and university. Despite this I was able to get into a good law school, where the format was a much better fit (which I could elaborate on if you want) and I did excellent. In the real world I’ve done alright for myself.
In the working world the best jobs are not at all like school - you make your own projects, there is no defined right answer, and there is room for lots of different types of people. Very different from school, where it is highly structured, in the box thinking, with very inbred processes.
My number one tip would be to work really hard in the beginning to get yourself into a place and position where you can be creative and shine. You may not land there in your first job, so bite the bullet and break out of it as soon as you can.
What were the hedge funds, what happened? I’m a fan of NNT, but I want to get a more complete picture of whether his “stuff” works or not, and good info is hard to come by.
I work in data privacy and grc. First, a random middle manager cannot simply peek at customer prod data, that’s seriously locked down. Second, attempting to do this would get you immediately terminated.
I started a job at Meta after the November layoffs. The process felt pretty long for me (four months) but talking to other people it was not atypical. I’ve never worked at a FAANG before so I can’t comment on how things are different or anything like that. I am on a specialized area - privacy. From my job search I can tell you that privacy and security continue to be hot areas for hiring.
Parents want their kids to get into college, admins want to keep the parents at bay, teachers are trying to get by, unions want teacher protections, etc. There's no QBR where people look at the stats and iterate.