From Newbie Coder to Google Software Engineer in Just 6 Months With Clément Mihailescu (S6E17)

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Former Google software engineer Clément Mihailescu has a STEM degree…but his letter isn’t the T.

Clement MihailescuAfter earning a degree in mathematics and dabbling in a couple different fields, Clément made a connection. The things he was interested in—including starting his own business or getting into something like product management—all required coding skills.

So without ever having written a single line of code before, he took the leap and enrolled in a coding bootcamp. Then, he started applying for jobs, but found it surprisingly difficult to land interviews. He dedicated months to coding interview practice so he’d be ready when the opportunity came.

And it came. After contacting a recruiter on LinkedIn, Clément landed an interview at Google. The interview process took three weeks, but by the end, he had a job as a Google software engineer.

Disclosure: I’m a proud affiliate for some of the resources mentioned in this article. If you buy a product through my links on this page, I may get a small commission for referring you. Thanks!

While working full-time, Clément was inspired by his own coding interview prep frustrations, particularly learning data structures and algorithms, and he founded AlgoExpert on the side to help others navigate their own coding interview questions. (By the way, since we recorded the interview, Clément has changed jobs and become a software engineer at Facebook…so he clearly knows what he’s doing!)

Special discount: Want 15% off AlgoExpert? Use the coupon code ltcwm (make sure the text is lowercased when entering the code)!

freelance developer

In today’s episode, Clément talks about what it was like to work at Google, advice for landing a job at a top tech company, coding interview preparation tips, and more.

Listen below!

This episode was transcribed with the help of an AI transcription tool. Please forgive any typos.

Laurence Bradford 0:08
Hi, and welcome to the Learn to Code With Me podcast. Today we'll be learning about a bunch of things, preparing for coding interviews, doing a side gig alongside a full time job, in what it's like to work at Google. That's all coming up after a quick word about how you can support the show.

Laurence Bradford 0:30
Wouldn't it be great if you could get paid to learn how to code even if you're a total beginner just starting out on your own learn to code journey? Well, I'm here to tell you that you can do this my free eBook 28 Ways to Earn A Side Income While Learning How to Code walks you through 28 different side gigs you can do to turn your tech skills into dollars, even if you're just starting out. You can download it for free over at learntocodewith.me/sidegig today. Again, the URL is learntocodewith.me/sidegig.

Laurence Bradford 1:09
Hey listeners. In today's episode, I talk with Clement Mihailescu. At the time of this recording, he was a software engineer at Google. And he's now started working at Facebook. Clement is also the founder and CEO of algo expert, a platform that helps you prepare for tech interviews. I want to speak to Clement for a number of reasons. He has a very inspiring story. He went from having never written a line of code to getting hired by Google in a matter of months, all while building a successful business on the side. I hope this story will inspire you by showing that you don't need a computer science degree or a technical background to break into tech, let alone to work at a tech company like Google or Facebook. In our conversation, we talk about Clements journey into tech. his advice for nailing technical interviews, why he started his side gig. What it's like running a side project and working full time, and what it's like to work at Google. Whether you want to land a job or start your own business, I think you'll get a lot from this interview. During our conversation, you'll hear more about Clements side business Algo Expert, which helps people prepare for coding interviews. Learn to Code With Me listeners get 30% off Algo Expert using my special affiliate link, just go to learntocodewith.me/algoexpert and enter the coupon code LTCWM. That stands for Learn to Code With Me and you'll get a 30% discount. If you end up buying algo expert I will get a small commission for referring you and that goes towards running the costs of Learn to Code With Me. Again, the URL where you can get this discount is learntocodewith.me/algoexpert. And that spelled all is one word. A-L-G-O-E-X-P-E-R-T. With that said, let's get into the interview.

Laurence Bradford 3:22
Hey, Clement, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Clement Mihailescu 3:25
Hey, Laurence. How's it going?

Laurence Bradford 3:26
It's going great. Thank you for coming on again. And I'm excited to chat with each day because you have a really awesome background in tech. You went to a coding boot camp, you've worked at top tech companies, you also have a side project or side business. So I'm just really excited to dive in. But first, could you just share a bit about yourself and your background with the audience and how you got into tech?

Clement Mihailescu 3:51
Sure. Well, first of all, again, thanks for having me. But my background is pretty unique or unconventional. Rather, I would say I went to college, and did not study computer science. So I do not have a computer science degree. And in fact, I never learned how to code until after college. I did do a stem degree, I did a degree in mathematics that was only after having dabbled in a bunch of different fields in college, and out of college, all the things that I was interested in doing, whether it be you know, trying to start my own business, or maybe get into something like product management, all these things sort of required coding skills. So I decided it was kind of time to take the leap. And I discovered these things called coding boot camps, which we mentioned just before, which were sort of up and coming at the time. This was about three years ago in 2016. And yeah, I enrolled in a coding boot camp kind of fell in love with software engineering, and the rest of sort of history.

Laurence Bradford 4:51
Wow. So you went to a coding boot camp? About three years ago you said? Was that like a tough decision for you to make like debris, working for At the time and like left your job to go dive into a coding boot camp?

Clement Mihailescu 5:05
It was a tough decision. But I was not working at the time I had just graduated from college. And when I say just I really mean like, a couple of weeks or maybe a month before my graduation had happened. And I remember, you know, thinking, right now I have to make a decision. Either I enter the job market in some other field, that wouldn't be software engineering, right? Or I really sort of take the leap or take this little sleep, and which is a leap from a financial point of view from a time commitment point of view, and do a coding boot camp for a few extra months and pay some more money right after having done four years of college to acquire these new skills with no no sort of like guarantee that it would work out right very keep in mind that I'd never written a line of code is my life at that point. But I did have the luxury of having a few friends who knew what they were talking about when it came to software engineering and coding, who kind of telling me like, hey, yeah, this coding boot camp looks legitimate. You should try it out. It'll be worth it. And it paid off.

Laurence Bradford 6:20
So how long was the coding bootcamp? He went through was it like, I feel like most are three months?

Clement Mihailescu 6:26
Most are three months. So mine was Yeah, it was three months as for the sort of immersive in person portion. And there was, I think, an extra like four weeks at home, sort of, you know, maybe half the days or do it yourself kind of thing before the three months.

Laurence Bradford 6:46
Nice. So what did you do then after the coding boot camp wrapped up? Did you get a job right away in software or as a software developer?

Clement Mihailescu 6:55
Right. So that's when when I guess they sort of career really began. I spent, you know, a few months preparing for interviews and and doing all of that. But then I went to my first job at Google as a software engineer. And right around the same time a little bit earlier than that. Actually, before I started there, I started working on this side business with mine, algo expert, to help people in that same coding interview process.

Laurence Bradford 7:23
Right. So could you I want to dive into both those things. Because first of all, I think it's like amazing that your first job out of college out of the coding boot camp was at Google to just talk a bit about that, like, how did you end up, like, what did you do to prepare? How did you get a job there? so on and so forth?

Clement Mihailescu 7:41
Right, and it's funny, because, you know, ironically, Google is sort of, you know, glamorized perhaps rightfully so especially in the software engineering field is an amazing place to work at a very difficult place to get to land a job at, but ironically, they were one of the few companies who seem to be willing to give me a chance to interview as someone with no experience coming out of a coding boot camp, and so on and so forth. I found it surprisingly hard to land interviews, or maybe not surprisingly. But I found it very hard to land interviews at companies. It seemed like people would always dismiss me as like, Oh, you don't have enough experience, you know, the canonical frustration of like, oh, in order to land your entry level job, you need a couple years of experience, but they were willing to give me that chance. So I contacted a recruiter directly, I think, via LinkedIn, he got back to me, got the interview process started. And then I spent, you know, good amount of time and energy, preparing for the coding interviews, which are sort of, you know, notorious for being pretty algorithm intensive. And I guess I just did very well on them and then then, you know, got the job and took it.

Laurence Bradford 9:00
How long was that total interview process? If you can kind of recall like from the time you messaged this recruiter on LinkedIn to the time, you know, the job offer was made?

Clement Mihailescu 9:11
Yeah. So I was a skipped to directly to the on site interview so I didn't have to do a phone interview. I would say that the interview process took about three weeks from the time I spoke to the recruiter, to the time that I was told you got a higher decision from the hiring committee, meaning you know, we want to offer you a position. However, the the irony there is that I ended up waiting an extra month and a half or two months after that in what's called the team matching phase at Google where they actually try to pair you up with the team after they've decided to hire you. So depending on how you see it, it took anywhere between three weeks and you know, two and a half months.

Laurence Bradford 9:58
Gotcha gotcha Oh, Wow, so Okay, so you mentioned earlier that you were also I think around this time as you were interviewing started this side project or side business Algo Expert. And for those of you those of you listening who aren't familiar, Algo Expert is like a platform where people can practice algorithm problems for an interview, right?

Clement Mihailescu 10:19
Yes.

Laurence Bradford 10:20
Okay, perfect. So were you building that at the same time as you were applying to Google and interviewing at other companies?

Clement Mihailescu 10:26
So the way it worked is, when when I was preparing for these interviews, I remember I was, it was one of the it was one of the most frustrating things I I've ever done in my life preparing for these interviews. At the time, I mostly had access to books, and I guess the internet. So I would spend hours trying to understand like a specific algorithm from a written solution in a book and that was very tedious and difficult. So then I would go online, and I would, you know, surf Wikipedia for hours, I would go on YouTube and it was very frustrating because there was no Like, consistent, clear sorts of information. And I remember thinking, there's got to be a better way, like these jobs that people prepare for with these coding interviews are so important. And yet there's not a better way to prepare for them. And that's when I sort of conceptualized the idea of algo expert and I started working on it after pitching it to my co founder, right around the time that I got my hire decision from Google. So this was you know, after after I'd done I'd finished the interviews, and when I had you know, a couple of months sort of waiting, not really doing anything if that makes sense.

Laurence Bradford 11:38
Yeah, that's really awesome. So I feel like it's, it's so great to like help people do something that like you're currently going through or had just gone through because you can like really empathize with what these other people that are going after you what they're experiencing. So I think it's really awesome that you created this for people as a solution for something that you're experiencing. So I would love to hear a bit about just like how algo expert has evolved since the early days.

Laurence Bradford 12:07
Because when you go to the website now and you know, I visited it, it's like very polished, really put together, I was actually shocked to realize it was your side business, because I remember looking at your LinkedIn and I saw, you know, your experience, like works at Google. And I was kind of like, oh, he probably just hasn't update his LinkedIn yet. I bet like he now does algo expert full time, and he's not still doing it on the side. But then you told me Oh, no, I'm actually still working full time. And I was like, Whoa, like, you're doing both like you're working at Google and building this, like, you know, this, you have this company at the same time. So, like, how has that been the last few years of doing both?

Clement Mihailescu 12:43
Right, right. So it's been it's been incredibly rewarding and also challenging, but for someone who really loves sort of entrepreneurship and building a business from scratch, which is something that's been you know, super fun. If that makes sense, like all the work and time that's been put into it has been just fun and rewarding. But um, yeah, it has grown a ton. Like I remember, I still remember when we launched what we call our alpha version, which was essentially, like a free version of the website where we only had, I think, 20 questions. And we gave it for free to a couple of people who attended the boot camp that I went to, just because we kind of wanted to validate the product.

Clement Mihailescu 13:30
And that's when I realized, okay, yeah, we really have something here because these people share the same frustration that I had when I was preparing for my coding interviews. But since then, yeah, we've really expanded the website from all points of view, way more content, no way more questions, way more features, way more sort of marketing and growth. You know, we've paired up with affiliates and online influencers and so now I'm super happy to say that we've got No, we've, we've helped thousands upon thousands of people prepare for their coding interview, or their coding interviews and land their dream jobs. So it's been really exciting.

Laurence Bradford 14:12
Yeah, wow. Um, so let's see here that have so many other things. I would love to ask about this, especially with like, interviewing and data structures and algorithms. So to algo. expert, it's so it helps you prepare for their coding interview. Is it just questions around algorithms and data structures? Or do you guys do other things as well to help people prepare?

Clement Mihailescu 14:37
So right now, the main focus is algorithms and data structures. So we you know, we call them sort of algorithm questions. Sometimes people also call them just coding questions. It's the typical questions that you get in these interviews that big tech companies and startups that typically take you know, 45 minutes or so to solve on a whiteboard. We are looking to expand into systems design soon, because the higher the higher up you go typically in these companies, the more you have to also interview in system design. Like typically, for instance, a senior engineer at one of these big tech companies or a senior candidate would have maybe four algorithm interviews, and one systems design interview. And so we want to start adding that kind of content to our website as well.

Laurence Bradford 15:28
Yeah, I mean, I think it's awesome that you guys are so specialized and niche because like, there's so many books, there's so many products on prepping for interviews, you know, General tech interviews, or just interviews in general, not even tech specific, like the soft kind of questions. So I think it's really cool and probably helps people even more that you're just so specific on, like algorithm kinds of questions. So I think it's really neat. And I'm curious, like, is he is it is it meant for anyone at any level right now or is it really geared towards beginners, kind of going on? For their first interview.

Clement Mihailescu 16:02
So that's a very good question. It's actually meant for all kinds of levels, like, Oh, we often get asked by people like, hey, are there any prerequisites to this? Or do I need to know something special? Maybe do I need to have taken an algorithms class in college or something to do this to, to, you know, to purchase your product and use it successfully? And the answer is no, you just need really like fundamental programming skills, you know, you you need to know programming.

Clement Mihailescu 16:32
And maybe you need to know basic data structures, like an array or a string, you know, maybe you need to know the concept of a tree. But beyond that, we'd sort of teach you everything through the questions and through the explanatory videos that accompany each question. And then, you know, even senior engineers would benefit a ton from from our website because at the end of the day, the coding interviews will be asking The same kinds of questions, they might just be assessing a senior candidate at a higher bar.

Laurence Bradford 17:06
Gotcha. Gotcha. So I don't want to get into too much detail about this cuz I know people can just, you know, go to your website and check it out themselves. But I just feel like teaching someone how to answer a whiteboard question online. That seems kind of difficult, or I don't know, like, how do you communicate like how to answer or how do you like test people? Is it the kind of thing where they you give them a problem? They try to solve it in a certain amount of time, and then you give them the explanation or like, yeah, how does it like work?

Clement Mihailescu 17:37
Right. So what, and again, this sort of all came from what I felt would have been amazing to prepare with back when I was preparing for my coding interviews. But what I would have loved would have been to be able to sort of open some kind of online editor, be given a list of questions that I can pick from, and then start putting out my answer to them. question and then you know, have a run code button where I can sort of execute my code and see if it passes, sort of premade test cases. So that's what we give to people. That's what we give to people who use the platform, they can write out their code for all of our questions. And they can actually execute it against premade test cases that we use that we have.

Clement Mihailescu 18:20
So they can know whether or not you know, their, their code is correct. And then we have a bunch of other features like hints and you know, other things for the online editor. And then we also have a part from our written solutions. We have these very comprehensive video explanations that are filmed by me were really go in depth and the sort of conceptual overview of the algorithm like how does this work conceptually, I use a whiteboard to kind of explain it out. And then I go into the actual code and explain line by line. Why I'm doing something like why am I doing a for loop here? Why am I doing Why am I using recursion here? And that's sort of how we get to explain to people you know how these complex algorithms work through an online platform.

Laurence Bradford 19:11
Sit tight podcast listeners, we're taking a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors.

Laurence Bradford 19:17
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Laurence Bradford 20:36
Gotcha. So you mentioned that you started algo expert with a co founder, right? Yes. So is it just you to then working on this behind the scenes or like how does that kind of balance look?

Clement Mihailescu 20:51
Yeah, so at this point, we were three people working on this. My co founder and I are still sort of the the main few people at the forefront. We have a third person who's also close friend of ours who's really helping us with some of the engineering. We haven't we haven't expanded beyond these three people.

Laurence Bradford 21:12
Got it. And I'm curious, like, do all three of you also work full time? So is this kind of like all your side project?

Clement Mihailescu 21:19
Yep. Yep, we all do. And the funny part is that we also all live in different locations. So I live, I'm based in the New York City area. And my co founder is based in the Bay Area in Silicon Valley. And my other co founder, our third partner is sort of in the middle of America. He's in the what is the central time zone?

Laurence Bradford 21:46
That's really cool. So I'd love to hear more about, like, working full time and having an entrepreneurial endeavor at the same time.

Clement Mihailescu 21:56
Yeah, so I would say that I'm happy to answer You know, perhaps more specific questions, but I would say the first thing that comes to mind there's really just, it's a lot of work. Both both actual work, you know, just like you have to double or triple the amount of normal work you'd have, but also a lot of sort of mental work because you you have to be able you have to sort of like it you have to be perhaps a work is the wrong word, but I guess like, there's mental energy to do all this work, if that makes sense.

Laurence Bradford 22:31
Yeah, definitely. And you've been doing it for what the algo expert has been around for three years now?

Clement Mihailescu 22:37
Well, yeah, yes. I guess that were creeping up on more like two years and a half, two years.

Laurence Bradford 22:43
Wow. Yeah, that's a long time to be doing like the to kind of be having two jobs you know, at the same time, but again, it's really awesome idea do you have so because people listening to the show love to hear these kinds of things like productivity tips, do you have anything like that you could share about how you maybe manage your schedule Or like work, but between the two things?

Clement Mihailescu 23:03
Yeah. So it's hard to say because I think, oftentimes productivity tips tend to be, or at least I've found they tend to be like unique to the person, when one thing that I've found was really important for me was to really separate the two things out. In other words, like, when I am focusing on algo expert, that's all I'm focusing on, I'm not going to be thinking about work and other things. When I'm focusing on work work, what I call work working on sort of real, quote, unquote, day to day job, that's I'm focusing purely on that completely eliminating any thought of anything else. That was something that that helped me a lot. And then otherwise, I guess, like, you know, just basically like really asking yourself, is this something that I value and that I want to do and if yes, Just go for it. Like if yes, it's almost sort of obvious, you know, like, of course, I'm just, of course, I'm going to do this, I love it.

Clement Mihailescu 24:08
If it's not an obvious, yes, then maybe, you know, you have to sort of reassess. Because sometimes, like, it's gonna be really difficult. And there were times when, you know, now now that we're two and a half years in, we're sort of starting to see a lot of tangible rewards from this business. Because, you know, we were starting to grow a lot, we still have a lot of room to grow, but you know, we're seeing more of the tangible rewards. In the earlier days, there was a lot of like, you know, we're just sort of putting a ton of work, not really getting anything in return, you put 80 hours of work, and you don't, you know, you still haven't gotten your first paying customer. That can be a struggle, if you're not really passionate about it, or if you're not really wanting to do it does that make sense?

Laurence Bradford 25:01
Oh, yeah, totally. I just interviewed another guest. So I see because I we're not sure on the order of episodes like sign up for the listeners, right? Sometimes you record episodes, we know the order that they're going to go out. And sometimes we're not sure yet we just the schedule later. So I'm not sure if this will be live before or after yours. But we were having a kind of similar conversation about side projects and having the motivation to work on them. And he was based because he had tried a bunch of different ones before finding one that kind of clicked and worked for him. And he was like, because I hate like the other ones. They had good like market research, they made sense. People wanted the things but I personally just hated it.

Laurence Bradford 25:40
Like I didn't like I wasn't interested in the topic, but I didn't care about it wasn't passionate about it. And because of that it was hard to wake up on Saturday mornings or to work at night on this thing because like I didn't have you know, the the passion for helping people in this area. So once he started doing something that he actually liked doing and enjoyed it was As you I think just said earlier, it's like if it's not obvious, yes, it's gonna be really hard to work on as a side project. And I 100% agree with that. Because I too, had gone through things. You know, years ago when I before I started learning to code me a few other ideas that I had of like other websites that maybe on paper made sense, but I, I would work on the idea for a week and I was like, oh, my goodness, I cannot do this anymore. It's just so boring to me. So, so yeah, no, totally, totally understand that. I would. So you were just working at Google for three years, right?

Clement Mihailescu 26:34
Uh two years, two months and eight days.

Laurence Bradford 26:37
Okay. Very exact two years, two months, eight days. What was it like working there? Right, like one of the top tech companies in the world What were you you know, kind of working on what does your day look like at Google?

Clement Mihailescu 26:49
So it's really incredible. I I'd like to think that I got lucky in that. I I landed on an amazing team working on an amazing product and project that just sort of was perfect for someone like me. I worked on a user interface for a specific product on Google Cloud Platform. So if you're not familiar, Google Cloud Platform is the sort of, I guess, cloud provider service that Google offers. It's sort of the equivalent of Amazon Web Services at Google. And you know, it's funny, because when I first joined, it wasn't a product that I really knew about. It wasn't something that any of my friends or family knew about, you know, it wasn't something like Google search or YouTube. But it ended up being really awesome because it is very fast growing right now. So it was very fast paced, and it got to teach me a lot about this industry like the sort of cloud industry Were, I think like, there's just a lot to learn it was very valuable. And then putting that aside here, I guess I was talking more about the product and team that I was on. But it's just been an amazing time for me to grow as an engineer as a person. It's just a great company to work at.

Laurence Bradford 28:19
Yeah, and I said this earlier, but it's absolutely amazing, in my opinion that you were able to land a job there, you know, right after college ready for coding boot camp, it was like your first real job.

Laurence Bradford 28:31
So I would love to hear what advice you have for someone who is either teaching themselves or they just graduated a coding boot camp, to getting a job at a top 10 at a top tech company like you did.

Clement Mihailescu 28:45
Right. So I think that, as with everything in life, there's always going to be a little bit of luck involved. So that's just one thing to note. And I say this mainly because you know, I don't want people to get discouraged if something doesn't work out for them. Oftentimes, it's a matter of luck, especially in the landing the interview phase. But of course, you know, the more persistent you are, and the more you The more you keep applying. And the more you keep sort of contacting people and recruiters, the higher chance you'll have to actually land the interviews.

Clement Mihailescu 29:21
But then as far as you know, preparing for the interviews, passing them and then landing the job. That's really just it. Like, all you have to do once you have the interview, to get that job is to pass these interviews, and these interviews are going to be the coding interviews that we were sort of talking about when we're talking about algo expert, which is obviously a you know, platform to prepare for them. So what I would really say for someone to someone who wants to land those jobs is make sure you prepare for those coding interviews. Make sure you don't underestimate them. And, you know, just do your best in that in that interview room. Because that's Probably like that one day of on site interviews, and maybe the phone interview, if you have one will be the primary thing in between the job, and yeah.

Laurence Bradford 30:15
Yeah, I didn't ask this earlier on, you're talking about like your journey. But did you have any other in person coding interviews before? you're one at Google?

Clement Mihailescu 30:25
I had. So let me think because it was a it was a very, it was a very brutal sort of funnel coming out of a coding boot camp. You know, I applied, I know, hundreds of jobs had a maybe a dozen companies sort of call back. The others were just sort of like automatic objections where they don't even consider you. And then from there, you know, only maybe half of those actually invited me to an interview. So I would say I had probably a total like, four or five on site interviews along side Google.

Laurence Bradford 31:01
Gotcha. So I was asking because I was just curious if like you had any other practice doing it, like, in real life, like in front of, you know, an interview panel or hiring manager or what have you. But okay, so sounds like you did for several other companies. But because you're mentioning applying to hundreds of, you know, jobs online, and then the position at Google, you messaged the recruiter directly on LinkedIn. Was that something you were doing from like the beginning, like messaging different recruiters from companies? Or is that something that you kind of were like, maybe instead of applying on the website, I should, you know, hit up someone who works there.

Clement Mihailescu 31:40
Yeah, I would say it's, I guess, a combination of the two because on the one side, you know, people in the coding boot camp and even people that when I was in college, had told me, you know, often heard like, yeah, contacting people on LinkedIn can be beneficial. But, you know, sometimes it can be a little daunting or sometimes you just don't really, I guess it's easier to submit a resume. online. So at first I was getting mostly the applications, then I tried to switch it up a bit, even there sort of hit or miss a lot of times you won't get an answer on LinkedIn. Um, but here I did, and, you know, it sort of worked out.

Laurence Bradford 32:15
Yeah, I feel like so just in my, in my own experience, I my last job I got from applying online, which like everyone says, or a lot of people say you never apply online, find mutual connections through you know, LinkedIn or other social networks or try to meet some at the coffee and kind of go through these backchannel ways, which I totally think works. And actually, I do think that probably has a much higher success rate. But I also do think that you know, messaged big applying online can still work to definitely you know, work for me in the past and it can be easier I think it's just like trying a lot of different things and you know, changing it up and seeing what works, what doesn't work because as you just said, not everyone checks LinkedIn. Like I feel bad.

Laurence Bradford 32:57
I know people will message me on LinkedIn sometimes and I just lately have not been checking my LinkedIn messages for any kind of communication. So I think just it depends on like the person and what they're using and what time of life they're in. But anyway, to kind of like wrap up the conversation, I would love if you could share parting advice for people who want to learn more about algorithms and data structures.

Clement Mihailescu 33:21
So if you want to learn more about algorithms and data structures, I'd say, first of all, you know, make sure that you have those sort of fundamental coding skills under your belt. If not, I would try to first jump into that, and then, you know, then dive into algorithms and data structures. But if you're there already, then of course, you know, I would I'm gonna you know, shamelessly promote algo expert just because, you know, we've, we've received tons of very, very positive feedback from our customers who've said that it's been a very good way to, to learn about them and to prepare for the coding interviews, of course, if you want to go even beyond that, You can get actual you know algorithm textbooks that might be way more comprehensive. And for those I think there are a couple of popular ones one is called clrs that's a really famous one. But yeah, that's what I would suggest.

Laurence Bradford 34:15
Awesome and for people on the Learn to Code With Me email listen in our audience listen to this podcast we do have a special discount for Algo Expert 30% off I'll have the coupon code in the URL after the interview is over. And I'll give you all the info there it'll also be on the show notes so you can just you know, click through the link directly. Anyhow, thank you so much for coming on the show. Where else can people where else can people find you online aside from you know, Algo Expert?

Clement Mihailescu 34:44
Yeah, so I recently started a YouTube channel that's been growing pretty pretty well lately, so I'm really excited about that. You can find me there. It's just my full name you know, typing Clements. Me I left you on, on YouTube are Clements Google and you should probably find me there and otherwise LinkedIn, and on Algo Expert.

Laurence Bradford 35:03
All right, perfect. Thank you so much again for coming on.

Clement Mihailescu 35:06
Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

Laurence Bradford 35:13
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with comment. If you missed any of that or would like to recap, the Show Notes for this episode can be found at learntocodewith.me/podcast. If you're listening to this episode in the future, simply click the Search icon in the upper navigation and type in Clement's name. And remember, if you're going to be applying for tech jobs anytime soon, you can prepare for your coding interview using Algo Expert. Don't forget to get your 30% discount by going to learntocodewith.me/algoexpert and using the coupon code, LTCWM, which stands for Learn to Code With Me. If you end up purchasing Algo Expert I will get a small commission for referring now. Thank you so much for tuning in today and I'll see you next time.

Key takeaways:

  • It is possible to land a job straight out of a bootcamp with minimal experience and a relevant degree. Not necessarily easy, but possible!
  • The more persistent you are and the more applying/outreach you do, the better your chance of landing an interview
  • Doing a side gig alongside a full-time job doesn’t just take up time, but mental energy too. You’ll need to be intentional about keeping balance in your life.
  • While you’re working on your side gig, try to eliminate all thoughts of your day job and vice versa.
  • Make sure you really value and want to do your side gig—if it’s not an obvious yes, maybe reassess because it’s a lot of work for little reward at first.

Links and mentions from the episode:

*Update (Nov 2019): Laurence mentions in the episode that you can get 30% off AlgoExpert. This has since been reduced to 15%.

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You might also like…

My free ebook 28 Ways to Earn a Side Income While Learning How to Code walks you through 28 different side gigs you can do to turn your tech skills into dollars—even if you’re just starting out. Download it for free at learntocodewith.me/sidegig.