Hamza Khawaja on LinkedIn: Netflix doesn’t have regular Software Engineers, they only have Senior… | 128 comments (2024)

For Muslims finding themselves time-strapped in the last few nights of Ramadan:Heading into Ramadan's final stretch, many of us might be looking for ways to boost our worship despite tight schedules or the desire for deeper connection.I’ve been playing around with Muslim-founded apps and Muslim tech has actually improved a surprising amount in the past year. Here are 3 Muslim-founded apps that stood out the most (note: this is not sponsored):1. Niyyah, a bite-sized Quran quiz app that helps you deeply reflect on the Quran through 8-question quizzes. This is great if you have <5 minutes and want to understand and reflect on core ayaat in a particular surah or a juz.2. Tarteel AI, an AI-powered Quran app with voice search and mistake detection. This can be great for commuters who’d want to recite while driving and feel their phone vibrate + beep when they make a mistake. 3. Quranic: the Quranic Arabic Learning App, a bite-sized Duolingo for Quranic Arabic that teaches you the most frequently seen words in the Quran through quizzes. Also takes <5 minutes. If there are any other apps that you’ve had great experiences with, feel free to let me know in the comments. And feel free to tag a fellow Muslim who may find any of these apps helpful.

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Peloton just laid off 1 in 5 employees a few hours ago.Peloton employees are some of the most qualified in their respective roles.If you’re hiring, please let Peloton employees know in the comments below. I’ve also included a gSheet in the comments with both open roles and the employees affected by the layoff.We’re also hiring for a bunch of fresh roles at Ripcord (Series B and backed by Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Steve Wozniak). Ripcord's openings: https://lnkd.in/gfnVKwbc. Chat with us and we'll get you a decision very soon.

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To show you what these answer choices mean, let me tell you a few stories.I had a friend who interned at a company where his manager often spoke to the rest of the team in a different language despite it being clear that my friend only understood English. Being the only intern on the team, he felt very uncomfortable, discouraged, and excluded. This is an example of a “People Challenge”.Another intern I know had a project that required permissions to several tools and services. His mentor and manager weren’t too responsive over Slack and other team members kept pointing him to others, who pointed him to others, who pointed him back to his original team members. As a result, it took him a while before he could start contributing. This is an example of a “Communication Challenge”.And lastly, I knew an intern who had taken PhD-level machine learning courses, had done previous ML internships, and was excited for this next internship where the hiring manager told him he’d be working on ML-based anomaly detection. He didn’t end up doing any of that — his team only needed him to write SQL. This is an example of an “Expectations misalignment”.And the “Internship project” poll option is exactly what you’d expect.And if I'm missing an option, feel free to drop a comment.

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InternshipsTip #39. How to set yourself up to contribute to complex codebases ASAP.I recently made a post asking interns which questions they want answered, and this was the most popular question. Here are a few tips, in no particular order.Intention. Accept the fact that you can’t contribute to a large codebase overnight. If you tell yourself otherwise, you’re being overconfident, deceiving yourself, and you won’t be as receptive to guidance from other engineers. Be a sponge.Your mentor. Make sure you figure out who your assigned mentor is, how often they’re okay with being asked questions, which parts of the codebase they’re very familiar with, and who the experts are for the other parts.Pre-work. Explore the codebase extensively on your own with your objective in mind, and write down all of the questions that, when answered, will allow you to start writing code. You always want to do your homework before asking for answers.The author knows best. Go to the author of the relevant function, file, or service in the codebase with all of your pre-written questions. Ask them about their design decisions, what’s unclear to you, and anything else that’s stopping you from contributing.The faintest ink is better than the sharpest memory. When someone explains something to you, make sure you have the SAME understanding as them, then jot it down as YOU understand it. These notes are critical for reference, and you won’t have to have people repeat themselves a bunch of times.Note: I’ve learned many of these points from my friends Muhammad Hasan Khan and Andrew Tan. Thank you both.Tag a fellow Software Engineering Intern that may find this useful.

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To all interns:What’s one question you want answered by next week?

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If you go to a school that’s quarter-based, you’re probably just starting your internship now.Here’s a tip that’ll make your manager, team, and future interns love you.As you go through the whole onboarding process, methodically take note of everything you do in a document titled “<Team Name> Intern Onboarding Guide”.In the guide, clearly document every step of things like the following:1. An overview of your team and how it fits into your org, and how your org fits into the grander company2. Company and team-specific acronyms that sound alien to you and their definitions.3. Key people to message for access to dev tools if you’re writing code4. Employees outside of your team that are important to meet5. Who on your team is the go-to expert for different topics6. Maybe even drop a couple of tips on company perks you really enjoyed (e.g. Some companies allow interns to expense headphones and most interns don’t realize this)And you’re done. Send it over to your manager so that the next intern on the team will have a much easier time.Everybody wins.

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InternshipsTip #38. When a recruiter ghosts you, it’s not your fault.If you’ve hunted for internships or jobs, you’ve definitely been ghosted. This might sound sound painfully familiar: “Hey, just following up!”, and then “Just following up again!”, and so on.After a few follow-ups, it’s more than normal for doubts to creep in— “Am I good enough for this role?”, “Did I do something wrong?”, “Was I rude?”, etc.It’s not your fault at all. Here are a few common reasons why we get ghosted:1. They’re really busy. Some recruiters are going back and forth with over 20 candidates at a time. They can’t remember you the same way that you remember them.2. They're looking for a specific skill (e.g. SQL).3. Your year in college. If you’re a freshman or a sophom*ore, they may prefer juniors over you. Juniors typically have (1) more experience, (2) the ability to return to their team right after graduating, and (3) may require less training before they can contribute to the project.But do these reasons justify ghosting you? Not at all. Nobody deserves to be ghosted. But it WILL happen, and we should (1) keep these reasons in mind, (2) assume that they don’t have ill intent, and (3) forgive them for any pain and worry they’ve caused us.Have a story? Drop it in the comments!

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For anyone that doesn’t know this, I’m a Muslim. And for all Muslims, Ramadan starts this week. If you aren’t Muslim, you might have a few questions about Ramadan. Here are a few key points:What is Ramadan?—> Muslims fast for 30 consecutive days.What’re the rules of a “fast”? And what do you mean by “consecutive”?—> You can’t eat or drink from dawn to dusk, which is roughly 15 hours for Muslims in the Bay Area. Others have shorter/longer fasts depending on where they live. We do this for 30 consecutive days.Why do we do it?—> To get closer to God.How do our bodies have the strength to do this for 30 days?—> Our stomachs "shrink" after the first few days. There’s a “reduction of several important cellular stomach wall factors” (Mayo Clinic). Towards the end of Ramadan, our bodies feel much closer to our normal state.Fun fact: Hakeem Olajuwon used to play NBA games while fasting. He scored over 40 points in many of those games, and played over 40 minutes in many of them as well (out of 48 total).If you have any questions I didn’t answer about Ramadan, please ask them in the comments, other fellow Muslims and I will try to clear them up :)

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It’s already March of 2021. Crazy how time flies, right?Over the years, I’ve heard people say something like “we’re already deep into the year, there’s way less motivation to form a new habit now”.It’s natural to have these thoughts creep in, but you can avoid them by changing your perspective on habits. Does it take 365-day New Years resolution to create a habit? Nope not at all.Studies have shown that it takes ~40 days to form a habit. Let’s say you have 4 habits you want to form. Just 4. You keep them for 40 days —> they become habits —> you move onto the next 4 and repeat.This is the cool part: there are 9 cycles of 40-day windows in 2021, and forming 4 new habits in each 40-day window will result in 4 * 9 —> 36 new habits formed without spreading yourself thin.Bruce Lee once said, “Long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity”.Long story short, forget New Years Resolutions. Do small things consistently, and they’ll quickly add up.What’re your thoughts on New Years resolutions and habits in general?

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InternshipsTip #37. Do A first, then A and B.Sophom*ore year at UC Berkeley, I worked 70 hrs/wk at Tesla in during Model 3 “Production Hell” and was also a full-time computer science student in school. It only worked out because I accidentally stumbled upon this trick. I happened to start the semester two weeks before my internship started. I realized I had to figure school out quick, since I wouldn’t have the time later. I participated heavily in Week 1 classes so the professors knew me personally. I told my professors about my situation in Week 2, and they trusted me.I then found strong project partners that were willing to work with my schedule.By the time Tesla started, I knew exactly what to expect from school.Takeaway: start one commitment earlier, gauge how you can do it with excellence in the least amount of time, and then take the second commitment on. Why does this work?1. Gradual change is always better than sudden.2. Humans are best at focusing on one thing at a time. 𝙇𝙤𝙣𝙜 𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙧𝙩, Do A first, then A and B. You won’t be overwhelmed, and you won’t be sacrificing your mental health and personal time.Feel free to tag a friend who might find this useful.

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