The Peterman Pod - Neetcode: Google vs Amazon, Programming Interviews, Quitting Big Tech

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Neetcode is the most well-known coding interview prep creator with over 1M+ subs on YouTube. I interviewed him about the latest on coding interviews, his career at Amazon vs Google, and what it was like quitting big tech to do his own thing.• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-donePodcast links:• YouTube: https://youtu.be/K15dND_Kfvg• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/neetcode-google-vs-amazon-programmingThank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/Timestamps:(00:00) Intro(00:33) Quitting Amazon after 2 months(06:00) Testing Neetcode on Leetcode(12:57) Memorizing vs deriving solutions and intelligence(16:13) The story behind Neetcode(22:24) Getting a job at Google(27:47) How it was quitting big tech(29:38) What he hated most about Google(30:52) Top technical book recommendation(32:34) Advice for his younger self(33:46) OutroWhere to find Neetcode:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/navdeep-singh-3aaa14161/• Twitter/X: https://x.com/neetcode1• His website: https://neetcode.io/• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NeetCodeIO• GitHub: https://github.com/neetcode-gh• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neetcodeio/• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@neetcode.io• Discord: https://discord.gg/ddjKRXPqtkWhere to find Ryan:• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpetermanReferenced in this episode:• Neetcode's "Maybe Some People Should Just Give Up" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsoEipuwXiI• Designing Data-Intensive Applications: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable/dp/B08VL1BLHB

Anyway, I'll stop, I'll stop to him before I, like, do more reputational damage. This is Neat Code. He's the most well-known creator teaching coding interview prep, and I asked him all about LeetCode and his career story at Google and Amazon. Where does that place you in the percentile of all ELOs? I don't know how people are going to feel about this. How is your experience quitting Google and doing your own thing full-time? I don't know if I should say this, but it's been like seven years at this point. Do you ever miss Google?

A lot. Like, I missed. Here's the full episode. You ended up unemployed? What was going on at the time? Yeah, it's a funny story, I guess, now in hindsight. But basically, like, I started working. I got my first full-time offer at Amazon.

I had heard it was, like, you know, like a pretty tough environment from, like, the online stuff, the things that you see on Reddit are blind. But for some reason, I just wasn't, like, nervous. I just thought, like, okay, it'll be fine. And as much as I would use the word intense, I think it was more so that it was like a culture shock for me, which is like I was very like introverted and do like too many activities or extracurriculars. And then so being in a place where it's not really academic. It's like there's a lot that goes into like having like a full time job and like working with people and like all those other things. That was really, really tough for me.

And so among like other reasons, like Amazon was not like the ideal environment in how. hindsight, I probably could have survived if I had to redo it, but I just didn't really know things at that point. And so for whatever reason, I just decided to quit after like a couple months. And it was just a really dumb decision because it's not like I had like a backup plan or I was like, I was broke. Like I couldn't afford to quit, but I still did it anyway. So it was just I'm glad it worked out, but I wouldn't probably recommend it to most people. What did you see at Amazon that made you want to quit so quickly? Yeah. So it was like I said, A very intense environment, but I think many people have dealt with that.

I think there's intense environments that are like people are still happy. People are like trying to perform like at the top of their game. And it's like kind of like a almost like a sport, I guess, where people are super competitive and they want to do the best that they can. But there are other environments, I think, that are like super cutthroat. And it's not people trying to do their best. It's like people, you can tell people are not like rooting for each other. Like people are, I wouldn't say they're trying to like screw each other over.

I wasn't really there long enough to judge that. But you can tell people are not friendly. Like there were some like meetings, like ice breakers that we had. And like nobody like all. It was like 10 people. Like five of us were like new grads. Literally we all had joined within the first month. The other half were like super burnt out experienced people like like mid level and seniors and stuff.

And they were just like very unhappy. And that like spreads pretty quickly to the rest. the team and like I said like I think every other new grad on the team probably survived that experience I didn't really keep in touch with them I don't think they probably got pipped or whatever but it was clearly like most people left that team I think like within a year like I have them all added on LinkedIn so they were not happy there either I don't think what gave you the confidence to just quit your job so quickly yeah I think it was like a very uncharacteristic thing of me I think I was like 22 and like it's so weird because

is right before I had started that job, I was like, I'm on top of the world. Like, I'm like, everything is going so well. Like I have, like, I was, I was broken. Now I have like a job and like, okay, like it might be stressful, but like, I'll have it for the rest of my life or maybe I'll switch to another job. Like it's so crazy. Like how quickly. Like I was like literally on the moon and it all just like plummeted overnight.

Like it was like my first day. My manager is like, okay, like the team's a little burnt out trying to ask too many questions. And so I'm just like, okay. Like, whoa, like, what's going on? It was like a horror movie. Like, it keeps getting worse and worse. But, yeah, anyways. Did you have to do leechode to get that job?

Yeah, you know, the funny thing is, I don't know if I should say this, but it's been like seven years at this point. The lead code questions for Amazon were actually, like, surprisingly easy. People always say that you can cheat now. At that point, I don't remember the exact question. It was like some variation of two-sum and questions that really weren't that different. They really grill you on the leadership principles, though. And I think it's important to be at least a little bit honest with that because I think, like, I lied for every single question for that.

Because it's like a personality test. It's like, okay, if you're in this situation, what would you do? And I know what they're looking for. Like, they're looking for, like, the personality type who has, like, high agency. Like, they're not really scared. They're going to take risks and they're going to just, you know, they're going to show up and stuff. And so I gave answers like that, but that's really not my personality. personality it's like very like the opposite where like I'm very risk averse and like I try not to

like mess things up and like I take initiative but at Amazon like they want like really high initiative where like you're on your first day you're just like making decisions so it took some like getting used to well I ask is when I when I was doing recruitment I remember this is a long time ago Amazon they did some weird thing where they had like this group SAT at my college where they sat down hundreds of us and gave us these it's a sequence of logic puzzles basically it would be something like this makes it this makes it sound really trivial but it'd be like multiple choice and be like you know a b c d colon and then it'd be like you know uh e f g blank what's the remaining like it's just you know continue the pattern kind of stuff i think i had something like that actually

It was like an online thing. It was like one section of it, though. You said you weren't good at LeakCode to begin with. And I mean today, like let's say I don't know how practiced you are right now. If I gave you the hardest LeakCode hard, could you solve it? No problem? Probably not. And I don't think I was ever actually that good.

Like because leak code is like such a big spectrum where it's like as you get better, most people can't really tell the difference between like a good engineer and like a 10x engineer. And that's like the level like that most people I think see like leak code where like somebody who's really, really good at leak code hards. Like they're just indistinguishable. But there's like there's other platforms like code forces I think is like the other big one where it's like the distribution is really like known because you'll be like on the completely other end of like somebody else who's better than you. But you might be the same like on the leak code spectrum as they are. But like on a different platform, it's much wider. But I guess to answer your question.

Yeah, I'm not I'm like decent still surprisingly like if you do something for years It's actually hard to forget it and I just kept making videos for years even when I didn't need to So like I'm pretty like practice with like the core patterns I could look at a problem and like tell you like what the solution might be But it'd be harder to like actually like hand code it up especially now that I feel like most people aren't like hand typing code anymore including myself So yeah it'd probably be tough what percent of like le could mediums could you do right now. If I just test you right now, so, you know, do this one or whatever. I mean, I'd be curious, but I don't, not too, not all of them for sure. I think for the vast majority of them, I could probably at least tell you like what the solution would be or like roughly like the pattern. Do you want to do a

leak code? Yeah, we can try it. So I was genuinely curious to see how good he was at leak code. And so we actually did do an impromptu leak code whiteboarding session where I asked him nothing but leech code hards and he had no time to prepare. If you're curious to see how he did, I uploaded it to my YouTube channel separately because it didn't fit in the podcast. Anyways, back to the original conversation. You mentioned the code forces. I think they have an ELO system in that, right? Right. This is my mental model is, there's, there's leak code is actually just the beginning. And lead code easy is you're, you're just barely doing it. Leak code mediums, you get jobs. Leac code hards, you're a bit better. But there's, you can go past that many standard deviations into code forces.

And so where, where do you think roughly, uh, someone who can pass interviews decently well? Let's say they can do lead code mediums pretty well. Where does that place you in the percentile of all ELOs, did you say? Yeah. So that's really, I guess kind of funny. And I don't know how people are going to feel about this. Because I've, I talked to a lot of people. I've spoken to a lot of people over the last few years.

And some people have the mentality that, like, if you want to get a job at big tech today, most of them are still doing some variation of, like, leak code. They think that they need to, like, be able to do the hardest questions, like, super hards. And if they failed their interview, it's just because they weren't able to do all the leak code hards and somebody else did. Unfortunately, that's not what usually happens. The people who are passing their interviews, it's not that, like, they're dumb. Like, they are competent and they're just as good as, like, anybody else. most likely they were just asked a question that they were able to answer and the other person

just wasn't. And I mean, that's provided you meet like some bar of like, okay, you kind of know like the core patterns that you'd be able to solve a question you've already seen before and stuff like that. So I think unfortunately like the answer is like it's wider than you think there isn't like an average. I think you could be pretty like low on that end and still pass interviews. You could be pretty high and fail some interviews. But if you're like really high, probably you won't fail most of them because it's like a numbers game at that point. But I think the average is lower than a lot of people think. I think if you can solve like some leak code mediums, like a third of leak code mediums,

you have a pretty good chance, I think, of like passing in an interview. One story that really showed me how big the gaps are is this was in college. Google hosted some event where they invited all these colleges to bring their, you know, a team to go and compete in this set of puzzles. And one of the rounds was just pure competitive programming. The other ones were like Word Association and some other things. But then the competitive programming one, my team was full of people that were all stacked in terms of getting jobs.

Like lead code was no problem for them. But these problems were so hard. I think there was like 13. And no one got any of them. And then one of the guys on our team was, he was a little bit, he was much better than all of us. And he carried us and he did like three problems out of like the 13. But the crazy thing is there's another college there was Caltech. They did all 13 and they just destroyed us.

Damn. So like, you know, there are levels to this stuff. It's really crazy. So I interviewed someone who's a complexity theorist. I want to know. So clearly competitive programmers, that's above leak coding. Where is complexity theory on all this stuff, right? I feel like to do something and to like learn it or to just do anything, the best way to do it is to like actually do it. And so like if you're training like another skill, it doesn't really work it out like the same way. I guess to use like an analogy, even like muscles. I feel like I could be wrong about this.

But if you're doing like a leg press machine, it doesn't actually help you that much for your. squat, like, you'd think it would because it's like the exact same muscle, but for some reason it actually doesn't. It'll make like a very small difference. And I think that's how a lot of life works. If you're like preparing like for competitive programming specifically, you'll get pretty good at that, but maybe like your communication will suck during like the actual interview or you'll miss something else. In my case, I did a lot of videos. And I think that actually doesn't make you that much better at solving the problems at a certain point because it's more of a distraction. Because it's like if you take like four hours to make a video, most of that is spent making the video and trying to understand like somebody else's perspective rather than making yourself better.

So if I had to guess, I don't think like the complexity theorists are probably like as good under like time constraints and like typing as fast as they can. But maybe for like really like hard problems, they can probably like, I don't know, they've probably just seen way more stuff. So they can kind of like recall something like, okay, like maybe this like algorithm or this technique will work on this problem or something. Because a lot of them get like really, really elaborate at that level where you like need like some really crazy obscure algorithm you could have possibly heard of. There's this idea. I think this was true throughout when I was learning math and, you know, various things in school. This is this idea of like deriving something when you need it and then memorization in this hierarchy. Deriving it is the true intelligence.

That's where you really, you know, you come up in the. to the math. You don't know the formulas, but you're good with math and you can figure it out on the fly. What percent of performance in Leak Code do you think is just people memorizing the solutions versus, you know, deriving things when they hear the question? If I had the guess, and even just from like speaking with people, I'd say like at least 90 percent of people just kind of memorizing one way or another, which I think is fine because if you look at like the entire problem, of like interview preparation. There's a lot to cover and you just can't like possibly do it yourself. But the other thing I will say is that you can't just memorize. You do have to like, this is what makes it really hard because you have to cover a lot of stuff. But at the same time, you have to like build at least some of the skills to like understand what's going on. So you're

not just like blindly memorizing or you're not like asking yourself, okay, should I do like DFS or BFS? Like you should still have like some like high level understanding. And that's, That's really hard, I think, like actually, like, covering things in, like, a smart way. I guess since we're talking about this memorization versus driving, and you've taught so many people, leak code, is leak code an accurate assessment of intelligence? I think definitely not. I think there's components to it. I think, like, is the SAT, like, a sign of intelligence? I think not really, but it's a sign of, like, a lot of things that correlate with it.

And some subset of it surely isn't intelligence because it's not like a dog could like pass those tests or like do an elite code problem or something. So like, yeah. But I think it's, I don't know. I think people get like caught up on that because then they like they see some people doing well and some people aren't. And they're like, well, it just must be intelligence or something else. Like maybe partially, but I think that's it's not just that like I'm just saying this just to say it. But I actually believe it now. Like after meeting so many people and like seeing so much stuff.

And I'm sure you've seen so many like high performing people and you've spoken to a lot of like guests and stuff. I feel like the number one thing, the number one bottleneck is usually like some level of enjoyment or passion or work ethic or just something of that nature where like somebody keeps doing something. Because I don't think I really did anything that special. All I did was just made a lot of leak code videos when most people wouldn't have been willing to do that or just not had the time to do that. And I think that's what most things boil down to. Like a lot of the really smart people that you have on the podcasts, I think they just enjoyed what they did and then just kept doing it and then built their life around that. And then it just becomes that.

I think the people usually, in terms of leak code, they're usually people that either did a lot of math or programming or some kind of like math club when they were kids. Like to get to a certain level, like the code forces level and stuff, you just have to have done that since you were a kid. Like if you're a chess player, like you have to just start early. What kept you making these lead code videos for so long? Because you have hundreds of them. One thing I guess I didn't like about school. And for the most part, I liked school. But I was thought that like the computer science classes especially, especially like every time we would get to a part where it's like starting to get really interesting, like whether it's databases or like ML or something else.

Like you get to the end of the class and you do like your random project or whatever. And then you like you kind of know like the core stuff. of that that class. And then that's the part where I want to like go 10 times deeper. I just want to like do one thing and then do it really, really well. I think that's why I wasn't like in terms of like being the best developer I could be. I think I'm better at like other things than than that.

And I think when I got to delete code, I just like enjoyed that. And I felt productive as I was doing it even though like it really wasn't on paper. I was like making a video getting like 50 views. And I was enjoying that, but it wasn't like I was ever going to like make a living off of this or anything. So I just kept doing it just because I was like stubborn. I enjoyed it. And I was, I thought I was like helping people as well.

So I just stuck with it. You had this one video. I remember it was like maybe some people should just give up. Or what was that the title? It was like maybe some people should just give up. And yeah, I guess I question to you is do you think that anyone could be good at Lee Kodar? some people inherently not able to do it. I think the vast majority of people, especially anybody who, like, is a programmer and likes

programming, I think they could get to that point. I think the, I mean, they might feel like they're not smart enough and, like, they might feel that like many steps along the way. And I think that will probably, like, burn them out before they can, like, get to that point. Because it's not like any, everyone wants to do everything. Like, if they want to, like, pass their interviews or for whatever reason they need to, I think they could probably do that.

but I think most people will find that there are other, like, most people decide for whatever reason that there are better ways to spend their time. Like most people will start the leak code grind and then give up. They're like, okay, screw this. Like I'm going to get a job another way. I'm going to network. Like I'm not about to like do 300 leak code problems. And that's perfectly fine, I think. But yeah.

So when you say that maybe some people should just give up, what's your take on? Okay. Yeah, I don't like I don't recommend anybody to give up. I really don't. I swear. I like for me like I want the opposite. I really do. Like I want people to like push themselves and to be like the best that they can be.

And I don't know. I guess it's just that like the reason I made that video I guess is like there's a certain attitude that I feel like it just really like turns you off. Like sometimes you'll see it in school, especially like early. school where like half the class like is paying attention and half the class just doesn't really care and that's fine. But it's like, I don't know, it's like the more seriously you take something and you spend like a bunch of time like making this video explaining all these parts and somebody asks you a question that like you know they could have answered. It just makes me like disappointed. It just makes me think like I know you're better than this. Like like you can you you can figure it out

yourself like you can like you're smarter like you're too smart to like give up that early. That's like how I feel, but obviously like the words that I said and like say it a certain way, like I recognize that people aren't going to interpret it that way. So I have to live with that. But I think I had a lot of people. I'd say like 95% of people actually like liked that video, like clicked like on that video, which was surprising to me. Most people that like reached out or commented, they said that, hey, like I needed to hear this. This was like a wake up call. And I had somebody like message me before they're like Microsoft intern interview and they're like, hey, like I really needed this. Like, I really needed this. Like, I really needed this. Like, I. I'm going to lock in for the next couple weeks. And I was like, okay, I guess I'll leave that video up because at least somebody got something out of it. But yeah. I see. So the energy in that is it's like a disappointed teacher. Yeah.

Disappointed. Yeah, because why would I make videos that are teaching people and then on the same side, like tell people that they should give up and not do this? Like it doesn't make sense. And yeah, so like I said, I can live with like what I said. It wasn't the nicest thing. if I could do it over again, probably whatever. I think like the only thing I said in that video, though,

I think that was actually offensive is that I can't believe somebody would ask me this dumb. And I said another word after that. And I said, literally the worst thing I said. I didn't make it personal with that person. I didn't call anybody like not smart enough or anything. But yeah, anyway, I'll stop there before I like do more reputational damage. When you, when you were recording this. you know, video, because what I liked the video, by the way, but when I saw the packaging and,

you know, it was like this unhinged thing that you had dropped. Were you worried at all on your side? Because you got to record it, watch it over and click send, right? So yeah, I watched that video a couple times actually because I was like, I'm not sure, but like sometimes I'm just like, I think when I made that video, if I could like somehow find a way to harness that energy, I'd have so many viral videos by now, but I really can't. Like, I'll just, like, every, like, few months, I'll just get, like, mad about something and just, like, make a rant video. But I really wasn't planning it.

Like, that video, like, when I looked back at it, it was just a really long, like, ramble where I went off on, like, five different tangents to make my point. I'm like, you know, if I was trying to make a viral video, this could be a little bit, like, better. Open AI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Versel all use this product to make their lives better. And the problem it solves is when you're building SaaS or an AI product and you want to sell to other companies, there's all these requirements you need to meet. There's SSO, there's SCM, there's Rback, there's audit logs. These are all things that take time to integrate, but aren't the main focus of your app. WorkOS is an API layer that lets you meet all of these requirements in just a few lines of code.

So let's say you have a new SaaS product and you want to sell to other companies, WorkOS will solve all of these critical features. your gaps for you. You can check them out at workos.com to learn more and get started. And I appreciate them for supporting my work and sponsoring this podcast. In your career path, I mean, you went to Amazon, you instantly quit and you started making these videos, right? You keep creating these videos and later you get your quote-unquote dream job. Yeah. So when I was making the videos, was I was hoping that somebody would like give me a job interview at some point and I'd like ace it. It took a long time. It took like almost a year.

And then it just happened to be Google. And I was like, you know, I kind of would have actually preferred somebody else so that the interview would be a little bit easier. But I was like, okay, well, like I guess like here goes. And the interview itself, I wasn't very nervous for whatever reason. I guess I just prepared so much. But and then getting into Google, pretty much like you said, it was like my dream job. I think a lot of people, like young college students, they see like a tech company like that. And like once you're in, like you feel like you've made it.

And that's definitely how I felt. And I was making like pretty good money. I was up here in Seattle. And like everything was going well. Like my team was really nice. It was kind of the opposite of Amazon where like everybody is like super friendly and like willing to help. And the work was, I would say fine. Like it was technical at least.

But it wasn't the most interesting. It was a lot of like processes and bureaucracies. So that was kind of boring. But then I got to a point where I felt like I could actually like go full time into like the YouTube neat code thing. And that was pretty risk-averse. Like I probably could have done it actually a lot sooner. And yeah, I really enjoyed my time at Google. But it was just something that I felt like I enjoyed like algorithms and stuff more.

And it was an opportunity that wasn't going to like be there forever. so I just wanted to take it. But I could have definitely seen myself working in big tech my whole life. A lot of people I talk to, they don't feel that way. A lot of people are like, I'm just here until I don't have to be here anymore for how many every years that is. But for me, I was pretty happy just like doing something technical my whole life. You mentioned that some, you know, some like Google's interviews maybe were a certain

level of hardness in leek code. If you would come up with a tier list of like the just purely leek code, so purely which companies ask the hardest lead code questions. And if you pass that bar, you must be pretty great at leak code. What's your tier list? I think the labs ask pretty tough questions these days, like Open AI and Anthropic, but they're not like exactly like the lead codes, traditional leak code format. They're a lot different.

But yeah, I think like it usually just comes down to like the supply and demand, like how many people are trying to get into that company and like how like how many roles does that company actually tried to fill. I feel like the smaller companies are usually harder. You said Open AI Anthropics interview process a little different. How does Open AI and Anthropic do their coding interviews? Yeah, I've heard a lot of mixed things. Like recently what I've heard is that definitely like knowledge of data structures and algorithms will be pretty helpful. Like it's pretty hard to get through it without that. But it's definitely not like elite code interview is what they would say. It's that like there might be components of like an algorithm or like

multiple files or like you're just given like a problem and you kind of have to like reason through it. Some of them mentioned that like they have AI access but I think for Anthropic it's not. And I think the most recent person I asked for Open AI I also said that they don't have AI access, which is really interesting to me. I think like interviews are just kind of really random lately. I'm trying to figure out like where this is going. But it's really impossible. Like I thought it was going to be AI assisted. all these companies are still like figuring it out as they go. So it's, it's been interesting to watch. You went to Google and you liked it, but it sounds like you left because you wanted to pursue full-time.

Like it wasn't like you were running from something. You were going towards lead code and content creation. I remember back in the day, you were faceless. Were you nervous at all to post your face? Yeah, no, it's kind of funny, I guess, because it's been six years now. since I, like, made the YouTube channel. And for the first three years, I think I was faceless. And, like, roughly three years ago this month, I think is when I did it. And so now I've had, like, half and half. And I think it's been great because I've gotten to, like, actually be, like, a person.

And after I did that, I had a lot of people, like, reach out to me. They're like, hey, like, I didn't know, like, you're the guy who did that. Like, hey, like, let me know if you're ever in town, blah, blah, blah. And I guess it was cool to, like, actually, like, meet people. And I don't know, just meet people, I guess, that you can, like, relate to. like content creators like we met as well. Yeah, I mean, so there's a part of me, I guess, that kind of liked the faceless version as well because you just get to be like really introverted and just like not have to like ever deal with people. But people are pretty

nice to me and I don't have any regrets about that. Once in a while, like I'll be out and somebody will like recognize me. And if I'm with a friend, it's like you can kind of like show off or act like you're a big deal. But for the most part, I don't know. I just, yeah, it's been not fun meeting like other nerds and stuff. How is your experience quitting Google? and doing your own thing full-time. I think in my case, I really enjoyed what I was doing, so it was a lot easier for me. I have a lot of people reach out that,

like, they don't really enjoy their jobs, but they don't really know what else they want to do either. I think that's a lot harder. For me, it was just that I liked algorithms and doing things around that, whether it was like building my site or making YouTube videos. And I just kind of leaned into that. And that's been working out for the past few years.

And more recently, trying to like expand into other areas and stuff. But I guess what I've learned is that like I guess passion really matters. And it's like if you're passionate about one thing, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be passionate about everything. But yeah, I think it's, I've definitely had no regrets. I think it's been a success for the most part. But yeah, it's not it's not like perfect. I wouldn't necessarily recommend like every person out there needs to quit their job or do their own side hustle or whatever.

I don't like buy into a lot of that stuff. Do you ever miss Google? A lot. Like I miss, like I can afford food now, but I still miss the free food for some reason. I don't know if you had that experience because they really like make it like in a way

that you'd miss it if you weren't there. Like especially the free coffee and stuff because I'd always get like a latte. But anyways, yeah, I miss, the one thing I miss is the culture because I could like

add my neat code and like I could hire a bunch of people and kind of create my own culture. And it's really nice that you have like the freedom to do that. But I'm not really like a culture builder. I'm more of like a person that just does things or solves problems or whatever. Like I don't consider myself a manager, but I've had to do that a lot the last couple of years. And it's been a learning experience. You mentioned what you miss about Google, but what is it that you hated most about working at Google? That's a good question. I think it's just really slow. Like urgency and like speed doesn't seem to matter, which is fine.

I guess the reason that's a problem because some people would see that and think like, oh, it's like a work life balance paradise. You can kind of just chill and do whatever you want, which is true because there's that side to it. But the other side is that like if you're ambitious or you're trying to like get your project delivered sooner or you're trying to get promoted or just anything, you're going to be fighting against like all that like work life balance culture because you're trying to get somebody else to do something and like you don't want to like put too much pressure on them.

you don't want to like mess with their work life balance because then they're going to mess with yours. And like, yeah, it was just really slow. If you're a technical person, you want to be there because they're not going to probably at Google like cut too many corners. But sometimes you wish they would because it just goes so slow. And like they prioritize processes over actually like making a like an impact for like a customer like getting a project delivered. It's just like, yeah, they care too much I think about like what the engineers think and like what they feel rather than like actually trying to serve like customers. So it's like the opposite of Amazon, I'd say, in that respect. What's the top technical book recommendation for software engineers?

Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I guess I really liked DDIA designing data intensive applications. I just spoke with somebody a month ago and they were telling me that they did read through it, but for them, like most of it didn't really stick. And I think that's fair, actually. I think for most people it wouldn't stick. But I think my brain is just kind of like wired a different way where like, rather than like, then like, I think most people learn by like getting an introduction to like a high level topic

and then like digging deeper into that. But for me, I like understanding like the actual like building blocks of something and that'll like help me understand like the higher level stuff. So like for example, like why did like data warehouses use like a completely different query engine than like a actual transactional database. I mean, most people don't need to know and it doesn't really matter most of the time. So you probably won't remember like even if you did learn it. but there happens to be like the way the data is actually assembled, and for certain query patterns, blah, blah, blah, like these things do matter.

And the reason I say it's a good book based on that isn't because you'll necessarily take those exact details and then apply them to like some problem. But it like changes the way your brain thinks about things. Like the same way learning algorithms will help you think about things differently. Understanding like just general like computer science problems and distributed systems and all that stuff. for me at least.

I notice a lot of parallels and stuff. Like when I'm reading DDIA, practically every single chapter, I can find at least like a few leak code problems that like can like help explain like certain things or like help me understand certain things. And so in that way it's been useful for me, but I wouldn't necessarily say for everybody it would be.

Last question is if you go back to your younger self when you just graduated college and give yourself some advice, what would you say? Definitely. focus a little bit more on what you enjoy because my priority at that point was just trying to get some job that I would reasonably enjoy. And I thought like anything technical will be fine. And so like as I was doing computer science, I started learning a lot about like web development because I saw people talking about that online and learning React. But I think probably my career

would have been just as well, if not better, had I done something like really random and obscure, like operating systems or databases or something, which I would have enjoyed. I enjoy it a lot more and I think I probably would have been better at it than I was at web development, even though people say like web dev or just like building apps is like the easy thing. I feel like it's not really easy if it's like boring to you and to me it was pretty boring. So yeah, people say the same thing about leak code like it's hard, but for me it was I guess easy because I just enjoyed it. So yeah, I'd say yeah, I think a lot of people are asking that question now and so I would just say that like try to enjoy it at least a little bit. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for your time.

Neat. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, appreciate it. Hey, thank you for watching this podcast. If you liked it and you want to see the show grow, please support with a comment or a like. Also, if you have any recommendations for people you want me to bring on, please drop a comment. Guests like Barbara Liskov, Mike Stonebreaker, Mark Brooker, these were all people that I brought on because someone left a comment. On another note, aside from the podcast, I'm working on building the ergonomic keyboard that I wish existed. Here's a glance at the prototype. It's a split keyboard.

So there's two sides. This is in the case. But yeah, we launched on Kickstarter and we hit our goal within eight hours of launching. I really appreciate it if you were one of the people who grabbed one of the early units. We're now working on the long journey of building the tooling now. And so if you still want to pick one up, I've left the late pledges open on Kickstarter. So you can grab one there. I'll put a link in the description.

Thank you again for watching the podcast. And I'll see you in the next step. episode.