Practical Advice For Finding A Job

2026-07-11

Do something that matters, that otherwise won’t get done, that only you can do. Search for those things, and until you find them, try to be part of teams doing things that you think are important that you can contribute to. Don’t worry about the role, and just figure out a way to add value.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP2zcESIpOo (2:09:00)

Where To Work

The first step to finding a job is deciding what are some important problems in the world that you can help solve. This will help you research what companies are active in those in areas, and help filter opportunities that you’d be interested in pursuing. For example, my preferences include industrials (Manufacturing, Energy, Mining, Semiconductors, Robotics) and compute infrastructure (Cloud, Observability, Inference).

Sourcing Companies

After you narrow the types of companies you want to work at, an easy place to start is just prompting a search:

Find me startups working on [x]

There are plenty of job boards littered with job postings, but don’t think just because there’s a job description means there’s an opportunity at that company. Job boards are more useful for finding companies working on problems you consider important. On a more practical note, these are the job boards I’ve found useful in the past:

But these forums come and go, what’s important is that you’re identifying the companies you think are doing meaningful work in the world. They might not have a role open for you now, but just take note and play the long game.

Reaching Out

cat resume.pdf > /dev/null

Whenever you submit an application, you need to assume it is piped to /dev/null. You should still submit it, but you need to supplement your submission by leveraging as many channels as possible. Here are some ways to do that:

When you reach out to someone, you genuinely want to prove to them you’re interested and can add value. So try sending messages along the lines of:

Get Out Of The House

It can be helpful to just get out of the house. Just find an event, find someone to talk to, and say this:

This shouldn’t be the most important focus, but overall good to do occasionally. Depending on the event, there will be people just scavenging to find a job. Expect to get nothing out of these events. Just chill, have a drink, and talk about what you’re working on.

One of my previous roles were found by literally flying out to a hackathon and working on a project that demonstrated I could be useful to a company.

Be Useful

This is the most important piece of advice. Your goal is to demonstrate that you can be useful and add value. The best way to do that is to publish your work. Here are some of the best ways to do that:

If you’re struggling to hear back for a job, this is the best way to fix that. This is also a great mechanism for sending links to people whenever you do outreach.

Keep Taking Shots

Do not look for quick wins in rapid succession. Play the absolute long game and focus on taking shots. An example of taking shots:

You will be put through a gauntlet of rejection, that’s ok. Pick yourself up, learn from your mistake, and take another shot. There are no setbacks, because you are playing the long game!

What’s important is that you keep sharpening your toolkit:

Leet Code

I’ve noticed leet code has become less popular lately, but don’t take it for granted. I still think there’s value in using DSA problems as technical interview practice. They’re good for brushing up on DSA fundamentals and flexing your technical interview muscle (explaining though process, analyzing complexity, considering constraints, etc).

Here are some more practical advice regarding leet code:

Focus on patterns - Don’t focus on solving individual problems, but focus more on the methods used to solve them like dynamic programming, sliding window, two pointer, stacks / queues, etc. If you generally know how these methods are used, a lot of the time the interviewer will help nudge you into the right one needed for your technical screening.

Intuitive Solutions vs Puzzles - Focus on your mental model and the patterns used to naturally get the solution. If it’s a problem that smells of gotchas or layers of data structures and algorithms to solve, don’t spend too much time on these less practical problems.

Hard problems - If a company is using hard problems to screen candidates, it’s likely a company that’s not a fit for you to begin with. For me personally, I like companies that are using DSA problems more as a way to signal to how well you are to work with, not if you can just solve a difficult problem under time constraints.

Great DSA resource - Algorithms Design and Analysis is a great resource for helping you build a solid foundation about how to think of data structures and algorithms before jumping right into leet code.

Be Authentic

The last piece of advice, which may be bad advice but has gotten me this far, is to be authentic. Talk about things you’ve actually built (sending links helps here), talk about your actual past experiences, and ask genuine questions about the company you want to work for. Worry less about what the company has to offer, and focus more on how can you add the most value possible in a short amount of time.