I don’t have really much to say these days, but the following tweet thread from Mekka Okereke just really blew me away. If you are working with students you should properly read this and take this to heart.
I asked the Google SWE:
— Mekka *My Mask Protects You* Okereke (@mekkaokereke) June 4, 2019
👨🏿: Did you know that there is literally a class in Stanford's CS curriculum, that is basically "How to pass Google's Interview?"
👨🏼: Wait… what?! Really?
👨🏿: Yep! They spend the semester practicing. Here's the course details:https://t.co/2xtsb0Trur
👨🏿: Stanford students also have ready access to Googlers for doing mock interviews. Ready access to SV tech workers also humanizes these mythical Google and Amazon engineers, into "kids I took classes with" or "my research teammate."
— Mekka *My Mask Protects You* Okereke (@mekkaokereke) June 4, 2019
👨🏼: That all makes sense…
👨🏿: The power of mock interviews cannot be overstated. Consider basketball.🏀 If the 1st time you ever try to shoot a 3 point shot, is in the NBA finals with LeBron James guarding you, you're probably gonna miss. Similarly, if your 1st real interview is at Google HQ, you'll miss.
— Mekka *My Mask Protects You* Okereke (@mekkaokereke) June 4, 2019
👨🏼: I get that. So what do we do about it?
— Mekka *My Mask Protects You* Okereke (@mekkaokereke) June 4, 2019
👨🏿: Two years ago, we started traveling to HBCUs, giving mock interviews, and we downloaded the publicly available syllabus from that Stanford interview prep class, and gave it to CS students at Howard. 3 guesses what happened next. 😁
👨🏼: More Howard CS grads started passing the Google interviews!
— Mekka *My Mask Protects You* Okereke (@mekkaokereke) June 4, 2019
👨🏿: That's correct! And anothe–
👨🏼: *Interrupting* We were interviewing for the wrong thing! For access rather than ability!
👨🏿: Yes, and so—
👨🏼: *Interrupting* We need to do more! How can I volunteer?
👨🏿: 🥰
Featured picture by Marten Newhall on Unsplash
Plain Sarah Jane 