How to ace your next technical interview with Katie Thomas, self-taught Software Engineer at Google


I was a biology major in undergrad and my first exposure to CS was during my junior year. By then, programming was the cool thing to do. Two of my best friends (shout out to Margaret and Katrina) were raving about it, so I decided to give it a try.

I loved it, but for many reasons decided I couldn’t pursue it at the time. I joined Teach For America and spent three years teaching middle and high school math in the Bay Area. After my third year, I had lived in the Bay Area long enough to realize I didn’t need a degree in CS to get a job as a software engineer. That summer, I applied to and was accepted at a coding bootcamp. In January 2014, I started working as a software engineer at a startup called Thumbtack.

How did you get your job at Google? Could you walk us through your regimen?
I practiced interviewing as much as possible. This is what I did during both my pre-Thumbtack and pre-Google job searches:

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