I had several calls and exchanged messages with Yonatan for a couple of months last year while I was searching for a new job. I would strongly recommend his services. Iâve been programming for ~5 years now, although I wouldnât consider some of those years to be particularly high quality experience.
The calls felt a little like âcareer therapyâ. Yonatan tended to answer a lot of my questions with questions of his own, in order to help me draw my own conclusions. He was perceptive and particularly good at pointing out irrational thoughts I had around my careerâit turned out there was a lot more of these than I was expecting!
Estimating counterfactual impact is obviously hard, but Iâm going to try anyway.
I ended up getting a FAANG job, which I estimate will reduce my time to getting a highly impactful job by 18-24 months compared to offers from good-but-not-FAANG companies.
I have slightly greater counterfactual earning-to-give potential, but I think itâs negligible.
I donât have a reasonable estimate of how likely it was to get to interview stage for FAANG companies, so I canât comment on how impactful Yonatan was in helping me land interviews in the first place (I suspect his CV review probably added a few % points, but <10)
Without speaking to Yonatan, I wouldâve applied for fewer jobs, done fewer interviews, been less prepared for them, and got less proficient in the process of doing them. Contingent on my getting a FAANG interview, my counterfactual estimate would be that I had a 10% chance of success, with Yonatanâs help I think I was ~40% ex ante.
If we use the (poor) assumption that I was always going to at least get the interview, I estimate Yonatanâs coaching added an extra 6-7 months of direct work to my career. If his help increased the chances of getting an interview in the first place, then the impact is higher.
My biggest takeaways from his coaching:
Have a low bar for applying to jobs, apply for lots of them, filter once you have more information about them. This helps you get better at interviews and allows you to compare potential offers against one another.
Only write a cover letter if the job is significantly higher value than others, otherwise cover letters are likely a poor spend of your time (apply for more jobs in the time you wouldâve spent writing them).
Apply early, see what parts of the interview process you get rejected at, and work on that part. Donât assume you need to grind LeetCode for 6 months before you can apply anywhereâmaybe youâre already great at LeetCode but suck at other things.
If you think âI would really like this job. I want to wait 3 months before applying to maximise my chances of successâ, email them and ask how before you can reapply in the event that you fail. Same goes for various other questions you might haveâask the company rather than not applying.
If you are applying for jobs with the purpose of gaining career capital, ask about whether there is structured mentorship available. I found this question particularly valuable in interviews, and was surprised by the amount of times I got a long, convoluted answer that amounted to ânoâ. If you are trying to improve, you want short feedback loops, and many companies donât have these in place.
I had several calls and exchanged messages with Yonatan for a couple of months last year while I was searching for a new job. I would strongly recommend his services. Iâve been programming for ~5 years now, although I wouldnât consider some of those years to be particularly high quality experience.
The calls felt a little like âcareer therapyâ. Yonatan tended to answer a lot of my questions with questions of his own, in order to help me draw my own conclusions. He was perceptive and particularly good at pointing out irrational thoughts I had around my careerâit turned out there was a lot more of these than I was expecting!
Estimating counterfactual impact is obviously hard, but Iâm going to try anyway.
I ended up getting a FAANG job, which I estimate will reduce my time to getting a highly impactful job by 18-24 months compared to offers from good-but-not-FAANG companies.
I have slightly greater counterfactual earning-to-give potential, but I think itâs negligible.
I donât have a reasonable estimate of how likely it was to get to interview stage for FAANG companies, so I canât comment on how impactful Yonatan was in helping me land interviews in the first place (I suspect his CV review probably added a few % points, but <10)
Without speaking to Yonatan, I wouldâve applied for fewer jobs, done fewer interviews, been less prepared for them, and got less proficient in the process of doing them. Contingent on my getting a FAANG interview, my counterfactual estimate would be that I had a 10% chance of success, with Yonatanâs help I think I was ~40% ex ante.
If we use the (poor) assumption that I was always going to at least get the interview, I estimate Yonatanâs coaching added an extra 6-7 months of direct work to my career. If his help increased the chances of getting an interview in the first place, then the impact is higher.
My biggest takeaways from his coaching:
Have a low bar for applying to jobs, apply for lots of them, filter once you have more information about them. This helps you get better at interviews and allows you to compare potential offers against one another.
Only write a cover letter if the job is significantly higher value than others, otherwise cover letters are likely a poor spend of your time (apply for more jobs in the time you wouldâve spent writing them).
Apply early, see what parts of the interview process you get rejected at, and work on that part. Donât assume you need to grind LeetCode for 6 months before you can apply anywhereâmaybe youâre already great at LeetCode but suck at other things.
If you think âI would really like this job. I want to wait 3 months before applying to maximise my chances of successâ, email them and ask how before you can reapply in the event that you fail. Same goes for various other questions you might haveâask the company rather than not applying.
If you are applying for jobs with the purpose of gaining career capital, ask about whether there is structured mentorship available. I found this question particularly valuable in interviews, and was surprised by the amount of times I got a long, convoluted answer that amounted to ânoâ. If you are trying to improve, you want short feedback loops, and many companies donât have these in place.