The Monday Byte

Welcome to the Monday Byte where I send you 5 things each week so you can improve your English and land a remote dev job.

📖 Word/Phrase - product-market-fit (PMF)

If you consume content about startups in English, you've probably heard this phrase: product-market-fit.

I break it down as "the product fits with the market." What does that mean? It means you're building something people actually want. But what's an example?

Think about Notion. Before Notion, we had Google Docs and Google Sheets. So this tool where you could write and make databases? I don't know but they found PMF.

People started using it everyday to organize information and track projects. Now Notion is a widely popular tool.

If you want to read about more PMF, here's a blog post about product market fit learnings from a YC startup.

💬 Pronunciation - From Non-Native English Dev to +$100M Business Owner

If you’ve ever done stuff in the WordPress space, you’ve probably used a plugin owned by this guy — Syed Balkhi. He moved to the US around age 13 and barely knew any English.

But he did know one thing. How to build websites with WordPress.

On My First Million (my favorite podcast), Syed shares his story and how he grew his business to 9-figures. And also pay attention to his pronunciation.

Yes, you can tell he's non-native BUT he didn't let that stop him from succeeding as a developer and now mega successful business owner.

🗣️ Real World Conversation - What is a Developer Advocate?

"I saw you worked at Meta. What exactly does a Developer Advocate do?"

This was the question I was asked by a Senior Engineer interviewing me last Friday. It's still a relative new title so I don't blame him for not knowing.

It's a mix of things. Typically though, it's someone who understands engineering, community and content. They build demo apps. They engage with the community. And they create content.

If you enjoy working with people or teaching, consider this role when you're job hunting. Lots of startups are hiring for this and the talent pool is limited.

🔗 Content - What’s a Developer Advocate Takehome like?

It's been two weeks since I've started my job hunt. And I'm sharing everything publicly on Twitter. One type of role I'm applying for has the title Developer Advocate.

And this type commonly has a takehome interview - something you complete on your own time, usually in 2-3 hours.

I decided to turn my takehome into a video series where break it into 4 videos and livestream what I build. Check out the playlist here:

💪🏼 Exercise - AI-Assisted Leetcode

You know LeetCode, the website popular for technical interview prep, right? Well I've come up with my own approach to doing these in a short period of time.

I call it AI-Assisted LeetCode and I think you should try it.

Bonus: I put together an example of the prompts I used on Saturday to do my first session of AI-Assisted Leetcode practice.

Enjoy the week, we’ll talk again soon.

- Joe