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 - Don't use “hello”

English Byte community member Tony shared this with me and I think it's valuable for everyone to read. Typically in a remote dev role, your teammates will want you to skip pleasantries.

Get straight to the point 🙂 You'll thank me later.

💬 Pronunciation - Critique of Mexican Programmer

Community member and friend Rafael agreed to let me critique his English for the newsletter. But, his English surprised me…

It was very native-like and he had few things I could correct 🤔

Want me to critique your English? Reply to this and let me know!

🗣️ Real World Conversation - The Cheatcode Question to Ask in an Interview

I've been doing a lot of interviews. I've probably had 20+ interviews in the last 3 weeks. And there's one question that I've learned is a true cheatcode.

It's asking interviewers this:

Why? Because you can learn why previous candidates didn't move forward in the interview process. Then, you can make sure to show the opposite thing to make sure you move forward.

Example: “Previous candidates for this Developer Advocate role weren't technical enough. Many stopped coding.”

So now, in future interviews, I'll go out of my way to highlight my technical skills! Boom. Cheatcode enabled 🙂 

🔗 Content - Mock Interview with ex-Staff Frontend Engineer

My friend Josh used to work at Codecademy as a Staff Frontend Engineer. Now he does open source full-time and is an author!

When I mentioned system design practice, he offered to do a mock interview with me. We did it last Friday and it was incredibly helpful.

He even took highly detailed notes which I want to share with you. It includes:

• the system design problem

• our conversation

• feedback on what went well vs what I can improve

• general tips for practicing

💪🏼 Exercise - Do a Mock Interview

I've done two of these so far with friends and they've been extremely helpful. Well, turns out if you don't have friends, you can use Pramp for FREE.

It's a platform specifically for doing mock interviews and it's awesome!

Even if you're not actively interviewing, you should do 1 and get a feel for it. I guarantee you'll be happy you did.

Bonus: Thinking about doing a mock interview YouTube series where I do mock interviews with non-native English programmers like you. Would you be interested in that? Reply and let me know!

Enjoy the week, we’ll talk again soon.

- Joe