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 - overemployment

I don’t know where I first heard this but it’s a trend that’s happening (or been happening) where someone holds two full-time jobs simultaneously. I don’t think this is legal in most cases but some people do it.

Read this article if you want to dive in more.

💬 Pronunciation - Identify Your Worst Sounds

One thing I’ve been doing to improve my own pronunciation [in Spanish] is figuring out what are my worst sounds. By that, I simply mean the ones I’m saying wrong.

Here’s how I’m doing it:

1. Find a video you like and get the transcript/subtitles

2. Record yourself reading it

3. Listen back and analyze for anything that sounds off

4. With that list of words, ask ChatGPT to look for patterns

And now that you have the patterns, you can start to isolate what you actually need to practice. For instance, I learned that I was pronouncing diphthongs incorrectly in Spanish.

Then I found a YouTube video → learned how to do it correctly and fixed my bad habit!

🗣️ Real World Conversation - Learning to Read Error Messages

If I think reading error messages is hard, how hard does it feel for you as a non-native speaker? 😱 

Remember how I told you we’re recording ourselves at work and having a coach watch and give us feedback? One thing my mentor pointed out was error messages. He said oftentimes I didn’t stop to read them.

And I realized…he was right. I wasn’t reading them because I didn’t understand them 😂 It’s always hard to understand error messages when you’re using a new language. And when English isn’t your first language

So goal is to do some deliberate practice this week and improve my error reading skills. I suggest you do the same! I think it’ll help us both level up.

🔗 Content - System Design Interviews

When I was prepping for system design interviews, the Exponent YouTube channel was extremely helpful. Most of their interviews are by native English speakers too. This is a great way to test your technical vocabulary and make sure you’re ready for system design interviews.

Enjoy the week, we’ll talk again soon.

- Joe