Samantha He

Hey folks, I'll be running a two-part virtual PD through Nassau BOCES in March 2025 called "Grading for Equity" using Joe Feldman's text, Grading for Equity, as our guide. Please see below for the description and feel free to share with your networks. To register, go to: https://lnkd.in/ehw8gkwn While grading is an everyday practice for classroom teachers, we rarely have the opportunity to interrogate our grading practices and understand how grades impact our students' attitudes, well-being, and academic success. In this transformational course, we will use Grading For Equity by Joe Feldman as our anchor text to 1) understand how traditional grading practices impact our students, and 2) how we can use research-based grading policies that are accurate, bias-resistant, motivational, and empowering. Rather than lectures, this course is active and engaging, using the case study method and rigorous discussion to support learning.

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𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗹𝗲𝗲𝗽 💤 ? because you can't pinpoint your CI bottlenecks or spot problematic trends? At Pinterest, we faced the same challenges—but we’ve found a solution. 🌟 In our latest Pinterest Engineering blog post 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eJJ_GpGW We share how we’re leveraging honeycomb.io to identify CI root causes through cross-data correlations. Discover our innovative approach for categorizing CI failures in real-time using job log analysis. Learn how to segment CI jobs by agent wait time, script execution, specific Bazel targets, or any other level of detail tailored to your needs. Our enhanced CI observability metrics have let us improve CI stability and boost developer productivity—and they could do the same for you! Check out the blog for the full breakdown and see what’s possible when data-driven decisions guide your CI workflows. 🚀 Let’s make CI faster and more reliable together! #DevOps #DevX #CICD #honeycomb #observability #engineering #softwareengineer

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Writing LinkedIn posts is not exactly my strength, but I’m going to get through this without GenAI! TL;DR - We have lots of job openings. Fullstack, iOS, Android, data, and machine learning soon. You can see all of them here: https://lnkd.in/eZsGv48Q My colleague Keith Regier started the site here about five years ago, and we’ve grown steadily and thoughtfully since, focussing on maintaining a great culture. Our engineers are a fun and exceptional bunch of people, working on difficult challenges, but ones with great rewards too. More recently, we’ve started to accelerate our growth, and my team is going to double in size by the end of the year (that’s where you come in). Ideally you’ll love a mix of product and platform work, and enjoy seeing your work in our apps. While we are growing quickly, you can still join and make a real impact. The roles are among the best engineering opportunities you’ll find in Ireland. My teams build things like: - In-app “experiences” like educating users about new features, and a lot more. - Data pipelines and ML models to figure out how to reach the right user at the right time - we only ever want to maximise engagement. Looking for machine learning engineers (coming soon). - Surveys to understand our users better and help them find what inspires them. - Pinterest’s Localization platform, infrastructure and tooling. It makes Pinterest available in 40+ languages, mixing human, machine, and GenAI translation. If that sounds interesting then check out the roles, and hopefully we’ll chat soon. My colleagues are looking for people in the data engineering domain, so check those out too. Fullstack (experiences) https://lnkd.in/e4VjyScB Fullstack (surveys) https://lnkd.in/eGMevn_D Android: https://lnkd.in/e6ZPBVnG iOS: https://lnkd.in/ebxTMU8H

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Day 2 of Tech Equity Collective Innovate 2024 NYC: A Google Initiative Just like yesterday, Rachelle Olden gave us a warm welcome, and encouraged us to "be curious". I listened in on a panel of 4 well informed speakers Devin Graham, Gavin Leo-Rhynie, Frank Lamar, and Jessica Theodat (SiliconAlley Jess). My biggest takeaway from this discussion is to stay updated on tech news, be open to feedback, indulge in passion projects surrounding my interests. At its core, tech is about solving real human issues. I attended a small session led by Diogo Botelho (He/Him) focused on 7 tools that software engineers can use to level up their toolkit. It takes a lot more than writing great code, to be an effective team member. Following this was another small group session about how to thrive in the dynamic tech industry. Landis Huey discussed the importance of taking accountability, demonstrating flexibility in learning, willingness to receive feedback, and engaging in continuous learning. We broke into lunch, where i had some tacos along side a great conversation about the lack of representation of minorities in tech spaces. I also got a professional headshot taken! I joined my last session led by Saad Tariq where we used lego blocks to talk about innovation. In teams, we built structures that represented where who we are as individuals, and what innovation means to us. This hands on experience exceeded my expectations. We joined in a large group for the last time, with another wonder panel of speakers Dale Allsopp, Brooke Pearson, and Ruben Harris. They shared vulnerable stories from their own journeys in tech, and moments where tehy had "AUDACITY". They discussed the importance of simply introducing yourself, and saying "hello" without any expectations, and following up when given advice or recommendations. One question i will forever ask myself is "What will you do without any limits? Thank you #TechEquityCollective and MLT for organizing this wonderful event!

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What a transformative year 2024 has been! Back in April, due to Google's organizational changes, I faced one of my career's most challenging moments when my role was eliminated.  Overnight, I went from settling into my then-current role to navigating the uncertainty of job hunting. The outpouring of support I received from the tech community was nothing short of extraordinary – hundreds of messages, connections, and helping hands extended my way. Your kindness became my strength. I’ll always be grateful for that kindness. I’m incredibly thankful that I was able to rejoin Google weeks after, on a new team focusing on the next-generation data analytics engine for model evaluation. While the transition was intense, it left me with a new level of resilience and determination. I’ve learned that challenges often show us how much more we can handle than we ever thought possible. As we step into 2025, I find myself in awe of how rapidly our tech landscape is evolving. Gemini 2.0, Deepseek v3, OpenAI o3... we're witnessing a pivotal moment where adaptability isn't just an advantage – it's essential. What fascinates me most isn't just the technology itself, but how we prepare ourselves in these transformative times. I've learned that our greatest asset isn't just our technical expertise, but our ability to grow, learn, and forge meaningful connections. In this age of AI, curiosity, creativity, and collaborative spirit – become even more valuable. For anyone reading this who’s also faced layoffs or transitions in 2024: you’re not alone. My experience showed me the importance of community support, staying prepared, and always remaining adaptable. If I can help with a referral, a bit of advice, or even just some moral support, don’t hesitate to let me know! Here’s to fresh beginnings, continued growth, and forging new paths—bring on 2025! #tech #SWE #software #softwareengineering #2025

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When I first joined Meta, I was assigned an onboarding buddy who was a VP that was also a former Microsoftie. They told me this parable of the two failure modes they’d observed when people joined the company. It was the parable of the lion and the lamb. Lions join a new team and roar at everyone about how broken everything is then sit back to bask in the glory of their rightness. I originally thought the failure mode here was pointing out problems versus offering solutions. I learned over time that the issue is actually that you need to start from a place of empathy. This means understanding the goals of the organization and its constraints then offer ways to help the team reach its goals. Loudly pointing out problems often makes you out a jerk. Lambs are more of a failure mode unique to Meta. The company encourages self direction and provides lavish perks. Managers are encouraged to “support” and give feedback to people instead of telling people what to do. Lambs don’t know how to handle the freedom of not being told what to do and flounder. The job can feel like this weird vacation where you’re paid well to make your own rules until the end of the year where you’re asked to tally your impact and have little to show. #copied Dare Obasanjo

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I'm excited to share that today marks the start of my second week as a Software Engineer at Google 🎉 I'd like to thank one person, in particular, my recruiter Jeffrey Rosas, who's been the KINDEST recruiter i've met so far. He's very responsive, optimistic, quick to get on a call whenever i had any questions, shared useful tips for interviews. (He is currently hiring for positions at Google). Here's everything I learnt along the way and hopefully it helps out others too - 1️⃣ Don't judge yourself and just apply. For the longest time, i didn't apply for positions at Google because i didn't feel ready to interview at Google. Somehow, i decided to just apply and once the process started, things started becoming easier. If you can takeaway anything from this post, let it be this. Things will always seem harder from the outside, but it definitely gets easier when you start taking steps towards your dream, even if it's doing it while being scared. 2️⃣ Don't skip mock interviewing 📞 . When i interviewed at Amazon approx 2.5 years after working in the industry, my interviewing skills were bad, and as expected, i was rejected. Fortunately, i was able to figure this out and mock interviewed couple times before interviewing at Google. I received valuable feedback and confidence boost during my mock interviews, which helped me get ready for actual interviews. 3️⃣ Take complete ownership and learn from failures. When i was rejected at Amazon, I spent a good amount of time analyzing my interviews and how i could get better at communication and problem solving. Eventually, I was able to figure out my shortcomings and create a plan to work on myself before interviewing again. Abraham Lincoln is often credited with saying, "The best way to predict your future is to create it". With that said, I'm excited to see what my future holds at Google. I can already tell it's going to be amazing considering my experience with Google so far 🎉 #google #noogler #softwareengineering

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Friday was my last day at Amazon after 7 years. Typically these types of posts aren't particularly interesting; so I'll just say that I'm super glad to be closing this chapter of my career and moving on to other endeavors. I've been ready to move on for about 2 years now, but market conditions have been rough and a lot of moves wouldn't have made sense. There's a lot of good, bad, and ugly that goes on at Amazon; I'll be grateful for the good, and forgive (but not forget) the bad and ugly. If anyone wants to learn vicariously; I think the thing that makes Amazon distinctive is their understanding of the power of processes and incentives, specifically, how to manipulate those variables to achieve the outcomes they desire (be it good or bad). If you get something out of this post, it’s that you should be aware of these structures as you go through your career. Depending on how they are set up; they will work for you or against you. And when they aren’t serving you, there’s two options: you change them, or you change yourself. Cheers - and super looking forward to my next gig. (Also the obligatory laptop and badge photo).

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Some good advice here

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🎉 Big News! We've just launched the third book in our System Design Playbook series! I don't want to brag too much because, well, I'm just the guy who created this, but together with my tireless team (shoutout to Rohit Jain and Shubham Chandak!), we've worked hard to make system design concepts simple and digestible. Preparing for FAANG interviews, I remember the struggle of finding comprehensive resources—concepts were all over the place, and explanations often left more questions than answers. We aimed to fix that. Here’s what we packed into this book: 1. 𝗩𝗶𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝗶𝗱𝘀: Lots of diagrams because, truly, "𝘈 𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘴 𝘢 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴." 2. 𝗡𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: No buzzwords, no fluff. Just clean, straightforward explanations that make sense. It's tough to write simply, but that's where the real effort lies—𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘺, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 - 𝘈𝘭𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘵 𝘌𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘪𝘯. We've included a sample from our latest chapter on Designing YouTube to give you a taste of how we approach teaching complex topics in a way that sticks. Download Full eBook: 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲: https://lnkd.in/dzUXgTwb 𝗞𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗹𝗲 𝗩𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: https://lnkd.in/dXPvFzju Happy learning!

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Whenever I get "worried" that an LLM will take my job as a SWE in the near future I look back at this benchmark leader board of real-world issues and am reminded that LLMs have been stuck at making marginal improvements bellow 20% resolved rate for over a year now. That being said, I do think AI will become an increasingly powerful tool in a SWEs belt in the coming years if it hasn't become one already. I personally use it to help me explore a problem space faster and come up with boilerplate for trivial problems and expand from there. In those cases it's like using Google and Stack Overflow and other forums, but faster. Edit: I'd like to also point out that I really like this benchmark because you cannot train a model on it unlike HumanEval. It's in essence, a true test of an llms ability to generalize and solve problems. Source: https://lnkd.in/epK2GQ2w

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I'm sure there are a few of you out there wondering what I have been up to since I left Cadence. I was lucky enough to join a terrific startup called Metrics Design Automation. I’d like to tell you how wonderful our products are, but it would be better if you saw for yourself. If you have any interest in simulation, please go to www.metrics.ca and check it out! While you're there, watch a couple of the videos we put together that show you how easy it is to get started with DSim.

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“While others might get caught up in building elegant technical solutions, I learned that stepping back and questioning our basic assumptions often revealed much more simple solutions hiding in plain sight…” Really good read with key pointers on how to spearhead a solid career in tech.

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It’s been nearly half a year already as a Googler and still loving every minute! Sharing a glimpse into what my SWE work here looks like for the first time. ➤ Like 99% of engineers, I start my day by checking emails and my calendar. ➤ Contrary to what many people think, most of my time goes into writing System Design Docs instead of coding. ➤ Once done, I implement the design docs, run tests, and get my work reviewed. ➤ After the code is pushed to production, I collaborate and assist teams using the service and fix any bugs that arise. Overall, I've found that system design, problem-solving, communication, and collaboration are essential skills in this role. ✅ If you are also preparing for PBCs, I'd recommend focusing on these. You can also reach out to senior engineers who can help you build these skills and prepare for the interviews. They are even offering a FREE trial, so go ahead and book a session: https://lnkd.in/dr3g2X9B These SDEs at Preplaced will take complete responsibility for your preparation - building real-world projects, upskilling, mock interviews, resume creation and more till you reach your goals. 🚀 All the best! #6MonthsAtGoogle #SoftwareEngineer #Collab #PreplacedCollab #InterviewPreparation

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🌟 Exciting Learning Experience! 🌟 I had the privilege of engaging in a System Design mock interview with the incredible Mark Klenk. In this session, I stepped into the candidate's shoes while Mark, with his extensive experience and insightful approach, took on the role of the interviewer. 🔍 What to Expect: • Real-world Scenarios: Dive deep into complex system design problems that are commonly faced in technical interviews. • Expert Insights: Learn from Mark's detailed feedback and understand the nuances of crafting efficient and scalable system designs. • Practical Tips: Gain valuable tips and strategies to tackle system design questions effectively. 💡 Whether you're preparing for an upcoming interview or simply looking to sharpen your design skills, this video is packed with valuable insights. 📺 Watch the Full Video Here: https://lnkd.in/gdBTKeAs A big thank you to Mark Klenk for his time and invaluable feedback. Let's continue to learn and grow together! #SystemDesign #MockInterview #SDE #IGotAnOffer #TechInterviews #CareerGrowth #EngineeringExcellence #CollaborativeLearning #Growth #TechJourney #LearningExperience #Skills

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In this world of ongoing layoffs, companies going against the grain to build highly customized in-house tech stacks that don't track to the skills and expertise engineers need for their past and future jobs will find themselves becoming a black hole devoid of talent. The ones who are good enough to leave will, and the ones who aren't will feel stuck because their work isn't advancing their skills in a way that adds to their value as an employee.

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It was a wild, two-and-a-half-year ride, but Friday was officially my last day at Meta.  After twenty years, I left Microsoft to do the kind of consumer AR/VR content creation that MS wasn't really doing at the time. I had a great time at Meta, working with some amazing people, but it turns out I didn't end up doing that kind of content creation there either, instead working in Horizon Worlds first on helping build platform features for the Arcade world, and later working on the scripting platform. I have no complaints, and I loved both the work and the teams. After wrapping up my latest, year-long project, and with my current team pivoting to a whole new area of focus, it was a natural inflection point for introspection. My oldest is heading to High School in September, and my youngest to Middle School. They'll both be leaving for college and their own lives before you know it. So, I've decided to take a few months off, to spend more time with the wife and kids, decompress, and focus on some personal projects that have nothing to do with C++, C#, Unity, headsets or computers. I'll probably hack on my third novel, and I'll probably sleep in a little later, especially on weekdays. I've been calling it my career halftime. I actually don't know what comes in the second half, which is both scary and exciting after 22+ continuous years of coding. I might make my way back to Meta or Microsoft, or I might try something completely new at a company I've never heard of before. The possibilities are, literally, endless. My goal is to make my next company my last company, because I'm the kind of employee that flourishes under long term relationships and loyalty. For the right position, I'm #OpenToWork now, but I don't plan to start actively searching in earnest until later this year, or maybe after the holidays.

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