Notes on Preparing for a Developer Job Change (Portfolio/Interviews/Coding Tests)
Sharing what I organized while preparing to change jobs. I'm a backend developer with 3 years of experience, and I prepared for about two months recently.
1. Start your portfolio with the README
Interviewers don't read all of your code. It worked well to first show the project overview, my role, and the problem-solving process. Explaining why I made certain choices mattered more than listing the tech stack.
2. Coding tests: 1–2 problems a day
Rather than increasing volume, I organized by problem type. I alternated between graph, DP, and implementation problems, and wrote down the reasons for missed problems in Notion.
3. Practice interview answers with STAR
Speaking in the order of Situation-Task-Action-Result made my answers much more organized. It was especially helpful when I was asked about incident response experience.
In conclusion, the longer your preparation period gets, the more anxious you become. For me, it seemed right to cap it at about two months and start applying.
6 answers
So true lol I end up not reading repos with disorganized READMEs either
I'm not so sure about #2. Doing 1–2 problems a day for two months is 60–120 problems, and honestly I doubt that's enough to get a clear grasp of the problem types. For me, my skills improved a lot when I picked one type and focused on just that type for 3–4 days straight. When you alternate between types, it feels like you're starting over each time and lose the feel for it, so I'd recommend at least batching them into blocks. Writing down the problems you got wrong in Notion is good, but the key is to pull out "why you got it wrong" in one line. Don't write long entries—no one will look at them, and since you won't look at them either, you won't read them lol.