There is a lot of scepticism of the claim that Musk is an engineer at all let alone the chief engineer of SpaceX. I wanted to collate the evidence backing it up here. I know some SpaceX employees have affirmed the claim.
I'm just looking for statements by credible sources that provide insight to what extent Musk is involved in concrete engineering decisions vs. managerial duties. I would add to this post the statements brought up in the comments.

Statements by SpaceX Employees

Tom Mueller
Tom Mueller (Wikipedia, LinkedIn) is one of SpaceX's founding employees. He served as the VP of Propulsion Engineering from 2002 to 2014 and Propulsion CTO from 2014 to 2019. He currently serves as an Senior Adviser. He's regarded as one of the foremost spacecraft propulsion experts in the world and owns many patents for propulsion technologies.

Not true, I am an advisor now. Elon and the Propulsion department are leading development of the SpaceX engines, particularly Raptor. I offer my 2 cents to help from time to time"

Source

We’ll have, you know, a group of people sitting in a room, making a key decision. And everybody in that room will say, you know, basically, “We need to turn left,” and Elon will say “No, we’re gonna turn right.” You know, to put it in a metaphor. And that’s how he thinks. He’s like, “You guys are taking the easy way out; we need to take the hard way.”
And, uh, I’ve seen that hurt us before, I’ve seen that fail, but I’ve also seen— where nobody thought it would work— it was the right decision. It was the harder way to do it, but in the end, it was the right thing.

Source

When the third chamber cracked, Musk flew the hardware back to California, took it to the factory floor, and, with the help of some engineers, started to fill the chambers with an epoxy to see if it would seal them. “He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty,” Mueller said. “He’s out there with his nice Italian shoes and clothes and has epoxy all over him. They were there all night and tested it again and it broke anyway.” Musk, clothes ruined, had decided the hardware was flawed, tested his hypothesis, and moved on quickly.

Source (Ashlee Vance's Biography).

Kevin Watson
Kevin Watson (LinkedIn) developed the avionics for Falcon 9 and Dragon. He previously managed the Advanced Computer Systems and Technologies Group within the Autonomous Systems Division at NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory.

Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction.
He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy.
He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years.

Source (Ashlee Vance's Biography). Kevin has attested to the biography's veracity.

Garrett Reisman
Garrett Reisman (Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Twitter) is an engineer and former NASA astronaut. He joined SpaceX as a senior engineer working on astronaut safety and mission assurance. He was later promoted to director of crew operations. He left this position in May 2018 and is now a Senior Advisor. He also functions as Professor of Astronautical Engineering at University of Southern California.

“I first met Elon for my job interview,” Reisman told the USA TODAY Network's Florida Today. “All he wanted to talk about were technical things. We talked a lot about different main propulsion system design architectures.
“At the end of my interview, I said, ‘Hey, are you sure you want to hire me? You’ve already got an astronaut, so are you sure you need two around here?’ ” Reisman asked. “He looked at me and said, ‘I’m not hiring you because you’re an astronaut. I’m hiring you because you’re a good engineer.’ ”
Managing SpaceX and Tesla, building out new businesses and maintaining relationships with his family makes Musk a busy billionaire.
“He’s obviously skilled at all those different functions, but certainly what really drives him and where his passion really is, is his role as CTO,” or chief technology officer, Reisman said. “Basically his role as chief designer and chief engineer. That’s the part of the job that really plays to his strengths."

(Source)

What's really remarkable to me is the breadth of his knowledge. I mean I've met a lot of super super smart people but they're usually super super smart on one thing and he's able to have conversations with our top engineers about the software, and the most arcane aspects of that and then he'll turn to our manufacturing engineers and have discussions about some really esoteric welding process for some crazy alloy and he'll just go back and forth and his ability to do that across the different technologies that go into rockets cars and everything else he does.

(Source)

Josh Boehm
Josh Boehm (LinkedIn, Quora) is the former Head of Software Quality Assurance at SpaceX.

Elon is both the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of SpaceX, so of course he does more than just ‘some very technical work’. He is integrally involved in the actual design and engineering of the rocket, and at least touches every other aspect of the business (but I would say the former takes up much more of his mental real estate). Elon is an engineer at heart, and that’s where and how he works best.

(Source)

Statements by External Observers

Eric Berger
Eric Berger (Twitter, LinkedIn) is a space journalist and Ars Technica's senior space editor. He has been interviewing SpaceX employees for an upcoming book on its early days.

True. Elon is the chief engineer in name and reality.

(Source)

Christian Davenport
Christian Davenport is the Washington Post's defense and space reporter and the author of "Space Barons". The following quotes are excerpts from his book.

He dispatched one of his lieutenants, Liam Sarsfield, then a high-ranking NASA official in the office of the chief engineer, to California to see whether the company was for real or just another failure in waiting.
Most of all, he was impressed with Musk, who was surprisingly fluent in rocket engineering and understood the science of propulsion and engine design. Musk was intense, preternaturally focused, and extremely determined. “This was not the kind of guy who was going to accept failure,” Sarsfield remembered thinking.
Throughout the day, as Musk showed off mockups of the Falcon 1 and Falcon 5, the engine designs, and plans to build a spacecraft capable of flying humans, Musk peppered Sarsfield with questions. He wanted to know what was going on within NASA. And how a company like his would be perceived. He asked tons of highly technical questions, including a detailed discussion about “base heating,” the heat radiating out from the exhaust going back up into the rocket’s engine compartment—a particular problem with rockets that have clusters of engines next to one another, as Musk was planning to build.
Now that he had a friend inside of NASA, Musk kept up with the questions in the weeks after Sarsfield’s visit, firing off “a nonstop torrent of e-mails” and texts, Sarsfield said. Musk jokingly warned that texting was a “core competency.” “He sends texts in a constant flow,” Sarsfield recalled. “I found him to be consumed by whatever was in front of him and anxious to solve problems. This, combined with a tendency to work eighteen hours a day, is a sign of someone driven to succeed.” Musk was particularly interested in the docking adapter of the International Space Station, the port where the spacecraft his team was designing would dock. He wanted to know the dimensions, the locking pin design, even the bolt pattern of the hatch. The more documents Sarsfield sent, the more questions Musk had.
“I really enjoyed the way he would pore over problems anxious to absorb every detail. To my mind, someone that clearly committed deserves all the support and help you can give him.”

Mosdell ( 10th employee ) found Musk a touch awkward and abrupt, but smart. Mosdell had showed up prepared to talk about his experience building launchpads, which, after all, was what SpaceX wanted him to do. But instead, Musk wanted to talk hard-core rocketry. Specifically the Delta IV rocket and its RS-68 engines, which Mosdell had some experience with when at Boeing. Over the course of the interview, they discussed “labyrinth purges” and “pump shaft seal design” and “the science behind using helium as opposed to nitrogen.”

After the meeting on Valentine’s Day adjourned, Musk offered to give the group a tour of his facility. To this group of engineers and entrepreneurs, it was like an invitation to a six-year-old to visit a chocolate factory. As Musk guided them through the factory floor, the group “let loose with detailed, technical questions, and he answered all of them,” Gedmark said. “Not once did he say, ‘I don’t feel comfortable answering that because it’s proprietary.’… It was certainly impressive.”

John Carmack
John Carmack (Twitter, Wikipedia) is a programmer, video game developer and engineer. He's the founder of Armadillo Aerospace and current CTO of Oculus VR.

Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so.

(Source)

Robert Zubrin
Robert Zubrin (Wikipedia) is an aerospace engineer and author, best known for his advocacy of human exploration of Mars.

When I met Elon it was apparent to me that although he had a scientific mind and he understood scientific principles, he did not know anything about rockets. Nothing. That was in 2001. By 2007 he knew everything about rockets - he really knew everything, in detail. You have to put some serious study in to know as much about rockets as he knows now. This doesn't come just from hanging out with people.

(Source)

Statements by Elon Himself

Yes. The design of Starship and the Super Heavy rocket booster I changed to a special alloy of stainless steel. I was contemplating this for a while. And this is somewhat counterintuitive. It took me quite a bit of effort to convince the team to go in this direction.

(Source)

I know more about rockets than anyone at the company by a pretty significant margin, I could redraw substantial portions of the rocket from memory without the blueprints

(Source)

Tim Dodd: "What people don't understand is that you're the lead engineer. You're literally sitting"
Musk: "Literally. This is a... I've actually had a dinner with some, with a, with a friend and he was like 'well who's the chief engineer of SpaceX?' I was like it's me. He was like 'it's not you, who is it?' Look it's either someone with a very low ego or I don't know."

(Source)

Interviewer: What do you do when you're at SpaceX and Tesla? What does your time look like there?
Elon: Yes, it's a good question. I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media or on businessy things*. But actually almost all my time, like 80% of it, is spent on engineering and design.* Engineering and design, so it's developing next-generation product. That's 80% of it.
Interviewer: You probably don't remember this. A very long time ago, many, many, years, you took me on a tour of SpaceX. And the most impressive thing was that you knew every detail of the rocket and every piece of engineering that went into it. And I don't think many people get that about you.
Elon: Yeah. I think a lot of people think I'm kind of a business person or something, which is fine. Business is fine. But really it's like at SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell is Chief Operating Officer. She manages legal, finance, sales, and general business activity. And then my time is almost entirely with the engineering team, working on improving the Falcon 9 and our Dragon spacecraft and developing the Mars Colonial architecture. At Tesla, it's working on the Model 3 and, yeah, so I'm in the design studio, take up a half a day a week, dealing with aesthetics and look-and-feel things. And then most of the rest of the week is just going through engineering of the car itself as well as engineering of the factory. Because the biggest epiphany I've had this year is that what really matters is the machine that builds the machine, the factory. And that is at least two orders of magnitude harder than the vehicle itself.

(Source)

Duke Interview Story

Genuine question: Do ABCD Indian guys actually prefer dating ACBD Indian girls?

Duke Alumni Interview

Guide: How to get your first 10 customers

Hey everyone! I’m back with another post on how to turn an idea into a business. If you haven’t yet, check out this post for more context (seriously, it’ll help set you up for success here).
Let's assume there’s sufficient evidence that says there’s a demand/a problem and you want to see if you can make some money going after it - great! You’ll likely ask the next question “How do I get my first 10 customers?” To answer that, you’ll need two things - 1.) an offer and 2.) potential customers.
Wait… what about the product? Hold off on that for now. Typically, I recommend not to build anything, or at least not software. I’ll touch more on that below.
Let’s start with the offer. An offer is a promise you sell to customers about solving their problems. In most cases, you don’t even need to build a product to sell your promise. To be clear, I’m not saying that you should lie - if you won’t be able to solve the problem, then don’t promise that you can. Our goal right now isn’t to figure out if you can build it, it’s to figure out if you can sell it.
Here’s why I love offers more than products - it helps de-risk two of the three fundamental challenges all startups face 1.) market risk and 2.) channel risk (product risk is the third if you were wondering). Market risk is asking the question “does anyone actually want/need this?” and channel risk askes the question “can you acquire customers (ideally profitably) through marketing channels?”. In my experience, I’ve seen significantly more startups fail due to market and channel issues than product issues.
Now that you’ve got your offer, let’s talk to potential customers. It is crucial that you show your offer to the right people, otherwise, the data you get back won’t be accurate. There’s a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this.
Most people will ask themselves “who do I think has this problem” and then relentlessly hunt those people down - this is a fine start, but we can do better. What I recommend is to ask yourself this, “who has the problem, knows they have the problem, and is currently DOING something about it?”
The latter part of that is key. You want to find people who are already trying to solve this problem on their own. Why? Because these people have already decided that it's a problem worth their time/money to solve.
With that context in mind here are some tactics to get your first 10 customers:

Customer Interviews > Sale: One of the easiest ways to get a customer is to circle back with the people you talked to about the problem in step one.
- Pros: It should be an easy sell since you’ve got their contact info and you’ve built a relationship with them already. Also, if they aren’t interested in buying, you can immediately ask questions that help you learn why - this can be invaluable.
- Cons: CDIs can be time-consuming, slow, and it can be really difficult to get a potential buyer on the phone to just “talk”. Also, sales calls can be uncomfortable.
Cold Outreach: With LinkedIn and Hunter.io you can find just about anyone’s contact info and shoot them a cold email or give them a call. The key is making sure there are signals that the people you’re emailing have the problem, know they have the problem and are trying to solve the problem that your offer addresses.
- Pros: It’s a relatively quick and cheap way to get your offer in front of qualified leads and give you the opportunity to talk to a real person to get feedback on your offer.
- Cons: Cold emailing can be a numbers game and isn’t effective for all types of businesses.
Partnerships: Partnering with influencers, businesses, or other authorities that are in a similar niche as your product is a great way to get access to buyers.
- Pros: You leverage the authority and trust built by your partner for a boost in credibility. Also, if you play it right, your product will be in front of the right target audience.
- Cons: Finding quality people to partner with can be tough - few people want to work with the new kid on the block. If you do find someone, you’ll likely have to give up a substantial piece of revenue or equity to make this happen.
Online Ads: If you have a tightly defined customer segment, you may be able to run an ad with your offer directly targeted to those people on Facebook, Google, or any other ad platform.
- Pros: This is a quick and relatively cheap way to get data and your product in front of a lot of people.
- Cons: There isn’t a great feedback loop with ads and the targeting isn’t super-specific. You’ll have data to look at, but ultimately, you won’t know why someone didn’t buy. e.g wrong audience, too expensive, they didn’t like the solution, they thought the website looked scammy, ect…
Online Communities: My personal favorite is to engage with potential customers in online communities. Regardless of your niche, there are almost certainly online communities where your early adopters hang out.
- Pros: Tons of qualified customers that are easy to find and talk to.
- Cons: Most communities don’t allow promotion, so you’ll need to add value and find ways to talk about your promotion. This can take time and be slow.
Build an Audience First: Depending on the business, it can be much easier to build an audience through a mastermind, online community, or blog to leverage when you’re ready to sell.
- Pros: You build a relationship with your target audience for sales in the future. IMO building an audience is the easiest way for you to be successful.
- Cons: The issue here is that building an audience likely won’t directly test the value proposition of your offer.

This is one post in a series of posts that will come around how to de-risk companies faster. I’ll hang out in the comments for discussion.
PS I just started using Twitter like all the cool kids, follow me if you want to see more content like this.
Edit - Adding Content Marketing: Creating optimized content for SEO or Quora can be a great way to catch buyers through search intent.

Pros: It's free (assuming you write it yourself) and can have lasting effects that create a real competitive advantage for your company.
Cons: Time-consuming, takes a while to reap the benefits, and similar with paid ads, there's not a feedback loop (ie you won't know what's working and what isn't). When trying to get your first 10 customers, your goal should be to move fast and learn as quickly as possible

Dhoni "Don't you think it's unfair that you play a team sport where the captain receives the trophy"? Have you guys seen this gem of an interview of Dhoni's after winning the 2018 IPL trophy?

After computer engineering?

What to do if you are pursuing Computer Science undergrad from a tier-2 college

This is in reply to a query by a user (whose privacy I will respect) on a month-long thread. My reply was too long so here it is:
Right. I think it's time to get started on this now. Enough procrastination.I wish to answer not only the question you asked, but also wish to convey whatever I feel you should do in the next 4 years.
First off -- I truly apologize for leaving you hanging like this for nearly a month. I wasn't even free during Dasara and after that things kinda petered out.
Coming to the point:
Programming is the ABC of Computer Science. I know many faculty members and others are saying that the core concept is not only programming, but the fact remains that if you are shoddy in programming, you are going to have a tough time in CSE.
Much of CS theory is about large systems in various levels and how to build and maintain them, but at the end of the day, the building blocks of such systems are code. Programming is like the language through which the systems are expressed.
A metaphor I might use is that when you're giving a speech in English, your content is important, but your grammar, diction and pronunciation matter too. Similarly, you might be writing a database program, a web app, an ML experiment, an operating system or code for a microcontroller, but in the end, you're still programming. What you write and how you write changes -- but there are some fundamental principles which apply.
That's it for one of your questions. Now, the rest of what I wanted to say.
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There's a quote from one of my seniors from what I would say is the 2nd/3rd best engineering undergrad college in my city (and a top 5 in my state).He said -- "Classes end at 5. Learning starts at 5."
You have to realise that there is a certain amount of obsolescence in engineering education in almost ALL colleges in India -- even in most of the ones that have good placements. They are obsolete in both the methods and the content.
So, what do you do?
The answer: Learn as much as you can by yourself.
The very first thing you need to do is to catch hold of one of the knowledgeble 4th years of your college and find out the CGPA cutoffs for campus placements and, if you have masters/PhD ambitions, the general CGPA of the students who go for that.
Depending on your aim, your goal is to have a CGPA that is just above the cutoff. Anything more than that is a waste of time, but anything less than that is a disaster. The thing is, having a perfect CGPA won't help you, but having a bad CGPA will hurt you. If the best company has a 8 CGPA cutoff -- you need 8.01 CGPA. But 10CGPA and 8.01 CGPA are pretty much the same in their eyes. After that point, the rest of your CV and your performance in their selection process is what matters. The same applies to foreign studies as well. I don't have an exact cutoff here, but you should be able to find out. I guess a 9 at the very least.
With the CGPA out of the way, let's talk about the rest of the faculty interaction.
Don't argue with faculty. Keep your head down. If they say 2+2 = 5, you say "yes sir, 2+2 = 5" and keep in mind that 2+2 = 4 and carry on. You never know when they will bite back. If faculty handle placements process, then that's where they could take their revenge.

The main things companies want are:

Good problem solving skills using the right data structures and algorithms.
Good experience with modern tools.
Plenty of experience working on your own projects and contributing to other projects.

So, what you should be doing is:

Install Ubuntu (either dual-boot or otherwise) on your laptop. Do all your coding work in Ubuntu. Off-topic here -- get a good laptop. Spend at least 50K on it (unless you are in a MAJOR financial crunch) and get something with 8GB of RAM, an i5 or the AMD equivalent, and an SSD. The reason is that you will be spending most of your time on your laptop so things like boot time, loading time, responsiveness etc add up quickly. Further, in my experience, laptops of around 30K price rarely last beyond 2-3 years -- so you'll be spending 60K in 4 years anyway. Might as well do it in the beginning and get a good laptop.
Get familiar with the Vim editor. Do all your coding in Vim to start with. Once you are generally familiar with 3-4 languages (C, C++, Python, Java) then move on to VS Code.
Start with the Python programming language through MIT 6.0001x. Once you have some familiarity with Python, IMMEDIATELY move on to C. Yes, C. Not C++. I am a little old-school here but I believe manually allocating and deallocating memory and learning how not to get "Segmentation fault (core dumped)" errors is a worthwhile exercise in programming discipline. Learn C from Harvard's CS50.
Here's the thing -- remember how the only way to learn Maths properly was to do Maths problems? The same principle applies to programming as well. The only way to be a good programmer is to practice programming. In both MIT 6.0001 and CS50, you MUST do the programming exercises given. There's no use just looking at a lecture.
Once you are familiar with functions ,while/for loops, multidimensional arrays, malloc/free, immediately start practicing problems from Hackerrank -> Algorithms -> Implementation. Do it in C. DO NOT SEE SOLUTIONS. And definitely do not view the extra testcases. Remember, these questions test your general problem-solving ability and DO NOT need any extra DSA knowledge.
You should be done with Hackerrank->Algorithms->Implementation in C by the end of your first semester, or at the latest, the middle of your second semester.
Now, it's time to start learning DSA. I never really used any online resource for this as my college prof is a legend. That said, I have heard good things about some NPTEL IIT courses. I suppose there is some or the other Quora answer which will tell you where to learn from. Don't get bogged down by which language the course uses. I would suggest you to implement all the key data structures and algorithms at least once in C.
Practice the various data structures and algorithms using the relevant filter on Hackerrank. The cool thing about Hackerrank is that you can filter by topic.
After this, familiarize yourself with C++ and in particular, the Standard Template Library.
Once you are familiar with the various data structures and algorithms, now is the time to prove yourself on Codechef, Codeforces and in other programming contests. Practicing on Leetcode is also a good idea. The gold standard of the contests is the ACM-ICPC -- the World Finalists from India are usually from some IIT, IIIT (H, B, A, D). There are other contests too -- and participating in them is a good way to make your mark. Some companies even recruit through contests like Google Code Jam, Kickstart, Facebook Hacker Cup etc. For some perspective, many of the ACM ICPC World Finalists go on to work at Google Mountain View even if their college doesn't have any footprint.
Don't totally ignore coursework either. Some subjects, like databases, operating systems, networking, DSA, compilers etc should be studied not for marks, but for expertise in the subject. Placements ke time mein kaam aayega.
It's not all about DSA and problem solving. You should demonstrate that you have experience in building and contributing to large systems through projects. You should familiarize yourself with modern tools across the board. When your college uses Turbo C /C++ compiler, you should use gcc and g++. When they suggest coding in Notepad, you should become familiar with VS Code, Atom or customized Vim. You should also become familiar with version control systems like Git as well as cloud repositories like Github. It is vital that you contribute to open source projects. Another standard for such participation is the Google Summer of Code.
Come placements time, if you have done all this, another major factor is your ability to communicate in English. Start reading novels in your spare time and watch your vocabulary and grammar break the glass ceiling. You should also get used to situations like public speaking, communicating effectively and without fear to your superiors etc because these are the skills that will give you confidence during your interview.

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That's all I have to say. DM me if you have any questions.

EDIT: I totally forgot about AIML/Data Science. Do ML ONLY after you have done a semester each of Linear Algebra, Probability/Statistics and Multivariate Calculus. Don't think that the Andrew Ng Coursera course is enough. Learn preprocessing, exploratory data visualization too. Learn the mathematical derivations for every algorithm right from Linear Regression all the way till Deep Neural Networks. Practice and compete on Kaggle. Learn how to use Numpy, Pandas , Matplotlib, Seaborn, SKLearn, Tensorflow2/Keras, Pytorch etc.

EDIT2: DON'T NEGLECT MATHS. It will bite your ass.

To my fellow internationals,

*please upvote so all internationals can see this post*
(Disclaimer: I commented on a post yesterday and I received a huge amount of messages, I tried to answer as much as I could but there was over 100 messages left so I decided to make a post for everyone.)
Hey everyone, my name is Amine, from Morocco. I'm here to share with all my fellow internationals how I got accepted to a US university with over $40,000 scholarship.
I am aware that this process must be very hard and confusing to most of us but I'm here to help you all. Here are the main point that you should know about the application process:

Common App
College list
Intro emails
Scholarships and Financial Aid application
Supportive documents for the financial aid
English proficiency test
SAT and SAT subject test
Common App Essay and Supplemental essays
Transcripts
Teacher's and counselor's recommendation letter
College Interviews

To start off, we are going to talk about the common app. The common app is an undergraduate college admission application that applicants may use to apply to any of more than 800 colleges and universities, as well as in Canada, China, Japan, and many European countries. Its mission is to promote access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process, which includes subjective factors gleaned from essays and recommendations alongside more objective criteria such as class rank. When you log in, you will need to fill out everything in order to give the school every information needed. you will also be asked to select the schools you want to apply to ( you have up to 20 colleges). So how do I choose the right university for me? this what leads us to the second part: The College List

The College list: the college list is basically the list to schools you choose to apply to. You should do your own research about what schools you're looking for. Ask yourself these questions: what major do I want to study? Does location matter? Do I want to go to a small liberal art college or a big state school? Do I need financial aid and scholarships or not?
Knowing the answer to all these questions will give you a big start, there is a lot of ressources you can use to make your college list. ( for exemple: Niche, College Board, college confidential, Reddit, Quora, and the universities website, etc...)
After you choose the colleges you want to apply to you will need to check their requirements and see if you have a chance there.

Intro Email: After you choose the school you want to apply to, you will need to show interest. By sending an intro email, you present yourself an at the same time you talk about the school and show your high interest. I can send you all a general template of how it looks like.

Scholarships and Financial Aid Application: In the US there is two type for us, international students, to have money from the school. 1. Merit-based scholarships*:* when you apply to the college you're automatically qualified for a merit based scholarship depending on your academic achievements: GPA, SAT, IELTS, and essays. 2. Financial Aid: if your family is not able to pay the cost of a US university, you can apply to financial aid. However, you will need to fill out some forms:
a- ISFAA: International Student Financial Aid Application
b- Certification of Finances
c- CSS Profile
P.S: Most schools asks for the CSS profile but quite few ask for one of the two others, as for the others, you can find them on Google.

After sending these forms, you will be asked to provide some supportive documents as a proof like: The Salary Statement of both parents, Unemployment Certificate if one of the parents doesn't work, Bank statements of the past three months, Tax form, etc...

Let's now talk about english proficiency tests: if your first language is not English, you will need to take the IELTS and TOEFL, they are both english tests that are REQUIRED for international students in order for the the school to know your level in english, they both have four sections: Speaking, Listening, Reading, and Writing. I linked a website to understand better the difference between them. By the way, a good score in the IELTS is 7.0/9 and a good score in the TOEFL is 100+/120

Now, let's talk about the SAT. the SAT is a The SAT is a standarized test widely used for college admission. The SAT takes three hours to finish, plus 50 minutes for the SAT with essay, and as of 2019 costs US$49.50 (US$64.50 with the optional essay), excluding late fees, with additional processing fees if the SAT is taken outside the United States. Scores on the SAT range from 400 to 1600, combining test results from two 200-to-800-point sections: Mathematics, and Critical Reading and Writing.
the SAT has a huge factor on your admission as it shows your academic abilities in both sections English and Math.
As of the SAT subject test, they are college admission exams on specific subjects. These are the only national admission tests where you choose the tests that best showcase your strengths and interests.
DISCLAIMER: DUE TO COVID-19, THE SAT WAS CANCELLED IN MULTIPLE CENTERS AROUND THE GLOBE AND MANY PEOPLE WERE NOT ABLE TO TAKE IT, SO MOST IF NOT ALL UNIVERSITIES WENT TO TEST-OPTIONAL, WHICH MEANS YOU WILL STILL BE ABLE TO APPLY TO SCHOOLS WITHOUT YOUR SAT.

Now let's move to The Common App Essay, otherwise known as the personal statement, is one of the most important parts of your application. The personal statement is your best chance to show who you really are and what you care most about. The rest of your application is primarily numbers and facts! So, how do you write the best personal statement. (btw, you have 650 word limit)
First things first, here’s a list of things that you should NOT talk about:

Anyone else - Admission officers want to get to know YOU, not your grandpa or sister.
Being an injured athlete - This is a cliché topic, as many high schoolers participate in sports and have experienced some sort of wound. Unless your injury changed your life in an incredibly profound way, stay away from this topic.
Family vacation abroad - Even if going to Paris or Tokyo changed your perspective on the world, writing about your family’s amazing trips often comes across as privileged.
Adversity that isn’t really adversity - Other students in your applicant pool will have experienced homelessness, life threatening diseases, and abuse. Only write about your adversity if it has been a true setback that has changed your life! If you were scared about giving a speech and then gave the speech in the end, this adversity sounds like a pretty common feat.
When writing your personal statement here are some tips to keep in mind:

Keep it personal - It’s okay to mention other people in your personal statement, but always connect it back to you and your development as a person.
Show don’t tell - Don’t just say, “I’m a hard worker.” Show how you are a hard worker through your story.
Think about your overall application theme - If all of your activities and classes are pointing towards you being a future business entrepreneur, it wouldn’t make much sense if you wrote your personal statement about how passionate you are about art. Think about how your personal statement ties back to the rest of your application.
Edit, edit, edit - When we work with students, we usually go through at least 10 drafts before the personal statement is perfect. Make sure that you edit your personal statement many times. It also helps to have your friends and family look over it for grammatical errors.

The personal statement can be incredibly powerful in showing admission officers your character. Don’t just throw it together - spend a lot of time brainstorming and drafting this essay!
P.S: After adding your all your colleges in the Common app, you will find the writing section of each school, and there you can find if there's any suppemental essay. A supplemental essay is ofter short answers essay where you will be asked to talk about something specific depending on the question. ( they can be more than just one)

Next, we are going to talk about your transcripts. US colleges asks for all your high school's transcripts, starting from 9th grade. You will need to translate them in english in case they are not and ask your counselor to submit them for you.

After that, you will need at least one teacher's recommendation letter and one counselor's recommendation letter. You will need to ask the teacher that knows you best and with whom you have a good relationship.

After you submit your application, you will need to book an interview with an admission officer or alumna who will ask you ome basic question, the interviews last between 25 minutes and 45 minutes. The main purpose of the interview is for the AOs to get to know you better and if you ever have questions about the schools this would be the perfect moment.

I know the struggle, I have been through all this and more, and I had to discover all of this by myself it was so stressful and seems impossible. So please if you have any questions or any concerns, you can email me or leave a comment.

Please convince me astrology is bullshit. I was in a vulnerable place and went down the rabbit hole of astrology and I hate it. It's controlling my life and I need help breaking out!

[[[ Edit: I really wasn’t expecting such a positive reply. I honestly thought I’d get trolled more than I’d get helped. I’m grateful to everyone who responded with a genuine intention to help and the niceness.
The general consensus is that I need professional help for my mental health. I’m going to try to make it available to me at the earliest.
And lastly, I feel much better. I’m still anxious and fearful, but also feeling better. So thank you for that. ]]]
Now before everyone starts judging me please know I wasn't always this obsessed about astrology. In fact I'm one of those people who keep logic and critical thinking at the forefront. However circumstances in life have made me so vulnerable and hopeless, that I'm spiraling down a rabbit-hole of astrology.
My family, especially my mother and her side of the family have always been believers of vedic astrology and kundli horoscopes. In fact they used to consult someone who ended up predicting almost everything accurately in their lives and as a result their belief and trust in him grew. Since I was a kid I have always distanced myself from astrologers and their predictions.
I remember whenever my parents would come back after taking me and my brother's kundlis for consultation, I would always just go sit in another room (when they'd discuss/tell us about it) because I didn't want to hear what the guy said. Firstly, because almost always it was something negative, and secondly, I felt it just ruined the mood and pushed you to make choices that you might not have considered before... turning the predictions into a sort of self fulfilling prophecy.
Now before I get into the astrology-bs I'm in, some back story:
I've had depression and anxiety as a teen. I've been to therapists a couple of times but it hasn't helped that much.
I graduated from engineering in 2017 and even though I was a better student and scored fairly well, things didn't work out so well. Due to an unfortunate circumstance I lost the on-campus placement I had secured. People who were less smart than me now have better careers and lives. I was unemployed for 8 months until I found an unpaid internship with a great MNC. I tried hard but it never turned into a full on paid role. Somehow I managed to get an interview at a company thanks to a reference from my cousin and got placed there as a software trainee. Even the job and role in itself had no growth or learning, I was happy to be finally employed. That year itself I met and started dating my first ever boyfriend.
So trouble began last year. The job was pathetic, my manager didn't treat me like a normal human and wouldn't even look me in the eye when he talked to me. He used to think trainees were useless and beneath him and ended up delegating someone else in the team the task to help me learn the ropes and get tasks done. I was so unhappy that I would often come home with an intention to put my papers the next day. But I kept on getting up every morning and dealing with it.
I was never expecting that on a fine Monday morning when I'm called for a meeting with my manager it'd be because I was being laid off. It was out of the blue and it was shocking. I felt like a rug had been pulled from underneath me. My relationship with my boyfriend was a bit tumultuous before but from here shit started to hit the fan. From the last year we've been in an on/off relationship. There have been massive fights and he's broken my heart by telling me he doesn't love me and thinks that he might never be able to. When I broke up with him over that, he backtracked and said he could love me with time and that he doesn't want to lose me. The emotional fool I am, I took his manipulative bait. He's been toxic and emotionally abusive and immature but patient and sweet at the same time. It's been a hellish roller coaster.
So when I lost my job again and got depressed my mother got worried. My cousin used to consult an astrology service at that time. Its a telecom company's calling astro service wherein astrologers speak to you on the phone and make predictions at Rs9/min. My cousin swore by this one specific astrologer she used to speak to at this service and naturally my mother decided to consult him(given the cool Rs9/min deal as well).
He would predict overall good things, about my future and my relationship. Some of his predictions were accurate. With just the name of my bf he was able to tell what he looks like and the exact spot he has a mole on his face on as well as many of his characteristics. When I gave him my bf's birthdate, he always told me that my bf is a good guy by nature and he loves me but isn't able to express it. He used to tell me he'd never misguide me and that me and my bf actually do have a happy stable future together. I love my bf and obviously this gave me lots of hope so I kept enduring and overlooking things in the relationship.
At the career front I applied to multiple jobs and would rarely get a call back. Whenever I did get a callback, I'd clear interview after interview till they'd reject me in the last round. I would call up the astrologer disheartened and he swore by the fact that I have an amazing career ahead of me and that "mera guarantee hai apka iss mahine job lag jaega. Mai apko kabhi galat guide kar sakta hoon kya?". He was telling me exactly what I needed to hear, both on the career and love front and I kept on believing him. But things never turned out quite like he said. I never got a job, my love life was bad and then covid hit. So when asked about his guarantee he used the excuse "Ye toh parmata ka kaam hai. Parmata se bada koi nahi. Aur Covid toh sabke sath hi problems create kar raha hai, sirf aapke sath nahi".
As you can tell by now I had already built a dependency on it. Every time shit got bad mentally (and more often than not it was due to relationship issues), I'd call him up. I used to trust this astrologer because after talking to him I felt positive (because he was lying as I later find out). Whenever me and my bf would have a fight, I'd be really upset and unable to eat or sleep but the astrologer would predict the exact date after which my bf would contact me again and say sorry and it always came true. A few weeks ago he left that consultancy service and I started talking to someone else who was even more positive and I guess this is where I realised he was overselling it. My life wasn't as good as he kept saying.
So on a random day I talked to a random guy from the service and not my "regular". He laid things out to me brutally honest. Apparently my kundli has a negative conjunction in the 7th house(the house of marriage and relationships). He said my kundli shows that I value relationships and bonds but unfortunately no matter who I'm with, my current bf or someone else, my relationships are bound to be rocky and always on the brink of breaking off. I will never get the amount of love I give back. There will always be problems. He said even my married life wouldn't be happy. I also have Shani and Jupiter that'd delay my marriage and any career related ventures.
In order to test his knowledge I asked him to tell me about my life so far. I gave him specific years to talk about and 99% of his words were accurate. He spoke about my past romantic likings and how even they never worked out well. How I've always had to struggle harder compared to my peers at school/college to get where they are and even then get unsuccessful results. How I was unemployed and struggled for a while before catching a break. Whatever he told me had happened to me, year by year, month by month. He predicted when I started my relationship, when I lost my job, and when my relationship started turning worse. I felt like he was playing a reel of my life just using my birthdate and time. He told me my life has been full of struggles from an early age and will continue to be so because it's in my kundli.
Obviously this made my anxiety skyrocket. No one wants to hear their life isn't happy.. then what's the point of living (and believe me my depression makes me ask this question a lot). When he realised how low hearing all this made me feel, he gave me a lot of "upaaye" to strengthen my planets.
I asked him philosophically if this is my destiny just because it's in my kundli and I was born at the wrong place or wrong time. I asked him if i can change things. He told me "karm se sab kuch badal sakta hai" which feels like such an oxymoron to all of it.
Needless to say, the break up happened with my bf to the point where he doesn't even want to talk about it or meet me. He's disrespectful, cold, and indifferent. We haven't met since Covid lockdown, it's been 9 months and he's showed no interest to talk things out or even make an effort to come meet me. I'm still unemployed. I have exhausted all my references, sent hundreds of applications and reached out to so many people but there is no hope in sight. I feel like my life is falling apart.
The astrologer even predicted the next 5-6 years of my life, and 2021 in a lot of detail. Things don't look good for me and it's giving me so much anxiety and worry. I don't know what to do and I'm scared.
I am so dependent and obsessed with astrology now that I keep calling just to see if someone would say something else, something positive and interpret my kundli in some other way. I've wasted thousands of rupees making hour long calls. I can correlate a lot of the things this new astrologer said about my life and my personality to the reality that now I feel like I'm doomed. I feel helpless like no matter what I do, it's just not in my control. What's written is going to happen. I value relationships a lot, and I tried really fucking hard to make it work with my bf. I was supportive, loving, loyal without ans stayed by him without even getting half of the intensity back. If my karm and my efforts couldn't even change my destiny then what's the point. Same was with my efforts at the career front. Multiple references, multiple calls, multiple applications. Nothing works.
I'm just 25 but I'm really depressed, vulnerable, and helpless right now. I feel like my life has no meaning anymore and it just isn't worth continuing if I can't change things or have what I want even with hard work. I've become so desperate to be accepted and loved back, it's ruined my self esteem. I'd like to believe I'm a good person and I don't deserve any of this.
I've read about the Barnum effect but I don't think it'd apply here as when you're on a call, the other person isn't getting all the visual and behavioral cues. I can't seem to accept that this is just cognitive bias since his "past predictions" were specific and spot on.
I really need help. I've gone through below mentioned articles and multiple Quora posts about astrology and if its real.
Scientists said this
and this but I can't seem to think logically anymore. I used to be a smart woman :( Help
Nothing seems to take this crushing doomed feeling away (the astrologer said I have ketu over me right now and things should get better in a month -_-) but I'm just tired of wasting money and hours and my energy obsessing over this. It's ruling my life right now and I fell like I have no control anymore.
I don't know how to get out of this mindset. I wish I had never got into astrology. My self confidence has been completely ruined. My life feels like it's in shambles.
What have everyone else's experiences with astrology been like, especially when you've been to one who actually knew what he was talking about? How do I get out of this shit-hole and change my perspective? Please convince me all this is actual bullshit.
I want to believe I can create a life I think I deserve and not my what my stars think I should get.
I need hope.

The ecommerce guide to acquiring new consumers

Evidence that Musk is the Chief Engineer of SpaceX

Statements by SpaceX Employees

Not true, I am an advisor now. Elon and the Propulsion department are leading development of the SpaceX engines, particularly Raptor. I offer my 2 cents to help from time to time"

Source

We’ll have, you know, a group of people sitting in a room, making a key decision. And everybody in that room will say, you know, basically, “We need to turn left,” and Elon will say “No, we’re gonna turn right.” You know, to put it in a metaphor. And that’s how he thinks. He’s like, “You guys are taking the easy way out; we need to take the hard way.”
And, uh, I’ve seen that hurt us before, I’ve seen that fail, but I’ve also seen— where nobody thought it would work— it was the right decision. It was the harder way to do it, but in the end, it was the right thing.

Source

When the third chamber cracked, Musk flew the hardware back to California, took it to the factory floor, and, with the help of some engineers, started to fill the chambers with an epoxy to see if it would seal them. “He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty,” Mueller said. “He’s out there with his nice Italian shoes and clothes and has epoxy all over him. They were there all night and tested it again and it broke anyway.” Musk, clothes ruined, had decided the hardware was flawed, tested his hypothesis, and moved on quickly.

Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction.
He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy.
He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years.

“I first met Elon for my job interview,” Reisman told the USA TODAY Network's Florida Today. “All he wanted to talk about were technical things. We talked a lot about different main propulsion system design architectures.
“At the end of my interview, I said, ‘Hey, are you sure you want to hire me? You’ve already got an astronaut, so are you sure you need two around here?’ ” Reisman asked. “He looked at me and said, ‘I’m not hiring you because you’re an astronaut. I’m hiring you because you’re a good engineer.’ ”
Managing SpaceX and Tesla, building out new businesses and maintaining relationships with his family makes Musk a busy billionaire.
“He’s obviously skilled at all those different functions, but certainly what really drives him and where his passion really is, is his role as CTO,” or chief technology officer, Reisman said. “Basically his role as chief designer and chief engineer. That’s the part of the job that really plays to his strengths."

(Source)

What's really remarkable to me is the breadth of his knowledge. I mean I've met a lot of super super smart people but they're usually super super smart on one thing and he's able to have conversations with our top engineers about the software, and the most arcane aspects of that and then he'll turn to our manufacturing engineers and have discussions about some really esoteric welding process for some crazy alloy and he'll just go back and forth and his ability to do that across the different technologies that go into rockets cars and everything else he does.

(Source)

Josh Boehm
Josh Boehm (LinkedIn, Quora) is the former Head of Software Quality Assurance at SpaceX.

Elon is both the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of SpaceX, so of course he does more than just ‘some very technical work’. He is integrally involved in the actual design and engineering of the rocket, and at least touches every other aspect of the business (but I would say the former takes up much more of his mental real estate). Elon is an engineer at heart, and that’s where and how he works best.

(Source)

Statements by External Observers

Eric Berger
Eric Berger (Twitter, LinkedIn) is a space journalist and Ars Technica's senior space editor. He has been interviewing SpaceX employees for an upcoming book on its early days.

True. Elon is the chief engineer in name and reality.

(Source)

Christian Davenport
Christian Davenport is the Washington Post's defense and space reporter and the author of "Space Barons". The following quotes are excerpts from his book.

He dispatched one of his lieutenants, Liam Sarsfield, then a high-ranking NASA official in the office of the chief engineer, to California to see whether the company was for real or just another failure in waiting.
Most of all, he was impressed with Musk, who was surprisingly fluent in rocket engineering and understood the science of propulsion and engine design. Musk was intense, preternaturally focused, and extremely determined. “This was not the kind of guy who was going to accept failure,” Sarsfield remembered thinking.
Throughout the day, as Musk showed off mockups of the Falcon 1 and Falcon 5, the engine designs, and plans to build a spacecraft capable of flying humans, Musk peppered Sarsfield with questions. He wanted to know what was going on within NASA. And how a company like his would be perceived. He asked tons of highly technical questions, including a detailed discussion about “base heating,” the heat radiating out from the exhaust going back up into the rocket’s engine compartment—a particular problem with rockets that have clusters of engines next to one another, as Musk was planning to build.
Now that he had a friend inside of NASA, Musk kept up with the questions in the weeks after Sarsfield’s visit, firing off “a nonstop torrent of e-mails” and texts, Sarsfield said. Musk jokingly warned that texting was a “core competency.” “He sends texts in a constant flow,” Sarsfield recalled. “I found him to be consumed by whatever was in front of him and anxious to solve problems. This, combined with a tendency to work eighteen hours a day, is a sign of someone driven to succeed.” Musk was particularly interested in the docking adapter of the International Space Station, the port where the spacecraft his team was designing would dock. He wanted to know the dimensions, the locking pin design, even the bolt pattern of the hatch. The more documents Sarsfield sent, the more questions Musk had.
“I really enjoyed the way he would pore over problems anxious to absorb every detail. To my mind, someone that clearly committed deserves all the support and help you can give him.”

Mosdell ( 10th employee ) found Musk a touch awkward and abrupt, but smart. Mosdell had showed up prepared to talk about his experience building launchpads, which, after all, was what SpaceX wanted him to do. But instead, Musk wanted to talk hard-core rocketry. Specifically the Delta IV rocket and its RS-68 engines, which Mosdell had some experience with when at Boeing. Over the course of the interview, they discussed “labyrinth purges” and “pump shaft seal design” and “the science behind using helium as opposed to nitrogen.”

After the meeting on Valentine’s Day adjourned, Musk offered to give the group a tour of his facility. To this group of engineers and entrepreneurs, it was like an invitation to a six-year-old to visit a chocolate factory. As Musk guided them through the factory floor, the group “let loose with detailed, technical questions, and he answered all of them,” Gedmark said. “Not once did he say, ‘I don’t feel comfortable answering that because it’s proprietary.’… It was certainly impressive.”

John Carmack
John Carmack (Twitter, Wikipedia) is a programmer, video game developer and engineer. He's the founder of Armadillo Aerospace and current CTO of Oculus VR.

Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so.

(Source)

Robert Zubrin
Robert Zubrin (Wikipedia) is an aerospace engineer and author, best known for his advocacy of human exploration of Mars.

When I met Elon it was apparent to me that although he had a scientific mind and he understood scientific principles, he did not know anything about rockets. Nothing. That was in 2001. By 2007 he knew everything about rockets - he really knew everything, in detail. You have to put some serious study in to know as much about rockets as he knows now. This doesn't come just from hanging out with people.

(Source)

Statements by Elon Himself

Yes. The design of Starship and the Super Heavy rocket booster I changed to a special alloy of stainless steel. I was contemplating this for a while. And this is somewhat counterintuitive. It took me quite a bit of effort to convince the team to go in this direction.

(Source)

I know more about rockets than anyone at the company by a pretty significant margin, I could redraw substantial portions of the rocket from memory without the blueprints

(Source)

Tim Dodd: "What people don't understand is that you're the lead engineer. You're literally sitting"
Musk: "Literally. This is a... I've actually had a dinner with some, with a, with a friend and he was like 'well who's the chief engineer of SpaceX?' I was like it's me. He was like 'it's not you, who is it?' Look it's either someone with a very low ego or I don't know."

(Source)

Interviewer: What do you do when you're at SpaceX and Tesla? What does your time look like there?
Elon: Yes, it's a good question. I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media or on businessy things*. But actually almost all my time, like 80% of it, is spent on engineering and design.* Engineering and design, so it's developing next-generation product. That's 80% of it.
Interviewer: You probably don't remember this. A very long time ago, many, many, years, you took me on a tour of SpaceX. And the most impressive thing was that you knew every detail of the rocket and every piece of engineering that went into it. And I don't think many people get that about you.
Elon: Yeah. I think a lot of people think I'm kind of a business person or something, which is fine. Business is fine. But really it's like at SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell is Chief Operating Officer. She manages legal, finance, sales, and general business activity. And then my time is almost entirely with the engineering team, working on improving the Falcon 9 and our Dragon spacecraft and developing the Mars Colonial architecture. At Tesla, it's working on the Model 3 and, yeah, so I'm in the design studio, take up a half a day a week, dealing with aesthetics and look-and-feel things. And then most of the rest of the week is just going through engineering of the car itself as well as engineering of the factory. Because the biggest epiphany I've had this year is that what really matters is the machine that builds the machine, the factory. And that is at least two orders of magnitude harder than the vehicle itself.

(Source)

Do not seem to have enough time in the day even though I am mostly doing nothing

CMV: There's no such thing as a person with a "photographic memory"

I posted about this in a different subreddit, but decided it would be more appropriately discussed here.
I've heard that there are people with "photographic memories" who can apparently easily recall any even distant memories with insane precision. Such people can, effortlessly without the need of memory training, mnemonic devices, or other memorization tricks, remember even inane and minute details of most interactions and can recite whole books that they've read verbatim after having only read them once. The term "photographic memory" suggests that, when these people recall things, it's similar to looking at a photograph or replaying a video.
If you just Google "what's it like to have a photographic memory", you'll find no shortage of people who claim to have this ability. Two posts that came up for me were this Quora post where someone claims to have memorized a 10,000 line poem after (I assume) one reading, and, apparently, asking them to recall exact details of the poem was like "asking someone to list the numbers from 1-50 and then the letters of the alphabet in alphabetical order". I also found this old Reddit AMA from someone claiming "I remember every word of every page I have ever read in English". These are just random examples I happened to come across from one Google search, but it isn't hard to find literally hundreds of examples of people claiming to have this ability.
In psychology, the concept of an eidetic memory is a controversial one, and it's disputed whether anyone with an eidetic memory actually exists. Indeed, the evidence that there are people with eidetic memories seems dubious at best, but even assuming they do exist, the most extreme cases studied don't come anywhere near the level of someone remembering every book they have ever read verbatim.
Also, this concept comes up in fiction a lot. In Good Will Hunting, for example, Matt Damon's character can recall exact quotes from dense history books down to the page number. It's pretty common, in fiction, for "genius" characters to have unbelievably good memories.
There are memory competitions where competitors compete to see who can memorize the most binary digits, playing cards, random words etc. in a given amount of time. So, I think the question is obvious. Why don't people with photographic memories ever show up to memory competitions and just completely dominate the whole event? If recalling memories for them is as easy as looking at a photograph, then they should be able to memorize binary digits (or whatever) basically as fast as you could show it to them, trivializing the whole event. They would be able to perform at or above the level of the best memorizers in the world with little or no training or practice.
Yet, it seems like this doesn't ever happen. In interviews, memory champions typically describe using all kinds of memorization tricks and training very hard from a young age to get to that level of skill, which suggests that they don't have photographic memories.
When I've mentioned this argument before, people have responded by saying that memory competitions basically blacklist people with photographic memories, but I've found no evidence of this occurring, at least not at a "professional" level. There have, I believe, been specific cases of people being banned from local competitions, but instances of this are usually because of other reasons, such as rule violations, or a desire not to have top-level competitors competing against beginners. I've heard no example of someone being banned from, say, the World Memory Championships because they were "too good" at memorizing stuff.
I think that people with "photographic memories" (in the sense that I've described in the first paragraph) don't actually exist, and claims from people online are heavily exaggerated or made up. I think it's similar to how some people claim to have telepathy or precognition, but are never able to reproduce these abilities consistently under scientific conditions.
More precisely, I think people who claim (or are claimed by others) to have photographic memories generally fall into one of three categories:
1.They are vastly exaggerating some real-life memory quirks. These people may have naturally quite good memory (not superhuman, not record-breaking, but good), an aptitude for memorizing random facts, or they may be particularly observant of small details in their environment that others typically overlook. Then, when someone makes note of their memory and suggests that they may have a photographic memory, they simply go along with it and exaggerate the full extent of their abilities when asked. In some more extreme cases, I think people can actually delude themselves into believing that they really do have a photographic memory by procedurally creating false memories of details they don't actually recall. Then, as is typical of any delusion, they will reject all conflicting evidence and find excuses to explain whenever their false memories don't match up with reality, and instances where the false memories are actually correct they will see as confirmation of their ability.
Relevant to this, I'd speculate that the person I mentioned in the Quora post I linked earlier falls into this category (obviously I don't know this person, this is just idle speculation, but I think it fits). The user says "I have a photographic memory, but I don't always have film in the camera, to paraphrase Steven Wright. Some days I don't use the flash or forget to take the lens cap off" and I think this is the excuse this person uses whenever their false memories don't match up with reality. If something they thought they remembered turned out to be false, they could simply say "Oh, I must have 'forgotten to use the flash' that day."
In fact, most accounts I've read from people claiming to have a photographic memory include this caveat that they occasionally have off-days where their memory doesn't quite work right. It's possible that this actually is just how photographic memories work, but I think it seems more likely that they are using this as an excuse for false memories and to preempt criticism.

They are a con-artist or magician pretending to have a "photographic memory" as an act for entertainment, attention, and/or for money. These people may use actual memory training techniques that are used by competitors for memory competitions, such as mnemonics, the method of loci, mnemonic linking, and chunking). In addition, people in this category will use misdirection and other tricks to create the appearance of doing memory feats that would be impossible for even the worlds best competitive memory champions. Derren Brown has done some tricks like this (though he doesn't claim to have a photographic memory); here is a video of Darren making it look like he's been able to memorize random books in under 20 minutes.
They are part of the extremely small minority of people with savant syndrome, so their incredible memory is usually accompanied by severe mental disabilities. For people in this category, their memorization abilities are also virtually always quite limited in scope. Stephen Wiltshire, for example, can memorize and draw landscapes quickly and with incredible detail, but there's no evidence of an exceptional memory in other areas. Stephen Wiltshire hasn't displayed the ability to memorize books verbatim, or, for that matter, strings of random digits.

I think the closest thing to a well documented example of a person with a "photographic memory" would be Kim Peek who apparently could recall the contents of around 10,000 to 12,000 books. However, Kim could not recite the contents of those books verbatim, he could "merely" remember details of the plot. As far as I know, Kim never competed in any memory competitions, so there's really no way to know how good he would have been at them. I found this thread where someone claims that Kim was struggling to exceed 7 digits in a digit span test, though I can't vouch for the veracity of this random person's claim. I'd speculate that, similar to Stephen Wiltshire, his incredible memorization abilities were very limited in scope and only applied to certain domains of information.
Even if Kim Peek had something that could be called a "photographic memory" (which evidence suggests is not the case), then he must be basically the only well-documented case in history. In this case, I'd be willing to weaken my claim to saying that "photographic memories" are astronomically rare (like in the ballpark of one in ten billion people) and pretty much everyone, except for Kim, falls into one of the three categories that I mentioned.
Edit: I would really appreciate if the people downvoting this post could let me know why. I spent a lot of time typing this, and having a bunch of people downvote it without responding kinda stings, I must admit.
Edit 2: In response to u/Arctus9819 I clarified a little bit about what I mean by "photographic memory":
I avoided precisely defining "photographic memory" because I think it's a vague concept. You know it when you see it, and I think the best examples of it come from fiction or these "ludicrous" claims made by people online and by celebrities (which I think are also fiction).
It's similar to how there are "strong" people, but there are no people with "super strength". There are people with good memories, but there are no people with these kinds of memory superpowers.

Ways To Get Your First 10 Customers

Customer Interviews > Sale: One of the easiest ways to get a customer is to circle back with the people you talked to about the problem in step one.
- Pros: It should be an easy sell since you’ve got their contact info and you’ve built a relationship with them already. Also, if they aren’t interested in buying, you can immediately ask questions that help you learn why - this can be invaluable.
- Cons: CDIs can be time-consuming, slow, and it can be really difficult to get a potential buyer on the phone to just “talk”. Also, sales calls can be uncomfortable.
Cold Outreach: With LinkedIn and Hunter.io you can find just about anyone’s contact info and shoot them a cold email or give them a call. The key is making sure there are signals that the people you’re emailing have the problem, know they have the problem and are trying to solve the problem that your offer addresses.
- Pros: It’s a relatively quick and cheap way to get your offer in front of qualified leads and give you the opportunity to talk to a real person to get feedback on your offer.
- Cons: Cold emailing can be a numbers game and isn’t effective for all types of businesses.
Partnerships: Partnering with influencers, businesses, or other authorities that are in a similar niche as your product is a great way to get access to buyers.
- Pros: You leverage the authority and trust built by your partner for a boost in credibility. Also, if you play it right, your product will be in front of the right target audience.
- Cons: Finding quality people to partner with can be tough - few people want to work with the new kid on the block. If you do find someone, you’ll likely have to give up a substantial piece of revenue or equity to make this happen.
Online Ads: If you have a tightly defined customer segment, you may be able to run an ad with your offer directly targeted to those people on Facebook, Google, or any other ad platform.
- Pros: This is a quick and relatively cheap way to get data and your product in front of a lot of people.
- Cons: There isn’t a great feedback loop with ads and the targeting isn’t super-specific. You’ll have data to look at, but ultimately, you won’t know why someone didn’t buy. e.g wrong audience, too expensive, they didn’t like the solution, they thought the website looked scammy, ect…
Online Communities: My personal favorite is to engage with potential customers in online communities. Regardless of your niche, there are almost certainly online communities where your early adopters hang out.
- Pros: Tons of qualified customers that are easy to find and talk to.
- Cons: Most communities don’t allow promotion, so you’ll need to add value and find ways to talk about your promotion. This can take time and be slow.
Build an Audience First: Depending on the business, it can be much easier to build an audience through a mastermind, online community, or blog to leverage when you’re ready to sell.
- Pros: You build a relationship with your target audience for sales in the future. IMO building an audience is the easiest way for you to be successful.
- Cons: The issue here is that building an audience likely won’t directly test the value proposition of your offer.

Pros: It's free (assuming you write it yourself) and can have lasting effects that create a real competitive advantage for your company.
Cons: Time-consuming, takes a while to reap the benefits, and similar with paid ads, there's not a feed-back loop (ie you won't know what's working and what isn't). When trying to get your first 10 customers, your goal should be to move fast and learn as quickly as possible.

[25/M] Directionless in an IT career, how do I grow from this witch?

I'm going to cry my heart out, so you've been warned.
Long story, short.

I was the bookish nerd until last year of engineering
Started writing code to build things in the last year
Luckily got a job in one of the "mass recruitment" companies
Got offered their Gold tier so I could skip training and join workforce on Day 7 and get 2.5x the salary offered to freshers because of communication & partially code
"Development" work is adding small features to old code, changing organization practices (moving to Jira, Github integration, creating CI/CD concept, Wiki-fying documents, etc).
Realize I suck at Data Structures and Algorithm.
Tired of monotony and stagnation, tried learning DSA but even the basic question that requires some "logic" looks like a failure.
I am restarting my algo and DS journey. But is there anything else I can do to get a job? Should I look at changing fields? If yes, how. I love management, CX, etc. I do love coding too, but I am not the competitive coder and that makes me believe that I am the impostor Among Us.
Communication Skill ✅ Presentation Skill ✅ Coding 🆗 DSA 😧

Long story, long.
Chapter 0: The beginning.
I was great at computers from when I was young. I was no Chintu developing applications and having investors wrestle to reach me, but I did some basic static HTML pages, could figure my way out in fixing computer and internet issues, etc. This got me the prestigious stature of "geek" and "gizmo" in a household where being able to surf the internet was akin to cavemen discovering fire. Then on, I decided I wanted to study computer science despite being from a school (rather, board) that did not even have Computers as a subject in 8th, 9th and 10th.
Come 11th, I wanted to take up Computer Science and take it up, I did. The first chapter (and I kid you not) was about introduction to computer science, where we had to rut what a peripheral device is and what a non-peripheral device is. The class was basically a teacher highlighting contents of the textbook that would fetch us marks. I nope'd out. Being the cream student, I had an option to switch to Electronics because the demand for electronics was so low that they had only 1 section with 63 people and were really looking to make that an even number. After a few trial classes, I realized electronics is fun too and I ditched my long term love to study electronics.
I guess somewhere, there was always a zeal to want to learn computers but I did not know the sources. I knew I could "learn C/C++" but what would I do with that was something I never knew. I consulted a couple of teachers in my college regarding this but what they'd suggest is for me to learn it to get good marks, improve my score and get into a good engineering college. 🙄 Their assumption was that the real CS happens in engineering college and 12th does not matter.
I stuck to electronics, scored fairly decent marks and in engineering, I opted for CS.
Chapter 1: University. (Can skip)
For some reason, I thought of University as a magic box where a dumb person goes in and comes out as a "coder, rider, provider". But alas, life is no TikTok and I realized it on day 1 when in my Science and Humanities department, I was the only one who did not know a line of code. There were kids who'd be inducted into Mechanical, Electronics, Civil departments and 99% of them knew how to write some code and I was caught off guard, by this. I thought I could wing it and yet again focused only on scoring marks. This is what I was thought whole my life and it did not help that the Director drew a correlation that every kid who scores a 8+ GPA lands up a job that pays them at least 12lpa.
Focusing on marks, studying what "looked" important and with a goal to maintain a 8+ GPA, I strictly adhered to rules that would help me achieve my goals. 3 years of this, you could ask me to write an API and I would first see if this was "in syllabus" or not. In the 3rd year, we had something called Practice School. This was a term that we borrowed from some IIT / NIT, but proudly wore it on our chests like it was some discovery we secretively made. Practice School is a fancy term for unpaid internship where you could either work for a company, or work under a professor to do some research work for some minor credit. For some weird reason, I was asked about what activity I did apart from academics in every interview that I attended. Did they really expect me to do anything apart from study and score marks? 😲 \s. So, obviously, I got a great internship in a very good company called the company of friends, located in the Boys hostel.
With an industry internship that went flying while jamming to "Hum Toh Udd Gaye, by Ritviz", I was left with no choice but to get a research internship. Thanks to my face, communication and luck I could convince one professor that it was me who discovered gravity and that I have some secretive potentially mind-blowing scientific research going on that would shock Stephen Hawking. I was a Research Assistant to a professor with initials MDD (which co-incidentally also stands for Major Depressive Disorder).
Chapter 2: Research Assistant. (Can skip)
Being a research assistant, my job was to build apps to capture data, propagate these apps to a set of users and generate datasets. Not bragging, but I could learn the technology he wanted and build apps very quickly. It was not production quality as this was the first "project" I was working on, but it was there. It could house about 100-150 users who actively used the application to log data. Spending more time towards this, I neglected studies a bit. My grades were still the same thanks to the easing up of the portions and subjects. I absolutely loved what I was doing and the fact that I could see a weekly impact when I release a new version of the app was something that gave me immense thrill. The professor, too, was extremely impressed by my efforts and gave me a couple of interns to "manage" in order to churn more apps. This was fun, we experimented with multiple frameworks, presented our "research" work to a couple of potential "investors" and this experience improved my communication, presentation, documentation, coding and every other skill I could think off. In one of the monthly "appraisal" scheduled by the professor, I asked him how "industry-ready" I was and he gave me compliments like I was the one of the many forms of Lord Vishnu. I was pretty satisfied and I could nail interviews (is what I thought).
Chapter 3: Placement Season (Please dont skip)
As 3rd year came to an end, placement season began. If placement season was a mood, it would be the mood associated with "winter is coming". First company that opened up doors to an interview was Uber. With a pay package that equates to my family's 2-year pay, they came in with a bang. The first round was an online round. As I read the questions, i could physically feel my hair jump and fall off and the one's remaining grey themselves in order to fool my body that we're old now and death was only a matter of time right now. I could solve 1 question, but most people could solve 2. I discussed this online and found out that Uber is notoriously asking difficult questions and that makes sense because they're paying a huge salary.
I was not aiming for such a huge salary, so I was fine. After this came Intuit, Microsoft, GS, AWS, HP, Cisco, Myntra, Sabre, Shell, Infosys and I could not clear even one of the first coding rounds. Sometimes I got 2 questions right, sometimes I got 1. But all the times I never got the interview.
I was genuinely depressed and realized that it is time to up my DSA game. This game isn't new to me. I was "preparing for placements" by referring to sources like HackerRank (which was the go-to choice of more than 90% of the recruiters). I reduced the time spent on this because I was convinced that my practical experiences will be valued. I restarted my practice and one fine day a small company came to campus. They asked the most simplest coding questions that just tested if you can translate the logic to code. I could and I got in, after 38 rejections and 1 interview. Pretty much a TWICH-isq company.
Chapter 4: The work (Please dont, thx)
The company that I got into typically trains all the employees for 6-8 months before giving them work. But thanks to my practical experience, I was one of the 10% people who was offered a role to join immediately out of college for a 2.5x increase in pay. I thought my luck is changing and apna time aayega. I joined the company. Next month, I will have completed 3 years in this company. The most "development" work I have done is add 3-4 minor "adapters" to the existing product and expand support. Apart from that, I aided migration to Jira, Github, setup CI / CD pipelines, got the Wiki culture, etc. It's a very old fashioned place but what I got going for me is that my team is not rigid in their mindset. In the 3 years that I am here, my salary has increased by a grand total of 7% (not annually, overall).
The ACTUAL question.
I am restarting my algo and DS journey. But is there anything else I can do to get a job? Should I look at changing fields? If yes, how. I love management, CX, etc. I do love coding too, but I am not the competitive coder and that makes me believe that I am the impostor Among Us. I am not looking to go abroad as I am the sole breadwinner in my family and I can barely sustain with my present salary.
Thanks for reading if you did.
Sorry for making this Quora-isque, lordships of Reddit.
Thanks,
Regards,
Bye.

What It's Like To Interview For A Coding Job

part 2 is continuing...... if you find it useful please do up vote.

7) How to structure your coding interview timeline
Avoiding exploding offers and burnout while maximizing negotiating leverage and keeping your options open
The exploding offer dilemma
Here’s the situation you wanna avoid: You’ve just started interviewing with a company you're really excited about. Another company you've been talking to for a while sends you an “exploding offer”—an offer that expires in a week or even 24 hours. You have to respond to the exploding offer before your final round of interviews at the first company.
You don’t wanna have to decide between a real offer and a potential offer. Either decision has a big downside:

If you accept the offer in front of you, you’re moving forward with a nagging “What if?”—especially if you were excited about the other company.
If you reject the real offer, it's possible the other company won't end up extending you an offer in the end. You could end up with nothing.

It's also bad for negotiation. The best way to get negotiating leverage with one company is to have an offer from another company. If your offers aren't open at the same time, you lose that leverage.
Work backwards from a signing date
So you want to do everything you can to ensure your offers come in at the same time. But how do you do that? The key is to work backwards:
Pick a "signing date" and stick to it. This is the date that you plan to make a final decision and sign an offer. This includes some allowed time for negotiating once you have all your offers in hand (more on that later).
Share your chosen signing date with every company as soon as you start talking to them. You may even want to ask them to confirm that they'll be able to work with your timeline. This way a company is much less likely to give you an offer that explodes before that date—they already know your timeline, so if they can't work with it they should tell you up front.
What if a company does give you an offer that explodes before your signing date, even though you told them about it early on? Don't panic. Politely remind them that you've been clear about your timeline from the beginning. Explain that you'd like to make your final decision on the date you've already shared with them.
If they still won't budge, you might be better off passing on that company—if they're comfortable squeezing you this early on in your relationship, that's a bad sign for how they'd treat you as an employee.
Now, some companies have policies about not having open offers for more than X days. So what if you're going through the interview process with one of those companies and it looks like you're moving too fast and the offer would come in too early and explode before the signing date you chose?
No problem. Most companies are happy to "pause" or slow down your interview process so the offer comes in later. This way both parties can get what they want: the company can follow their usual "offers explode after X days" policy, and you can have the offer still open on your pre-planned signing date.
How far out should my signing date be?
It depends. At a high level, you should allow as much time as you can afford to. Most people underestimate how long their job search is going to take. And when you end up in a time crunch at the end, it means less time at the negotiation stage. So allowing an extra week for your job search could literally mean earning tens of thousands of dollars more in your final salary.
If you have a current job or are a full-time student, try to allow more time by starting the process earlier.
Of course, some of us will be in situations where we really need to start our new job as soon as possible. That's fine. Do what works for you.
Keep in mind that you’re shooting for having enough time to practice and get through the whole interview process with multiple companies if you can. Think through how much time you can devote to each of these steps:

Studying (1–8 weeks)
Phone screens (1–3 weeks)
Onsites (1–3 weeks)
Negotiation (1–2 weeks)

One more consideration: if you have the means, consider leaving yourself some time for a vacation before starting your new job. Job hunting is stressful. And that window of time between signing a new offer and starting a new job can be a rare window of low stress and low responsibility in your life.
Many companies are happy to accommodate this by setting your start date a few weeks after your signing date—just ask. Many offers include a signing bonus, which could help offset the cost of this extra time without a salary. But again, this'll depend on your means—not everyone can afford to take this extra time off.
Cast a wide net
Interview with multiple companies. Exactly how many companies depends on your situation, but the point is to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket. You want multiple offers by the end, so you can negotiate the best offer possible.
A good rule of thumb: send out applications to more places than you’re currently planning. If you end up getting too many interviews…well that’s a good problem to have! You can always "pause" or simply cancel the interview process with some companies.
Schedule your favorite companies last. Get interview practice with the places you aren’t as excited about. You’ll be in your prime by the time you interview with your top choices, so long as you don’t burn out.
Jot down your impressions after each interview. You’ll be surprised how much different companies can start to melt together after a couple weeks of interviewing.
Avoid burnout
If you’re casting a wide net and allowing several weeks for your job search, you need to be careful about burnout. The interview process is a marathon, not a sprint.
Space out your onsites. Onsites are draining. Try to keep at least a two day buffer between them—one day to recover after your last onsite, and one day to get ready for the next.
Don’t travel too much. You can quickly burn yourself out bopping across the country. When you have to travel for an interview, try to wait a few days before you travel again.
Batch interviews that are in cities you have to fly to. Try to avoid flying to the same city multiple times—though sometimes traveling to the same place twice is better than trying to cram three or more onsites into a short span of time.
8) Telling Better Stories For Behavioral Programming Interview Questions
“Show, don’t tell”
You’ve probably heard this advice before. Maybe it was your 10th grade English teacher. Maybe it was career services in college. “Remember: show, don’t tell.”
And it’s good advice. When it comes to answering behavioral questions (like “Tell me about yourself”) in coding interviews, the difference between a good answer and a great answer comes down to showing rather than telling.
The problem is, people who give you the advice of “Show, don’t tell”… are themselves failing to follow it. They’re telling you to show, but they should be showing you how to show. That’s the hardest part!
So here are three specific tips for showing more and telling less.
1. Sprinkle in specific details
Imagine two responses to the stock interview question “Tell me about yourself.”
First:
I started programming about two years ago with some personal projects. I eventually got a job at a small tech company in my home town, and I’ve been working there about a year and a half. I like my job, but I’m looking for a new challenge, which I think your company could provide.
Then:
I got started programming because I wanted to build a social network for cats. That didn’t take off, but the prototype helped me get a job at a small tech company in my home town.
Last month, I read an awesome article on Hacker News about the social network your company is building. The scaling challenges you face seem like they’ll help me grow faster and stronger than my current role will.
The second response says a lot more about the candidate.
Why? Because of the specific details. An interviewer won’t remember the tenth person to say “I’m looking for a new challenge.” They will remember the person who tried to build a social network for cats and read about their company on Hacker News.
So don’t skimp on the details. Look out for opportunities to use specifics, especially if they’re at all quirky, funny, surprising, or otherwise memorable.
2. Tell a story from your life
Take another common question: “Why do you want to work here?”
People tend to just cross-reference their values with those of the company or team they’re interviewing with:
I’m really interested in technical blogging and open source. So I like that your company has some open-source work and contributes back to the community.
That’s a fine response. But to really wow your interviewer, try adding a specific story around those values:
A couple years ago, when I was still new to programming, I was working on this tricky bug. I found a post on a company blog where an engineer explained how her team solved the issue. She included a code snippet she’d open-sourced. I appreciated that she took the time to write about her team’s experience and share their solution. It helped me!
That’s how I first started getting into open source. I really wanna work with more engineers like that—who write about their work and try to help others in the community. So I was excited to see all the stuff your team shares on your blog and on the company’s Github profile.
The second response just sounds more genuine. It shows a personal connection to open source and technical blogging, instead of just telling it.
Anyone can look up a company’s core values and repeat them during an interview. It’s more meaningful to tell a story from your life that shows how those values benefited you or taught you something.
3. Use someone else’s voice
This one’s a neat trick. Consider one more standard behavioral question: “What’s your biggest strength?”
You might tell the interviewer:
I work well with others. Even under tough circumstances, I make sure my coworkers feel supported.
But a lightly detailed story is better suited to show this strength:
I have a coworker, Ana, who’s been an engineer for almost a decade. We worked together on this really tough, messy project.
Towards the end, she told me, “For such a hellish project, you really made things feel sane.” I think this is my biggest strength—I work well with others, even under tough circumstances.
When you respond with a story, you can refer to what other people have said about your best qualities. In this case, a ten-year tech veteran said you made a project feel less awful. That kind of praise is a lot more credible when it comes from someone else.
Practice, practice, practice
Remember these specific tricks for showing rather than telling:

Use specific, memorable details. “Social network for cats” instead of “a personal project.”
Tell a story from your life. “I was trying to solve a tricky bug…” instead of “I value open source contributions.”
Use someone else’s voice. “’You really made things feel sane‘” instead of "I work well with others."

Try these tactics out on the questions below. Keep in mind, sometimes it’s easiest to start with a “tell” response, then spruce it up to “show.”

Tell me your biggest weakness as an engineer.
Describe a tricky bug you’ve encountered.
What’s the biggest project you’ve shipped?
What’s your favorite programming language? Why?
How do you overcome interpersonal conflicts with coworkers?

9) Common Issues In Coding Interviews
And how to fix them
The biggest, scariest issues
I keep getting lost or stuck in the middle of technical questions.
Getting stuck during a coding interview can be really demoralizing. That is, until you get good at getting un-stuck. That's right, you can get good at getting un-stuck! You just have to learn the steps.
But surprisingly, sometimes you're supposed to get stuck, and sometimes you're supposed to lose your train of thought. To understand why, read up on how the coding interview is like a maze
Of course, with more practice you're less likely to get stuck or lose your train of thought. Check out our practice coding interview questions.
Finally, make sure you're doing everything you can to get yourself into the best possible headspace in the 24 hours before your big interview.
It takes me forever to solve a single problem.
The trick to finishing problems faster is using a specific process and sticking to it:

Brainstorm and design your algorithm by manipulating sample inputs by hand on the whiteboard. Don't start writing code until you know exactly how your algorithm will work.
Code it up as quickly as possible. Don't get caught up in details like, "should this be a '<' or a '<='?"—just make a check mark in the margin and move on. Don't start debugging it until it's all written out.
Finally, walk through your code with a sample input and fix any bugs you find.

The important lesson here is to never skip ahead. Only move on to the next step after finishing the last step. This keeps your thinking more organized, makes it easier for your interviewer to follow what you're doing, helps you avoid mistakes, and ultimately makes you move faster.
This process is explained in more detail in our general coding interview tips article.
I'm practicing, but I'm not getting better.
I don't have a CS degree. I don't understand big O notation and algorithms.
A lot of people struggle with data structures, algorithms, and big O notation. Especially people who don't have a computer science degree.
It's easy to think this stuff is just objectively hard to understand, since it's associated with the "academic" side of software. That makes it seem more technical and difficult.
The truth is this stuff just feels technical and difficult because people are bad at teaching it.
Yes, thinking in algorithms and data structures is a specific skill that's different from general coding. It's a separate thing you have to learn.
But it's very learnable. Check out our Intuitive Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms.
I . . . feel like I'm just not good at this stuff :/
This feeling is very common. The interview process makes us doubt ourselves. It eats away at our confidence. This is called impostor syndrome, and it can be fixed.
The rest of the job search process
How do I get interviews?
But I don't know the latest hip new framework or language.
How long should I allow for my job search?
I got an offer but it expires soon! What do I do?
What about behavioral questions? How do I prepare for those?
Practicing
I know I should practice, but I have trouble finding the time.
For most of us, saying, "I should spend a few hours practicing for coding interviews each week" just doesn't work. Whenever there's a spare hour, it's suddenly really important to send some emails. Or do laundry. Or do some other "productive" bit of procrastination.
The fix is to pick a specific, regular time for your interview practice. Block it off and stick to it.
An hour a day, or a few hours over the weekend. Just pick something you can actually commit to.
Open up your calendar and do it right now.
Couple more tips:

Try going to a cafe or library. The ritual of going to a new place tells your mind, "Okay, we're going to a specific place to do a specific thing now."
Grab a pen and paper to write your code on. This is good practice for coding on a whiteboard, but it also helps you focus in on the task at hand.
If you're using our course to practice, consider using the browser on your tablet instead of your laptop—again, it's less distracting.
Leave your phone at home, or put it in airplane mode while you're practicing.

How should I practice?
Not all programming interview practice is made equal. There are a lot of things you can do to make sure you're getting the maximum possible benefit out of your practice sessions. Check out our guide to getting the most out of your coding interview practice.
How long should I spend on each each practice problem?
In general, a coding interview is about 45 minutes of problem solving. Sometimes you'll get a few short technical questions, but usually you'll only dig into one complex algorithmic coding interview question (like the ones in our course).
So, 45 minutes per question is a good rule of thumb. But don’t worry too much if you’re taking longer to finish our practice questions—you’ll get faster with time. Stressing about the clock usually does more harm than good.
Should I do mock interviews? How?
Yes! There are a few great websites that offer mock interviews as a service. Check out:

Interviewing.io (free)
Pramp (free)

Or you can grab a buddy and organize some mock interviews yourselves.
For phone interview practice, do it over the computer. Use a shared coding environment tool like CoderPad, and actually talk to each-other over the phone or through Skype (great opportunity to test that your laptop's microphone works!).
For onsite interview practice, whip out some paper and pencils or, better yet, actually get on your feet and write stuff on a whiteboard.
You can even run a mock interview with a nontechnical friend! Try loading up one of our practice questions on a laptop or tablet—the progressive hints and gotchas allow your friend to use the page like a script.
And of course, real interviews are very effective as "mock interviews" :) Reach out to some more companies and try to get some extra interviews.
Onsite Interviews
What should I do the day before an onsite interview?
There's a lot to say about this, and getting yourself into the best possible head space the day before a big onsite can make a huge difference!
Read our full guide on what to do in the 24 hours before a big onsite interview.
And check out our guided meditation for visualizing yourself breezing through a day of onsite interviews.
My whiteboard always gets really messy :/
This is pretty common, and it can actually be a big problem. A messy whiteboard makes it more likely that you or your interviewer will get totally lost trying to understand your code, especially when you come back to it a few minutes later to walk through it with a sample input. Here are some tips:
Start in the very top-left corner of the board. Most people's instinct is to leave some margin on the left and top of the board, so their code comes out "centered." But this just ends up leaving you with less space. And you want all the space you can get.
Leave blank space between each line as you write your code. This makes it much easier to add an extra line later.
Take an extra second to carefully name each variable. Don't rush this part! It might seem like this'll slow you down, but using more descriptive variable names actually ends up saving you time in the end. Few reasons why:

You're less likely to confuse your interviewer, which means you don't have to waste time explaining things.
You're less likely to confuse yourself, especially later on when you go back and walk through your code with a sample input to see if it works.

Miscellaneous
What do I do if I get rejected?
Rejection happens. It’s an ugly reality of the interview process. If you can afford to, take a brief break from your studying so you can come back fresh.
The good news: You’re better at interviewing now. Sure, running practice questions is good preparation, but actually getting out there and failing some interviews is great preparation. Nothing approximates real interviews quite like other real interviews!
Reach out to the company and ask for feedback. Some companies can’t do this for legal reasons, but it never hurts to ask.
Keep in mind that rejection can happen for any number of reasons. There’s definitely an element of randomness. A lot of Google engineers feel there’s only a 50-50 chance they’d get an offer if they went through the interview process again.
Sometimes company priorities change, and they decide they need to slow down hiring. Sometimes you just get unlucky and get the interviewers who like to give low ratings.
There’s lots you can do to prepare, but there’s also lots that you can’t control. The best you can do is keep showing up and slowly getting better!
EDITS are always welcome!

quora questions to ask interviewer video

9 essential questions to ask your interviewer . So, you’ve given thoughtful, well-considered answers to your interviewers’ questions – well done. That’s the hard part complete but the interview isn’t over yet. As things start to wind up and you’re asked if you have any questions, don’t say no! This is your time to shine. Asking the right kinds of questions in an interview not What visions they have for our nation, where does he/she wants to see his/her constituency in terms of developement in 4.5 years once he /she is elected If given a chance to amend constitution without interference what would he/she change If given... This is one of the more unique questions to ask the interviewer, and it will reveal what pieces of your background caught their attention. (Then, you can make sure to discuss those pieces when answering questions in the interview). 5. What are the most important things you’re prioritizing or looking for in the candidate you hire? This is another excellent, unique question to ask the Q. What are the best questions to ask a job interviewer? A. In recruiting, job seekers always used to ask me how quickly I was looking to fill a job. The answer was easy: now! The job wouldn’t be posted if the company wasn’t looking to fill it as soon as possible. Another common one: When can I expect to hear back, and what are the next steps? This is a good question, because you want to find out if you’re in the beginning of the interviewing cycle or towards the end of it, and when Don't ask questions just for the sake of asking questions. It's annoying to me as an interviewer when someone asks a question I've already answered, or is blatantly not relevant, just because they had it prepared. As Benjamin Holder suggests, ask questions that show you are genuinely interested in learning more about the job, the role, and the company. Use the opportunity to end on a high note. Good interview questions to ask the interviewer. How long have you been with the company? What do you enjoy most about working here? What makes you good at your job? Bonus interview questions to ask . How long is the average tenure of an employee? Where would the company like to be in five years? Am I going to be a mentor or will I be mentored? What questions should a job candidate ask the interviewer? originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. As your job interview comes to a close, one of the final questions you may be asked is, "What can I answer for you?" Your interviewer will expect for you to have some inquiries. Not asking any questions could make you seem unprepared or disinterested, so take the time to have some questions of your own ready to ask the hiring manager. The best one I’ve heard of (I’ve also used it myself) is this: Let’s fast forward a year from today. You’ve made this hire—maybe it’s me and maybe it’s not—and a whole year has gone by. What does a homerun hire look like for you? In other words, w...

What questions should I ask while interviewing - Quora

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The best ways to acquire new customers

Content marketing

Highly targeted advertising

Developing business partnerships

Create a lead generating site

Focus on benefits over features

Be present on social media

Make your brand known on forums

Offer deals and promotions

Run giveaways

Showcase testimonials

Keep track of the competition

Host an event

Ask for referrals

Make sure your SEO is up to date

A/B test everything

Now that you acquired them, how do you retain them?

Don’t miss out on customers

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