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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

S8 E1: Sargun Kaur, Byteboard

Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Noah Labhart - Startup Founder & CTO

Tech News, News, Business, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Careers

4.6216 Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Before Sargun Kaur got into tech, she was anti-wanting to be in tech. Her Dad was an engineer, and she thought the work he did was super boring. She pursued journalism, marine biology, and found her self changing interests a lot as she got bored. Now, she came over to the dark side, and jokes that she is no longer interesting because she is so immersed in what she does. Outside of tech, she loves to travel, building community, and hosting. This boils down to loving bringing people together through multiple means. And finally, she jokes that she is a mediocre instagram poet, enjoying writing semi-deep posts on the platform. When Sargun was applying at Google, she went through their normal engineering interview process - IE five whiteboard sessions back to back. After getting hired at Google, she struggled with the industry standard for interview questions, via algorithmic riddles, that didn't mirror the actual job. These types of interviews weren't only not fair, but left many great candidates out in the cold. This is the creation story of Byteboard. Our Sponsors: * Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com * Check out Red Hat: https://www.redhat.com * Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORY Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

It's just industry standard to kind of often use these algorithmic riddles that don't actually apply to what you do end up doing on the job.

0:11.6

Very often on the job, I would have multiple links of stack overflow open.

0:15.8

I'd like, you know, this was back in the day of pre-remote, like, not remote jobs, but I would look over my

0:21.0

shoulder and ask someone of like, hey, can we talk through this problem that I'm thinking

0:24.3

through? I would ask and talk others. I would look things up and try as I was building things.

0:29.6

But in an interview setting, all of that was stripped away. And it was like, hey, do you,

0:34.8

can you master this algorithm and write it on the whiteboard like perfectly.

0:39.3

My name is Sargonkar and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Byboard.

0:46.5

This is Code Story.

0:49.1

A podcast bringing you interviews with tech visionaries.

0:52.3

It's six months moonlighting.

0:53.7

There's nothing on the the backcats.

0:55.8

Who share what it takes to change in industry.

0:58.3

I don't exactly know what to do next.

1:00.2

She took many goes to get right.

1:01.9

Who built the teams that have their back.

1:04.5

The company is its people.

1:06.1

The teams help each other achieve.

1:07.5

Most proud of her team.

1:09.0

Keeping scalability top of mind.

1:11.6

All that infrastructure was a pain.

1:12.8

Yes, we've been fighting it as a group.

...

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