Reddit Experience · Apr 2026

I dont know if this is a great or terrible start for my career

SWE Phone Screen Junior
8 upvotes 3 replies

Interview Experience

im a junior who got my first job 3 months ago. its at a small company that has only been around for 2.5 years and has like 30 employees. my long term goal is to have a small business by the time im in

Full Details

im a junior who got my first job 3 months ago. its at a small company that has only been around for 2.5 years and has like 30 employees. my long term goal is to have a small business by the time im in my late 20s to early 30s. i dont wanna remain an employee forever. my issue is i dont know if my current job is good for my goals and for my career if the whole business idea doesnt work out. Its a small unknown company and that has benefits like the fact that i do alot of work both technical and business. im really close to the founder and im learning alot about growing a small business, i am handling clients from start to finish and somewhat managing my own work with clients and coordinating with other people for help. so im kind of my own little project manager. i think this experience ie great for learning how to run my own business in the future. Plus technical wise im still learning a good amount of code related stuff. so the bad is that its a small unknown company which could in my opinion hurt my chances of working at a big company in the future. while thats not my long term life goal it could still be useful if the whole business doesnt work out. plus having a big name on my resume can definetly help, plus its a different kind of experience. Im just worried that my start is at some unknown little company that i may not really be able to get out of the whole small company tier. That would be bad as tbh the pay isnt that good. i know my post may be a bit contradictory but i wanna start a business in like 7 or 8 years but i also want to get some big tech job to help fund that business and act as a safety net if the business doesnt work out. Basically what im asking is if im screwed? if i wanna pivot to big tech or maybe consulting in like 3 to 5 years.

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About This Question

This is a candidate experience report from a other interview for a swe role (junior level) during the phone screen round reported in 2026.

It covers the following topics: Career .

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About Other Interview Reports

This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Other. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.

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How To Practice This Type of Question

Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.

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During Your Other Round

Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.

The single most predictive failure mode in Other reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.