Behavioral interview guide for software engineers
Behavioral interviews are a crucial part of hiring in software engineering, assessing how...
Codesmith’s rigorous pedagogy of hard learning equips residents with the ability to solve complex problems and teach themselves any programming stack. These capacities often enable grads to land mid to senior level engineering roles directly after graduating the program.
Carlos Botero-Vargas is Principle Associate at Capital One, above a Senior Software Engineer and below Engineering Manager. Carlos joined Capital One as a Senior Software Engineer on their machine learning team three years ago upon finishing the program at Codesmith.
His journey to senior software engineer is remarkable—not only because he had no prior tech experience, but also because his previous career mirrored many aspects of senior engineering and leadership roles.
From conductor to coder
Before entering tech, Carlos was a peripatetic orchestra conductor, traveling the world to teach and lead orchestras.
“I was an orchestral conductor, which meant visiting orchestras around the world. My job was to work out how I can make each one better, how can I improve the lives of the musicians?” he says.
A conductor has an omniscient understanding of all instruments being played by the different musicians in their orchestra, and uses their capacious knowledge of these components, alongside true leadership skills, to become the architect of the final product.
“You come in with open ears, your training, all the practice you've had, and then you make them sound better.”
It’s not dissimilar to his work as a software engineer, only he uses his ability to analyze, refine, and optimize an ensemble of engineers and tweaking a codebase to make it sing better.
“That's the whole goal of an orchestra conductor. The individual development of each musician, and how that actually returns and gives back to the ensemble as a whole.
“Then the pandemic hit. The larger institutions that had an endowment, to continue paying the salaries, were able to subsist. The rest of us were crumbling and trying to find something else.”
In Carlos’ case he found Codesmith, where his background and transferable skills were quickly identified.
He began reading, training alone, joining as many hangouts and coding collaborations as he could to prepare for the tough admissions test, and within a few months was ready to take the technical interview. He was offered a place immediately after passing and only seven months after starting to learn to code he graduated Codesmith, securing a job at Capital One soon after.
Cracking the coding interview & getting upleveled
“I actually applied to three different roles in different areas of Capital One. One was a junior role and two were senior. I got a job in the area where I had applied for the junior role, but they decided they wanted me in a senior role there,” he says.
Being upleveled in an interview is common among Codesmith alums, who often demonstrate the technical skills needed for a role but who also bring capacities that better suit leadership positions.
“The hiring team at Capital One wanted someone who could take decisions on how processes are made, not just repeat processes and produce a high quality project. They valued my background in that regard.”
The interview process is not simply asking questions, Carlos explains, companies want to know how people respond to new materials. In his interview he was deliberately given three examples of code in languages that were unfamiliar to him.
“I was well-versed in JavaScript, but I didn't know anything about T+, Go, Rust, or anything like that.”
The key to passing this part of the hiring process is not to prepare by learning every language, quite the opposite, as Carlos says, it is to demonstrate what you would do if faced with a new challenge.
Now, as Principal Associate, Carlos is often on the other side of the table, and so can give further insights into what is expected of candidates.
“In interviews we lead the person in. We ask what do you think of this? What are these areas going to do? How can you improve what is written here?
“When shown the foreign code in interviews you make a quick assessment. What could it be saying? In my interview they obviously liked what they saw and decided, okay, he doesn't know this particular language, but he’s making informed decisions that are going to be useful.”
In his case, Capital One placed him as a senior engineer on the machine learning team.
“My first year in Capital One was like Codesmith—but amped up. Not only the process of learning, but also the output had to be produced. I had to run from the get go. There's no waiting in the professional world, either you can do it or you can't”
Engineering at Capital One: machine learning & finance tech
Carlos was tasked with bringing automation and efficient processes to the machine learning team that deals with finance tech.
“That is the tech support for all the folks in the bank making the financial investment decisions, not so much the customers of the bank, but for those that are part of the bank and they're making investment decisions.
“My team dealt with all the models of how the financial markets are going to behave in specific trenches. So the machine learning portion was, how can we put those models together for the last 5 to 10 years? How can we automate certain processes and try to understand them from a point of view of large computing systems?
"It was taking over all the data sets with those models to give better information to those folks making the larger decisions.”
It was no small leap for someone who had started to learn to code just seven months before.
“I continuously feed our recruiters with recommendations for Codesmith grads and so many alums work across Capital One. They’re able to respond to the level of expectation and the desired requirements”
The reality of transitioning from Codesmith to industry
The transition to professional work was tough but the rigour of the program at Codesmith has prepared him for that reality well in advance.
“My first year in Capital One was like Codesmith—but amped up. Not only the process of learning, but also the output had to be produced. I had to run from the get go. There's no waiting in the professional world, either you can do it or you can't.”
Within two years he got his first promotion, and has been a part of three different teams in the company, where his capacity to learn new languages and frameworks while on the job has helped him continue to grow.
“The start of each team is a steep learning curve because it's already a working environment performing at 100% every day. You have to hit the ground running. Our stack is already in the cloud, so your AWS certification is a requirement. If you don't have it you immediately need to work on that. The entire Capital One workforce is AWS Certified.”
This learning curve isn’t just steep because of different stacks used, senior engineers must understand the business behind the product they are building.
“When you switch teams, yes it's a completely different system you have to learn, but you also need to learn the business of the new area. My approach is, “How can I make my colleagues’ lives easier? Through those efforts we’ve improved efficiency by 300%—reducing payment authorizations from several days to just 10-15 minutes.”
"Another Codesmith grad just joined as a Senior Software Engineer this week....The engineering market right now is steep, and has been for the last three years, the fact that he was hired as a senior speaks volumes about Codesmith’s program”
Leading the Treasury team means the scope of what Carlos does has increased in size. Where the machine learning team takes care of financial models for analysis, his role now is well beyond the legacy of one team.
While the responsibility is much higher, this also allows Carlos much more creativity and input from “how I think things should look and behave, which is much closer to my experience in music.”
While his musical background is unique, Carlos is not alone—many Codesmith graduates now work at Capital One, and he frequently recommends new alumni for roles, safe in the knowledge they too are prepared for senior positions.
“I continuously feed our recruiters with recommendations for Codesmith grads and so many alums work across Capital One. They’re able to respond to the level of expectation and the desired requirements.”
From his particular Codesmith cohort there’s already three people working at Capital One.
“Two are Senior Software Engineers, one is a Principal Associate like me, and another Codesmith grad just joined as a Senior Software Engineer this week.”
“The engineering market right now is steep, and has been for the last three years, the fact that he was hired as a senior speaks volumes about Codesmith’s program.”
Start your career in coding today
Carlos’ journey from orchestra conductor to Principal Associate at Capital One is proof that when instilled with the right capacities anyone can transition into software engineering.
If you’re ready to take your career to the next level, explore Codesmith’s programs today and start your journey toward a high-impact role in tech!
