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Chat with Fatima, SWE at Yelp

November 8th, 2023 (11 months ago) • 3 minutes

Fatima is a senior software engineer at Yelp, and I recently had a chance to talk to her over a video call. Here are the takeaways from our chat:

How did you arrive at Yelp?

  • She studied computer science at UWaterloo and took 4 internships throughout her undergrad studies. This gave her a lot of clarity on what she is interested in, and she highly recommends students to explore their interests via internships.
  • Spent 2 years at a trading firm but decided she did not enjoy working with the people, despite finding the problems interesting.
  • Yelp is exciting because she got to take a lot of ownership of the projects she's involved in.

What are some interesting things you are doing at Yelp?

  • Learning about how features get rolled out to the public in a controlled manner.
  • Learning about how to mitigate risk and downtime in a large-scale system.
  • Learning how to think very quickly.

Day-to-day life at Yelp?

  • Early in her career, she spent 90% of her time actively involved in implementation and programming. However, as she went on to become a senior, more time is spent on architecting, meetings, and deciding project directions.
  • Monday & Wednesday are no-meeting days so that people can focus on their work.

What are some tips on networking?

  • Yelp practices remote working, so it's hard for networking to happen organically.
  • She recommends reaching out to other teams and asking for coffee chats to learn about what they are doing.

What are some pieces of advice you would give to your younger self?

  • Strategize Politically (at least a little bit)
    • Although considered taboo, politics play a big role, and knowing the right people and establishing relationships is key.
    • The higher you go, the more people you have to convince and have a good rapport with.
    • Focus on high-impact and high-visibility work; these projects can only be obtained if you have a good relationship with your manager.
  • Be a Nice Person
    • People don't remember you for your technical skills, but your attitude instead.
    • Technical skills can be taught, but attitude cannot, so people with a bad attitude are very easy to replace.
    • Don't hoard knowledge; instead, actively share it.
    • Practice excellent communication skills.

Life in Montreal and vibes

  • Has European vibes.
  • California has too high living costs, so she prefers to work remotely.