Case study: My expenses report to San Francisco Facebook onsite trip

Sept. 19, 2019

Introduction

It is my personal finance research. I like to do a case study how I spent money and time on onsite trip to San Francisco 3 days trips.

Case study

I just got noticed that on Sept. 18, 2019, my expenses has been approved and also the amount is already deposited into my US chase bank account.

I like to do a case study, and look into how I should do better in order to be a financial responsible person.

The maximum amount for international candidate is $500 US dollars, my expense is $302.00 dollars. I think that I stayed in budget, 60% of maximum amount. Great job.

After the trip, I also got a free Linkedin 6 month premium account from the friend I met on this trip. It is important for me to learn that I should behave my best as a friend, support those friends even though they are much more successful in their career already.

Here is my folder on github repository.

Car rental: $165.35 (include gas I spent)
Parking: $52.00 (Pullman hotel)

Other expenses

I like to document my expenses of ticket and hotel as well. The pullman hotel is such a place to stay, compared to the four star hotel in Seattle on June 8, 2018's expense $450.00 us dolars one night, this one costs less.

My airline ticket expenses

Total expenses:

$493.83  hotel
$731.44  airline ticket
$302.00  rental car and other expenses

In total, $1537.27

Lessons I learned

Most of important I learned is that people were waiting to meet me, and evaluate how good I can code and also design system. I should ensure them I travel safe and on schedule, and also notify the recruiter I arrive the hotel. Just be polite and keep in touch all the time.

I should not worry about at all about missing flight. MPK park is only less than 20 miles away from the international airport. It only take me less than 30 minutes driving on highway, less than 10 minutes to return the car.

I learn that I should focus on more on performance of my coding interview, and ensure that I pushed myself to the limit, test my own code, try to break the code, and focus on task to make the code perfect instead.

rental car two days: 80 miles, $9.99/ gallon, cost $13.86 dollar for gas.
SF international airport -> MPK Facebook hq building 19 miles
223 Twin Dolphin Drive - stanford university campus 10 miles one way

3 hours - Stanford university campus visit, August 19
less than 3 hours - Dinner with friends in Sichun restaranaut - 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Swimming - 1.5 hours on August 18, 1.0 hours on August 19
Gym - 2 hours on August 19
Lunch break meet a friend - one hour on August 19

I need to learn to be humble again

August 24, 2019

Introduction

It is my personal finance research. I chose to start personal finance research last November, and then learned that frugality should be my best choice, cut off all relative's emotional connections, focus on my own business. I do not want those depressed stuff and try to find ways to cut off. I do not want anything in my life, no material things, I can live happy and healthy and smart.

My email

I wrote an email to reflect on my thought process. I know that it is tough business world. No one will pay attention to my writing, since I like to write and express myself.

HI, xxx, 

I read your email. It is such great to hear from you about the result about onsite interview. I definitely like the whole experience of interview, including final result. I am just hunger for success, and so happy to meet those hard working engineers in Facebook. 

I wish that I could have impressed them with my curiosity, and quick-to-learn, sports-style problem solving and coding approach. It is very challenging job to work on big project like Instagram, ads team, work for Facebook in general. I am looking for the best opportunity, and also Facebook works so hard to identify who has potential. We all take calculated risk to figure out best for us. 

My boss - owner of company XX xxxxxing sent the email once a few years ago with all kinds of paper piling on the table to the office, remind us to clean up, throw away things when we moved the office. He told me a few times how to work better with young people in the office. 

I enjoy my current job, and also I enjoy to work on more algorithm and data structure practice, 

Feel free to reach me any time if I have chance to be interviewed. I will be very happy to apply again. 

Also if you can share me more about feedback, it will be great help for me as well. 


Sincerely, 

jianmin chen 

Actionable Items

August 25, 2019 - 12:05 AM

It is so important for me to review my own thought process. I just reviewed the onsite interview, and then I noticed that I was so rude, in my thinking process; I did not send an email in Sunday August 18 or August 19 to notify the recruiter that I came to San Francisco as planned. I did not think for others, specially a big company to work together closely. 

I decided to change the blog title from "Look for fair chance" to "I need to learn to be humble again". 

I also decide to start to learn how to be a project manager through youtube.com. I like to be a person who knows how and what to communicate, and be able to allow people smart and successful people in Facebook feel comfortable to work closely with me. 

I like to continue to advance my algorithm and data structure practice, and really make it my hobby and good topics for me to learn how to write as a writer. 

Ideas to celebrate my first Facebook onsite interview at California MPK campus

August 23, 2019

Introduction

I just came back from Tuesday Facebook onsite interview from California MPK campus. I met over 8 interviewers and experience biggest social platform Facebook, and experienced excitement to work on the campus.

Schedule

My first email from Facebook in 2019, May 2019. Here is the blog.
My phone screen       July 22, 2019. Here is the blog.
My onsite interview   August 20, 2019

Ideas

One of ideas is to celebrate my first Facebook onsite interview. I just could not believe that I do have to work hard to celebrate the onsite interview.

1. First, I like to use a Leetcode discuss post to celebrate my onsite interview. My failure opens door to my curiosity, and make every idea work. Even though it is not so rewarding if I try a new idea on onsite interview, and I should have acknowledged that the code will have index-out-of-range error, wrong answer.

Here is the link. Here is the idea I made it work, and I like to encourage myself to be a good engineer, test my own code.