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Capstone: Mock Loop & Self-Exam1 / 2

1 min lesson

The pre-interview ritual

Work through this case: "Your mock scores: debugging 5, triage 5, onsite autonomy 2. Where should almost all your remaining prep go and why?" Say what you would do and why.

Step 1 of 2

The pre-interview ritualThe two weeks before

  1. 1Use Cursor for real, daily, 2+ weeks. Not a cram session - sustained use is what produces the lived texture the recruiter screens for.
  2. 2Run a fresh competitive scan. Spend an hour each in Copilot, Windsurf and Claude Code so your 90-second take is current, not last quarter's.
  3. 3Re-run your weakest drill until it's a 4+. Reps, not reading. A sub-3 on any round is a blocker a 5 elsewhere can't offset.
  4. 4Draft your 90-day plan. It doubles as your onsite framing and your closer in the hiring-manager round.
The 90-day plan is a multi-tool

Write one crisp answer to “what would your first 90 days look like?” - stand up signal sources, build a triage pipeline with agent assistance, ship the first weekly quality brief. It frames your onsite work and lands as the strongest possible close in the behavioral round. One artifact, two rounds.

Readiness gut check

Can you debug a gnarly Cursor bug like an engineer, rank a messy batch so the catastrophic-but-quiet wins and walk into an open problem with enough autonomy that a senior teammate would trust you with it? Any honest no is exactly where this week's reps go.