Change Log: Our Latest Releases 🚀

Formation is built by ex-FAANG engineers + interviewers who deeply understand job hunting and technical interview prep, and we work each and every day to ship products, features, and tools to help you level up most effectively.

Our product roadmap is driven partially by our in-depth and first-hand knowledge about the job market and what companies are looking for and partially by feedback we hear directly from our community.

Each feature is intended to upgrade the way you practice solo, interact with our mentors and career coaches, job hunt, and take advantage of all of the world-class (and unconditional!) resources and connections we provide.

Check out some of some of our recent releases + how they impact our Fellows. 💪

New Course Launch: Ship Faster with AI 🚀

Formation’s new course, Ship Faster with AI, helps engineers evolve with the changing technical landscape and seamlessly integrate AI into their daily workflow. Through hands-on exercises and interactive mentorship, participants quickly gain expertise in AI foundations, scaling large codebases, and designing AI-friendly systems.

In just four weeks, engineers collaborate with industry-leading mentors and peers, applying immediate, practical skills to boost productivity and stand out in an AI-driven workplace.

Join the next cohort and start shipping smarter today! 💻✨

An Upgrade to Our Core Platform

The Formation journey just got a whole lot clearer.

We’ve combined two platform surfaces, Feed and Timeline, into one streamlined ✨ Roadmap ✨ — making it easier than ever for Fellows to see where they’ve been, what’s next, and how everything connects.

Now, Fellows can:

• Scroll through their journey: Review completed work or preview upcoming challenges in a clean chronological layout.
• Navigate with a click: Jump directly to any Challenge from the left-hand view.
• Zoom out anytime: Hit “back” to see your full Timeline at a glance.
• Stay focused: Simplified components help spotlight exactly what to work on next.

This update puts the entire Formation experience front and center, so you can move through your learning journey with confidence and clarity 🚀

Activity Log

Never lose track of your work again, with our new Activity Log!

We’ve made it easier than ever to review everything you’ve accomplished — Fellows can either seamlessly browse completed work in chronological order, or find what they're looking for in a searchable, filterable table.

Every challenge, module, and mock they’ve finished — all just one click away.

Your hard work deserves to be easy to find, revisit, and celebrate. Now it is. 🙌

Post-Session Feedback, Powered by ✨ Nova ✨

Great technical feedback shouldn’t stop when the session ends. That’s why Formation’s ✨ Nova ✨ just got even smarter.

Now, after every technical module or mock interview, Nova follows up with personalized, actionable feedback, delivered straight to a Fellow’s DMs. Think of it like a mentor following up with notes tailored to your performance: what you did well, what to improve, and how to level up next time.

This update makes it even easier to reflect, reinforce learning, and keep momentum between sessions.

Whether you're crushing system design or refining your interview game, Nova’s post-session insights help you stay sharp and keep growing. 💪

✨ Nova ✨ Powered Learning, Leveled Up

Technical learning thrives on interaction—not just static text or videos. Formation has enhanced its core System Design modules by integrating ✨ Nova ✨ Chat .

Instead of passively reading, Fellows now engage in dynamic, AI-driven conversations that guide them through complex concepts step-by-step. Nova actively checks their understanding, provides immediate feedback, clarifies tricky points with real-world examples, and answers follow-up questions in real time.

Topics covered include:

• Persistent storage use-cases
• Protocol comparisons (HTTP vs. RPC)
• WebSocket scenarios

This interactive format offers a richer, personalized learning experience tailored to individual needs, unlocking deeper understanding and confidence in technical skills! 💡

Integrated Excalidraw Diagramming

Effective system design often relies on clear, real-time visuals. Formation has introduced Excalidraw as the new default diagramming tool within its coding environments.

Designed specifically for interview-sized problems, Excalidraw enables learners to sketch architectures and system flows in real-time. They can collaborate live with mentors or peers, refine diagrams instantly, and prepare more realistically for technical interviews.

This update further helps Fellows simulate interview environments and get ready for the expectations and pressure of the real thing, ensuring you're ready when it's time to shine. 🎯

Learning, Powered by Chat with✨ Nova ✨

Practicing system design can be notoriously hard—it often includes long readings or videos without much feedback or iteration in between. We heard from our Fellows that more interaction within their system design practice would unlock deeper learnings—so we launched Chat with ✨ Nova ✨ to do just that!

Now, in Fellows' system design practice, they can:

• Check their understanding of their readings by answering questions and having Nova evaluate correctness right away
• If they fall short of a fully correct answer, Nova will let them know what parts of their answer could use improvement.
• From there, they can ask for a hint, try to answer again on their own, or type a question to ask Nova a follow-up on something they found tricky

This is just the first step of integrating LLMs into our prep to make it more personalized and more accessible, and we can't wait to roll it out further soon! 💬

Opt-In Targeted Mentorship

Fast, targeted, and iterative feedback cycles are everything when it comes to leveling up most effectively.

Now, when Fellows struggle on a benchmark testing a specific skill, our system will automatically identify upcoming sessions that are being hosted by one of our Technical Mentors on that topic specifically to empower Fellows to join and iterate more quickly with the help of their peers, our technical mentors, and small group session formats. 👨‍🏫

LinkedIn Optimization, Powered by ✨ Nova ✨

LinkedIn is a critical part of job hunting, but oftentimes, people on the job market focus solely on their resume.

Formation got perspectives from our mentor and career coaching network (the same ones you work with as a Fellow!) to understand what typically strikes them as impressive LinkedIn attributes. Based on the feedback, we've created a tool where Fellows can upload their LinkedIn and work alongside our AI, ✨ Nova ✨, to optimize it according to the best practices defined.

As a result, Fellows will have a polished profile that highlights their skills, projects, and aspirations – which means greater responses on outreach to their network and therefore more opportunities to interview! 🤓

Recommended Roles + Networking with ✨ Nova ✨

We get it — job hunting itself can feel like a full-time role. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to apply to the roles and companies that mean most to you, and provide you with tools, resources, and connections to network around and get more opportunities.

Now, when a Fellow adds a company as a target company of theirs on our Job Hunt Board, we'll automatically begin sourcing open roles there that are a good fit for them so they can apply more efficiently.

We also identify key contacts at that company and automatically draft personalized outreach for them—allowing them to make meaningful and purposeful connections to help their application stand out with the click of a mouse. 🤝

Seniority-Aligned Resume Optimization, by ✨ Nova ✨

Around 75% of all resumes never see a humans eyes—so it's incredibly imperative to optimize your resume (both content and format!) to stand out in automated screening processes and if a human does review it.

Not every resume should be created equal though, and expectations differ depending on your experience and seniority. With our new resume optimization tool, powered by ✨ Nova ✨ (our AI!), Fellows will get real-time feedback on both the content and format of their resume, personalized to them and based on best practices from our mentors and career coaches.

If Fellows need additional assistance, they'll be guided through prompts to curate meaningful statements of impact based on their experience and even work directly with a career coach to ensure they have a resume that stands out—regardless of who or what views it. 📑

On-Platform Practice Environment

To enable Fellows to focus their energy, save their work, and revisit old problems, we launched an entirely native on-platform coding & whiteboarding environment that can be used in both async prep, during mentor-led guided interview sessions, and during 1:1 mock interviews.

This upgrade means that Fellows can start a new pad for each and every problem so they can organize their work better, avoid switching between environments, + reflect back on progress throughout their interview prep. 💡

Quests

Setting achievable goals is key to consistent progress and success. We've identified buckets of goals that Fellows can select and commit to each week to chart continued progress — we encourage Fellows to commit themselves to three of them and see their preparation soar. 🚀

Systems Design Quick Practice Mode

We heard feedback that sitting down for a long problem or a mentor-led guided interview session doesn't always work every single day, but we also know that consistency is key to progress.

We built upon our Quick Practice Mode we shipped last month for DS&A problems and applied it to systems design. This means that with just a few minutes to spare, Fellows can practice and brush up on knowledge and critical thinking questions related to system design.

Bonus: With each quick question Fellows complete, our algorithm learns more and more about them—meaning every minute Fellows invest in Formation results in even more personalization of their experience. 🪄

Feed & Schedule View

We consolidated a few different learning and surfaces areas into two main views: Feed & Schedule.

Feed: This houses all of Fellows' work to complete, and dynamically updates to them based on their progress with each item they complete. This'll be filled with all of their async work each week for every topic they're working through. Fellows can also see, at a glance, any interviews or sessions they have coming up.

Schedule: To help Fellows see their synchronous sessions at a glance and plan their week accordingly, all live meetings will show in the Schedule view. This'll include all of their mentor-led guided interview sessions, pair programming, peer mock interviews, 1:1 mentor mock interviews, company interviews, and any additional events. 📆

Company-Specific Interview Prep

While many top-tier companies follow the same flow of the interview process and test similar skills, there are nuances between each. We heard our Fellows loud and clear—they wanted company-specific prep.

Given our top-notch track record placing Fellows in life-changing roles (check out our success stories!), we identified the companies in which we have the most first-party data (both volume and recency) about what to expect on the DS&A portion of that interview process.

Given that insight, we were able to launch 30 company-specific prep tracks that Fellows get access to once they are in active interview loops with that company. Expand the list below to see the companies included. 💻

DS&A Quick Practice

We got the feedback that fitting a complex problem or hour-long mentor session doesn't work every day, but we all know how important consistency is. With that in mind, we wanted to launch a way for Fellows to keep making progress towards their technical goals, but in a quicker way.

Introducing: DS&A Quick Quizzes. These problems take only a few minutes to solve, but help reinforce skills Fellows are brushing up on in their more rigorous training. These quizzes should be seen as complementary to longer tasks, assignments, mentor-led sessions, + mock interviews (not in place of).

Fun Fact: The more of these Fellows complete, the more we learn about their skill level and progress, meaning the more we can adapt their training to them in real time! ✨

Thanks for following along with all of the exciting things we've been shipping. Have questions, thoughts, or feedback? Reach out to us at hello@formation.dev