Formation Monthly Deploy: April 2026

Welcome to the Formation Monthly Deploy, our monthly blog highlighting achievements, insights, and innovations from across the Formation ecosystem. Whether you're a current Fellow navigating challenges, an Alumni building your career, or a Mentor guiding others, this space is designed to keep you connected to your community.

🌎 Engineering tip from Daniel Tomko

Know when to pivot your approach 🔄

In interviews, strong engineers don’t just push forward. They recognize when a path is getting too complicated and adjust.

✅ Watch for unnecessary complexity. If your solution is getting messy or hard to reason about, that’s a signal to pause and reassess.

🔁 Be willing to pivot. It’s okay to say, “I think this approach is getting too complex. I’d like to try a simpler direction.” That shows strong judgment.

❌ Avoid the sunk cost fallacy. Just because you’ve spent time on an idea doesn’t mean you should keep going. Interviews reward good decisions, not stubbornness.

🧠 Clarity beats persistence. A clean, well-reasoned approach is almost always better than forcing a complicated one to work.

At Formation, we want you to demonstrate judgment, not just effort. Knowing when to change direction is a key part of solving problems well.

🌊 Recent Rising Tide winners

Each month, we recognize Fellows who consistently lift others up through collaboration, encouragement, and thoughtfulness. Our recent Rising Tide winners exemplified what it means to show up well for the community.

Ahmed Abdelsadek was recognized for providing consistent, high-quality technical feedback that sharpened Fellows' thinking through their solutions. Ahmed's nominator shared: "Ahmed had consistently had great feedback on my code and has helped me to think more clearly about my solutions as I explore them. He is often able to bring in ways of thinking about problems that I did not consider, which helps expand my toolkit for solving coding problems."

Thank you, Ahmed, for the generosity and depth you bring to every session.

🌟Recent Lighthouse Award winners

The Lighthouse Award recognizes mentors who consistently guide, support, and elevate Fellows through clarity, care, and deep expertise.

Schaffer Stewart was recognized for being a highly responsive and thoughtful mentor who brings intentionality to every explanation. One Fellow shared: "He is very responsive and a great listener. He keeps me in the loop, and we learn together about system design fundamentals. His explanations are intentional and thoughtful, making complex concepts clear and easy to understand."

Kevin Farst was recognized for delivering high-density learning experiences that consistently leave Fellows with new frameworks and sharper instincts. A Fellow shared: "He always gives a ton of knowledge in each session. I've done one group systems design and one group coding exercise led by Kevin. Both times I walked out learning at least 3–4 new things, in addition to going through a very productive group exercise."

Thank you to Schaffer and Kevin for the care and expertise you bring to the Formation community.

🏆 Highlighted recent placements

We’re celebrating Fellows who turned persistence into progress and landed new roles, even in a challenging market.

Mehdi Mousavi → SS&C Technologies Mehdi's path to SS&C Technologies was built on consistency and honest self-assessment. He shared: "The biggest thing I've learned is this: believe in yourself and commit to consistency. You know your own strengths and weaknesses better than anyone else. Be honest about them. Focus on improving your weaknesses with consistency, and at the same time, practice how to highlight your strengths so they shine during interviews."

Gadiel Russell → Proximity Health Gadiel's advice centers on building learning systems that reinforce retention and staying honest about what you don't know. He reflected: "Build systems that reinforce what you're learning and don't shortcut the curriculum. Taking the time to genuinely learn the topics will pay off in spades."

🚀 What’s new at Formation

Fellow support update: personalized check-in cadence

Formation's mentorship model is built around the idea that structured support should fit how you actually work. Fellows can now set their own check-in frequency with their Fellow Manager team, choosing from weekly touchpoints to independent, as-needed communication.

Fellows can now choose from:

• Weekly — I want regular accountability and interaction
• Every two weeks — Reach out regularly, but I don't need weekly check-ins (this is the default)
• Every three weeks — I'm pretty good solo, but please reach out occasionally
• I'll reach out when needed — I'm in focus mode, so I'll come to you when I need support

Fellow Managers will always reach out when something time-sensitive comes up — and Fellows can adjust their preference anytime from their platform settings. 🙌

📅 Join us for Upcoming Live Studio Workshops

Want to sharpen your interview instincts before your next loop? Join us for these free, mentor-led Studio Sessions designed to help you understand what strong interview performance actually looks like.

How Senior Engineers Land Interviews

📅 April 21, 2026
⏰ 7pm EDT

Most strong engineers don’t fail interviews because of coding, they fail because no one taught them how to show senior-level judgment. This session shows what actually changes that.

👉 RSVP

The Stories That Stick: Selecting the Right Stories for Hiring Manager Interviews

📅 April 28, 2026
⏰ 7 pm EDT

An interactive workshop for senior engineers focused on reviewing their career experience and building a clear mental catalog of interview-ready stories, so you can reliably select the right example for any hiring manager question.

👉 RSVP

AI for System Design

📅 May 5, 2026
⏰ 7 pm EDT

AI is showing up more and more in system design interviews. This session helps you understand how AI systems fit together. In this session, we'll break down the architecture and the design patterns you need to understand. 80-90% of it is software engineering you already know how to do.

👉 RSVP

See you next month!

We’re always proud of how this community shows up — with generosity, determination, and drive. Keep asking questions, lifting each other up, and pushing the limits of what you thought you could do.

Until next month,
The Formation Team

This blog is adapted from our monthly newsletter, The Monthly Deploy. If you're not yet part of the Formation community but would also like these updates directly in your inbox, subscribe to our blog.