Formation Monthly Deploy: December 2025

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

Interview coming up? The best prep might actually be… less prep.

In the final days before your interview, your goal isn’t to cram: it’s to stay sharp and confident. Here’s how to set yourself up for success:

✅ Focus on fundamentals. Spend your prep time reviewing core concepts you’re likely to use: loops, recursion, edge case handling, basic data structures. These show up in every interview.

⛔️ Avoid hard problems. They can tank your confidence and are unlikely to appear anyway. Deep dives into complex topics at the last minute don’t stick and just create stress.

🛌 The day before? Don’t practice. Take a walk, get good sleep, and clear your head. Resting your brain is more valuable than squeezing in one more problem.

A calm, well-rested mind that knows the basics will always outperform a burned-out one chasing last-minute breakthroughs.

🌊 Last month’s Rising Tide winners

Each month, we recognize Fellows who go above and beyond to lift others up. These standout Fellows showed up with support, positivity, and generosity, making Formation better for everyone around them:

Gadiel Russell was recognized for his support in system design prep. His nominator shared: "He offered to help me with system design preparation before my upcoming technical interview, dedicated time for a mock interview session, and identified issues with my system design thinking process. His help put me in a better position for my interview!"

Lei Li stood out for her curiosity and engagement. Her nominator shared: "Lei has been an excellent Fellow to work with this week because she has asked great questions in sessions, positively engages with the community, and brings a curious learning mindset to each session she attends."

Ben Chen was recognized for his creative thinking and collaboration. His nominator shared: "Ben’s support and guidance for my first week at Formation made a big difference. His system design ideas and approach to a constraint satisfaction problem gave me new perspective and helped me understand how others might handle peak/valley problems."

🌟 Last month’s Lighthouse Award winners

The Lighthouse Award recognizes mentors who go above and beyond to guide, support, and light the way forward. Last month’s winners exemplified what it means to meet Fellows where they are and leave them better than they found them.

Roy Garcia was recognized for his clarity and expectations-setting. His nominator shared: "The way the mentor applied the Engineering Methods and walked through test cases before coding helped everything sink in. He also set expectations for what a tier-1 interviewer would focus on through problem-solving, which helps me aim for similar expectations in my own practices."

Conrad Lotz stood out for his targeted behavioral interview support. His nominator shared: "Conrad was extremely helpful with helping me refine my stories for behavioral interviews with a bunch of targeted feedback. His style was super effective in helping me learn where my blind spots are and improve. I now feel much more confident about upcoming behavioral interviews."

🏆 Job placement celebrations

We’re celebrating Fellows who turned persistence into progress and landed new roles this month.

Wes McElroy → Fullstack Software Engineer | Chat Team at Planning Center“Just keep pushing even when you're struggling to get traction. I struggled for months to get companies responding, and it can feel demoralizing. Then suddenly five companies reached out in four days — and one became my offer. It can all turn around very quickly.”

Ryan Rugh → Software Engineer 2 | Tiphaus“Embrace the process and realize this is where the market is right now. The number of applications and interviews has less to do with you and more to do with the environment. Be kind to yourself.”

🚀 What’s new at Formation?

New challenge drop: AI-Assisted interview prep

Technical interviews are changing fast, and Formation is staying ahead of the curve. Our newest challenge, AI-Assisted Interview Prep, is now available. This challenge helps Fellows build confidence with a growing interview format that combines their coding and problem-solving skills with AI-enabled tools.

What’s inside

• Our first subchallenge is AI-Assisted Algos, a focused set of practice problems that let Fellows experience this new interview style firsthand.
• All content is fully asynchronous, so Fellows can work on it at their own pace.

Weekly Goals Glow-Up

We’ve redesigned Weekly Goals to make planning Fellows’ weeks clearer, faster, and more intentional, so they always know what to aim for and how to stay on track.

What’s new

• Guided Monday setup that reviews last week and helps Fellows set the right goal
• Personalized task recommendations based on recent performance
• Clear time estimates so Fellows know exactly what you’re committing to
• A redesigned progress bar showing real-time progress on sessions and tasks
• Smarter mid-week tracking so Fellows always know where they stand

This is the new weekly rhythm: clearer expectations, stronger momentum, and a smoother path to success.

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.