Formation Monthly Deploy: March 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.

🌎 What's happening in tech: insights from Sophie 

Sophie Novati's market analysis brings promising news this month. Tech hiring is on the rebound, with AI-focused companies leading the charge. 

The numbers tell an encouraging story:

• Layoffs have decreased by 40% since 2024, down to 152K
• 2025 projections show another potential 40% drop
• Open tech positions stand at 228K—a 25% increase since early 2024

While job descriptions and skill requirements continue to evolve in response to AI advancements (particularly in areas like test generation and simple debugging tasks), interview processes at major tech companies remain largely unchanged.

Sophie's key takeaway resonates across all experience levels: "In today's tech landscape, change is truly the only constant." Keep learning, stay curious, and be ready to adapt as frameworks and coding styles evolve.

🌟 Last Month's Light House winners

Our Light House award recognizes mentors whose guidance illuminates the path for Fellows. February's honorees:

Malcolm Hill brought exceptional detail and positivity to job search preparation. His nominator shared:

"Malcolm crushed it in the entire job search kickoff session I had with him, but I was particularly impacted by his attention to detail and specificity. While screen sharing, he went through each of our LinkedIns and found things to compliment and to improve upon, all noted with a ton of positivity and support. We had a lot of questions as a group, and he answered them with patience, detail, and skill. He stayed a few minutes late with us to keep answering questions, and then he further offered for us to reach out to him on MM anytime, not requiring an official 1:1 session, for follow-up questions or conversations. He really infused the process with joy, competence, and confidence. Thanks, Malcolm!"

Shan Huang provided candid, constructive feedback during mock interviews. Here’s what her nominators had to say:

"Had a mock interview session and was incredibly open and honest with feedback. She identified everything I did poorly and what I could work on. I appreciate her thoughtfulness and her feedback, which is incredibly helpful."

"Excellent job pacing and executing the material. Shan made sure that every student had some time to digest the information and troubleshoot from their perspective. She provided opportunities where learning moments would arise but also kept a paced approach by redirecting the ideas and potential solutions. Felt like a collaborative environment."

🏆 Job placement celebrations

Each placement represents countless hours of preparation, resilience through setbacks, and the community support that makes Formation unique. We're super proud of these Fellows who landed great jobs this month! Check out their stories and advice:

Nilesh Patel → LinkedIn

Nilesh's insight on the interview process: "Interviewing is a marathon, so pace yourself by dedicating 2-3 hours daily to preparation and avoiding burnout. Take full advantage of Formation’s resources — mock interviews, debugging sessions, and peer discussions — to grow and learn. Don’t hesitate to ask for help. Celebrate your small wins by keeping a list of milestones and kind words to inspire yourself. You’re not alone — lean on this community, keep learning, and trust the process. You’ve got this!"

Dzara Melcone → Bloomberg

Dzara's perspective on persistence: "Keep the faith that if you do the hard work, you will achieve the offer you want, regardless of macroeconomic conditions."

🚀 Recent launches at Formation

We've been busy making Formation even better! 

Here’s a peek at what’s new:

Company-specific practice

We've always said the best way to prepare for interviews is to work on your skills and follow the engineering method. But we heard you wanted problems tagged to specific companies—so we made it happen!

Now, when you log an interview on your Job Hunt board, you'll get a practice button in your Feed with DS&A problems for that company. We started with Meta, Amazon, and Google, but now we've expanded to the top 30 companies our Fellows interview with!

Better feed and schedule views

We've made it easier to see what you need to do each week! The new Feed View groups your work by Subchallenge, Job Hunt, or general Fellowship tasks, and organizes them in Learn/Practice/Benchmark order so you focus on what matters most. Plus, you get a snapshot of your daily sessions.

The Schedule view now shows all your sessions on one screen without horizontal scrolling. Way better!

Network with Nova

Let's be honest — networking can be exhausting. That's why we built Nova to make it easier:

• Nova finds people for you: Looking at companies in your Leads column and Top Companies list, Nova finds Recruiters, Software Engineers, and Engineering Managers you might want to connect with.
• Nova writes your messages: Based on your resume and the person's background, Nova creates customized outreach messages you can use or tweak. (Nova's still learning, so feel free to give feedback on the tool!)

This takes away the headache of finding contacts and writing messages from scratch, so you can focus on making real connections.

See you next month!

That wraps up our update! We're so happy to see our community doing well—with Fellows landing great jobs and mentors making such a positive impact.

As things keep changing in tech, remember you've got Formation behind you. Keep pushing forward, celebrate your wins (big and small), and support each other! Have questions or something cool to share? Just reach out — we'd love to hear from you!

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.