Formation Monthly Deploy: May 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 Sophie Novati

Depth beats volume in the AI era

AI makes it incredibly easy to spin up projects quickly. But creating lots of shallow projects isn't the same as building real engineering skill.

✅ Go deep on fewer projects. Build something you understand well enough to discuss for 20+ minutes at multiple levels of detail.

❌ Don't optimize for quantity. A GitHub full of AI-generated side projects can actually be a weak signal if you can't explain the tradeoffs and decisions behind them.

🧠 Focus on understanding, not just output. Strong engineers can explain architecture choices, debugging decisions, limitations, and iterations.

💬 Prepare to discuss your work deeply. Interviews increasingly test whether you truly understand what you built, not just whether you shipped it.

At Formation, we want you to use AI to accelerate learning, not bypass it. Depth of understanding is still the differentiator.

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🌊 Recent Rising Tide winner

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

Michael DeGori was recognized for his curiosity, thoroughness, and clear communication. His nominator shared: "He was not afraid to dive in and ask as many questions as possible to make sure he understood every part of a problem and its solution. Very articulate."

Thank you, Michael, for bringing that energy 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.

Jesse Farmer was recognized for making complex concepts genuinely accessible through strong visual teaching and clear explanations. One Fellow shared: "It's abundantly clear that he enjoys teaching and goes the extra mile to make concepts easier to digest. After the session, I was able to solve problems that would have taken me about an hour. Now I feel that I have a much better mental framework for approaching backtracking problems."

Jerica Huang was recognized for creating an environment where Fellows feel seen and supported. One Fellow shared: "Jerica complimented my solution during the session, and was also forgiving when it came to an alternative recursive implementation — she understood that I needed practice with using a recursive helper method in recursive problems. She also recognizes everyone for their contributions."

Andrew Miner was recognized for the clarity and practicality he brings to every session. One Fellow shared: "Andrew was a great mentor who eloquently led me through the practice problems without giving out too many hints or wasting time on programming basics or irrelevant nitpicks — he focused on the core concepts and strategies of solving linked list problems."

Thank you to Jesse, Jerica, and Andrew 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.

Tom Ames → Gridware

Tom shared candid advice for engineers navigating a competitive market: "In my search, I found that there simply was too much strong competition to break into the premier tech companies, given my experience level. Instead, I found a lot more success targeting startups or small companies that were scaling up." Tom leaned into a niche skill set in high demand and found that specificity drove far more traction than applying broadly. His advice: identify what you have that's hard to find, then go all in on it.

Bryan Peterson → Caesar Entertainment

Bryan's approach came down to generating real evidence of his abilities: "Landing a role depends on so many variables, and everyone's situation is different. Don't be afraid to pivot or try something new if you're not gaining traction." Once he had a clear read on what a role required, he built a working MVP in a day and a half to demonstrate he could do the job. The ability to show something real and deployed made a meaningful difference in his interviews.

Ammar Chishti → Arlo

Ammar's biggest takeaway was simple: take full advantage of the Formation community. "Formation's biggest asset by far is the community of people here that have been through the job search and interview gauntlet and know exactly what it takes to succeed."

Vishnu Jayavel → Bezos Academy

Vishnu reflected on the mental side of a long search: "A lot of this process is mental. The hardest part isn't the technical prep; it's dealing with the doubts that come after rejection." His advice is to build real evidence of your progress so you have something concrete to point to when doubt creeps in. He also credited Formation's mentor community with helping him gain clarity on what he actually wanted, which led him to choose a non-profit role over a Big Tech offer. "The self-discovery you get from being part of this community is what truly makes a difference."

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: