Notes on interviewing well.
Field notes from thousands of practice interviews — what calms nerves, what convinces hiring managers, and what we're learning as Lyra gets better.
Forward Deployed Engineer: the role nobody heard of, and now everyone's hiring for
FDE job listings jumped over 800% in a year. Here's what the role actually is, what it pays in Australia, and how to survive the interview round that trips up most engineers.
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Best interview practice tools when the interview is already real
Five tools matched to what you actually need — from realistic mock interviews to delivery feedback to peer coding reps.
The STAR framework, slightly refined — how to tell a story that lands
STAR is a starting point, not a script. After reviewing a random sample of 4,000 anonymized withLyra practice answers, here's the structural tweak that consistently makes responses feel less rehearsed.
Why interview anxiety peaks at question three
We reviewed a random sample of 4,000 anonymized sessions and found a consistent anxiety spike at exactly the third question.
Interview tomorrow? Prep in 15 minutes
Reading builds recognition; interviews test retrieval. Here's what to actually do with the last fifteen minutes — and the one part of it you can't do by reading.

Product design in 2026: what actually changed, if you're trying to break in
AI has made average screens cheap, which shifts the value of design toward judgment, clarity, taste, and the ability to design how intent-based systems behave.