Gayle Laakmann McDowell

Gayle Laakmann McDowell is a well-known career development and interview preparation expert in the tech industry. She founded and leads CareerCup, a platform focused on helping candidates prepare for competitive technical and product interviews. Her professional background includes software engineering roles at major technology companies, and she has authored multiple widely used interview-prep books, including Cracking the Coding Interview and Cracking the PM Interview. She holds degrees in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Wharton, and she draws on both hiring insight and coaching experience to make interview processes more understandable and navigable.