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Search - "best interview ever"
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Worst dev I've interviewed?
"Archie" ran his own consulting business for almost 20 years. Prior to his interview, Archie sent HR (to send to us) his company's website, where he had samples of code for us to review (which was not bad, this guy did know his stuff).
What I found odd was Archie was the lone wolf at his company, but everything I found about him (the about page, his bio, etc), Archie was referred to as 'Mr. Archie Brown'.
Ex. 'Mr. Archie Brown began his humble career and 'Mr. Archie Brown is active in his church and volunteers his time in many charities ...'
Odd to refer to yourself in the third person on your own site, but OK, I like putting hot sauce on my mac & cheese (no judgement here).
Then the interview..standard stuff, then..
Me: "Given your experience, this is an entry level developer position. Do you feel the work would be challenging enough for you?"
Archie: "Yes, Mr. Archie Brown would have no problem starting at bottom. You see ..."
Almost any time he would reference himself, instead of 'me' or 'I', he would say 'Mr. Archie Brown'. As the interview continued, the ego and self-importance grew and grew.
My interview partner wanted to be done by using the escape clause, "PaperTrail, I'm good, do you have any questions?"
Yes, yes I do. I was having too much fun listening to this guy ramble on about himself. I made the interview go the full hour with the majority of time 'Archie' telling us how great he is.
The icing on the cake was my partner caught his gold cuff-links and tie-pin where his initials and how he kept raising his hands and playing with his tie to show us (which I totally missed, then was like "oh yea, that was weird")
After the interview, talking with HR:
HR-Jake: "How did it go?"
John: "Terrible. One of the worst. We would have been done in 10 minutes if PaperTrail didn't keep asking questions."
Me: "Are you kidding!? I had the best time ever. I wish I could have stayed longer."
HR-Jake: "Really? This guy was so full of himself I wasn't sure to even schedule with you guys. With his experience, I thought it deserved at least a round with you two. You think we should give him a chance?"
Me: "Hell no. Never in a million years, no. I never in my whole life met anyone with such a big ego. I mean, he kept referring to himself in the third person. Who does that?"
HR-Jake: "Whew!...yea, he did that in the phone interview too. It was a red flag for us as well."
Couple of weeks later I ran into HR-Jake in the break room.
HR-Jake: "Remember Mr. Archie Brown?"
Me: "To my dying day, I will never forget Mr. Archie Brown."
HR-Jake: "I called him later that day to tell him the good news and he accused me of being a racist. If we didn't give him the job, he was getting a lawyer and sue us for discrimination."
Me: "What the frack!"
HR-Jake: "Yep, and guess what? Got a letter from his lawyer today. I don't think a case will come in front of a judge, but if you have any notes from the interview, I'll need them."
Me: "What are we going to do?"
HR-Jake: "Play the waiting game between lawyers. We're pretty sure he'll run out of money before we do."
After about 6 months, and a theft conviction (that story made the local paper), Mr. Archie Brooks dropped his case (or his lawyers did).23 -
Recently had an interview with a company. At some point an SELinux question came up and while I didn't provide the best answer ever (I'm hardly familiar with SELinux and mentioned that as well beforehand so they knew), it was technically correct and the reaction of the interviewers was funny.
TI (technical interviewer): say your php script isn't executed and after a while you find out that SELinux is blocking php script execution, how can you fix that?
Me: setenforce 0...? (essentially disabling SELinux at all)
TI: disabling it entirely for getting php execution to work?! That doesn't sound like a good solu...
HRI (HR (non technical) interviewer, also present): *turns to TI* - but, would it solve the problem?
TI: 😐 well, yes, but... That's a bad thing to do so I wouldn't count is corre..
HRI: *still aiming towards TI* but you simply asked him for a way to solve the php execution issue, would his answer work? Regardless of whether it's the best or worst solution, would it be a solution which works?
TI: well... yes...
HRI: then he answered correctly I'd say, next!
(yes, I'm aware that my answer wasn't good as for security at all but it would have solved that problem which is what was asked)18 -
You know what? Fuck this shit. We spend most of our life locked down in a school, we are being told facts, tested and stressed for many years with the only hope to get out as soon as possible.
Failing is something that keeps you there indefinitely.
Parents keep pushing on kids to achieve the best and get good grades to have a job.
Then something happens.
You get out of school and what happens?
You start working.
A.k.a modern slavery...
Employers thinks that since you are young they are doing YOU a favor if they decided to hire you.
So you find yourself having to do the same tasks everyone is doing, perhaps you are even fully capable of managing them and get the shit done but guess what!!
You are paid the minimum.
You barely make enough to pay off your rent which keeps you locked away from Holidays abroad, from that huge cake you desperately want.
And guess what! Try to raise your voice and you'll get fired in a Matter of seconds, replaced with someone else which accepts any condition.
You dream of a house, a family and a car but you can't even eat healthy with that salary.
So you are forced to buy cheap and low quality food from the same store again and again till you had enough and spend some days with that horrible feeling...
Calling you to get a job interview feels like they are doing you a favor, they always try to give the minimum possible and expect you to work in a serious manner and respect their deadlines.
Colleagues earn a lot more even though they aren't doing anything different from you.
For the first year you won't have any holiday, let alone traveling or anything different from just staying home for 3 days straight.
Banks won't give you a loan because your job doesn't pay off
The day that your car is broken you struggle to eat the whole month.
On top of that, taxes. Because they aren't taking away enough.
I don't want to live this life, I don't want to become a modern slave and work 8-17 everyday for the rest of my life and retire with a shitty retirement pension that won't probably grant me anything again.
I had enough of this shit.
I don't want to go back to work and pretend to do what I am supposed to do with a smile on my face knowing that I am just a number and that no matter how skilled I am I can always get replaced with N number of people for a lower salary of mine.
I am tired
I dream of a life that I won't ever reach this way.
Today I looked up houses prices and felt like shit.
I will never in my entire life be able to afford something so expensive, let alone buying furnitures and what is needed or what I like.
I dream of having my place, my dog and my family but apparently I am asking too much.
How is this even fair in 2018/2019?
I... I am... Speechless.
I wonder how many people out there are in the same situation or even worse and I can't even wrap my mind around that.
This is just modern slavery.
My boss makes a shit load of money from young people that can't complain because they are threatened and will eventually be replaced...
This is my rant.22 -
Being told I’m not experienced enough to get a senior dev job I interviewed for.
Even though I aced the first 4 interview rounds, the tech test feedback was “the best solution they had ever seen”, and I’ve been a senior dev for 25 years.
Time wasting assholes.3 -
My boss asked me if he could smoke one before starting the interview. So I went down with him and lighted one up as well. Then we started to talk as if we were friends since years after I told him I like to drink alcohol from time to time (he asked :D) . Afterwards he just asked me if I know Java and stuff and I was like "sure ez pz". We still have drinking competitions on every company event. Best boss ever3
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The man who runs my IT department. The man who is in charge of all things and people that are technical: IT management software development, infrastructure, training, help desk, system administration, etc. A man with a staff of fifty plus. If you were to peel back the flesh on this man's head and crack open his skull you would find dung beetles feasting on the feces that power his thoughts and motor functions. Underneath this foul membrane, if you could push past the maggots; the meal worms; his undying love for hourly binges of Johnny Walker Black on any day of the week with a name that contains a vowel; his fascination with shiny objects and his endless internal monologue wondering when they would hatch rainbow ponies that fly; his desire whenever he enters a paint store to open all the cans of paint and taste the different colors; if you could push past all of the vile crap that exists where Thomas Aquinas once theorized there was a soul, you would find a colony of paramecia at the end of their short lives laughing hysterically at how much smarter they were than the host they lived in.
This man was in charge of hiring the Manager of Software Development. The manager I report to. After seven months of ignoring this chore; after interviewing the sum total of four candidates; after making a point to tell myself and a colleague that there was no one qualified to fill this position within our company (an opinion that is both untrue and, when spoken, runs afoul of internal hiring policies) this man hired a soulless cretin with no experience in software development or with running a software development group. A man who regularly confuses web servers and SQL servers. A man who asked me how my previous manager reviewed my work, was told by me that said previous manager read my code, and then replied in his capacity as the manager of software development that "looking at code is a compete waste of time for a manager." A man so without any humanity or reason for being that he will sit silently, creepily, in conference rooms with the lights off waiting for meetings to begin. Meetings he has scheduled. That have no reason for being in the first place. Just like himself.
Shortly before the man in charge offered the Dev Manager job to the simulacrum of human flesh that is my manager, he met with me and others who had been involved in the interview process. When I informed him that hiring someone with no technical knowledge for a very technical position would be a mistake that he would suffer through for years, he replied in reference to his future hire that "his managerial experience makes up for his lack of technical knowledge."
Best. Prank. Ever. Worst prank ever too. Fuck.6 -
Sitting in the room with the hiring manager and the previous employee:
Manager: "Do you know your stuff?"
Me: "Yes"
Manager: "Do you know your stuff as well as him? (pointing at previous employee)"
Me: "I taught him."
Manager: "Okay, when can you start?"7 -
About 18 months ago my non-technical Manager of Applications Development asked me to do the technical interviews for a .NET web developer position that needed to be filled. Because I don't believe in white board interviewing (that's another rant), but I do need to see if the prospective dev can actually code, for the initial interview I prepare a couple of coding problems on paper and ask that they solve them using any language or pseudo code they want. I tell them that after they're done we'll discuss their thought process. While they work the other interviewing dev and I silently do our own stuff.
About half way through the first round of technical interviews the aforementioned manager insisted we interview a dev from his previous company. This guy was top notch. Excellent. Will fit right in.
The manager's applicant comes in to interview and after some initial questions about his resume and experience I give him the first programming problem: a straightforward fizzbuzz (http://wiki.c2.com/?FizzBuzzTest). He looked as if the gamesters of Triskelion had dropped him into the arena. He demurs. Comments on the unexpectedness of the request. Explains that he has a little book he usually refers to to help him with such problems (can't make this stuff up). I again offer that he could use any language or pseudo code. We just want to see how he thinks. He decides he will do the fizzbuzz problem in SQL. My co-interviewer and I are surprised at this choice, but recover quickly and tell him to go ahead. Twenty minutes later he hands me a blank piece of paper. Of the 18 or so candidates we interview, he is the only one who cannot write a single line of code or pseudo code.
I receive an email from this applicant a couple of weeks after his interview. He has given the fizzbuzz problem some more thought. He writes that it occurs to him that the code could be placed into a function. That is the culmination of his cogitation over two weeks. We shake our heads and shortly thereafter attend the scheduled meeting to discuss the applicants.
At the meeting the manager asks about his former co-worker. I inartfully, though accurately, tell him that his candidate does not know how to code. He calls me irrational. After the requisite shocked silence of five people not knowing how to respond to this outburst we all sing Kumbaya and elect to hire someone else.
Interviews are fraught for both sides of the table. I use Fizzbuzz because if the applicant knows how to code it's an early win in the process and we all need that. And if the applicant can't solve it, cut bait and go home.
Fizzbuzz. Best. Interview. Question. Ever.6 -
An excerpt from the best rant about whiteboard interviews posted on the internet. Ever.
"Well, maybe your maximum subsequence problem is a truly shitty interview problem. You are putting your interview candidate in a situation where their employment hinges on a trivia question. — Kadane's algorithm! They know it, or they don't. If they do, then congratulations, you just met an engineer that recently studied Kadane's algorithm.
Which any other reasonably competent programmer could do by reading Wikipedia.
And if they don't, well, that just proves how smart the interviewer is. At which point the interviewer will be sure to tell you how many people couldn't answer his trivially simple interview question.
Find a spanning tree across a graph where the edges have minimal weight. Maybe one programmer in ten thousand — and I’m being generous — has ever implemented this algorithm in production code. There are only a few highly specific vertical fields in the industry that have a use for it. Despite the fact that next to no one uses it, the question must be asked during job interviews, and you must write production-quality code without looking it up, because surely you know Kruskal’s algorithm; it’s trivial.
Question: why are manhole covers round? Answer: they’re not just round, if you live in London; they're triangular and rectangular and a bunch of other shapes. Why is your interview question broken? Why did you just crib an interview question without researching whether its internal assumption was correct? Do you think that “round manhole covers are easier to roll" is a good answer? Have you ever tried to roll an iron coin that weighs up to 300 pounds? Did you survive? Do you think that “manhole covers are circular so that they don’t fall into manholes” is a good answer? Do you know what a curve of constant width is? Do you know what a Reuleaux triangle is? Have you ever even been to London?
If the purpose of interviewing was to play stump the candidate, I’d just ask you questions from my area of specialization. “What are the windowing conditions which, during the lapping operation on a modified discrete cosine transform, guarantee that the resynthesis achieves perfect reconstruction?” The answer of course is the Princen-Bradley condition! Everyone knows that’s when your windowing function satisfies the conditions h(k)2+h(k+N)2=1 (the lapping regions of the window, squared, should sum to one) and h(k)=h(2N−1−k) (the window should be symmetric). That’s fundamental computer science. So obvious, even a child should know the answer to that one. It’s trivial. You embarrass your entire extended family with your galactic stupidity, which is so vast that its value can only be stored in a double, because a float has insufficient range:"
Author: John Byrd
Src: https://quora.com/What-is-the-harde...3 -
during an interview for a software dev job...
interviewer: so in your opinion, what is the best part of git?
me: pushing to master
interview: damn that's the best answer anyone has ever answered. well played. *wink*4 -
Favorite/most hated language? (I love a good flame war)
Why did you quit your previous job / Moment you've considered quitting your current job?
Why do you think Linux is so much better than OSX? (Ahh yes I feed on apple flavored hipster tears)
What side project are you currently working on?
If you had the best teams and unlimited funds, to be used only on a serious project using both Blockchain, IoT and AI, what would you create?
If you forgot how to code, what other career would you pursue?
What is your "I was so busy wondering if I could, that I forgot whether I should" concept/idea/project?
How many chicken eggs would fit inside the moon if it was hollow? (I like retarded interview questions)
If you started a startup, what unique perk would you offer your developer employees?
Do you under- or overengineer?
Most unnecessary feature you ever had to create?
Most necessary feature your boss/client denied to approve?15 -
So a few days ago I shared about the conflict with my colleague on learning React. Today I was let go. Obviously I asked why they would do that and they said they feel the problem isn't even my React knowledge but the fact I don't grasp the fundamentals of OO programming.
Thing is in these 3 months there has not been a single code review. They are either going of what my lying colleague told them (they claimed he was excluded from giving feedback), or the consultants who were hired to help us. And yes, I got feedback I should improve but at the same time the assurance so long as I show improvement it'd be fine. And I was told they could see improvement. So I'm not sure what changed but suddenly there is no budget to keep me on. In any case it feels like shitty corporate bullshit.
But I can't say they are wrong. I struggle to explain simple concepts I know in words. I've worked a series of bad jobs where nobody cared how you did stuff as long as it got done. I feel I'm so behind now and so affected by bad knowledge it's even harder to fix than to learn the first time. So I'm wondering how to fix this.
I'm really gutted too because I loved this company. I was finally getting a fair wage instead of being underpaid. The people were excellent. I felt I could finally relax and feel safe at work. And now I feel betrayed. Which for someone with self esteem issues is very hard. Can't trust in myself and can't trust in others.
I'm gonna try and pick myself up in the morning, but today I feel totally shit. This wasn't how I'd expected things to go. I thought my manager had intended to talk conflicts over but instead I get the boot. And the advice to stop overselling myself. Real useful that. Like it is on me that they hired me despite my subpar interview because my CV looked good. It's a shitty excuse. In any case they're now stuck with a dev that walks out of work, throws false accusations about colleagues, and another person warned me about to not engage because nothing good ever came from it. He's gonna keep over engineering everything and make up for all the time he wastes outside of work creating a dysfunctional environment for everyone. But yeah, easier to fire the new person who does her best despite the odds. And who cautioned against over engineering because we kept missing deadlines. And who believes in refactoring when it is needed because that's how agile works. Yeah better keep someone who has no sense of work life balance and makes others miserable then claiming he's being driven out by your ignorance. And of course the consultants who throw your own people under the bus. Can't get rid of those now.7 -
I had a manager who scolded me in me in public on a non-IT floor because I used child classes and overloading of methods which "is too hard to read". Instead use "lots of ifs and else's". This is the guy that had a JSP so large (be cause he had so many ifs) that it couldn't be compiled even on a server.
The best karma happened a few months later. I was looking for a new job (wonder why?) and was very deep in the interview process - like round 5- of company A. I got talking to this jackass, who had no idea I was interviewing, said "yeah I applied to company A once. Couldn't get past the first round. Great benefits, though.". Me getting the job a week later was the best thing ever. -
Soft rant...
So I'm working at the company for 8 months now. Best 8 months in my career, great team mates, great work, the best - a team leader who is one of the best developers I've ever worked with, but more importantly he is a good friend, brother like. We had great time, from the interview we understood there is a bro-mance there.
So why am I ranting? He got promoted and became a group leader, not even of my group. Now we don't have a TL and we're afraid they won't be able to get a swell guy like our exTL2 -
Once I was told to interview a junior dev. It was my first ever interview from the side of employer, so I hope this story will never appear here told by my vis a vis. Ok, to the subject. Position of jun iOS dev. It was so long time ago, the manual reference counting was the only option on a platform. And I ask her, to describe how the manual ref counting actually working. She cannot answer this. I try to split the theme in to a pieces and ask more precise questions, about this or that situation, what should happen, or at least how she thinks it may work. She cannot answer this as well. Technically for me it was the end of interview, but I cannot give up on her that easy so I ask her to tell me what she is doing on her current position and we had spoke for another 15 min. TLDR she has failed.
Next year, another company, interview for the same position, the same people on the scene. So, I remember her, she remembers me. We both know the question I will ask. TLDR she has failed on the very same question.
Oh god knows how bad I feel after rejecting her second time. But I was little more experienced with the interviews and I was sure this question should not be a problem to those who have little experience on a platform.
Several years has passed. Another company. I’m about to jump to the next company and project managers are doing their best to fill the position with ANYONE as it’s a big fight for developers at the moment. So they have found a junior inside the company who wants to try. And SAME PEOPLE on the scene. Same question on a table. And some other questions, and more. So she’s got that job.
After many years I can say she could have a job from the first time if only I try to question her about other sides of day to day code writing. It was just me - not very experienced interviewer and not very experienced mid developer. I only hope she is not hating me a lot.6 -
!rant
Today is a happy day.
I just got a job to finance my last year of studies as a frontend dev for two months this summer.
I'll be working as an intern and won't get paid much, but it's still tremendously more than I would've ever made with any other shitty student job.
Best thing is that my best friend works at the same company and we'll be seated next to each other (he also convinced the HR to invite me to the interview, woul've been rejected right away without him).
So basically I am a lucky bastard and they even told me that if I'm doing well they wouldn't hesitate to hire me after my studies if I'd still be interested in a year ❤️
What I'm missing most as a student is to work in front of a computer 8 hours a day. This will be a welcome change and a nice addition to my CV.
Wish me luck! Starting right after my final exams on the 16th 😎3 -
"How would you reverse a string?"
One of the best Java interview questions I ever had! (no kidding)8 -
Hmm. So have you ever argued in a job interview? Like really standing your ground? In a technical interview?
Today I had a live coding session with a company I'm interested in. The developer was giving me tasks to evolve the feature on and on.
Everything was TDD. Splendid!
However at one point I had to test if the outcome of the method call is random. What I did is basically:
```
Provider<String> provider = new SomeProvider("aaa", "bbb", "ccc", "ddd", "eee", "fff")
for(int i=0; i<100; i++) {
String str = provider.get();
map.put(str, incrementCount(str));
}
Set<Integer> occurences = new HashSet(map.values());
occurences.removeIf(o -> o.equals(occurences.get(0)));
assertFalse(occurences.empty());
```
and I called it good enough, since I cannot verify true randomness.
But the dev argued that this is not enough and I must verify whether the output is truly random or not, and the output (considering the provider only has a finite set of values to return) occurences are almost equal (i.e. the deviation from median is the median itself).
I argued this is not possible and it beats the core principle of randomness -- non-determinism. Since if you can reliably test whether the sequence is truly random you must have an algorithm which determines what value can or cannot be next in the sequence. Which means determinism. And that the (P)RNG is then flawed. The best you can do is to test whether randomness is "good enough" for your use case.
We were arguing and he eventually said "alright, let's call it a good enough solution, since we're short on time".
I wonder whether this will have adverse effect my evaluation . So have you ever argued with your interviewer? Did it turn out to the better or to the worse?
But more importantly, was I right? :D21 -
So technical interview today but woke up (6am) and started thinking about it and it led to this rant about algorithms. This is probably going into a Medium post if I ever get around to finishing it but sort of just wanted to share the rant that literally just went off in my mind.
*The problem with Algorithms Technical Interviews Is They don't test Real skills*
Real world problems are complex and often cross domain combining experience in multiple areas. Often the best way is not obvious unless you're a polymath and familiar with different areas, paradigms, designs. And intuitively can understand, reason, and combine them.
I don't think this is something a specific algorithm problem is designed to show. And the problem is the optimal solution to some of these and to algorithm design itself is that unless you train for it or are an algorithm designer (practice and experience), you can only brute force it in the amount of time given.
And quite frankly the algorithms I think we rely on daily weren't thought of in 30 minutes. The designers did this stuff for a living, thought about these problems for days and several iterations… at least. A lot were mathematicians. The matrix algorithm that had a Big O of 7N required a flash of insight that only someone constantly looking and thinking about the equations could see.
TBA
-system design
-clean readable coding practices
...
TLDR: I could probably go on and on about this stuff for hours jumping from item/example/area to the next and back again... But I don't think you can test these (~20) years of experience in a 1 hr technical interview focused on algorithms...8 -
Had an interview today with someone who made me feel like I knew nothing. Best experience I have ever had in an interview. I know it sounds weird, but I actually felt like I learned a lot from that man and would like to work with people who make me feel that way.
Unfortunately, that will probably not happen after that interview.3 -
Any JavaScript developers out there willing to help me out with something?
I have an interview question that I like to ask candidates that no one ever seems to get right. But, to me, it seems pretty basic, so I expect MOST JavaScript developers at almost any level of expertise to get it, and I like it generally because it demonstrates some core knowledge of JavaScript concepts and syntax.
But I want to verify that my feelings about it are reasonable, because give how few ever seem to get it right (and I'm talking across literally hundreds of interviews, MAYBE 2 people have ever gotten it right), I'm starting to wonder if I'm right or not.
Look at this code, and then answer the question after. Please do so off the top of your head and without testing anything since that's normally the experience a candidate would have. I'll give the answer after some time for anyone who gets it wrong but is curious.
But this isn't about YOU getting it right or not, and it's not about whether it's the best way to do something in JavaScript or anything like that, it's just about whether it's a reasonable question and whether my expectation that MOST JavaScript developers should get it right is fair.
const O = {
sayHello : function() { alert("Hello"); }
};
const S = "sayHello";
Question: using ONLY the variables O and S (and you MUST use both), write code that executes the sayHello function.
Thanks!34 -
Software Developer Interview Questions!
Hey friends, for my IT Careers class I have been assigned to interview a software developer. I was wondering if some people would be willing to answer the following questions. Thank you so much!
Name:
Title of position:
Company you work for:
1. What is a typical day at work like?
2. What are your hours like? Are you ever on call?
3. What are the best parts of your job?
4. Are there any downsides?
5. What influenced your decision to choose this career? Are you glad that you did?
6. What education did you need to get?
7. Do you specialize in certain languages or types of programs?
8. Do you work remotely or at the job site?
9. What is your pay like? Are you paid by the hour, or do you get a salary?
10. Was there ever a specific project you've worked on that was your favorite?
11. Does your job require any work outside of work hours?
12. What are the biggest obstacles you run into as a developer?
13. If you could change something about your job, would you? What would it be?
14. What are some tasks you must complete for your job?
15. Is there anything you wish you knew before starting your career?
16. Are there days that seem too repetitive?
17. Do you often have to learn new languages?
18. Have there been any big changes in your career since you first started?
19. How long have you worked as a developer?
20. Is there any advice you would give to college students looking to pursue a development career?
Any responses are appreciated! Thank you so much!9 -
I’d been working event based and freelance jobs in the security and entertainment fields for years, with odd stints as a bartender sprinkled in. My pay was mostly decent, but I had no job security, and I was more on the road than at home. A few years before this job search experience I had already realised I can’t continue on this path for ever, especially if I ever want a serious relationship (e.g. 16 weeks straight touring Europe with on avg. 16h work days pretty much every day isn’t ideal in that regard, and also really though on both body and mind). So I decided to study. As I applied in autumn, not every line of study accepted students. The closest to my interest I found was BBA in Business IT.
Fast forward 1,5 years. After moving away from my previous base due to then-gfs studies, I had also been able to accept less work. Well, there were really two reasons: I didn’t want to go on weeks long big tours anymore, and I’d had to price up on my freelance job due to reasons. I still managed to keep our household going, but not knowing when the next paycheck would be available was becoming a little too stressful. I wanted job security. So a few weeks after my wedding I scoured the internetz for positions I could apply to, and applied to a dozen or so places. They were a variety of positions I had a vague understanding of from what I’d learned at UAS: from sales to data analytics to dev… I was aware pretty much all of the applications were a long shot by best, so I expected to be ghosted…
Two of the organizations I applied to wanted to go forward with me. Both dev jobs. I can’t even remember the specifics of the other one anymore, but I do remember the interview: I got in to their office (which was ridiculously open), and got marched into a tiny conference room. The interviewer was passive-aggressive and really bombarded me with questions, not really leaving a socially awkward introvert with any time to answer. I started to get really anxious and twitchy, sweating like a pig. Just wanted out. But nooo, they wanted me to do a coding test live. So they sat me on a computer with Eclipse open, gave me an assignment and told me not to use the internet. What’s even worse is that I could literally feel the interviewer breathing down my neck when I tried to do the test. Well, didn’t happen cause I was under so much pressure that I couldn’t think at all… yeah, that was horrible.
Anyhow, the other position I really applied to because it was in my hometown and I recognised the company name from legendary commercials from the 90s - everyone in this country who watched TV in mid-to-late 90s remembers those. Anyway, to my surprise, my present day manager contacted me and wanted me to do a coding test. At the time he asked I was having a bout of fevers after fevers, not really able to get healthy. I told him that I’d do it as soon as I’m healthy. A month went by, maybe more. He asked again. Again I replied that as soon as I get healthy, but promised to do it next week the latest. I didn’t deliver on that, but the next week after that, even if I was the most feverish I had been, I did the tests. I could only finish half of them, cause I couldn’t look at a screen for long at a time and had to visit the loo every 10min or so, but apparently that was enough. Next week I was already going to the interview… oh I also googled what is PHP on the way there, since it was mentioned as a requirement and I had no idea what it was. Imagine that…
The interview itself couldn’t have been more different from the other one. We were sitting in a nice conference room with my manager and the product’s lead dev, drinking coffee, our feet on the table and talking smack. Oh, and we did play a game of NHL<insertNumber> on PS4 during the interview… it was relaxed. Of course the more serious chat was there, too, but I can only really remember how relaxed it was. When I left the interview, I had been promised the position and that I would be sent the contract to be signed as soon as the CEO had reviewed and approved it. Next day, I had signed it and some time later I started at my current job (I gave a date when I was available to start, since there was a tour still agreed upon between the interview and the start).
Oh, and the job’s pretty much like the interview. Relaxed. It’s a good place to be in, even though the pay could be better (I regularly get offers for junior positions with more pay, and mid level positions with double the pay). I do value a pleasant working environment and the absence of stress more than big munny, what can I say?1 -
Bruh, tbh, this is kind of going to be a sad rant.
tl;dr: LEETCODE THE FUCK UP AND GET INTO FANG.
For all the people out there, just stop fucking around with small companies/startups early in your career. Leetcode up and get into FANG. Once you have that validation, these startups will be much easier to get into.
I have gone through this first hand.
After amazing on-sites with multiple startups, where everyone said that I'm the kind of person they're looking for (background wise: CS grad, startup experience, 2+ YOE as a fullstack Dev using Java, py, js and all the famous frameworks you could name), they rejected me.
Heck, a company flew me out to SF from Seattle where I think I had had my best on-site ever. They rejected me today. The sad part is that I actually for once really believed in the mission of the company.
At this point, I have wasted so much time reading about the xyz startup that's about to disrupt pqr industry (to prepare for behavioral/cultural interview), practiced for such shitty interviews like pair programming etc., worked on numerous take home projects (completing all those "bonus" parts) and deploying it and spending money out of my own pocket for that.
I'M JUST FUCKING DONE WITH THIS SHIT.
I have given mock interviews with ex bosses and friends and they told me that I'm good. Heck, I even solved a LC medium in 20 minutes (optimal solution) but still got rejected.
I'm kind of writing this for myself and people who are on the same boat as I am:
Get into FANG and then think about other shit. STOP looking for smaller companies and being scared of getting your ass kicked by a Leetcode interview. Any company who would not take LC interviews will prefer someone from FANG unless you're lucky as fuck. You don't want your career to be based on luck, man. That shit's not gonna take you anywhere.4 -
Well here I go my first rant.
A little bit of background:
So I started working my first job a little over a month ago. found devrant about a week in. I was lucky that at a very young age I found programming and liked it (about 6 or 7). I went to college just to get a degree (bachelors of game development).
The job that was a "Great" opportunity that would be bad to let slip by (not a game dev job sadly). Well during the interview they asked me simple thing like what programming languages I know and some simple stuff like that, they never did ask me to demonstrate my knowledge though. Then they went to the weirder questions.
Do you know SQL? yeah at a very base level.
Do you know Excel? I mean I used is a bit, but not very much.
Etc.
A few of the questions felt a little out of place for the field, But it was the only "programming job" that would hire an experienced junior developer, so I took it. Guess I should have asked more questions.
Now I'm here at a job to help replace someone who is retiring. He wasn't a programmer really, but he wrote some code out of necessity well his platform of choice was VBA in Excel. Oh, and that's not the best part, he also dealt with mistakes that happen in the lab (electronics shit). So when ever there is a fuck up I have to go figure out how to search a poorly designed database (that is constantly changing), and today is the day he leaves, so no more help after today. My biggest fear currently is that I wont be able to fill a request that someone makes and I'll be the reason the company is losing money. And with all the stress/burn out that's building up I haven't been working on personal projects, which being my main source of entertainment might be making me depressed. Even when I do work up the effort to work on my projects I don't get very much entertainment. (If anyone has a suggestion for this that would be helpful.)
TIL: Even if the job is a great opportunity don't stop searching and ask a lot of questions.2 -
Had my first ever final interview as a developer after passing the first ever coding assignment, now can't stop thinking if I should have answered the questions differently.
I was very honest to my answer when they asked "How do you test your application?" As I started building the app with 0 knowledge about software development and know nothing about software testing. So I just told them the truth that I did not do any proper test, I just used a checklist and manual test to test my app and the app that I created for the assignment was the first app that I write a proper test cases and implement an automated test. The same goes to other questions like automated deployment and OOP experience. I just told them the honest truth even though I know that they are not the best practice. Did I just f*cked up the interview??
Arghh can't stop thinking2 -
So I'm in my last year of university. The GPA is high. Did one internship the summer after second year in one of the best companies in my country. Third year in my department we do a semester long internship for 5 months, I joined a company and worked on back-end using Go. This was the spring semester and I wanted to continue working in the summer. The internsip company didn't tell me anything so I looked for a job. Found one that paid great, I was getting the salary a new graduate was getting. I worked as a full-stack there. Mostly prototyping, the company was new and I was in the R&D side. After 2 months the company had some budgetary problems and we parted ways. I was in the market again for part-time job in my senior year and because of my prior experience with Go, a friend mentioned me to a company executive he met and I had an interview and got in as a full-stack part-time dev. This was for some background information.
My story is;
The work is actually great in terms of what I do. I'm learning a lot here. The problem is that I'm having imposter syndrome for the first time ever. The projects are demanding and because that I'm part-time they take time to finish. There are no due dates or anything but sometimes the CEO is coming to me and saying "Aren't you finished with it?" or "Are you going to finish it soon?". Because that I'm more qualified in Javascript and React when they gave me my current frontend project I told them that its better if they give javascript/frontend projects from now on so that I can do a better job finishing them. What the CEO told me after that was, "Then hopefully you'll finish them sooner.". The people are nice and stuff like this only happened 2-3 times and the lead that I'm working with acknowledges my pros and cons and we have a good relationship, when I do something wrong he tells me why and how I can improve my code. But I just can't get over the syndrome and for some time I actually thought they would fire me when they get a full time dev.
Everything is great for some time. It's my fourth month and I think I felt this way because this is the most demanding job I have with senior year and also I didn't know people that well because I was the new guy. Although I still have concerns, have you ever felt this way? If you share tips or any recommendations I would feel great.
Thank you for reading.2