this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024

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198

Programmers of Lemmy, what are your interviewing horror stories? (poptalk.scrubbles.tech)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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What are your worst interviews you've done? I'm currently going through them myself and want to hear what others are like. Dijkstras algorithm on the whiteboard? Binary Search? My personal favorite "I don't see anything wrong with your architecture, but I'm not a fan of X language/framework so I have to call that out"

Let me hear them!

(Non programmers too please jump in with your horrid interviews, I'm just very fed up with tech screens)

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago

Went in for an in-person prescreening with HR that turned into a surprise panel interview with the tech leadership, which sounds like a good thing, but I'm a severe introvert, so it tilted me to the point that I had a hard time regaining my internal composure.

Conversion was friendly and softball, and whiteboard was a super simple rdbms outer join scenario, but in the moment I couldn't really think straight, so I didn't see any of this.

I'd actually been practicing DSA so one of those problems might have actually been engaging enough to get me to focus.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

One time I have applied for a role in one of the big companies. Microsoft/Apple/Google/Amazon like big (for the record, none of the above). The process took almost two months, I had 7 or 8 interviews with various department heads - HR, hardware and software engineers, support. I had to take an IQ test disguised as personality test, one more "soft" test, did the homework assignment based on sent requirements and docs. Now, the role I was applying for was a mix of sysops, devops and sys architect. I would be working with the bare metal. I was so deep in the sys/ops world I failed on fairly simple task. During the final interview I was tasked with a live coding problem - "using the language of your choice, write a program that calculates the fibonacci sequence". I was not prepared for that. Usually I could do this with my eyes closed after a night of heavy drinking but in this case I was so deep in systems architecture I totally blew it. Lesson I learned was to be prepared for most unusual tech questions. Ever since I always prepare for both, dev and ops parts even if it's strictly ops role.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I don't come from a developer background but that honestly sounds ridiculous.

If this type of thing is standard in software development, I feel bad for anybody in the industry.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

I can only talk about my experience, not sure how it reflects the whole industry. But all the big companies I applied for had a multistep recruitment process. On the other hand, the company I work for at the moment, was more than chill during the interview process. I had two interviews, one with the HR 3rd party and one with the CTO and the founder. I didn't do any homework and most of the time we talked was a casual small talk with some tech questions. The more I think about that conversation, the more I think that I didn't read between the lines. I guess the people who I talked to were really good t judging the character.

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[–] the16bitgamer 11 points 3 weeks ago

When I was in Uni, we had the opportunity to apply for co-op at Black Berry when they still made phones with their own OS.

I was getting into mobile dev at this time and applied and got an interview.

I didn't know what I was expecting but what I got was a 10-20min sales pitch for their phone and I wasn't asked a question... I don't think. From what I gathered afterwards they just wanted to hire/rehire one guy and had to interview others to be in the co-op program.

Believe it or not I wasn't sold on black berry after that.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

At university, a prof for theoretical CS (the kind of professor who thought CS students don't need computers) was looking for someone to program something for him. The requirements really showed that he had no clue about programming. His assistent, sitting beside him, obviously knew that, too.

I basically told that prof that he had no idea what he was talking about, and suggested that he should attend a basic programming course before I left.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

I’m actually happy to say I haven’t necessarily had any bad programming related interviews. In fact, as someone with zero professional development experience but a healthy portfolio (side business for former employer, systems built for prior jobs not related to development) I’d say it was almost too easy to finally land a full time development job.

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