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I am at my wits end. I am getting exhausted and drained in these interviews. There are times where I just botch interviews. Here and there, I look back and rea

I am at my wits end. I am getting exhausted and drained in these interviews. There are times where I just botch interviews. Here and there, I look back and realize I came off the wrong way, like wow, I did that. But I reflect, and strive to get better. Sometimes it's just not a fit. Or someone comes along that's a better option than me. But there is a growing pocket of places I interview at where they blatantly lie, bait and switch, ignore my portfolio and go right into brainteasers, code golf, and refactors that have absolutely nothing to do with the role being filled. Then radio silence. I'm coming to the conclusion I'd rather earn less and work more hours on my own than enable this system. Because I have an indictment far more damning the OP: Some of the people interviewing me can barely code and are trying to survive another day. Not to mention, there are some who are afraid of letting in a stronger candidate that could replace them. Heh, what do you think they do? Last interview I had, I discussed multiple times it being in Django and Python. Come the time of our call, interviewer flipped the script, it's in JavaScript, Underscore, and the data being passed around is so ambiguous it meshed together in my mind through the remainder of our call. I don't know if it's a clueless interviewer - or a really shrewd one who knew how to lay one over me. Or is it me? The problem I face is getting beat down by all these tests makes me feel I'm not a good coder. Due to the fog of Dunning-Kruger, I know I can never be sure if the deficit is really on my end or not. Does anyone else out there feel this? I have published code all over. I code 10+ hours a day, even on the weekends. I get hammered in technical interviews.

goodoldboys 9y ago
You're not alone - I feel the same way, and from what I can gather there are lots more that identify with this sentiment. From what I've read, the common advice is just to keep slogging away and not let the terrible interviewers get you down. Which doesn't seem particularly helpful. I personally avoid any interviews like this and simply end any interview that starts going down that path. Fortunately, I work for myself and currently have no problem getting work through networking and take-home projects to showcase my skills. But I am fearful of if (when) I have to interview again for full time positions because I know how awful it is. Anyways, I feel your pain. Know that you're not alone, and I'm reasonably confident that you're a solid programmer!
MarkCole 9y ago
Sometimes in an interview its better to just say "This is not the right job for me" and end it yourself. I've done that a few times now for various reasons. Sometimes simply just because I know I probably wouldn't like to have the interviewer as a Colleague or Boss. If I thought I was interviewing for a Django/Python job and they completely changed the job description on me I'd have probably cut it right there. You can't just completely change the job someone is interviewing for from under them. I definitely feel you on it though, I'd much rather earn less in a comfortable job where I'm happy than go through the stress of interviewing and having to refresh my knowledge of CS trivia so interviewers can throw a few at me.
- beilabs 9y ago
  Interviewed for a large tech company a few months ago just for the sake of it. (VP of engineering role), corporate headhunter persuaded me to take the call even though I'm happy where I am. 5 minutes into the job interview the guy seemed very obsessed with my direct reports number. I have 12 engineers currently (CTO), have worked in China with 30 engineers reporting to me and in my previous life as a school principal I had 40+ staff and a few hundred students. With many other software roles in between around the planet. Anyhow, it seemed that the position was not a good fit, they were recently acquired, the founders had all left and a new management team had taken over. Multiple interviews were expected as well as attending their office on-site on the other side of the planet. Ended the call once I heard this and told them this was not the right role for me. Have to be respectful but not every position is a good fit for the candidate. Trust your gut especially if red flags are raised. The guy conducting the interview seemed a bit shocked that i bailed on the process so quickly. Ain't no-one got time for the commitment some interviews require some days.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- akerro 9y ago
  >they completely changed the job description >the stress of interviewing and having to refresh my knowledge of CS trivia I was recently visiting a friend from uni, he wanted to start working in a bigger company, so he took his chances on Amazon (they had office 10min walk from where he lived). He applied for Java/C++ backend role with some indication that's related to robotics. First week interviewer told him to refresh knowledge from basics of machine learning, searching algorithms and path finding, so he spent all weekend reading wikipedia and our notes from uni. During the interview he was asked questions about his experience with JS, Angular and CSS. What interesting JS projects he did and why links to the projects are not in his CV. He graduated with second best grade at the uni with a major project from autonomous sailing robot and failed interview in Amazon because he didn't do anything hipsterish with Angular on Github. I showed him link to the FACE of Amazon to cheer him up... and it worked, he decided not to apply there any more. What a waste of time.
qualitytime 9y ago
I'll raise my hand. When I look back it seems I'm experienced at hearing other peoples software requirements and implementing them. From university to the workplace, I seem to be very good since those who receive the end result always benefit. Done it so many times, for others and for my own ideas. But check this out, occasionally in a dry period, when I feel I should find a job and get an interview. I get asked a puzzle, unrelated to anything, no benefit to the interviewer or their company, in a language that requires a thicker than the bible manual, to program in some corner case that I would never find myself in and to someone to see the solution in the future to also feel the urge to puke. And don't even get me started on the latest frameworks buzzword bingo crap. You know, the tipping point was once when I got a rejection email where the top guy said I wasn't even good at a particular language, one which I'd programmed several applications for some years. Some guy, who last "coded" by "clicking" on a button which generated a TODO list single page web fucking app. Fuck all of you because we do what you dream of wanting to do that you'll never be able to do, not because you are running out of time, it's because you just don't have the chops. You really should be doing something else with your life.
- BigJono 9y ago
  Don't get me started on the framework buzzword bullshit. I'm so sick of developers that launch into 50 tool stacks just to tick the boxes. Whether it's resume driven development or just plain ignorance, it seems to be pervasive. I hate that every other interaction I have with the developer community is suggesting that a newbie back up a few steps and understand the problem they're trying to solve before introducing a solution, or worse yet, suggesting that the person trying to help them shut the fuck up and stop recommending things this beginner has no business using. The mindset is literally everywhere. It's like I'm surrounded by a cult of redux middleware worshippers that is trying to drain my will to live before they hand me a cup of cyanide. I'm interviewing candidates for front-end roles at the moment and every other one is someone that has launched into a huge React project with barely any basic understanding of Javascript or web development. Half the candidates have every buzzword under the sun in their resume, and a GitHub full of little React projects with all the dependencies checked off nicely, then you get them into an interview and half of them can't name a single HTTP method, while the other half have done 5+ years of jQuery, and yet couldn't tell a closure from a prototype. One of my first questions is always to ask them what front-end tools they are familiar with, and then follow up with "what problem does that tool solve?". 90% of the interviews are pretty much donezo by the time that question is answered (or more often not), and it feels like the rest of the time is wasted just running out the string. Since most of the people in this thread are candidates rather than interviewers, if anyone has any suggestions about how to make the interviews more inviting and find out quicker and easier whether someone is the right fit, please let me know! I feel like I'm strugglinga bit.
nvarsj 9y ago
It's Hanlon's razor. Tech interviewing is done poorly, almost everywhere. It's cargo culted to death, with little thought. It's brutal on certain types of personalities. It predominately favors people without families or responsibilities. And it rarely correlates with actual engineering skill. I personally get bad anxiety from interviews, from some negative experiences. To the point where I actively avoid interviews, even if in my best interest. Not worth the risk, I think. I recognize this is self defeating and self limiting though. And it's something I need to deal with and overcome. All I can offer is that you try to accept there is the "interview game" and you have to play it. Fortunately once you get that job, you can forget about it for a while.
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  Not everywhere. Most places I've interviewed for had a recruiter and an actual team member; after the recruiter ticks their checkboxes for "moves Mt.Fuji" and "can tell a RB tree from a hole in the ground", someone who actually works with the code takes over with domain-specific questions. (Yes, I'm aware this wouldn't scale for an organization that hires by the thousands)
  - gardnr 9y ago
    Thanks for this. I agree that some companies are sane, or even progressive. I personally have been lucky enough never to have heard the Mt Fuji question.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - nvarsj 9y ago
    Yeah not everywhere. I was being a little dramatic. This is like the 10000th hacker news post on interviews after all. London contractor job market could be a good case study for what happens when interviews are more reasonable. It's usually a phone call, and an hour face to face and you get a job. Some people hop every 6 months. Others stick around longer (with the spectre of HMRC IR35 hanging over them). Everyone seems to get to know each other in the job market pretty fast. When you need someone, you know who to call because you have worked with a lot of people and know who's good and who's not.
reureu 9y ago
Amen. I'm a data scientist in healthcare with approaching 10 years of experience (since, you know, people were doing "data science" since before "data science" was a thing, they just called it epidemiology, biostatistics, or biomedical informatics). I had two recent interview experiences that left a really crappy taste in my mouth. One was at Grail. Recruiter contacted me. I have a biology background from undergrad, but little direct experience in that field since then. Recruiter says that's totally fine, they were happy with even a little bit of bio experience and would happily get people up to speed after that. In my five panel interviews, they literally all asked the same technical question. Literally all of them. Asked the same question. The exact same question. It was a question related to a project that they had all worked on previously, and required some biology knowledge specific to this problem. I did not get that question right. However, by the fifth time I was asked that question, I had surmised enough tidbits from the previous four times that I could piece together a decent answer. No response from the recruiter (which was fine by me, as I assumed there was our opinions of each other were mutual). Well, until three months later, when I get an email saying they had long considered my application and would not be moving forward. Uh huh. Second experience was at one of the big companies. Recruiter contacts me about a very specific role that seems perfectly aligned with my background. It's a new team, there isn't a job description for it. I've previously chatted with this recruiter and some of the folks on the team, but timing never worked out (or, alternative theory, an ex had been working on the same team and would not be ok working together). They bring me in, and the technical screen is done by someone from a totally different part of the organization. This person apparently does a lot of signal processing. I have never done signal processing in my life, and it's not something that's on my resume. I'm very open with that, and yet all of the technical questions he asks me are ones involving signal processing techniques. Recruiter tells me that I "didn't have enough data science experience" for that job. I almost snapped back (but didn't; not worth burning bridges) that I was surprised they would even know that, since they never asked any questions that tap into my data science skills. Someone screwed something up in that process, and it wasn't me — if signal processing is required for that job, then I should never have been a candidate; if signal processing is not required, then I should never have been quizzed on it. There are plenty of studies that show unfavorable answers to irrelevant questions tend to negatively bias perception of candidates. Being set up for failure really blows. If I could redo everything again, I would ask recruiters more questions about the interview process and how that process lines up with job requirements; I would not be shy with the interviewer or recruiter if I felt like I was being judged on something that wasn't in line with my expectations ("I noticed that you're asking a lot of signal processing questions and not questions around things I have experience with — is that a core aspect of the job? I'm not sure I would be a good fit if that's the case, otherwise I'd love an opportunity to demonstrate my skills that might be more relevant"); and I would not be shy about cutting an interview early, as it saves everyone's time.
mikepost001 9y ago
"I have published code all over. I code 10+ hours a day, even on the weekends. I get hammered in technical interviews." Yes, yes, and yes. I've been meaning to blog about this experience (as an update, after last touching on it a few years ago). But I wanted to blog from a position of triumph. You know, "now that I've beaten the coding challenge I can say with conviction what is wrong with the coding challenge". That sort of thing. Except it's becoming obvious that I'll never beat these coding challenges, despite them being completely unsuitable for the role being advertised. Apart from now, I hit the job market about 2 years ago, and before that another 2 years ago, and there seems to be a lot more of these gatekeepers around now who favour irrelevant coding challenges. Are German or French language teachers rejected on some obscure piece of Latin taught 10 years ago in college, but can't recite perfectly anymore? The current crop of gatekeepers in tech seem to be a really bizarre mix. I'm having the hardest time in trying to find work this time, despite being more skilled, and having more people skills (hopefully). I'm at a loss. You might be onto something with people trying to protect their jobs by using these obscure challenges to filter out suitable candidates. It's some kind of negligence. I don't think it's me, or you, but I feel like I'm going crazy. I can do the job, well I think, but the interviews (and perhaps the interviewers) aren't suited to filling the role.

goodoldboys 9y ago

You're not alone - I feel the same way, and from what I can gather there are lots more that identify with this sentiment. From what I've read, the common advice is just to keep slogging away and not let the terrible interviewers get you down. Which doesn't seem particularly helpful. I personally avoid any interviews like this and simply end any interview that starts going down that path. Fortunately, I work for myself and currently have no problem getting work through networking and take-home projects to showcase my skills. But I am fearful of if (when) I have to interview again for full time positions because I know how awful it is. Anyways, I feel your pain. Know that you're not alone, and I'm reasonably confident that you're a solid programmer!

MarkCole 9y ago

Sometimes in an interview its better to just say "This is not the right job for me" and end it yourself. I've done that a few times now for various reasons. Sometimes simply just because I know I probably wouldn't like to have the interviewer as a Colleague or Boss. If I thought I was interviewing for a Django/Python job and they completely changed the job description on me I'd have probably cut it right there. You can't just completely change the job someone is interviewing for from under them. I definitely feel you on it though, I'd much rather earn less in a comfortable job where I'm happy than go through the stress of interviewing and having to refresh my knowledge of CS trivia so interviewers can throw a few at me.

beilabs 9y ago
Interviewed for a large tech company a few months ago just for the sake of it. (VP of engineering role), corporate headhunter persuaded me to take the call even though I'm happy where I am. 5 minutes into the job interview the guy seemed very obsessed with my direct reports number. I have 12 engineers currently (CTO), have worked in China with 30 engineers reporting to me and in my previous life as a school principal I had 40+ staff and a few hundred students. With many other software roles in between around the planet. Anyhow, it seemed that the position was not a good fit, they were recently acquired, the founders had all left and a new management team had taken over. Multiple interviews were expected as well as attending their office on-site on the other side of the planet. Ended the call once I heard this and told them this was not the right role for me. Have to be respectful but not every position is a good fit for the candidate. Trust your gut especially if red flags are raised. The guy conducting the interview seemed a bit shocked that i bailed on the process so quickly. Ain't no-one got time for the commitment some interviews require some days.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
akerro 9y ago
>they completely changed the job description >the stress of interviewing and having to refresh my knowledge of CS trivia I was recently visiting a friend from uni, he wanted to start working in a bigger company, so he took his chances on Amazon (they had office 10min walk from where he lived). He applied for Java/C++ backend role with some indication that's related to robotics. First week interviewer told him to refresh knowledge from basics of machine learning, searching algorithms and path finding, so he spent all weekend reading wikipedia and our notes from uni. During the interview he was asked questions about his experience with JS, Angular and CSS. What interesting JS projects he did and why links to the projects are not in his CV. He graduated with second best grade at the uni with a major project from autonomous sailing robot and failed interview in Amazon because he didn't do anything hipsterish with Angular on Github. I showed him link to the FACE of Amazon to cheer him up... and it worked, he decided not to apply there any more. What a waste of time.

qualitytime 9y ago

I'll raise my hand. When I look back it seems I'm experienced at hearing other peoples software requirements and implementing them. From university to the workplace, I seem to be very good since those who receive the end result always benefit. Done it so many times, for others and for my own ideas. But check this out, occasionally in a dry period, when I feel I should find a job and get an interview. I get asked a puzzle, unrelated to anything, no benefit to the interviewer or their company, in a language that requires a thicker than the bible manual, to program in some corner case that I would never find myself in and to someone to see the solution in the future to also feel the urge to puke. And don't even get me started on the latest frameworks buzzword bingo crap. You know, the tipping point was once when I got a rejection email where the top guy said I wasn't even good at a particular language, one which I'd programmed several applications for some years. Some guy, who last "coded" by "clicking" on a button which generated a TODO list single page web fucking app. Fuck all of you because we do what you dream of wanting to do that you'll never be able to do, not because you are running out of time, it's because you just don't have the chops. You really should be doing something else with your life.

BigJono 9y ago
Don't get me started on the framework buzzword bullshit. I'm so sick of developers that launch into 50 tool stacks just to tick the boxes. Whether it's resume driven development or just plain ignorance, it seems to be pervasive. I hate that every other interaction I have with the developer community is suggesting that a newbie back up a few steps and understand the problem they're trying to solve before introducing a solution, or worse yet, suggesting that the person trying to help them shut the fuck up and stop recommending things this beginner has no business using. The mindset is literally everywhere. It's like I'm surrounded by a cult of redux middleware worshippers that is trying to drain my will to live before they hand me a cup of cyanide. I'm interviewing candidates for front-end roles at the moment and every other one is someone that has launched into a huge React project with barely any basic understanding of Javascript or web development. Half the candidates have every buzzword under the sun in their resume, and a GitHub full of little React projects with all the dependencies checked off nicely, then you get them into an interview and half of them can't name a single HTTP method, while the other half have done 5+ years of jQuery, and yet couldn't tell a closure from a prototype. One of my first questions is always to ask them what front-end tools they are familiar with, and then follow up with "what problem does that tool solve?". 90% of the interviews are pretty much donezo by the time that question is answered (or more often not), and it feels like the rest of the time is wasted just running out the string. Since most of the people in this thread are candidates rather than interviewers, if anyone has any suggestions about how to make the interviews more inviting and find out quicker and easier whether someone is the right fit, please let me know! I feel like I'm strugglinga bit.

nvarsj 9y ago

It's Hanlon's razor. Tech interviewing is done poorly, almost everywhere. It's cargo culted to death, with little thought. It's brutal on certain types of personalities. It predominately favors people without families or responsibilities. And it rarely correlates with actual engineering skill. I personally get bad anxiety from interviews, from some negative experiences. To the point where I actively avoid interviews, even if in my best interest. Not worth the risk, I think. I recognize this is self defeating and self limiting though. And it's something I need to deal with and overcome. All I can offer is that you try to accept there is the "interview game" and you have to play it. Fortunately once you get that job, you can forget about it for a while.

Piskvorrr 9y ago
Not everywhere. Most places I've interviewed for had a recruiter and an actual team member; after the recruiter ticks their checkboxes for "moves Mt.Fuji" and "can tell a RB tree from a hole in the ground", someone who actually works with the code takes over with domain-specific questions. (Yes, I'm aware this wouldn't scale for an organization that hires by the thousands)
- gardnr 9y ago
  Thanks for this. I agree that some companies are sane, or even progressive. I personally have been lucky enough never to have heard the Mt Fuji question.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- nvarsj 9y ago
  Yeah not everywhere. I was being a little dramatic. This is like the 10000th hacker news post on interviews after all. London contractor job market could be a good case study for what happens when interviews are more reasonable. It's usually a phone call, and an hour face to face and you get a job. Some people hop every 6 months. Others stick around longer (with the spectre of HMRC IR35 hanging over them). Everyone seems to get to know each other in the job market pretty fast. When you need someone, you know who to call because you have worked with a lot of people and know who's good and who's not.

reureu 9y ago

Amen. I'm a data scientist in healthcare with approaching 10 years of experience (since, you know, people were doing "data science" since before "data science" was a thing, they just called it epidemiology, biostatistics, or biomedical informatics). I had two recent interview experiences that left a really crappy taste in my mouth. One was at Grail. Recruiter contacted me. I have a biology background from undergrad, but little direct experience in that field since then. Recruiter says that's totally fine, they were happy with even a little bit of bio experience and would happily get people up to speed after that. In my five panel interviews, they literally all asked the same technical question. Literally all of them. Asked the same question. The exact same question. It was a question related to a project that they had all worked on previously, and required some biology knowledge specific to this problem. I did not get that question right. However, by the fifth time I was asked that question, I had surmised enough tidbits from the previous four times that I could piece together a decent answer. No response from the recruiter (which was fine by me, as I assumed there was our opinions of each other were mutual). Well, until three months later, when I get an email saying they had long considered my application and would not be moving forward. Uh huh. Second experience was at one of the big companies. Recruiter contacts me about a very specific role that seems perfectly aligned with my background. It's a new team, there isn't a job description for it. I've previously chatted with this recruiter and some of the folks on the team, but timing never worked out (or, alternative theory, an ex had been working on the same team and would not be ok working together). They bring me in, and the technical screen is done by someone from a totally different part of the organization. This person apparently does a lot of signal processing. I have never done signal processing in my life, and it's not something that's on my resume. I'm very open with that, and yet all of the technical questions he asks me are ones involving signal processing techniques. Recruiter tells me that I "didn't have enough data science experience" for that job. I almost snapped back (but didn't; not worth burning bridges) that I was surprised they would even know that, since they never asked any questions that tap into my data science skills. Someone screwed something up in that process, and it wasn't me — if signal processing is required for that job, then I should never have been a candidate; if signal processing is not required, then I should never have been quizzed on it. There are plenty of studies that show unfavorable answers to irrelevant questions tend to negatively bias perception of candidates. Being set up for failure really blows. If I could redo everything again, I would ask recruiters more questions about the interview process and how that process lines up with job requirements; I would not be shy with the interviewer or recruiter if I felt like I was being judged on something that wasn't in line with my expectations ("I noticed that you're asking a lot of signal processing questions and not questions around things I have experience with — is that a core aspect of the job? I'm not sure I would be a good fit if that's the case, otherwise I'd love an opportunity to demonstrate my skills that might be more relevant"); and I would not be shy about cutting an interview early, as it saves everyone's time.

mikepost001 9y ago

"I have published code all over. I code 10+ hours a day, even on the weekends. I get hammered in technical interviews." Yes, yes, and yes. I've been meaning to blog about this experience (as an update, after last touching on it a few years ago). But I wanted to blog from a position of triumph. You know, "now that I've beaten the coding challenge I can say with conviction what is wrong with the coding challenge". That sort of thing. Except it's becoming obvious that I'll never beat these coding challenges, despite them being completely unsuitable for the role being advertised. Apart from now, I hit the job market about 2 years ago, and before that another 2 years ago, and there seems to be a lot more of these gatekeepers around now who favour irrelevant coding challenges. Are German or French language teachers rejected on some obscure piece of Latin taught 10 years ago in college, but can't recite perfectly anymore? The current crop of gatekeepers in tech seem to be a really bizarre mix. I'm having the hardest time in trying to find work this time, despite being more skilled, and having more people skills (hopefully). I'm at a loss. You might be onto something with people trying to protect their jobs by using these obscure challenges to filter out suitable candidates. It's some kind of negligence. I don't think it's me, or you, but I feel like I'm going crazy. I can do the job, well I think, but the interviews (and perhaps the interviewers) aren't suited to filling the role.