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)
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.
Did you forgot how the sequence worked, and the interviewer not tell you/didnt let you look it up?
Because its logic only requires a loop where you keep adding i and j, where j is the previous value of i.
Needless to say, must be very unlucky.
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.
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.