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I will never forget my interview at the 2 best fashion houses in London. Both failed for what I still consider was a massive loss to them as I had all the skil

I will never forget my interview at the 2 best fashion houses in London. Both failed for what I still consider was a massive loss to them as I had all the skills they needed and more, but either management or the devs had no idea. Im not bitter for I earn much more now than I would have, it was just crazy to see the disconnect between management and programmers, in opposing ways. Fashion house 1: 2 guys sat me down and ask me to answer a question about some node.js code, which took around 25 minutes to get running on my laptop. Once it was they were hoping for progress, when it took me a few minutes to read through several config files ( over a hundred lines each). After 30 minutes they gave up and asked me what library I should use for a certain task. I said I had built alot of code in that domain didn't recall which library I used for that specific task. Suddenly I was walked out, but not before one of them took pity and tried to explain to me how, when you make a request you can write code which waits for a response from a server (async programming). I ofcourse thanked him and left. This was after I spent 3 years developing a successful networked engine in my spare time ( with a custom 3d engine bolted on it ) which enabled 20 asynchronous connections for a war simulation I built. They both had 30 minutes and hadnt thought of reading my CV or asking me about any of code / experience. Just drank their coffees looked at their mobiles and waited for me to somehow decipher their 10k line codebase. (Management had already OK'ed me but were not around for this part of the interview and blind to what was happening ( or the lack of it.) To this day I dont think the engineers even looked at my CV. Just thought I was some confused kid who didn't understand how basic network code worked. Fashion house 2 I also interviewed at their competitor, who had looked at my CV, lead engineer was about to extend an offer, CEO walked in, not knowing who I was, asked a casual question ( culture fit ) type, but I was unable to answer, I had trouble understanding what he was saying. Failed interview, but that is ok atleast I was not as offended this time as there were no quips. The icing on the cake, was that both companies had a 20+ engineering team, that relied on an app, which just framed a webpage. And I cant help feeling I know the reason why.

commandlinefan 7y ago
A few years back I interviewed for a software architect position at a major US airline. I actually had experience with every one of the 20+ things they listed on their availability description, including the “nice to haves”, some of which was sort of obscure but I had actually done quite a bit of work with anyway. So they phone screened me, I got feedback from the recruiter that the phone screen went well and they wanted to bring me in for a face-to-face. I took a day off of my then-current job to drive out there and spend nearly a whole day (four hours) talking to them. I got word back from the recruiter that things went great, but a week later they asked me to come out for ANOTHER face-to-face, so I took ANOTHER day off to spend the whole day talking to them. I got feedback from the recruiter that things went great, and I should hear back from them any time. A week passed, nothing. I called the recruiter. He said he hadn’t heard back from them. Another week passed, nothing. I never heard back from them.
cshah4 7y ago
That sucks. I recently had a similar experience. Onsite interview went well with some coding and design questions and then got a rejection a day later saying I don't have networking experience which was quite clear from my resume. I was only asked how DNS works in the interview and I answered that. I told the recruiter this wasn't mentioned in the job description nor was I asked those questions in the interview, but he didn't have anything to say.

commandlinefan 7y ago

A few years back I interviewed for a software architect position at a major US airline. I actually had experience with every one of the 20+ things they listed on their availability description, including the “nice to haves”, some of which was sort of obscure but I had actually done quite a bit of work with anyway. So they phone screened me, I got feedback from the recruiter that the phone screen went well and they wanted to bring me in for a face-to-face. I took a day off of my then-current job to drive out there and spend nearly a whole day (four hours) talking to them. I got word back from the recruiter that things went great, but a week later they asked me to come out for ANOTHER face-to-face, so I took ANOTHER day off to spend the whole day talking to them. I got feedback from the recruiter that things went great, and I should hear back from them any time. A week passed, nothing. I called the recruiter. He said he hadn’t heard back from them. Another week passed, nothing. I never heard back from them.

cshah4 7y ago

That sucks. I recently had a similar experience. Onsite interview went well with some coding and design questions and then got a rejection a day later saying I don't have networking experience which was quite clear from my resume. I was only asked how DNS works in the interview and I answered that. I told the recruiter this wasn't mentioned in the job description nor was I asked those questions in the interview, but he didn't have anything to say.