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I actually had one of these and I won't do another one either. Here's the gist of how it went down: 1) first part was the "personality" interview. Two "HR" pe
by at-fates-hands 13y ago
I actually had one of these and I won't do another one either.
Here's the gist of how it went down:
1) first part was the "personality" interview. Two "HR" people blew smoke up my ass for about 30 minutes about how awesome my site and my work was, then asked me to do a "code challenge". I agreed - I mean, how bad could it be?
2) The code challenge. I was given a PSD with a straight forward design. Asked to code it, make sure it worked in legacy browsers, publish on a server and show them the code on GitHub
3) Passed and then was asked to come back and explain some of my coding decisions. I was told this was more for show and I was already in effect hired, I just had to pass this last hurdle. It turned out to be a very confrontational, inquisition type of an interview. Not at all the type of laid back code review I'm used it.
I got pretty frustrated by the two "Senior" devs who seemed to take great pride in tearing my code and my decisions apart. After my first heated exchange with one of the devs, I actually asked them how many of the sites listed in the gallery on their site they actually tested and validated the code on. They said "All of them, why do you ask?" I told them I actually ran all of their sites through the W3C validation site and none of them passed. Every single one had over 60 errors on it. I basically said, "If standards are so important to you, then why are you holding people who don't even work for your company to a higher standard than those who actually do?"
There was a long silence and then I finally spoke up and said, "Clearly, this company has its priorities in the wrong order. Thank you for time, but I'm not interested." and got up and walked out.
I got several worried calls from the company recruiter, but by then I was so pissed at how much of my time they had wasted, and vowed never to do something like it again.
- atmosx 13y agoHahaha good going. Interesting story, thanks for sharing.
- zalew 13y ago> I got pretty frustrated by the two "Senior" devs who seemed to take great pride in tearing my code and my decisions apart. Two possibilities: a) You got a glimpse of how your life on the job would look like. b) Just like qualified specialists can be terrible interviewees, they can be terrible interviewers. They just screwed up.
- npinguy 13y agoc) Push the interviewer to defend their decisions, and see how they react. If you can't defend your decision to intelligent people with strong opinions (!== assholes automatically), you won't make a good developer
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- shobhitverma 13y agoCan resonate with the author and you. Had similar experiences.
- prostoalex 13y ago> I basically said, "If standards are so important to you, then why are you holding people who don't even work for your company to a higher standard than those who actually do?" Well, you want to hire people who are better than you, not worse than you. Hiring bar at a good company should go up, not down, as it grows.
- ChristianMarks 13y agoMaybe they had a different definition of "validate." Did you ask your interlocutors what they did to validate their sites?
- npinguy 13y agoI'm amused that you take so personally the concept of a professional who's not familiar with your competencies trying to evaluate your ability. Which by the way is more than just pumping out code, it also involves defending difficult decisions to your peers. If you can't handle a little pressure from a code review, find a new career.
- devrelm 13y agoI think the problem can be that many times there aren't difficult decisions to be made to solve most coding challenges. Getting grilled over trivialities or obvious decisions makes the interviewer seem either incompetent or like a micro-manager, neither of which would make me seem happy to work with them.
- zalew 13y agoThere's a difference between evaluating abilities and trying to engage him in a pissing contest. Interviews should determine if the candidate will deliver what he's being paid for, nitpicking and flamewars can be saved for future coffee break entertainment. "It's not my solution therefore it's shit" is not what code review should be about.