Comment by vdnkh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vdnkh | Hacker News Reader

I had an interview like this recently. A "live coding" exercise after (in their words) two excellent phone screens. The test was to implement a class which would be run through a bunch of unit tests. Simple right? It turned out to be a disaster.

First was the choice of language. They offered to take it in JS, Ruby, Python, or Java. I'm a .NET developer whose competent with JS, but I really could be better at it. I asked to take it in C# but they refused and said it's not about specific language knowledge. So I did in in JS. I turned out to be almost completely about JS specifics and quirks. Because I've been learning JS recently, I've had the fortune of having to avoid the bad parts. When asked to recite them I struggled. This part is obviously my fault but if I had been allowed to perform in C#, I would have done a hell of a lot better.

Second was the environment. I have very limited exposure to programming on a Macbook and I spent the first few minutes struggling to translate all of my shortcuts. During a timed test it was pretty disheartening to not be able to type as fast as I could. I haven't used Sublime before but the default theme was near unreadable and I was allowed to switch it after a few minutes. The third was the test framework. I really wasn't familiar with how Jasmine worked in the browser, and it showed. Again, my fault. But taking 5 minutes to familiarize me with their setup would have made things go much, much better for me.

Before I get jumped on for blaming them for my poor performance, this was for a test automation role. I explicitly said that my JS/Jasmine/etc. skills were not that great and they still brought me on site.

Honestly, I would have preferred the whiteboard. Each test took up nearly the entire period, leaving very short time for talks about what I really care about - culture. I have a Github with a bunch of good projects. I've been employed as a developer for a while now. I can obviously program well. Drop the bullshit and lets talk.

> "I asked to take it in C# but they refused and said it's not about specific language knowledge."

So.. "This isnt about a specific language, but you must use the ones we tell you!"

I sympathize. I remember when I was first applying for tech jobs I was often given a mac (which I was unfamiliar with) set in Qwerty (I used Dvorak) and told "just write this."

Even asking them to change it to Dvorak for me (since I wasn't familiar with the menus) I could tell they were judging me. Once I bit the the bullet and learned the mac interface suddenly people were assuming I was super hardcore because I use Dvorak.... Stereotypes cut both ways I guess.

I explicitly and repeatedly told a recruiter and the hiring manager from a (unicorn) YC startup with a large logistics component that, while I am a data scientist, I don't do OR / stochastic processes. I took a single class on them over a decade ago and that's about it. They repeatedly assured me they also needed someone who builds classifiers/models user behavior. Guess what the the in-person interview was about...

I've had interviews where they told me to code on paper, with full syntax (no missing semicolons). This included drawing out db tables and their relations etc.

At one place - they gave me a very old computer and their actual code base and told me to fix a bug. No other information provided (that was actually a fun exercise).

Different places do it differently - but all I can say is that none of these are enjoyable to the interviewee, and I think in most cases they are not enjoyable to the interviewers either.

But the absolute worst thing is dealing with recruiters - starting with asking candidates to fill out forms so long that would put gov bureaucrats to shame. They also have a list of tech questions given to them to "screen" candidates and you can guess how that goes ("No not Linux, have you worked with LAMP?", "I am not talking about Javascript, I'm talking about jQuery, could you rate yourself on jQuery?")

Ouch, that's just a crummy interview experience. If you're coming in with the understanding that .NET is your best language, seems odd they wouldn't allow that, or at least make amends, such as letting you know in advance that it'll be about Jasmine, or using your own IDE.

Sounds like you dodged a bullet working for them. Personally, I would avoid any company that forces you to use a specific type of computer/os without a good reason (such as iOS development or Windows specific). Good companies will let developers work in what makes them most comfortable, whether that's *nix, windows or OSX.

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