throwaway12412

That is a very good point and something I didn't really consider. I've placed top 100 globally in advent of code a couple of times, so I do think my coding speed is relatively quickly, but maybe. Next time I'll focus more on speed, I was under the impression that showing your thinking and walking the interviewer through the thought process was more important.

Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the feedback!

It's totally OK to judge, one of the reasons I made this post was to get some raw feedback. If the most common reaction is that I come across as arrogant and the unreasonable party here, I'll do some soul searching around that :)

And you bring up a good point, but I don't like to think in those ways because it takes agency away from myself. Can't fix a problem I had no control over.

And couldn't agree more with the focusing on myself and to do further upskilling. I'll continue working hard and hoping that in another 6 month's I stand a better change of getting more interviews.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer!

Hey!

Thanks for the feedback and I am actually very happy to hear that, given that one of my strongest skills is that I'm generally very nice to work with. That was actually the one piece of feedback I got in the original rejection mail, that all the interviewers had said that I had been great to chat with and that they hoped I applied in the future. The reason given when I called was specifically that I didn't reach their technical bar.

It's actually you funny you raise it, because we spent the last parts of the second interview talking about how important interpersonal relations was and how we both, me and the interviewer, were surprised by how many people in IT undervalue the skill.

Regardless, taking the third person point of view is always difficult and I appreciate your insight!

First of all, thank you for providing this feedback, this is exactly what I was looking for!

I'm very confident in my own skills and I feel like I have a fairly ok gauge on what kind of level of developer I am. I am definitivly above average, but I am no guru or savant. I shared that I had been programming since I was young to try to back up the claim that while my CV might not reflect it, I've been doing low latency, highly optimized stuff for a while.

I have about 6 yoe at this point, and I've interviewed several times, but in this round I've only gotten two oppertunities to talk to an interviewer. I shared this also in the post, to back up that my CV is indeed weak. My post is not about trying to come to terms with that I didn't get the job, but more that I find it very strange that I, in my opinion aced the test and was then let go.

Obviously with a NDA and without a recording I cannot back that up, so I fully understand that you choose to doubt this. It was a very simple problem in a domain I've worked in. I've discussed this sort of setup with other developers before and ran benchmarks. I'm fairly certain that what I implemented in those 40 minutes represents close to a perfect solution, given the circumstances.

And I could not agree more with the last line, I have and continue to dedicate most of my freetime to upskilling. I'll be looking to build more projects for a better portfolio, I'm in the process of making my first contributions to GCC and Clang, and I Hope to give some conference talks either this year or next year.

I mentioned it in a post above, but I really view this as being on my technical or interviewing abilities as the best possible outcome, because it means that I can course correct and come back stronger :)

Once again, thanks for taking the time to answer, I really appriciate it!

First of all, thank you, this is exactly the type of response I was looking for!

I think all your points are very valid, and I maybe should have made it more clear that I am not trying to dwell on this and more looking for honest feedback.

I would defend myself and say that I am quite a pleasant person all around, so I doubt it was that, and the only feedback I was given, was that all the interviewers had really enjoyed their chats with me and hoped that I applied in the future. I had no adverserial interactions with any in the team and I ended every interview saying that if I didn't make it to the next one I fully understood and that I was happy to have gotten this far.

I would also say that the person I was calling is headlands head recruiter and when on the phone she repeatedly said that she would ask the team and forward the feedback to me. I fully understand the game theory of not giving any feedback, both to leave the door open and to avoid spending more energy on a candidate you have discarded, but it's the two faced way of repeatedly saying it over the phone and then immediately turning around over text.

This is overall a positive message, this means that I must have made some sort of technical mistake and that I can correct for this next time. In my eyes that is the version of reality I am hoping for.

Once again, thank you so much for the honest and realistic feedback!

I did in my preparation and there are several mentions of this on glassdoor, but mostly from quants, which mention that they feel like they were mining for strategy information, under the guise of an interview.

I find such websites very hard to trust, as there is a heavy selection bias there and I am not a quant, so I don't know if that is something that happens.

Also, I'm sorry, but I'm not able to parse your first sentence. Is there an extra an extra comma there, meaning that there is no such training being done, or do you mean that I'm not paranoid and that weak candidates are used as training?

Thanks for the tips and while the GDPR angle is interesting, but I am not looking to spend more energy on this, they won't be hiring me and I don't want to create some sort of reputation about myself.

As to your question, I am very open about the fact that I don't have the CV experience to show for it, but I am very confident about the technical skills that I do have and in general I come across as confident in the areas I know things about.

The reason I am specifying it here is to give honest context and to show that I'm able to do at least a basic level of introspection. I want to be honest that I didn't go to harvard, MIT, didn't have any prestigious internships and I'm trying to switch industries.

But I am confident that I did ace atleast 3 of the interviews and that last interview, which was the reason given as to why I would not be preceding. This is why I'm seeking some answers here.