Was thinking it would be cool to open a thread where folks can share the worst engineering interview practices they’ve run into that they wish they could have better prepared for. The idea is to get a helpful trading of tips 🤝 going.
This is bouncing off of a new blog at Triplebyte Compiler that point out (and explains how to steer around) six common technical interview practices that have been known to shake up engineers and even lead to impostor syndrome.
Would love to hear about all your experiences and lessons learned on this. Leave a comment in our blog conversation thread or right here below!
A freelance agency I applied to online had a multiple stage screening process. The first asked me to take a quiz on basic technical knowledge, followed by a few minute phone screen with a recruiter, followed by a 90 minute coding challenge with 3 very difficult coding questions, followed by a 1 hour technical interview over Zoom. All very reasonable so far, then at the end of the technical interview, I was told the next step was a take-home project to do design a REST API. I hadn't done this part before, but I've seen enough REST APIs, it seemed like it wouldn't be that hard, and I'd have 2 weeks to do it, so I took it on.
What I got was a list of requirements that included setting up a web front-end with a database backend, designing an API with its own user management system, user creation, password management, role management, security, collecting data and producing reports, connecting to outside APIs to correlate with the included data, documentation, data validation, unit and end-to-end tests, all to be completed without pay on the off chance that they decided to give me a job. I worked day and night for the better part of a week, and scheduled my interview a little early because the only other option was a month later.
By the time I realized that there was no way I could possibly have all of their requirements met before my interview, their system said it was too late to reschedule. Okay, I figured, they can't possibly be that picky. I had implemented some very stable, secure, well-written code, demonstrated quite a lot of skill building a giant codebase from the ground up, and what I had left to do could easily be completed in less than I day. They could not possibly be that picky.
Boy was I wrong. The interviewer nitpicked every little thing, including things that weren't even on the requirements list, and said that because I had not 100% fulfilled every single requirement, and there were one or two small bugs and formatting issues that he had noticed, that he was denying my application, but I could reapply in a month. Seriously, how much work do they expect people to do for an interview? This particular agency advertises that they only hire 3% of their applicants, and that's probably because those are the only people willing to put up with their BS.
Code "pairing" on a live computer/environment. I prefer to code on a whiteboard as it puts both the interviewer and I on the same level, they need to see the syntax mistake to call it out. I've had coding interviews where we got stuck on exact syntax to get past compiler issues or the interviewer can't code in the language that I'm working in. The point is to talk about problem solving in a language.
I have had one interview where they first assigned me a technical project, which comprised of data cleaning, model building, EDA, a summary report, and then a ppt presentation for the actual interview. The project was longer than what other companies would typically assign, and it was due *before* the in-person coding interview. They didn't tell me what topics would be covered for the code interview, and I didn't do as well as I wanted to. My issue is that instead of lumping every thing into one in-person interview, they should have the coding screening before assigning a project to the candidate (like other companies do), since the project took a lot of effort and time. I feel like this particular company took advantage of the candidates, and I would not go through with that interview process again.
Was asked by a prospective employer to take a Triplebyte quiz. Each problem on the quiz had a time limit. I remember thinking "I like how each _problem_ has a time limit rather than the entire exam. You don't need to be strategic about allocation. You can take your time on the problem, re-read every question, inspect _all_ the answers, be very very thorough without worrying about making it through the whole thing."
I never got my results back. I had to ask the prospective employer to send me the summary. It turned out (even though this was mentioned nowhere) that _speed_ was a large component of your score. You get more points for answering questions faster. They set it up to _encourage_ you to go slower and then score you for answering questions quickly without telling you.
Well over a _year_ later I was sent my results from Triplebyte and it was a completely different (and much better) result from what the prospective employer had received.
Not training interviewers on what is appropriate or legal. I've been in interviews where I've been told that the company is great place to work "because we don't hire any old people" and "because no one on the team has kids". I've also been asked if I planned to have more kids. Although, I guess this does make it easy to rule them out as a potential employer.
Also, saying that a coding interview can be done in the language of your choice, but then showing up and them requiring it in a specific language.
Code tests that are highly opinionated and don’t reflect real life. I was exposed to test after test that was predicated on patterns that would never fly in a real enterprise. Furthermore, as a non-neurotypical I was constantly struggling with context issues.
The worst however was a code test I failed because they could no get the monorepo they asked for to run.
I've had so many interview coding horror stories. The first that comes to mind was when i was interviewed by 8 individuals from the team i would be potentially working with and other departments within the company (clients). The interview was 4 hours total on zoom. The first 2 hours I was ask general questions and a few technical questions. The last 2 hours were spent completing a "coding challenges" mainly patterns that would never be used in any real life projects. I've had so many horrible coding interviews that i have considered a career change.
Hi I went through an interview where I was assigned a 6 hour take home "coding challenge" and after that was successful at least 4 hours more of hackerrank type problem solving was required. When I asked whether coding aspects alone was given priority over everything else, they did not want to proceed.
For coding interviews, I had different experiences with interviews that were termed "pair programming". Sometimes these were true collaborations like I expected, but other times they were basically just another coding quiz, just with a shared editor window. In general though I think it's a good sign if a company does pair programming from time to time, to encourage collaboration!
Honestly, the job I'm at right now is running a background check with a third party and I wish I would have known that before I got to the end of the offer. I have nothing to hide, but I'm stressed out right now waiting for confirmation that it went through ok, if I even get any.
I was interviewing for a developer job at a small company, and they asked me to do a programming task in a shared window, while he waited. I told him I only code in an IDE, but he said he had no option. I told him that is really old school, and I was not a performing monkey. Modern methods are to have some clone a GitHub repo, modify it, and submit it. It really makes me angry that people create such artificial testing situations.
Over the quarantine, I did a LOT of at-home code tests, but one of them was especially heinous. It had to install software with admin access to your computer, it wouldn't let you install on anything without a webcam, it wouldn't let you *take* the test without the webcam turned on. And while you take the test, it would use eye-tracking and flash angry red borders around your monitor and scold you if you seemed to be looking anywhere but the center of the screen (even if you just closed your eyes for a second).
On top of that nightmare of an experience, the recruiter (like SO MANY of them) was so incompetent that they said they would tell me my score, what I did well on, and what I need to improve before retaking the code test.
...they told me that I did really well on the javascript portion of the test. Tried setting up another appointment to submit myself to 1984 once more, I said "I'll get back to you." And after the call, I never realized what he told me I needed to improve, so I emailed him.
HackerRank question with a test that violates the pre-conditions. I spent 15 minutes debugging my code only to find it was a faulty input on their end. Essentially, problem says input will always be a "string of a-z characters" but then one of the hidden test cases, which show you very little information, was failing. After debugging that test case, I found the input was a string of characters and symbols. You couldn't see what expected answer was so I had to play with leaving the symbols in, removing the symbols altogether, etc. to figure out what to do to pass the test case.
I captured a screenshot to show my FAANG recruiter, but don't think they honestly did anything with that. I emailed HackerRank support multiple times and never received a response about that test case. I still despise HackerRank to this day.
A freelance agency I applied to online had a multiple stage screening process. The first asked me to take a quiz on basic technical knowledge, followed by a few minute phone screen with a recruiter, followed by a 90 minute coding challenge with 3 very difficult coding questions, followed by a 1 hour technical interview over Zoom. All very reasonable so far, then at the end of the technical interview, I was told the next step was a take-home project to do design a REST API. I hadn't done this part before, but I've seen enough REST APIs, it seemed like it wouldn't be that hard, and I'd have 2 weeks to do it, so I took it on.
What I got was a list of requirements that included setting up a web front-end with a database backend, designing an API with its own user management system, user creation, password management, role management, security, collecting data and producing reports, connecting to outside APIs to correlate with the included data, documentation, data validation, unit and end-to-end tests, all to be completed without pay on the off chance that they decided to give me a job. I worked day and night for the better part of a week, and scheduled my interview a little early because the only other option was a month later.
By the time I realized that there was no way I could possibly have all of their requirements met before my interview, their system said it was too late to reschedule. Okay, I figured, they can't possibly be that picky. I had implemented some very stable, secure, well-written code, demonstrated quite a lot of skill building a giant codebase from the ground up, and what I had left to do could easily be completed in less than I day. They could not possibly be that picky.
Boy was I wrong. The interviewer nitpicked every little thing, including things that weren't even on the requirements list, and said that because I had not 100% fulfilled every single requirement, and there were one or two small bugs and formatting issues that he had noticed, that he was denying my application, but I could reapply in a month. Seriously, how much work do they expect people to do for an interview? This particular agency advertises that they only hire 3% of their applicants, and that's probably because those are the only people willing to put up with their BS.
Code "pairing" on a live computer/environment. I prefer to code on a whiteboard as it puts both the interviewer and I on the same level, they need to see the syntax mistake to call it out. I've had coding interviews where we got stuck on exact syntax to get past compiler issues or the interviewer can't code in the language that I'm working in. The point is to talk about problem solving in a language.
I have had one interview where they first assigned me a technical project, which comprised of data cleaning, model building, EDA, a summary report, and then a ppt presentation for the actual interview. The project was longer than what other companies would typically assign, and it was due *before* the in-person coding interview. They didn't tell me what topics would be covered for the code interview, and I didn't do as well as I wanted to. My issue is that instead of lumping every thing into one in-person interview, they should have the coding screening before assigning a project to the candidate (like other companies do), since the project took a lot of effort and time. I feel like this particular company took advantage of the candidates, and I would not go through with that interview process again.
Was asked by a prospective employer to take a Triplebyte quiz. Each problem on the quiz had a time limit. I remember thinking "I like how each _problem_ has a time limit rather than the entire exam. You don't need to be strategic about allocation. You can take your time on the problem, re-read every question, inspect _all_ the answers, be very very thorough without worrying about making it through the whole thing."
I never got my results back. I had to ask the prospective employer to send me the summary. It turned out (even though this was mentioned nowhere) that _speed_ was a large component of your score. You get more points for answering questions faster. They set it up to _encourage_ you to go slower and then score you for answering questions quickly without telling you.
Well over a _year_ later I was sent my results from Triplebyte and it was a completely different (and much better) result from what the prospective employer had received.
Not training interviewers on what is appropriate or legal. I've been in interviews where I've been told that the company is great place to work "because we don't hire any old people" and "because no one on the team has kids". I've also been asked if I planned to have more kids. Although, I guess this does make it easy to rule them out as a potential employer.
Also, saying that a coding interview can be done in the language of your choice, but then showing up and them requiring it in a specific language.
Code tests that are highly opinionated and don’t reflect real life. I was exposed to test after test that was predicated on patterns that would never fly in a real enterprise. Furthermore, as a non-neurotypical I was constantly struggling with context issues.
The worst however was a code test I failed because they could no get the monorepo they asked for to run.
I've had so many interview coding horror stories. The first that comes to mind was when i was interviewed by 8 individuals from the team i would be potentially working with and other departments within the company (clients). The interview was 4 hours total on zoom. The first 2 hours I was ask general questions and a few technical questions. The last 2 hours were spent completing a "coding challenges" mainly patterns that would never be used in any real life projects. I've had so many horrible coding interviews that i have considered a career change.
Hi I went through an interview where I was assigned a 6 hour take home "coding challenge" and after that was successful at least 4 hours more of hackerrank type problem solving was required. When I asked whether coding aspects alone was given priority over everything else, they did not want to proceed.
For coding interviews, I had different experiences with interviews that were termed "pair programming". Sometimes these were true collaborations like I expected, but other times they were basically just another coding quiz, just with a shared editor window. In general though I think it's a good sign if a company does pair programming from time to time, to encourage collaboration!
Honestly, the job I'm at right now is running a background check with a third party and I wish I would have known that before I got to the end of the offer. I have nothing to hide, but I'm stressed out right now waiting for confirmation that it went through ok, if I even get any.
I was interviewing for a developer job at a small company, and they asked me to do a programming task in a shared window, while he waited. I told him I only code in an IDE, but he said he had no option. I told him that is really old school, and I was not a performing monkey. Modern methods are to have some clone a GitHub repo, modify it, and submit it. It really makes me angry that people create such artificial testing situations.
Over the quarantine, I did a LOT of at-home code tests, but one of them was especially heinous. It had to install software with admin access to your computer, it wouldn't let you install on anything without a webcam, it wouldn't let you *take* the test without the webcam turned on. And while you take the test, it would use eye-tracking and flash angry red borders around your monitor and scold you if you seemed to be looking anywhere but the center of the screen (even if you just closed your eyes for a second).
On top of that nightmare of an experience, the recruiter (like SO MANY of them) was so incompetent that they said they would tell me my score, what I did well on, and what I need to improve before retaking the code test.
...they told me that I did really well on the javascript portion of the test. Tried setting up another appointment to submit myself to 1984 once more, I said "I'll get back to you." And after the call, I never realized what he told me I needed to improve, so I emailed him.
"javascript"
The entire test was in react.
HackerRank question with a test that violates the pre-conditions. I spent 15 minutes debugging my code only to find it was a faulty input on their end. Essentially, problem says input will always be a "string of a-z characters" but then one of the hidden test cases, which show you very little information, was failing. After debugging that test case, I found the input was a string of characters and symbols. You couldn't see what expected answer was so I had to play with leaving the symbols in, removing the symbols altogether, etc. to figure out what to do to pass the test case.
I captured a screenshot to show my FAANG recruiter, but don't think they honestly did anything with that. I emailed HackerRank support multiple times and never received a response about that test case. I still despise HackerRank to this day.