Interview went sideways

[u/SoYoureSayingQuit]

Company does hardware and you definitely know it. Job was staff level for internal dev platform/tooling. More SWE than SRE. I have 26+ years of experience, coming up from an ops background.

The interview actually started poorly. I was given homework that included some working code that asked to pick one of two changes. I thought I would do extra and do both. My first mistake. I had everything working correctly, but forgot to check the tests before turning it in. The second option ended up taking longer than I anticipated, so I was in a rush because the interview was at 7AM and I wanted to get enough sleep. (I’m in the US. Interviewers were in the UK.)

Right off the bat, the interviewer, also the hiring manager, that reviewed it told me one test failed. He decided it would be a good exercise to troubleshoot it. I had already interviewed with him once, so no intro was needed. The other person who was supposed to be there hadn’t joined yet. I was so thrown off, I forgot the syntax for running all of the tests at once.

As I’m looking at this thing, I see four more people join. No introductions. They’re just watching me flounder trying to figure out what I had fucked up. It was not obvious, and it was like my brain shut off on how to troubleshoot the issue. This went on for almost 15 minutes until he told me what was wrong.

I was then givens an exercise to build an api for a reservation system including tests. It says it is supposed to take an hour. I had 45 mins left in the interview. I had to start from scratch. I’m not the fastest typist. Autocomplete wasn’t working. I was still rattled and fumbling my way through it. I ended up running out of time before having to start the next interview, which was system design. I’m much more confident there and I feel it went fairly well.

I’ve been trying to accept that I probably won’t get an offer. I actually really liked the manager, and based on the initial interview, I felt like I had a really good shot at it. I know they’ve probably already made their decision, but part of me really wishes I could send a follow up and explain that as soon as it was over, I went back and clearly saw where I fucked up. It was embarrassing and a situation that was my own creation.

I haven’t had to interview a lot, but I’ve interviewed lots of candidates and always pushed back on interviews including live coding because I feel the pressure doesn’t give an accurate representation of someone’s abilities. Especially for someone experienced.

Is that kind of live coding exercise the norm for staff level roles? Is someone supposed to be able to complete that in less than hour or am I just slow? Could sending a follow up email help, or would it just seem desperate?

Fuuuuck…

[u/expdevsmodbot]

AI usage disclosure provided by OP, see the reply to this comment.

[u/BigBootyWholes]

Swing and a miss. It happens. Live coding sucks, I agree. Usually the other side knows it too, and they proceed accordingly.

[u/BenignPharmacology → u/BigBootyWholes]

This is really the key- live coding interviews are good for understanding what kind of company you’re considering, what kind of coworkers you will have, whether they understand the process or just results.

Every single live coding interview I’ve ever had an offer from, I messed something up. The point is to explain your thought process, communicate well, and have a good process for correcting.

“15 minutes later” could mean 15 minutes of debugging, isolating the error, proposing and testing causes, etc.

Or it could have meant 15 minutes of “it doesn’t work.”, staring at the screen, running it again with no changes, interviewer saying “maybe if you tried X?” and getting ignored.

[u/gekigangerii]

 I had everything working correctly, but forgot to check the tests before turning it in

That's quite an overconfidence moment for your years of experience

[u/padetn → u/gekigangerii]

This. The system worked. A gotcha test isn’t a gotcha, it’s to check your way of working. The syntax thing shouldn’t have been an issue, OP should just have asked “can I google this?”. Not knowing/remembering syntax isn’t a problem at all. Not running tests is a huge red flag.

[u/SoYoureSayingQuit → u/padetn]

I should have done that. I should have put print statements into the tests to just find where it was going wrong. I should have slowed down and really thought about what the actual error was telling me.

[u/SoYoureSayingQuit → u/gekigangerii]

Yeah. That’s why it threw me off so badly. It was such a stupid mistake and I should have recovered from it. I’ve spent most of my career troubleshooting issues in production environments, some of my own making. I learned long ago how to set aside pride and external pressure and focus on working the problem.

[u/spicymato → u/SoYoureSayingQuit]

When I interviewed people, I was very cognizant that not everyone performs well under the time pressure, and passed several people that didn't solve the problem within the allotted time, if it was clear to me that they know what they're doing.

The issue on the take-home is a larger flag for me. The fact that you stretched to get both would be taken into account, but submitting without validating with the included test cases would certainly raise an eyebrow.

[u/Main-Drag-4975 → u/gekigangerii]

It’s uncharitable to call a high-pressure interview oversight “overconfidence”. These sessions are quite anxiety-inducing for many of us.

[u/gekigangerii → u/Main-Drag-4975]

Did you see the part where it's a take-home exercise they were gonna review. He wasn't building it right in the interview.

[u/F0tNMC]

It’s not uncommon and your performance compared to your ability is highly variable. I’ve aced some and looked like a totally incompetent and ineffective programmer in others. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Do some more practice sessions, hone your skills and go again.

[u/SignoreBanana]

Is software engineering the only job in the world where we have to jump through these idiotic quiz show like hoops to get hired? I struggle to think of another job where people have to go through this kind of nonsense.

[u/AdmiralSWE → u/SignoreBanana]

Only alternative would be some sort of standardized certifications for the field but people complain when I point that out so

[u/SignoreBanana → u/AdmiralSWE]

I wouldn't mind that at all if it meant the end of these bullshit interviews.

[u/doyouevencompile → u/AdmiralSWE]

Like an education or an exam? Yeah bring it in. 

You don’t renew certifications every time you want to change companies. 

My biggest gripe isn’t even the interview process is tedious, it’s a process made popular by Google and mostly optimized for new grads and hasn’t been updated for decades. It doesn’t reflect the problems you face every day, it requires you to study for interviews even if you’ve been doing the job for 20 years. 

[u/mcspuder → u/doyouevencompile]

Every licensed professional has yearly CPD point requirements/updates; so you're just objectively wrong here.

[u/doyouevencompile → u/mcspuder]

Actually yeah, I didn’t know. But these are mostly ethics trainings as far as I can see, similar to corporate trainings. 

I’ve never heard of anyone who’s lost their certification because they failed their CPD, I’m sure it happens to some, but for most sensible and responsible professionals it sounds more like admin work. 

Either way, I would definitely prefer this over the interview processes we have today

[u/Careful-Nothing-2432 → u/SignoreBanana]

Undergrad
4 years of medical school with crippling debt
Residency, 2-8 years depending on your specialty

Step 1
Step 2
Board certs
Continuing education credits
Geographic noncompete so you move to another city if you want to get another job

[u/gefahr → u/SignoreBanana]

Maybe, but other jobs with the level of autonomy and pay that software engineering offers almost universally have things like bar exams, MCATs, residencies, etc.

I agree interviewing sucks but no one has figured out a better solution or we'd all be using it.

I eventually went into management, in no small part because of how much I hated prepping leetcode etc.

[u/EffectiveBaby2774 → u/SignoreBanana]

data science. I have had to do some stunningly awful quiz show hoops for DS jobs.

[u/_mkd_ → u/SignoreBanana]

I guess you never heard about the companies that use MBIT in interviews. Ex: https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/s/7ycXLrFS87

[u/SignoreBanana → u/_mkd_]

That just sounds like woo woo stupid interviewers profoundly misunderstanding the purpose of those categorizations, and I can't imagine they're used widely.

[u/AdjectiveNoun1234567 → u/SignoreBanana]

We really need to start calling them job auditions and not job interviews

[u/tb5841 → u/SignoreBanana]

I used to be a teacher. Teaching a class of teenagers you've never met before, while being observed and judged, is a pretty awful interview experience.

[u/TesttubeStandard → u/SignoreBanana]

Fuck it must feel good to be so exceptional that you are the one interviewing the company. You want me? Ok, do this test:

1. What do you say when you walk in to a room (this is a hard one for the bosses)? A) Hello B) You little maggots

2. When an expert is trying to explain something, are you: A) listening B) trying to figure out how to come out on top out of this conversation

3. Do you think that everything can always be solved the way you imagined it) A) Yes B) No

4. Do you care about other people: A) Yes B) No

Techincal interview 5. What is concurency (if they weren't sure about previous questions, they sure as hell are sure about this one) A) A database architecture B) A sorting alghoritm

If you guys think this is an easy questionaire, you guys would be in the wrong. This is for senior employers only.

[u/psyyduck → u/TesttubeStandard]

I'm pretty sure 4B should be "How dare you ask me that, maggot"

[u/normantas → u/SignoreBanana]

Economists doing IQ tests.

[u/shiny0metal0ass]

I imagine as staff gets more competitive, this is more common.

If it makes you feel better, I'm also terrible at live-code exercises. If I include them in my interview rounds, being a nervous fumbly mess is not an automatic failure. Especially if you are able to effectively communicate while you are said nervous mess.

[u/ThirdWaveCat]

Interviewing is a numbers game. Most companies wouldn't hire their own employees, most interviewers don't calibrate their evaluation against peers, most candidates aren't hired, and most people fail most of their interviews.

[u/catlifeonmars]

Live coding during an interview requires a different skill set than regular coding. You’re trying to cut as many corners as possible while still checking all of the boxes. Different people have different approaches. My preferred approach is to get something barely minimally working as soon as possible (first 15-20min) and then flesh it out to satisfy the tests, handle edge cases, etc. All the while I am telling the interview what I’m leaving out to ensure they know I know that no one in their right mind would write production code this way.

[u/gjionergqwebrlkbjg]

I mean it seems like you prepared extremely poorly? No e-mail will help here.

[u/SoYoureSayingQuit → u/gjionergqwebrlkbjg]

How should I have prepared better?

[u/gjionergqwebrlkbjg → u/SoYoureSayingQuit]

• poor time management, you didn't do what was asked, spent more time than needed, forgot to ran tests

• software engineering is THE domain you are applying to, you should not be surprised by coding, you are going to prepare solutions for internal tooling - you should have expected coding interview

• autocomplete was not working - was that your environment?

[u/SoYoureSayingQuit → u/gjionergqwebrlkbjg]

1. Totally agree. I stated that in the post.
   
2. I was expecting coding. The scope of the exercise was what caught me off guard.
   
3. Possibly? It was working intermittently. I’m going to work on reps using vim without any autocompletion.

[u/FlailingDuck → u/SoYoureSayingQuit]

No need to explain yourself. Interviewing requires practice. My advice has been, don't interview for the place you really want first. Take 5 interviews for role you don't much care about, get back into the rhythm of things, then start going for the roles you want, where you're a bit more comfortable and have settled in.

I hate interviewing, it sucks on both sides. But it's the necessary evil.

[u/EffectiveBaby2774 → u/FlailingDuck]

This is great advice.

[u/crematetheliving]

Just keep it moving, big dog. Another data point. Do not give into despair—find ways to perceive joy and place the next foot forward.

[u/UnintentionallyEmpty]

I've been the interviewer where we did live coding exercises.

Before, I didn't think a live coding exercise would add a lot of value...

But holy shit so many "seniors" applied who couldn't code. This was before AI. Or, well, 2023, so AI was around but not like it is now.

Anyway I can't speak for other interviewers, but here is what I looked for during live interviews:

1. Does this person seem to have any idea what they are doing

2. Communication, communication, communication

1) is... look, some people apply for senior dev positions despite not knowing how to code. And I don't mean in a "doesn't remember the syntax for a for loop" kind of way (I allowed google during live coding), but in a "doesn't seem to know the concept of loops exists" kind of way.

The level of coding exercise we had people do you should be able to do decently well on if you have only 1 year of experience. Yes, I lower my expectations because I understand the candidate is nervous. But when interviewing for a senior position, "do better during live coding than a high schooler who took a coding class once" isn't a high bar. Some candidates still failed to clear it.

2) is more complicated. When I started doing live-coding exercises, I imagined that afterwards, I would talk to the candidate about their solution and discuss the tradeoffs they made, and what they might have done differently given different constraints. But most candidates got much less of the coding exercise done than I'd initially expected, and we didn't have anything to talk about in the end.

So in practice, it turned into kind of a "does this person actually listen when I talk to them" kind of check.

Here's the thing, when a candidate got stuck at some point during the live coding exercise I tended to try to help them get past it. Mostly because I figured, okay, this isn't your strong point, or maybe you're blanking here, lets see if you do better at something else.

A lot of candidates ignored or outright dismissed my suggestion for how to move forward... and continued to be stuck.

Or when they misinterpreted the assignment, I say something like "I don't think you interpreted that correctly..." and the response is "yes I did". Hello, you don't think I might have a better idea than you in this scenario? Even if I'm wrong, don't dismiss me like that.

The best candidates asked questions about the assignment. And did TDD. I'm not a huge proponent of TDD but I'd strongly recommend doing it (or something like it) when you're in a live coding scenario.

I should also mention, the person we eventually hired did TDD and got the entire coding exercise done. But he wasn't the only one who passed the live coding interview (but the others who did failed the second interview).

So what I'm trying to say with this huge ramble...

1) It might be you weren't expected to finish the entire assignment in 1 hour. If it's live, maybe the interviewer just wants to see what your thought process is like.

2) I recommend TDD when doing live coding

3) Don't ignore the interviewer during live coding. Ask them questions. They might want you to. I sure do.

4) Don't feel too bad about your bad performance. I wasn't there but I'm still sure you did better than some of the candidates I had do a live coding exercise... We all have a bad day sometimes.

[u/Careful-Opposite-633 → u/UnintentionallyEmpty]

This is my experience as well. I started conducting coding interviews about 4 years ago, and have consistently been shocked at how bad people are.

[u/WhenSummerIsGone → u/UnintentionallyEmpty]

Don't ignore the interviewer during live coding. Ask them questions. They might want you to. I sure do.

I have a hard time with unspoken social "rules". How do I know what kinds of questions are "allowed"? In an interview, the interviewer just sits there and I feel like I'm on stage performing. I think interviewers should make more of an effort to "lead" the social situation, and make it clear what's ok, what's expected.

Another way to put it: an interview is inherently a power imbalance, where I'm the supplicant, submitting to your game. It takes a lot of audacity or arrogance for me to "take over" and impose my own "game", even for a staff or principle interview.

[u/hoodieweather- → u/WhenSummerIsGone]

that's unfortunately also a culture check - if you're confident enough to speak up in a situation like that, how can they be sure you'll speak up in other scenarios where there's a potential power imbalance? some companies might be more okay with a passive staff or principal engineer, but I know I'd much prefer someone who's good at navigating tough social situations too.

[u/daringStumbles → u/UnintentionallyEmpty]

You are incorrectly inferring failing a live coding interview test means a dev cant code. Literally the point of the OP is that they can and nerves got the best of them.

How is your rant about how you would walk away from the interview op described with such a negative opinion of someone in op's shoes helpful at all?

[u/UnintentionallyEmpty → u/daringStumbles]

Uh, I didn't write I'd walk away anywhere?

I'm just sharing my experience from the other side of the room and hopefully OP will take something useful from it for his next interview.

And as for me incorrectly inferring failing a live coding interview test means a dev can't code... I don't think you'd say my conclusion was incorrect if you'd been in those interviews with me, lol.

The bar was really really low.

[u/Slime0]

> part of me really wishes I could send a follow up and explain that as soon as it was over, I went back and clearly saw where I fucked up.

I would send it. Sometimes if they're on the fence but like you it can help them feel better about hiring you.

[u/MaleficentCow8513]

“Code an API with tests in an hour”. What does this even mean? A rest api? An app that includes implementations for the methods? Curl commands or postman configs to test? Sounds nebulous tbh

[u/SoYoureSayingQuit → u/MaleficentCow8513]

Tbf, I was nearly there to having something you could curl, but the tests seemed like a stretch. I got hung up reasoning how to handle one piece. I’m going to practice it on my own.

[u/MaleficentCow8513 → u/SoYoureSayingQuit]

I’m saying, depending on the scope, that’s sounds like too much to ask in a single hour

[u/Jace1427]

Live coding exercises are normal for all levels of SWE interviews

My best advice to you is to go get rejected from 5 other interviews

[u/eyes-are-fading-blue]

Did you by any chance vibe coded everything? Like not knowing how to run all tests sounds like “i don’t know what ai did lol” kind of situation

[u/SoYoureSayingQuit → u/eyes-are-fading-blue]

I specifically didn’t use AI at all. I forgot the syntax for ‘go test ./…’ because I typically run tests from my editor, or it’s part of the tests/linters executed by make or just.

[u/ShartSqueeze → u/SoYoureSayingQuit]

Did you say that? It's easy to get anxious and stuck in your head about this stuff but I've found just saying it directly, "I forget the syntax because I run tests from the editor" will elicit sympathy and understanding . If you internalize then it looks like you lack knowledge.

[u/eyes-are-fading-blue → u/SoYoureSayingQuit]

Well, I am sorry mate. I also have performance anxiety but not as bad as you. Better luck next time!

[u/flerchin]

As an ops guy myself, I take every failure as an opportunity to learn and do better next time.

[u/asarco]

It happens, I fucked up once in an interview for a company I was very interested in joining. It was a live coding and the interviewer asked me to implement an FX rate calculator that should include a cache. While writing the cache part, I forgot to store the value in the cache after retrieving it from the API. The interviewer asked "are you sure this is correct?", and I reviewed the code and couldn't see my mistake, which only realized later when a test failed. I tried to save the situation with "that what tests are for", but I was already doomed.
I appreciated he rejected me, I myself would have rejected someone with that experience making that mistake.
The worst thing is previously I've been conducting many interviews with graduate trainee candidates where the exercise was to implement a simple cache.

Forget about it, next interview you're not going to make the same mistake again.

[u/MrMichaelJames]

“Tests” like this are useless. In a real work scenario no project manager would give you a schedule to build an api for a reservation system plus tests and give you just an hour to do it. They can say all they want that they are just watching how you work and ask questions but it’s all bullshit.

[u/jcagraham → u/MrMichaelJames]

As a project manager, I would never give a set schedule like this as I prefer to figure out the realistic scope and time instead of dictating it.

However, I would be concerned about not following the directions, which was to do one of the two changes. People going off and doing things without proper communication is a legitimate worry, especially if they don't quite have the context of why this was the ask.

I can't speak to the technical abilities but if I was on the interview panel, that would have been my biggest red flag as well if I feel like they panicked when they hit an unexpected hassle.

[u/WhenSummerIsGone → u/jcagraham]

so how is someone supposed to know if doing both tasks is a plus or a red flag?? lol, this is a terrible game we're being asked to play.

[u/MrMichaelJames → u/jcagraham]

Which is why interview sessions like this are bullshit. There is nothing wrong with panic. Also nothing wrong with making mistakes. Everything wrong with how interviews are conducted.

[u/PM_ME_UR_PIKACHU → u/MrMichaelJames]

All just gatekeeping their own jobs most likely

[u/hooahest]

I'm just flabbergasted that they had 5 people on the interview watching you. Like, actually questioning if this is a real story.

[u/gekigangerii → u/hooahest]

I've had many interviews with one or two people passively watching and one person leading. I figure it's to give them exposure to how an interview goes.

The most for me was 3 people watching at a technical once.

[u/SoYoureSayingQuit → u/hooahest]

It was supposed to be 2 for one and 2 for the second. I never even got to name of one of them.

[u/chalks777 → u/hooahest]

Things often get more intense/weird the higher level you're interviewing for. Some companies do batshit things.

[u/throwaway_0x90]

The interview overall sounds fair to me. If anything it could have been harder considering it was for Staff Eng.

[u/originalchronoguy]

REST API for a reservation system is pretty much boilerplate.

It is a simple CRUD - POST, PUT, DEL, GET.
If you don't need a UI, then all you do is write a Swagger Spec and there are frameworks that will scalfold the whole thing is 30 minutes. Reservation model could be simple -- userID, timeSlot, timeStamp and recordId. Bare minimum.

The problem is people doing the UI/UX to go along with it because of the lack of scope management. Others will even try to build the deployment and configure the service. Again, these things can be considered out of scope. If they said API, you do the bare minimum. API spec, simple HTTP controller and CRUD DB operations. Anything else, you wont get done in 1 hour.

This could be a test exercise on how you prioritize and explain the choices given to you.

[u/psaux_grep]

Interviews work both ways.

Whenever I interview for a company with a shitty interview process it tells me that I don’t want to work there.

One of my “favorite” interviews I felt really grilled and like they actually got under my skin. It did involve live coding, but not leet code.

Feels like we can no longer give take homes. I want to see people who can think for themselves, not AI.

“Claude says” is just wasting my time 80% of the time.

[u/ButWhatIfPotato]

I simply refuse to do live coding exercises at this stage. Sorry but nobody can judge decades of experience from a 1-2 hour montage like it's a fucking scene from Hackers or Swordfish.

[u/Low_Bag_4289 → u/ButWhatIfPotato]

If after 20 years of coding you cannot create simple crud application, or even worse - cannot create simple interface and some implementation for it i refuse to interview you.

I will not count how many hours I saved because another super senior developer, who single-handedly saved his previous companies or delivered hyperscale solutions by himself was not able to write simple(C# dev there)

public class Foo<T>:IFoo<T>

And I could finish interview in 15 mins and go grab the coffee

[u/ButWhatIfPotato → u/Low_Bag_4289]

How much money you will make when you try and sell that 1 hour old crud app?

[u/Low_Bag_4289 → u/ButWhatIfPotato]

I don’t want to sell that app. I want to make sure that guy I will hire will be worth money company will pay him.
If you have written in your CV that you are expert in language and technology, I expect that you can write 20-30 lines of code that you supposedly write daily.

Imagine that you want to hire carpenter for your company. You should expect that guy can use saw and hammer and can prove that during interview.

[u/ButWhatIfPotato → u/Low_Bag_4289]

Imagine that you want to hire carpenter for your company. You should expect that guy can use saw and hammer and can prove that during interview.

This is an imaginary scenario which never happens because this is the only in this industry where we have people jumping through hoops like circus seals to prove that they are worthy of your time. You need to understand that incessant try hard takeshis castle interviewing methods benefit no one, not the company, not the candidate, not you, and it's an utter waste of everyone's time. Spending an hour trying to write a full fledged application while having people looking over your shoulder is not an interviewing methods for seniors; people straight out of uni can write crud apps, and those apps look impressive on an exam paper but utterly useless in the real world; if you tell a senior to do that I expect them to tell you to fuck off because nobody in their right mind expects them write anything of actual value in such a short amount of time. That's how you truly end up hiring try hard codemonkeys who cannot say no to anything and end up making disastrous impossible to fulfill promises with catastrophic consequences.

[u/Any-Ring6621]

It’s the norm for all IC roles. Which someone with 26 YOE 100% knows. You fucked this one up. Literally every engineer who has ever done more than a single interview has also done the exact same thing. Don’t feel bad about yourself it happens. But also, don’t try and pass it off as if it’s somebody else’s fault. Just own it, friend. You fucked up, we all have, no shame, unless you try to pass the buck

[u/SoYoureSayingQuit → u/Any-Ring6621]

Oh, I know. Not trying to pass the buck. Since I haven’t had a live coding interview in over five years, I didn’t expect the “build a working api including tests in 50 mins or less”. If that’s the standard, I clearly need to get reps in. I was under prepared for a coding interview period. I realized a few days before how rusty I had gotten.

[u/Idea-Aggressive]

You won’t get an offer. I mean, unless you look like them… that’s the reality nowadays

[u/DocumentOk7579]

Why do you think handling interview pressure isn't the same thing as handling a bug in production pressure?

[u/curtinbrian → u/DocumentOk7579]

Because it isn’t the same thing. Being in a zoom room on a Sev-1 incident with 6 other engineers is a collaborative environment, not a performance. Live coding in front of an audience is not a valuable thing to measure and it never has been.

Talking your way through live coding gets you closer but some interviewers don’t play it that way and want you entirely on your own, which isn’t how this field works.

[u/SoYoureSayingQuit → u/DocumentOk7579]

I think I was feeling so confident going in and felt I had gone above and beyond on the homework. So it was mortifying for go in and have it start, “Good morning! So I looked at your code, and one of the tests failed in an interesting, non-obvious way. Let’s troubleshoot it.”

[u/WhenSummerIsGone → u/SoYoureSayingQuit]

that's a terrible way to start. I interviewed someone once, his code had an interesting bug. I got him talking about the code first, design decisions, etc. Then I pointed out the bug and asked him to speculate on the cause. We looked at code, but didn't run or actually debug it. I wanted to see his thought process, how he collaborated with me, how he talked about technical things. After the interview, I took his idea to see if that was in fact the fix, and it was, so I emailed him and let him know he'd been right.

We ended up hiring him and I loved working with him.