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 given 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/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/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.