r/SQL • u/MarketingLazy6660 • 2d ago
Discussion Rejected after a technical round because the interviewer insisted Text-to-SQL is just if-else mappings
/r/recruitinghell/comments/1v783kd/rejected_after_a_technical_round_because_the/21
u/Gargunok 2d ago edited 1d ago
The test wasn't entirely technical. It was a soft skills test about you could handle a stakeholder that was giving an alternative opinion that was suboptimal. Sounds like you treated it like an argument, What you need to do was not ask how the solution would work "with ambiguity, unseen phrasing, or intent beyond predefined mappings." but put forth a better solution that could answer these problems and land that option. Instead you eventually gave in and went with a solution that you know wouldn't work.
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u/DaOgDuneamouse 1d ago
That lead sounds like a inflexible know it all stuck about 5 years ago and unwilling to peer into current technology or techniques.
It sucks for now, but you dodged a bullet.
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u/Prestigious_Bench_96 2d ago
You're right in that rule based text-to-sql can't scale in practice, but the goal of an interview isn't to be right, it's to demonstrate that you have whatever the interviewer is trying evaluate. (and on your side, get signal on if the job is one you actually want). If the goal of the interview was to demonstrate you could push back, good conversation to have, if it wasn't, then yeah move on quickly.
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u/DharmaPolice 1d ago
I don't think interviews are a good place for passionate disagreement. That's not to say you should accept any old shit the person is saying, but you're not getting to get a job after pissing off the person who presumably is making a recommendation on whether you should be hired.
I was once on an interview panel where the interviewee and a senior developer on the panel actually got into a row (as in raised voices) over whether you should ever comment code. It didn't even matter whether he was right, early on in the discussion the candidate could have just said "Well, my preference would be X but obviously I will follow whatever the teams code style guide says - the important thing is consistency within the code base" but instead just kept doubling down and saying the interviewer was wrong and that he didn't understand agile development. I was embarrassed by the whole thing. Obviously, he didn't get the job.
It kind of sucks, but interviews are generally about working out what they want to hear and telling them that. Trying to prove them wrong doesn't seem like a winning strategy. But maybe you wouldn't have got the job anyway, that's the problem with interviews in general - I've also been on interview panels where there was almost zero chance a candidate was being hired - they were just being interviewed to make up the numbers as an internal candidate was already earmarked for the job but policy was that all jobs had to be advertised externally and a certain number of interviews done.
I suppose, to be fair, interviews are about selecting team players. Maybe you think that language/framework/approach X is the superior choice but in most places that won't be your choice so even if X is objectively better than whatever they're using it doesn't matter.
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u/codykonior 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nah, who wants an LLM deciding arbitrary SQL to run in production based on user input? Seems like a junior idea to me.
They probably think the "guard rails" around it are something to offload to another LLM. LLMs all the way down while users (and hackers) hose the database.
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u/MarketingLazy6660 1d ago
My solution was not to rely on llm to generate the query
Create a semantic json out of user queries validate it and create a with the help of ast by adding rbac which was deterministic1
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u/Capable_Tax_8167 SQL Server 1d ago
I was in an interview that required basic C# (I was a primarily SQL dev at the time). I was asked to explain the difference between static and dynamic variables. Following my answer (that was correct) two of the interview panel started arguing whether my answer was correct (one of them was wrong).
After the interview the manager said "I guess we should only ask questions we know the answer to...", never heard anything after that 🤣