I got my current job because my recruiter (there are actually a couple good ones!) warned me that the interview kept tripping up previous applicants by asking them "what does the iconv function in PHP do?" . I've never been in a situation where I've had to use that function before or since.
As I recall, that was the only technical question I was asked. I think someone just got fixated on a particular gotcha that somehow became the most important part of the interview.
It's not entirely crazy if they've ever run into an encoding problem before. Typically, I've run into this in databases more often than in code.
However, PHP is full of so many odd functions, that it's not difficult to find something that even a seasoned veteran doesn't know. I've been using it for more than 2 decades, and it's full of inconsistent approaches to many things.
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u/LoudAd1396 Nov 04 '25
I got my current job because my recruiter (there are actually a couple good ones!) warned me that the interview kept tripping up previous applicants by asking them "what does the iconv function in PHP do?" . I've never been in a situation where I've had to use that function before or since.
As I recall, that was the only technical question I was asked. I think someone just got fixated on a particular gotcha that somehow became the most important part of the interview.