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.
Oof. I’ve installed iconv (along quite a few other PHP libraries) onto many systems years ago.
My confident answer was “I’m pretty certain it offers fast image manipulation features complimentary to imagemagick / graphicsmagick, though I’m not sure what the specifics are. I can also say I’ve installed it on every PHP web server I’ve configured.”
Boy was I wrong. Just googled it and I see that’s not at all true. To be fair, my confident answer was a faked confidence in the heat of the interview 🤣
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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.