Oh interviews!
Some people are afraid of them, but I am always looking forward. It's the skill that you need to develop constantly. No matter how good you are at what you do, you need to be able to present it to new people during the short conversation.
And I think, everyone agrees that interviews are the tests of not only technical skills, but adaptability to the new team.
What is the worst question you have ever been asked in a job interview?
My experience:
1) If I had 7+ years of experience on the software that exists only for 3 years.
and there were many more.......much more......
Oldest comments (102)
I've been asked on flags that exist or not on a precise object of the android framework.
This kind of questions are pointless, as there is no value on knowing the doc per heart...
I agree, such questions/answers are pointless.
Unfortunately, some interviewers make a goal of showing that they are smarter than you, rather than looking for candidates for their team. Ego!
This is very true. Oh well.
"What kind of car you drive?" They saw me in the video camera when I arrived. Year, model, color, etc.
Correct answer:
class Car
{
string color = "gray";
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Car myObj = new Car();
Console.WriteLine(myObj.color);
}
}
oh, so you actually had to guess that they want to code as an answer.
I guess so, but that was my answer. I didn't get a job ;)
Hiring for JS and CSS and every question was about C# .net and random .net libraries.
Maybe the team didn't even know JS and CSS themselves and still they had to ask you something!
"What is RAID?"
It allows multiple disks to be configured in a way that optimizes for speed or redundancy or a combination of the two.
"What is RAID 0?"
I don't have the specific types of RAID memorized. Rather if I need a specific need, like redundancy, I can google the kind that I need.
"....Ok....So what is RAID 1?"
Do you have any questions that aren't answerable with a google search?
"..."
Turns out they just wanted a DBA.
Don't want to play the smartass here as it's true that this information can be quickly found with a search, as almost everything, but not knowing the answer straight away actually DOES give a seniority indication, at least for sysadmins. Knowing the difference between Raid 0, 1 and 5 (the most used ones) should be granted for sysadmins and expected also from DBAs. my2c
You're absolutely right that I would expect a sysadmin to know these off-the-cuff, but this interview was for a junior software engineer.
It was not advertised as for a DBA or sysadmin position. They also didn't change up the questions after realizing that they weren't going to get anywhere. Instead they just kept going down their list of "okay, what is RAID 2...RAID 3..."
Oh right, for a junior developer these are not required notions. And insisting on Raid 2, 3 and other quite uncommon levels was pointless
What is SOLID design principles? I was literally stuck in how to implement it.
pretty common question imo.
I feel like this is pretty fundamental, really. I've certainly brought these up in design discussions with my team at work before, and they're something I think about frequently in my hobby projects, as well.
Not really I think it's more of an opinion or best practices that the company might adopt. Which is similar to design patterns that might not be that common as well. Like you don't need it unless you are required to use it?
I mean, I suppose you're right in that you don't absolutely need them to write working software. But I think the same could be said about things like tests, or not littering magic numbers throughout your code. They aren't necessarily going to make your code work better now, but they've got a very high likelihood of making it more maintainable!
Anyway, I'm sorry you got stuck on that question! Regardless of the topic, getting stumped in interviews sucks.
Yeah I'm not against it for code maintainable sake. Which I will usually chuck it as a nice to have thing. Over something like clean code, pair programming and TDD.
In fact it lead me in reading it more in depth to explore design patterns and SOLID more. It just makes me more smarter in future interviews to ask questions.
What are they are expecting for me roughly in a interview before I go for another one to prevent myself being caught off guard.
Hm. I feel like there are probably a pretty huge range of answers there, depending on who the interviewer is, what company they work for, and what department they work for (could be HR, a technical person from the prospective team, a technical person from a different team, a recruiter, etc.). I'm also not sure that I'm really the right person to answer - my interview experience is pretty limited. I have opinions on things like SOLID because I spend a lot of time thinking about, reading about, and practicing software engineering, both at work and in my free time. I've also worked in some pretty gross codebases, and I've seen what happens when people don't keep things organized and adhere to things like SRP.
My (limited) understanding is that interviewers are usually trying to gauge you on at least two axies:
Both of those have a pretty huge impact on how much value you're likely add to the organization.
I would also say that, if they're thoughtful about it, they're probably also trying to gauge your fit for the industry or domain you'll be working in: an engineer with an interest in ecommerce is going to be more valuable to an ecommerce company than one who is interested in game development, simply because they have spent more hours thinking about the domain. When they are given a problem to solve, they'll have more context that they cam draw on.
As for not getting caught off guard, I'm inclined to say there are probably two aspects to focus on: 1) building your knowledge in the relevant areas, 2) your ability to handle being caught off guard when it does happen.
Point 1 is something you can solve through Google, reading, practice, and just being generally curious about your craft. Generally, I would say be curious about the fundamentals.
Point 2 is equally important, though - you're going to get caught off guard, evem after years of experience, so being prepared for it and having a plan for how to recover is really crucial, I think. A lot of the time, interviewers are explicitly trying to test the boundaries of your knowledge. It lets them find out what you really know, and also how you handle not knowing.
For concrete areas, I'd be inclined to focus on things such as:
Again, these are just bits and pieces I've concluded from my limited experience. Please take anything I say with a fairly hefty dose of salt!
It's a extensive list :) we all have our preferences and in the way we do things in the type of jobs, we are of interested in or has inclination with.
I just chuck it as experience and seek for other pastures. As startup has always been about culture fit. Which I just guess I do not fit them and its alright. Since there is tons of companies or jobs out there.
For me, I'm more of scrappy person to get stuff done. Even if I'm bad at it for the start. I will figure out a way to do it.
Which is why I'm not really that opinionated or dogmatic in my way. Sure sometimes I wish there will be certain expectations I see in others. but I won't be bothered with they are not having clean code, good test cases and easy to understand documentation. I just figure it out to deal with it along which sadly can not be verified through a short interview.
Besides I feel we should be a voracious learner to take on multiple mental models to solve a problem. Combine with interest in learning soft skills needed for us to be better communicator & developer, leading a team and dealing with people who might be less technical inclined to get something done.
I went for an interview where the boss sat me down and told me to write a sort function on paper. I get very nervous at this kind of question and ended the interview as soon as I could. Not long after that I got a new job anyway, at the company they were outsourcing nearly all of their development work to.
Have been there. Once i was explained the database relationship of multiple tables orally and was asked to write down the query on piece of paper. I wrote the query but totally messed up the table names. Selective memory...but for this kind of questions a little handout with structure would greatly help.
Oh the irony!
Them: Please list all Possible Linux signals And their meanings
Me: Can I have a terminal?
Them: You should be able to answer without a terminal
Me: Are we not allowed to look at man pages for this job or....
Not an interview question, but I had a professor in university with the same attitude as you. He thought there was no value in learning everything by heart because "You're never going to be on a desert island and the only way you can get off is by calculating the standard deviation of a data set by heart"
I agree! I think there’s value in learning how to find things outside of google but even then there are very few instances where you don’t have google. I’m not a huge fan of this trivia-like interview questions as it doesn’t prove application of knowledge.
+1! Being able to read and extract value from, e.g., a
manpage is a super useful skill."Is there any dog/kid/wife that could get sick and make you miss some work days?"
I was baffled, I ended the interview and told them I was not interested into getting involved with a company asking these kind of questions.
oh wow! Does the cat also count?
OH MY what an awful question and glad you took that as a major red flag. In fact, I'm not a lawyer, but asking directly about marital status in an interview actually illegal in the US.
betterteam.com/illegal-interview-q...
It's very illegal in Canada too, and we have even stricter rules than US like no age, sex, religion, skin color, etc. At this point, I just wished them to go bankrupt and didn't want to spend anymore energy on them.
I was applying for a WordPress plugin developer position and they asked "What's your favorite WordPress hook?" Uh... All of them?
i am not familiar with Wordpress but looks like a question: what is your favorite hand: left or right?
You won!
I would never think of something more stupid to ask.
How awful and disgusting of them. So sorry you got asked such a question.
I met a interview question which is to say 23 kinds of design patterns
When the interviewer asks me n-number of smth, i always answer what i remember and start explaining those. Let's see who has more patience.
And we have a winner. Yikes.
"We're looking to fill a role with someone who has 5-10 years of experience with [buzzword framework], do you have it?" (and in my head, I'm thinking umm...that framework has only been out for 2 years...)
Very common question. Especially i like when people put this range 5-10 years of experience.
I think they are looking for the creator of that framework, but they are feeling shy to reach out to him/her directly, so they are hoping that he/she shows up in one of their interviews. #ultraoptimism
I think that this is a problem in general today, there are recruiters that are hired by companies and are given a list of objectives and requirements but of course the recruiters beautify them and if they are interviewing you there is a high change asking you question like this now knowing what they are dealing with. I am talking from experience, went on an interview, they asked me personal questions only and said that there would be a second interview with the tech lead but they never called me, idk why, my skills were never tested.
How come you type so fast?
Practice I guess?
You have a girlfriend?
Do I have to answer that?
Then it must be girlfriend.
That's practice on mobile. Right?
Hyderabad interview 2010
If you answered the girlfriend question, they might have asked "How good is your relationship with your girlfriend?" (see the above comments)
Haha yes yes... people say you should learn from your experiences, and if I were to learn from my interview experiences, I would definitely ask you, "How good is your relationship with your girlfriend?"
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