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Discussion on: Applying To Facebook

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bytebodger profile image
Adam Nathaniel Davis

This is a great point. And in case I wasn't clear about it in the original article, lemme make it totally clear here:

I'm not mad, at anyone, for asking any kinda interview question.

You wanna ask me about assembling byte code in my interview? Sure. Ask away. You wanna ask me to do my whiteboard coding in emojicode? Hey... it's your interview! And you can put whatever restrictions on me that suit you and/or your company.

The only "problem" that I have with these kinds of questions is that, when they're asked, you can almost feel this sense of judgment coming from the interviewer. It's usually implied (or even - outright stated) that this particular esoteric concept is one they believe that you should know if you're a "real" developer - or if you're a solid prospect for the job.

You can ask anything in an interview. But ideally, you're taking all of the answers as smaller pieces in a much larger puzzle that is: the candidate.

I totally understand that, if you're looking for a top-notch JS dev, and you ask him about .call()/.apply()/.whatever(), it's probably a good sign if they know all about it, and they can talk about the concepts inside-and-out. But it's not necessarily a bad sign if they aren't familiar with it. It's just part of the broader picture.

In some interviews that I've conducted in the past, I did indeed start to wonder "just how deep does this person's knowledge go??" And in those scenarios, I absolutely started asking more esoteric questions. But when I reach the point where I'm asking about something they're unfamiliar with, I typically let them know that it's no big deal, and I was just curious if they knew about that particular concept.