DEV Community: Sohail Nasir

So I got fired

Sohail Nasir — Fri, 03 May 2024 15:06:08 +0000

Some time ago I got fired from a senior developer position, prior to this I never got fired, always been a medium to top performer wherever I have gone and always been well loved by colleagues however things went very different here.

Where I was at

I left my previous job as they ran into financial issues also I had been there a while and felt I was getting stale in my role, I was a hybrid between a senior developer and a team lead, my team dwindled to only me towards the end.

I became unmotivated, one of the major projects at the company which my team had worked on tirelessly was canned. Over a years worth of work was in essence thrown in the bin because the company had to pivot.

So I started looking for another job, I didn't want just another development position, I wanted more of a challenge, I wanted to expand myself. I saw a consultancy who were looking for a developer with the lure of working on some cool projects. I applied, passed their tests, smashed the interview and ready to try something new.

Walking into the storm

Before I joined, I went to this company's summer party and there were no red flags, people seemed happy and the owners seemed nice.

I got my laptop and a nice welcome box and was genuinely excited, ready to re-invigorate myself and smash this opportunity out of the park.

Did my normal HR stuff, got my environment set up on the first day, then was told that the project that I was supposed to go on hadn't been approved yet. Was told to start focusing on my certifications and would be told when the project will be ready.

Got a call out of the blue from one of the owners saying that there was a front end project that needed resource to speed things along. The tech stack was a little out of my comfort zone but wanting to impress and show that I am fairly versatile was like sure I can do it, I explained I needed to get up to speed with the tech stack used and was given about half a day to read up what I needed to.

Clouds gather

I met up with the lead developer on the project, whilst he was sort of friendly, he did seem rather unhappy that I didn't have experience in the tech stack however he assigned me some tasks and left me to them until... an hour later he called me up to ask how I was getting on. Told him, struggling to get the project running locally and he sat through with me and we got compiling and running, there were a few hoops and database entries to get me running.

The tasks themselves were simple but I couldn't make heads or tails of the coding style and pattern used. Some of the decisions for this project were a bit questionable looking back at it in hindsight.

I would get calls every 2 hours asking progress and would get comments like you are slow, we are falling behind with then a quick reassurance we will get there. Very quickly I gone from I can conquer anything to maybe I suck as a developer.

It looks like its starting to rain

I really didn't make any friends or form any close bonds with the people at this company. I felt quite lonely and going from the life of the party to someone very introverted and quite reserved was quite a shock. It something I haven't quite recovered from, I am still fairly quiet and won't say much nowadays.

This carried on for 2 weeks more, the developer who had been micromanaging me needed a vacation and gave me a weeks worth of tasks.

He went through the tasks in question, we gave them estimates, at this point I was starting to become a bit ambivalent whether I was able to even perform my job.

The tasks were on paper easy but in actual fact I burned a lot of time trying to navigate the codebase. There were times I would get distracted, watch a few Youtube video too many and would lose focus quickly. I stopped caring and at this point, started to job hunt explaining I felt I made a mistake with this role.

Now its thundering

After the other developer came back from vacation he seemed incensed that I hadn't finished all the tasks, I did put PRs up for the ones I managed to but his semi reassuring line came back "we will get through it".

Towards the end of the day I got an ominous email from HR telling me the client was not happy and I had complete an audit of all work I had performed on the project.

I completed the audit and wrote back I was disappointed with the client for not raising this with me and in retrospect this was a very bad idea. Next minute I got a HR meeting request for the next morning.

Lightning strikes

In the HR call, it was quick, told I was getting let go, I knew why and I didn't bother fighting it or arguing, I accepted it and now embraced my new found unemployment.

I felt angry for a few days after it and it showed, I lost my cool with an interviewer, was generally upset at the world. I gave myself a few days to mope and then got back on my horse and found a better consultancy though my role was less developer focused.

Reflections

Reason why I wrote this article, its ok to get fired, yes its horrible and the uncertainty of finding a new role especially in todays market is a horrible feeling however as the great lead developer would say "We will get there".

Reflecting on this I needed a break, my previous role to this horrible role was so full on, I had gone through some major life events and some generally hard times, in the last year, I moved house, my son was born and switched job. I was bound to crack, my notice period was a slog and I should have taken some time off between roles.

I also think I should have taken a break from development, I feel I did lose passion for it at this stage and going into the role I am in now has helped me reinvigorate my passion for development by taking one step away from it.

I shouldn't been so eager to take any project, I should have just plainly said I don't think I can do this role, please find me another project, also should have flagged early on I didn't think I can do this work.

I should have been more client focused, this nowadays has helped me navigate through some hurdles by simply speaking to the client.

In regards to the lead developer I understand the pressure they were under, I won't bash them or blame them for my failings. However as a team lead nowadays I ensure I keep professional, encourage my team members and make sure feedback is constructive not a series of digs followed with false reassurance.

At the end of the day, getting fired isn't the end of your life or even your career, you can bounce back and use it as a learning experience.

Growing and returning

Sohail Nasir — Sun, 01 Nov 2020 13:22:04 +0000

It's been a while since I logged in and even longer since I wrote a post..

Been reading some of my past posts ranging from my aborted toxicity series to the contraversial VIM post that upset some people.

Sometimes it's worth looking back at what you once were like and maybe ask yourself have you grown from these.

First off I want to apologise to the people who took offense at my VIM post. I admit I deleted it in anger after reading a lot of hurtful comments on it attack my professionalism but I shouldn't have written it in the first place.

I think writing articles that attack a technology or even a tool without giving thought of how they could be improved is misguided. Maybe I could have written the article differently, maybe not attacking VIM but actually trying out and maybe giving thoughts on it. As one colleague once said to me don't bash it unless you know it.

Now to turn my attention to the toxicity articles.

When they started it was more about a retrospective on how I learnt from a toxic situation but gradually they became a way of bashing old colleagues or things that I hadn't learnt to let go of.

I think attacking people is just mean and dev.to probably isn't the place to air out your dirty laundry. This site is meant to be a positivr place of learning and inclusivity and other than the first two parts of the series the rest I am deleting.

I need to continue to grow and positively contribute to society as a whole.

how to be the king of developers

Sohail Nasir — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 22:16:17 +0000

Note that is article is purely for satire and any advice I really hope does not get followed here, it may get you in hot water with management or worse. Also anyone can be a King (men, women or whatever you identify as) otherwise enjoy

So you finally decided to read this article and must have wondered what it would take to become the king of developers. Sit back take a sip of your favourite beverage and flatuate because this article will change you entirely.

Starting out

Let's assume you are a developer who is just angry they are not a king or even a measley duke. Assumption is key to becoming a king, if you don't assume than what good are you? So one scenario to use this in is if you have a feature that needs to be developed, don't wait for some horrid analyst or your manager to give you a spec or tell you what to do. Just guess what they want and create something that is amazing to you. If they don't like it then they don't appreciate good workmanship and let them know that you are a developer and know best and if they still don't like it be profane and let them know that they are stupid, they are lucky to still have a job after arguing with the king or KIT (King in training).

Designing the perfect solution

As a KIT you must disregard any solutions presented to you, they are utter garbage and are from traitors to the crown. If you have a lead architect or lead developer trying to give you their view, fob them off or if you are due to give them a kingly game of squash later on in the afternoon then nod attentively and feign interest, what do they know? They are SOPs (Spies Of Management) who as we know are trying to sabotage your reign.

For the design it should be something so great and secret that only you and maybe a friend can understand it, use either unintelligible notation or a secret language to layout what you need then go on a 2 week vacation. A king needs their rest and when you come back to work and if any of your minions complain about the lack of clarity, tell them they are rubbish and if they persist get them fired, a treasonous minion can be a threat to your good authority, they are lucky that they don't get drawn and quartered like in the days of Fortran.

Now for the code

This step is so important, this will determine if you are king or a KIT still. Use 1 -3 letter for variable names, why waste precious keystrokes for anything longer and use of one variable type, the rest are superfluous bin fodder for your minions to fight over. Do not fall pray to the lunacy of tidy and readable code, this is up some dictatorial crap made by some hippy ideology. Make sure its complex and make it that you can only read it and outsmart those other cretinous developers on your team when it comes down to it, do you want them getting the credit for your hard work, do you want them fixing alleged bugs in your code, No! You are the king!! They are minions and they can go back to their minionous duties.

Start using fancy anagrams to explain fancy (nonsensical) concepts to everyone, So when talking about a fast way of storing data in a relational table, you can start talking about the marvels of Short Hexidecimal Internet Table (SHIT) or if you if you are called up to solve a shortfall in the IT budget, start telling management about Funding Under Calculations (FUC) and how it can maximise revenue.

Make sure you use these anagrams in code otherwise your ghastly minions won't remember the proper terms and will start writing utter horrific unkingly code which undoubtedly will end in your own downfall.

If someone questions code, start with a quote from a wise coding guru and use their statements to back up your code, everyone loves a rock programmer god don't they. So if someone says doing an entire SQL select than using one record from it is inefficient, you can turn back to them and say "Uncle Bob believes doing a select before breakfast is good for the soul" They won't dare argue after hearing this and you can wear your crown with pride as you see them sulking away.

People will often ask to pair program with you and as a king you should be open to this how an earth will you establish your court without people knowing what a good king you are however there are things you should do to help them.

Do not use IDEs, these are evil and only communist peasants use these, use something that the old kings used like VI (not VIM, this is a bastardization of VI and therefore, this is a tool for peasants ). If the tools the old kings do not appeal to your reign then create your own. The steeper the learning curve the better as it shows that you have true power enforce your subjects to use the same technology as you otherwise they can plot your downfall.

Testers

If you are unfortunately saddled with allies of management (AIM) also known as testers, you might find getting your work out there difficult and they may throw unnecessary wrenches in your plans because they found a bug or the client did not ask for this. Bah!! A king never creates bugs nor does the client know what they want. These fools have been brainwashed by the evil management and will try and will aid them in your downfall.

Don't listen to these fools, brush off their concerns if you can, say it's meant to work that way, if they disturb your slumber during the work day you shout out them, tell them how dare they wake you for such trivial nonsense and the ones that IM or email you constantly, ignore them, never help a tester... ever or they will plot against you!

If you are finding your code is not getting through then start to bad mouth them to their boss. Tell this boss guy that this tester was drinking at their desk or sexually harassed you that's why they think they found a bug and if this boss guy does not believe you, tell them you are the king and to hell with what they think.

The build and release

First off a true king should know that the build should break because it is utter garbage created by some radical hippies. If the code works on your machine (The Royal tower/laptop) then any other PC that can't compile it is inefficient and is only fit for fodder in a peasant's hearth.

Sometimes the satanic forces of management might talk about this horrific thing called "CI (Continuous Integration)". This is just another annoying ploy to dethrone you, this just creates work for you and your minions. Rather than making code compile with some automated process and heaven forbid create a release for your clients. Wouldn't you rather do important things like sleep, create really good code and harass HR?

Show management who's boss by refusing to embrace this process, tell them they are incompetent bufoons who should be shot for suggesting such wicked things. Try and sabotage the process at every turn, like delete random code to stop it from compiling, turn off machines vital to the process or if it a cloud based solution then unplug the connection to the world wide world. This should frustrate management and with time they will realise they are stupid and will give up and bow down to the king.

A king should only build DLLs/executables on their machine for the client and not allow some automated process or minions compile their precious gems, these inferior beings are not worthy of this great honour. A king should copy the compiled code onto a medieum of their choosing, don't be afraid to embrace old and slightly eccentric technologies to aid you in delivering this paragon to the client. Some good examples are vintage floppy disks, obscure formats such as minidiscs or 8 track are also good contenders.

If a client does not have any devices that can access these mediums then a proper king tells the client that they should aquire said devices and if they resist then berate the client and tell them they are philistines and don't deserve your unique gems.

Debugging failing applications

A client may find a flaw in your otherwise perfect code or maybe something does not work on their inferior hardware and it is up to you to fix it. Makes sure that these complaints come to you as a king you should be able to address these feeble minded miscreant's oinking sounds and put them at ease or at least out of business. Start with the phrases "What problem?", "Have you tried turning it off and on?". Make sure you can be brash as possible with them because afterall what do they know, if for some reason they have a support team, refuse to communicate with them, tell them you are much more experienced then them and they should get a job at McDonalds or something.

If the complaint still persists then see if you can get access to their systems so you can see what the issue is, if what they complain about actually happens and it is not immediately obvious, copy the sourcecode on the machine and try running it. Using your kingly powers you can see which line the problem happens and fix it there and then. If their hardware is not completely crap, you may be able to compile and fix the alleged problem.

Are you ready to become a king?

If you have read this horrific guide from top to bottom and follow most of these practises then you are a true King and probably should start to think about in what ways you can improve as a developer.

A lot of these experiences I have seen in other developers during my career and some I have seen in myself and I thought it would be comical to produce this piece.

So you are leaving?

Sohail Nasir — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 15:13:05 +0000

I feel it is time to finally write this article as I have left a job with great people to pursue the next stage of my career and this has to be one of the most satisfying leaving experiences I have had as I feel there no loose ends, was/am appreciated for my dedication over my time there. So I would thought I would write about what I have done in this leaving and ones before it. Everytime I left though I would be sorely missed I was told, you have a good way of handing over things, how were you motivated enough to do this?

I am writing this guide for people who's firm is not shutting down operations and are leaving on fairly amicable terms. If you have been fired or made redundant then advice I would give would be different.

So your notice period is coming to an end and you are ready to move onto your next challenge and are wondering what to do with the time you have left at soon to be old firm.

Spread the knowledge

Often if you have been working at a place for a significant period of time you will often have specialised knowledge of certain components and once you leave this knowledge may be useless at your next place.

So if you are on good terms with your line manager/boss then ask them if they would like to do a handover plan with you, I did this at a place I worked at and my boss appreciated it and it took the sting out of my resignation. It showed even though I was done with the place I cared enough to help the company ease the transition of losing me and training up my replacement.

Though it may be rare if you have a replacement ready and waiting, offer to spend some time with them and go over what they need to know, keep friendly, avoid bashing the company and make sure they fully understanding what they are taking on. A brain dump might be tough on the new recruit so if you have time try and spread it out and also leave notes just in case they stuck but do these things only if you have time.

If you don't have a replacement ready then try and dump your knowledge onto others, when someone asks for some help on a part of the system you know well, try and impart your knowledge onto them. One of the juniors needed my help on something I wrote, even the problem was simple, I gave them an entire overview of the system, even though something that should have been 5 minutes turned into half an hour, we both were satisfied that the knowledge I had accrued was successfully imparted.

Lastly if you are sole developer at company like I was once, write guides store them somewhere and make sure your line manager or some who is invested in the project knows where there are.

Connecting with your soon to be former colleagues

This I have found difficult in the past, I am not sure what people think of me once I have handed in that dreaded notice. Will they still respect me, will they close up on me entirely or even be aggressive to me?

I once had a line manager look at my notice and look back at me and say "You f**ked up" and sigh. He's human, I was an asset to the company, me leaving this job made his life more difficult, it's understandable while I stayed silent from the shock for a couple of minutes I brushed it off at the time and fired back in a joking tone, well maybe you should not have gone on holiday, I was lonely, it made my eyes wonder". It eased up the situation and any bad feeling eased and my leaving period a little bit easier.

Other than that I have had some interesting replies from from colleagues when they have heard I resigned ranging from the common "I am going to miss you" to "This place is going to hell and I want out too" to even "You are not leaving here, what can I do to make you change your mind?"

My advice is avoid bad mouthing the company or any people you are leaving, word gets round and sometimes if where you are going isn't great you may need a place to back to. Also people move companies, so down the line you may meet up with these people.

Any colleagues you got on well with, make sure you get their contact details, you never know they may help you get future opportunities. The job that I am going to was recommended to me by a former colleague and I believe he had some sway in the decision whether or not the company should hire me.

Getting that reference

If you got on with your line manager it is worth asking them to do your reference, as they would be able to evaluate you and give worthwhile feedback to your prospective employer. If a line manager for any reason can't give you a reference then it might be worth asking another colleague that worked well with you to give you a reference.

In the end...

As your last day approaches it is easy to lose interest but try and keep motivated, make sure you handover any stuff that won't get finished in time. Sometimes your soon to be former colleagues might arrange a leaving do for you but if not then you can always arrange a farewell lunch before bowing out gracefully. If you go out gracefully then people may remember you and this can create opportunities down the line later.

Getting back into the development world

Sohail Nasir — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 22:14:07 +0000

I have been asked this question a few times by friends I graduated with, often they have completed a Computer science degree (or something similar) but never got into the industry and have forgotten everything around this subject.

So grab yourself a coffee as I whittle through my experience and give some tips around this towards the end.

My experience

5 years ago I found myself with this exact same problem. I worked as a developer for about a year at this point but my company had decided to shift me to a team that was support heavy, my work day did not allow for any development and as a result I became rusty.

In a bid to get back to development I started to read blogs and articles relating to development, meaningless terms filled my head like F#, BDD, CI, I really had no confidence in my ability anymore.

So what did I do? Firstly I had to admit to myself I had forgotten the basics, I had to also tell myself that I can recover from this position, I can get back into this, I had to have confidence in myself.

Next I needed a plan, I did C# in university and had been writing with it before this slump, so I dug up a series of tutorials on C#. I would often stop the video while the speaker went through examples and would attempt to follow the code but this took too long and I wasn't really progressing. The content of the tutorials were good and the speaker was easy to follow but I kept getting lost. I figured I would change my workflow. I came up with this:

Watch video -> Attempt to write code -> Rewatch if I got stuck.

I did this for the rest of the tutorials and I found I was a little bit more confident in my abilities.

Now I needed to test my refound skills, I wrote a few programs but I couldn't stick to a single idea, I got would often jump around different things, I couldn't stay focused. I picked one idea which was my unfinished final year project from university and planned it out, decided what framework I would use, what features to implement and more importantly gave myself little deadlines. Though the project was unsuccessful it still was useful for writing a testbed of things I had learnt.

Advise to others

Often my advice to people who approach me with this question would be:

Ask your self why do you want to go in development?
Can you make time to learn and practice?
Have you got the passion still?

If you can answered these honestly and still want to get back into the groove than go and do it. The web has tons of free well thought out tutorials or sites like udemy & Lynda do sales all the time.

If you can find someone in friendly who is a software developer, and talk to them, converse and see if you can keep up with conversation with them. I did this with a tech lead years ago and as soon as I could understand and form opinions on what we were discussing I knew I was back in the game.

Any opinions or thoughts, just drop them in the comments below.

The Toxicity Part 1: The Manipulator

Sohail Nasir — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 22:04:36 +0000

In my career as a developer I have run into a fair number of toxic people in my working life and it can be a pain to deal with. It can affect your work life and maybe creep into your home life and well make you very miserable.

I see on a lot of message boards like the work place stack exchange of people asking for advice in dealing with these problems. Each situation is different and sometimes ignoring the problem can just add fuel to the fire.

So I am going to run through situations I have dealt with in the past, some I handled well and some... not very well. A lot of these cases are not based on one person and I have purposely left detail out and been deliberately vague to protect the innocent and guilty.

Enter the manipulator

This person tries to be your best friend, learns your secrets and well uses you and others to gain leverage in the company. I have come across this sort of person a few times in my career but in the interest of everyone's sanity I will go through my first run in. I was in my first year as junior programmer, the company was doing great well, we had won some big contracts and development was interesting.

I had another developer who started a few months after me and we hit it off instantly and became best buds, we did have some great times, we were put on the same development team and at first it went well but cracks began to show.

The "buddy" in question started to make snide comments to me and other guys on the team about me napping or falling asleep, not sure what they were referring to, I am quite a lively chap, quite energetic but it was true I wasn't as productive as them and so I shrugged it off, I didn't have years of experience as everyone on the team.

I look back now, maybe I should have confronted or at least asked them to offer some explanation. Next thing I knew I was being bumped down to another team. The development support team, it honestly felt like a demotion, it was a team that never went anywhere, the issues were first line support and if there was any development work it was minimal, I took it in my stride and at the time I felt it would make me a more productive developer.

More victims manipulated

Fast forward a year or so, I am back on the same team as my "buddy" now fully in their role as the manipulator, they now became the team lead and people were happy about my return and things started off well. However things again started to fall apart again however this time it wasn't me that was called out, we had a very experienced developer on our team who knew the domain inside out. The manipulator was again making snide comments about this developer calling him old fashioned and not appreciative of the cutting edge and they were bumped to the same support team I just escaped from.

The developer who replaced the departing developer breathed new life into the team, challenging the status quo, constantly suggesting new ideas but the manipulator thought this developer was a threat to the manipulator and well when we had our reviews. This own developer's boss said well we are not going to give you a raise because the manipulator feels you are a disruptive influence and this developer stopped being so enthusiastic and well eventually left.

The atmosphere on team went from being relaxed to fearful, I felt utterly useless, wasn't being productive and quite frankly the manipulator was putting ideas into my head that I was one letting the team down and I only found out about this later on but the manipulator would also make comments to other developers behind my back that I was a pretty useless developer and I belonged in development support and perhaps should leave development all together.

Well feeling useless and quite disillusioned I kicked off the job hunt, got a similar role at another company but had the matter of resigning...

I arranged a meeting with my line manager and he was shocked and scheduled a meeting with higher management with the CEO and they seemed shocked that I was going and in the heat of moment I said "Well I am pretty useless to you guys" and the CEO looked at me and said "No, we wouldn't be having this meeting if you were useless, think about your situation, we will accept your resignation but we will hold your position for a month, if you change your mind I am quite happy to forget about this resignation".

I ended up rejecting that job offer because the prospective job did not feel right and I was taken aback by the CEO's comment. I stayed at the company for another couple of years. Mine and buddy's friendship pretty much cooled at that point, mainly because a part of my staying negotiations I requested I be transferred onto another team and they took it as an affront.

Conclusion

My mistakes in handling this were, firstly, that I had no self confidence in myself, I was on the verge of quitting my developer career and going into testing. I let the manipulator's ideas get into my head and to be honest I believed them for a long time afterwards.

Secondly, I hated confrontation (and to a degree I still do), I should have confronted the manipulator, essentially the manipulator was a bully to get people to do their bidding and hated confrontation.

Thirdly, I should have spoken to management more often, I should have got their assessment of my skills (or lack of). The CEO evidently felt I was worth a meeting when I decided to jump ship.

My advice if you met a person like this, don't trust them, don't make yourself a target and if they are gunning for you confront them. Have confidence in yourself, it's easy as a junior to feel that you are not productive as others.

I am sure they are other mistakes or take aways from this, feel free to stick these into the comments.

Your first interview as a software engineer

Sohail Nasir — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 11:51:58 +0000

Just a note this piece is pretty subjective based on my experience and this is going to be a pretty long read!

So you have spent ages writing and perfecting your CV (or resume), sent to every recruitment agency or company out there and finally you have peaked some interest and have been called for your first interview. Woo it is time to show them what you got!

Now the real challenge begins...

The phone interview

Sometimes you may be asked to participate in a phone interview, normally this is for the hiring manager/interviewer to gauge whether or not it is worth inviting the candidate for a face to face interview, it is also important for you as the candidate to get a feel of the company. Sometimes this is with a technical person such as the head of developer or this can be someone from Human resources, it really depends on the company.

If it is someone from HR, questions will be mostly personal questions such as whether you can legally work in the country? Some history about your work and then general questions about your CV.

However...

It if it is someone that is a bit more technical it can change somewhat, I have been asked a multitude of things and to list them out here would be trivial so I would go through some common examples i have encountered.

Do you understand [x] technology?

Be honest about this one, sometimes a hiring manager might want to see if there is something you may have missed on your CV, sometimes they are trying to gauge your interest in said technology. Never blankly say "Yes" to everything, this gives the wrong impression to hiring manager, they assume 'Oh great they know this technology', they may even ask some follow up questions, back tracking or not answering them correctly might swiftly end the call for the worse.

If you don't know the technology, just come out with it, sometimes if I haven't heard of technology I may ask the hiring manager about it.

The brain teaser...

I personally don't advocate these but I have been asked a whole range of these, some are there to perhaps help the interviewer gauge if the candidate thinks logically, see how they handle the question, there are so many arguments for and against these. Best way to answer these, is think about the problem first, attempt a solution, sometimes if the interviewer is generous they may throw some hints, don't be disheartened if you don't get it.

Language/stack specific

These may be simple questions that require one line answers, they are seldom something you have to explain in depth or know the inner workings of. For example I work predominately in the .Net stack, so questions I was asked in my first phone interviews were "How do you initialise a string in C#?", "What is the difference between a List and an IEnumerable?" or "Why would I use a decimal over an integer in a certain situation".

Make sure you research technologies carefully before the interview, make sure you look at what the company uses, if they use Typescript, try and get a basic understanding of Typescript. Also never make up an answer or try guessing what the interviewer wants to here, this indicates to the interviewer that you would rather lie than look up the answer. If you don't know, just plainly say you don't know and research it when you finish the interview.

Some red flags

Sometimes you can gauge a company the way interviewer speaks to you, I once was on the phone for an interview for a graduate developer position at a university. The interviewer was friendly and polite but they really did not seem bothered about my answers to their questions. I got things back like "That's nice...", "How quaint", no real feedback to my answers. I was invited for a face to face interview but told them forget it, I wasn't interested. I might have acted rashly but I didn't feel they were genuinely, I was just a filler candidate.

Another phone interview I once had was with a government department and again the interviewer was polite and fairly friendly but asked me about my ethnicity, I said I was born in England but my parents were from Pakistan. The interviewer fired back with "that won't do! We thought you were from elsewhere" I replied with excuse me? shocked at the remark, I carried on with the interview as much as I could. I wish I reported the interviewer now but to me that signals a hostile environment that invites racism of some order.

The face to face interview

Sometimes you may go straight to an interview, it can be in many stages and normally there will be technical person there almost most of the time, maybe a HR person and someone from management, it varies from company to company.

When entering the building be polite to whoever you meet, they may be interviewing you or have influence whether your hired or not. I once held the door for a guy dressed in jeans and ripped t-shirt exiting the building where I was going to have an interview and he turned out to be the CEO of the firm.

You will be most likely met by a receptionist or someone from HR, who will direct you to a waiting room or in some cases the interview room, they may offer you water. Again be polite, make conversation if you can, sometimes useful information about the company might be gained this way.

Meeting the interviewers

Depending on what country you are in, this may vary, here in Britain we would stand up, look the interviewer in the eye and shake their hand with confidence but wherever country you are interviewing in, look up local customs and adhere to them.

Often the interviewers would try and break the ice, so questions I have asked to candidates in the past are "So how was the journey here?", "So how far did you travel from?" or the conventional "How are you today?"

Answer how you would normally, don't be profane whatever you do, yes I once had a candidate who actually swore in their opening sentence. This can be a death sentence as it raises red flags, as is this how they may behave when meeting clients or other staff who may be sensitive to profanity.

Questions about the company

The interviewers will ask you questions about the company, this is purely to ascertain how interested you are in the company. So before going to the interview make sure you know some basics about the company, like what sector are they in? Maybe some notable achievements. Most companies these days have websites or at least Googlable information. Do your research!

Technical Section

I covered some of this in the phone interview but you may get asked some run of the mill questions about the language/technology you will use. Then sometimes you will get to present a solution to a problem... Oh goody!

Make sure you understand the problem, if you don't understand or are unclear, don't be afraid to ask. Sometimes the interviewer may not explain it clearly or it may be something you are unsure of. Make an attempt to engineer a solution and optimise at the end. Don't be afraid to say what you could have done better if you had more time.

You may get a coding test... these can be anything from make these unit tests pass to engineer a whole application to process documents. My only advice is make sure you know the stack, don't be afraid to Google or ask the interviewer if they are technical. Most places won't expect a finished all dancing solution, they want to see you preform under pressure and time conditions.

Bring your portfolio

When I was interviewing for my first coding position, I was told by my older brother who was a developer back then to start coding in my free time. I created a few phone applications for the then new Windows phone platform. I brought them with me on my clunky laptop, I made sure the whole thing was loaded up with an IDE window showing my code and a emulator window showing my application, I put my laptop in Suspend mode, so it was all ready to show when it was time.

The code was not perfect, in fact it was horrible to look at, the application was buggy and amateurish but when the development manager went through the application and looked at my code, asked me a few questions around what certain lines did. They were impressed that I actually went through the effort of putting this demo together in a new (at the time) technology, I got the job in the end.

You may get challenged about your code, this is not subjective, this purely to see how you would handle reviews of your code. Don't get offended or spout off some opinion, answer politely, think of good reasons why you wrote in that way, sometimes it may be right to accept the challenge and simple say it sounds good I will get to it tonight or something along those lines.

Don't give up

Always get feedback from the interviewer if you can and learn from any mistakes you may have made. Also sometimes it may be the interviewer felt you weren't a good fit or something else. Think of the interview as a learning experience, not many people get it on their first interview, it took me around 10 interviews before I finally got a job.

In conclusion...

This is aimed for people looking for their first programming job out of school/university and is largely based on my experience as graduate software engineer and when I had to hire from a graduate pool at a former company. A lot of it is based around the UK, so some of this information may not apply to you. Any comments or even thoughts around this, please comment below...