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I failed a coding Interview 😞

Ojay on October 02, 2022

“Hi Oj, thanks for meeting Matt today for a second interview. After careful consideration, we decided not to move forward at this moment…” Thi...

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Favour Felix • Oct 3 '22

Love the confidence in your skills that made you request for another interview. Epic! Surely, there are better days ahead.

Anurag Vishwakarma • Oct 3 '22

Bro keep learning.

Alvaro • Oct 3 '22

as an interviewer and having created this process in multiple places. I want to also add, that is important the interaction and attitude.The thing that is less important for me is the code.
Communication is key, do you accept feedback, do you share knowledge, are you an active listener, anyone can code, not to much people are able to cooperate without ego, specially as they move forward into being "seniors".

Mortensen Cristian • Oct 5 '22

You will have a lot of interviews in your life, and you will fail lots of them. The important thing is to learn from them as much as possible, and always ask why you don't get the job it could be (technical reasons, communicational reasons, money, timezone) and always be transparent, that way you will be more prepared to the next opportunity. Trust me! And good luck next time!

Adam Gardner • Oct 6 '22

Keep on keeping on man, the hardest part of working...getting the job. As someone who interviews many developers for the company I work at, its all about selling yourself. 90% of the interview I have with each person is all about personality and who the person is. I can teach anyone to code, teaching someone to interact with people that has to be there already. Best of luck to you Ojay.

AlexParton • Oct 4 '22

At some point we should talk about companies doing stupid technical tests with problems that will never appear in the field like the ridiculous bucket algorythm that doesnt reveal anything but a programmer with good memory.
Red Flag, move on OJ, you deserve better!

栈烟 • Oct 7 '22

The next one will always be better！And ~~ review this interview to understand your weekness❀

cubiclesocial • Oct 4 '22

Jobs for "remote work" are generally limited to country of origin and every business everywhere will always prefer a local resident who works remotely over a really remote worker. Many remote workers are still generally expected to come into the office from time to time for on-site meetings and the like. So they want the person to live in the country and also not be too far away physically from the office building. So just because a job description says "remote work" does not mean halfway around the world or even in the next state over within the U.S. Some "remote work" jobs actually want people to live in the same state or even same city as the job. Those requirements make it easier for tax purposes for the business but I can see how it would be confusing to the uninitiated or upsetting to get through an interview process and find out everyone's time had been wasted.

Should you keep applying to U.S.-based jobs? It doesn't hurt to try.

Question: Do you go by "Oj" or "Ojay?" The reason I ask is because you say the CTO said "Oj" in their message, not "Ojay." You should stick to your full first name when interacting with U.S. employers. There was a certain "O.J." a while ago that people here in the U.S. still remember.

Matt Ellen-Tsivintzeli • Oct 3 '22

Thanks for sharing. There are not enough stories like this in public.

Jeff Chavez • Oct 5 '22

True.

Mighty • Oct 5 '22

Try and try one day you will get a offer. Please take a note what are things asked and the. You can study those part. I am also attending interviews these days and still no luck. But I will never give up until I got a offer.

Duy K. Bui • Oct 9 '22 • Edited

I agreed with everything you said except for this.

Try to demonstrate your technical prowess in your code rather than applying the quick fix to the task at hand.

Do neither. Instead, solve the exercise as if it's a real task you are going to solve on the job. Show your consideration for maintainability, extensibility, security, scalability, performance, etc. If you don't have enough time to take care of something, add an in-code comment or at least say something to the interviewers about it. That is how I usually tell junior developers from the more mature ones: the juniors focus solely on coding while more mature ones consider other aspects of building a system. Senior ones will have to consider even more, like deadlines and business objectives, and are able to make reasonable (and later amendable) compromises when needed.

Ojay • Oct 11 '22

I totally agree with you, @khuongduybui... This serves as a more illustrative example of my summary. Thank you

Fernando Tinoco • Oct 5 '22

Keep it up bro!

As for me, I've had several interviews in last weeks, but unfortunately I haven't been able to get a new job, but this is what it is, and the only thing I can do is to keep trying, I believe that good things are coming our way :)

In my case, my English level is my stopper to get my dream job, but I'm improving it every day.

Don't lose heart, just have confidence in yourserlf.

hjrobinson • Oct 5 '22 • Edited

Sometimes it's impossible to know exactly what's in people's heads or what they want. It's not always about your skills. Someone may write their code in a certain way and they want someone who just happens to write code in a similar fashion. This is not an exact parallel to what you experienced but I remember when I took my first (and only) programming course in college (which I ultimately failed) that I managed to find a solution that worked perfectly for the problem that that the instructor presented. But because I didn't solve the problem the same way he would have or what was the most common solution I got a low grade. Some folks are more concerned with the route you take. I can see how this makes sense of if your code is overly verbose but aside from that it's just being finicky and that's just how some people are. Sooner or later you'll find someone who's less finicky or who's style of coding lines up with yours. You may find an employer who is patient enough to allow you to learn to code in their style. If you really want to find a job don't quit. Otherwise try to find a way to freelance. Good luck.

Jose Ignacio Santa Cruz G. • Oct 8 '22

Remote positions have that catch, of location and language. For example I live in Chile, South America, Spanish speaking country. For some reason the company's job offerings in Spanish, appeared like open world wide. The thing is that even our remote workers are native Spanish speakers, and we still got many applications from Nigeria in English.
Not blaming anyone, but even if you're a great developer, language can easily get you lost in translation (I know it's not your specific case, but had to tell this story).

Oleksandr • Oct 8 '22

As an interviewer, i expect to have some dialogue. Code task is just a subject to have some discussion around it.
The worst thing you can do is look into task and do nothing or write terrible solution.
Instead, you can discuss how would you solve a problem, why would you choose this solution.
Also, it's very important to ask questions, it's better to ask something rather than assume.

spO0q • Oct 3 '22

nice feedback @oj_redifined ! No success without failures. I'm sure you'll get through next time!

Ojay • Oct 3 '22

Thank you @jmau111

Tonghe Wang • Oct 3 '22

Bro, carry on. With the way you learn and reflect, I’m sure best things are just around the corner.

DG Royals • Oct 7 '22

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Edwardprogrammer • Oct 3 '22

Becoming a programmer can be really hard.

Anass Allabou • Oct 4 '22

Big up bro, wish you all the best

Lars Ejaas • Oct 4 '22

Thanks for sharing and good luck with your next interview(s).
Really digging into the feedback and trying to grow from this experience is going to be SO helpful. Keep going, you can do this! 💪