|
|
|
why I'm bad at technical interviews
Thursday, February 1 2024
At 1:00pm, I had my technical interview for some company that had been cagey about what software they make. This was a job that I'd thought would require ReactJS knowledge, which was what I'd been cramming on. But all the programming questions I got today were about C#. There's no other way to say it: it was a complete disaster, as my technical interviews generally are. I have a couple problems that make me struggle during such interviews.
One is that, as a self-taught developer, I don't know all that much theory and sometimes don't even know pertinent terminology. My experience with software development has been entirely practical, a series of problems that need to be solved. When that's what I'm doing, I'm as good as anyone I've ever worked with and generally have superior problem solving skills. This is why throughout my career, I'm the one always given the problems that nobody else can solve.
The other big problem when I'm interviewing is that the parts of my brain needed to socialize (that is, the ones that judge other people's emotions and come up with responses to their questions) are the same ones I use to manipulate code. So when I'm engaged in a social interaction, I have little capacity to analyze or produce code. Foremost in my brain is a conscious wondering what the other person is thinking and what I should do about it. This is particularly true when interacting with a stranger interviewing me for a job. There is a great deal more mental processing needed when analyzing the emotional state of someone with no known backstory.
This is all background for the many ways in which the interview went poorly. It started with a question about two C# objects with identical properties. I was asked if they would be equal and I thought they would be. Evidently people who know this stuff on a deeper level would know right away that the correct answer was they are not equal. (I still don't know why.) Then I was asked the difference between a struct and an object, and I didn't have a good answer. This gets at my knowledge of C# theory, which is nonexistent, except for the cases where I needed to know it to solve real problems that I'd encountered. Next I was directed to a file of C# code and asked if I could identify any problems with it. I looked at it and looked at it but could barely focus any energy on it because a little voice inside my head was telling me I had to come up with something to please the interviewer. Then another voice would ask how I might gracefully abort the interview. I never managed to come up with any response at all, so we moved on to the next thing. I was shown a skeleton of C# code with the task of coming up with methods and such (based on a provided interface) to manipulate a chunked array (that is, an array with grouped sequences of items). As I worked on it, I gradually became more comfortable with what I was doing and less concerned with the thoughts of the interviewer, and I actually managed to write some code, though of course none of it worked. After that, there was a question about the version managing system git. And then it was mercifully over.
I went downstairs feeling glum and Gretchen (who had been on the phone all that time with her friend Lynne) asked how it gone. "It was torture," I declared emphatically. "Oh, honey, I'm sorry!" she said, adding, "put on some pants!" The plan for this afternoon was to drive over to Red Hook to check out antique door latching mechanisms at Hoffman's Barn, an architectural salvage place. Then we'd be going to the Historic Village Diner north of Red Hook's downtown for lupper, my favorite meal of the day.
Though I'd worked for years less than a mile away, I'd never been to Hoffman's Barn, which is a shame, because they have a lot of fun stuff like vintage tools, antique fixtures, and such. They don't have the bulky items like kitchen sinks and toilets that you can get at Zaporski's Emporium. But they had a box full of old door latching mechanisms, which seemed to come in a variety of standards. We needed a replacement for the door latching system on the front door of the Golden Notebook (the bookstore where Gretchen works) which hasn't latched shut in years. This hadn't been a problem, since the dead bolt works, and friction holds the door shut otherwise. But Gretchen wants to bring Charlotte to work with her occasionally, and Charlotte had figured out she could run out to meet passing dogs by simply pushing the door open. Unfortunately, Hoffman's didn't seem to have any latching mechanism that operate via a thumb-activated lever (which is what is needed for the Golden Notebook's front door), and when I asked one of the guys there, he said such mechanisms were rare. He said that simply fixing the existing mechanism might not be too difficult, since (in his experience), most problems with them is a failed spring. He suggested we bring it by and he'd try to fix it. This, of course, led me to think that I might be able to fix it myself. Gretchen and I also considered replacing the mechanism with one using the more-common rotating doorknob, but the Hoffman guy said that getting it to fit would be a challenge. Still, we didn't leave empty-handed, buying an old iron coat hook decorated with a rooster.
It was about 4:00pm when we got to the diner, and the lupper crowd was a respectable (if geriatric) one. Gretchen and I both ordered veggie burgers with fries from our super-competent waitress. We also got a side of spaghetti with marinara sauce as if there was a potential it would be good. But I knew we'd had it in the past and it wasn't so great. When I tasted it, I was struck by a dissonant flavor note of something like cinnamon, nutmeg, or perhaps cloves. What was that doing in there? This rendered it inedible for Gretchen, though I managed to eat about half of it. We talked some about what I might do if I keep having bad job interviews, and decided I should probably pursue a venture I have that Gretchen and I think her father might fund, if only as a way to launder an intergenerational money transfer (which otherwise, he seems to have concluded, would be heavily taxed). As we discussed these things, I had little voice in my head telling me that I'm not really a very good software developer and that's why I can't fucking pass a technical interview. The horrible experience I'd had earlier was so humiliating that it was causing me to question my self-worth.
Back at the house, I busied myself by fixing all the mangled insulation on the indoor spans of refrigerant piping for the new mini-split using spray foam. Much of this was along the south wall of the laboratory. I also sprayed foam around the pipes in the places where it passed through walls: from the first floor office into the laboratory, from the laboratory into the laundry room, and from the laundry room to the outdoors.
As I was lying in bed before going to sleep, I watched a truly astonishing Holmes Inspection where a young couple bought a beautiful freshly-renovated house after a bidding war only to discover that it had been nearly-destroyed by termites. Along one wall, its wooden frame was sitting directly on soil, all of which had been hidden beneath spray foam and then covered up with drywall. It had passed a home inspection, though I'm seeing a pattern on this show: realtors recommending an inspector, who then pass the house, allowing the sale to proceed. Clearly the realtor and thus the inspector have interests that don't align with the buyer, since they both want a sale, whereas the buyer wants a sale only if the house passes the inspection. A similar dynamic played out when we bought the house we now live in in Hurley. Our realtor Larry found us a home inspector, who passed the house with a few trivial mentions of minor wiring issues and a light critique of the amateurishly-designed slab heating system. But he completely missed a serious foundation issue that had already caused the north-south walls of the basement to go two degrees out of plumb and was threatening a foundation collapse in the southwest corner of the house (an issue I fixed after great effort beginning in 2004). We never got inspections for any of the properties we've bought since then. This is partly because such inspections can't be trusted (even from inspectors without a conflict of inerest), but it's also because I have the general technical skills necessary to do my own inspections.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?240201 feedback
previous | next |
