URI originalPost = devJobInterview[0];
I'm writing this in a separate post so people can go back and read the first before seeing the outcome.
So the day finally came, from the moment I woke up to the moment just before the interview I felt so nervous that I almost got sick. About 10 minutes before the interview I had to take a quick walk around outside to get some air and try to calm myself down. Living in Arizona that wasn't the best idea since it was around 95 at the time, but it didn't really feel all too bad. When the meeting started I got confused when I was in a side office and had no messages or meeting invites from my interviewer. I go back to my desk real quick to grab a drink and when I'm about 5 feet away I can hear my desk phone ring, my interviewer was calling my desk. I answered the phone and asked if we were holding a Webex meeting for this instead(they are in Rochester NY so I could really just waltz into their meeting room, and I'm sure I would have been the first one in there just because I like to be early everywhere. Bad habit). She agrees that a webex meeting is a better option and sends the invite to the computer in the side office. I get on and as soon as we do a quick greeting, the webex meeting dies......No problem I work PC support I've seen this happen plenty of times. I quickly get the meeting back up and there are small laughs around with my technical prowess of getting everything back up quickly.
We do another greeting as we're not sure if I heard the name of the the other two in the room. My interviewer(We'll call her Maranda), a manager of the other team that I'll be working closely with(We'll call her Gloria), and the developer who got hired on to that other team I'd be working closely with (We'll call him Roland, because I like Borderlands).
First set of questions are your typical "What got you interested in programming" "What kinds of projects have you done" "If you wear two different color socks do you own it or just go without them"(Not a real question but some of them didn't seem linked at all.
First Technical question: "How would you get information from an array, let's say a persons name, and retrieve that information to then feed into an API service?" This was where the fun began. I asked my questions: Is the name split up into different indexes of the array? Do I know the index that the name is in? Am I doing part of the name or the full name? First middle last? Is it deliminated in a way that I can pull by a comma or a space? All of the important things to know. After that I gave my answer. I feel like I kinda over explained it, but at the same time I wanted to be thorough with how I would go about it. I have the feeling I aced the first technical question and that I'm off to a good start.
Whiteboarding question: "Do you know what a palindrome is?" Yeah, when you can spell a word the same way in reverse and get the same word. "Good, now use Racecar, or my favorite Tacocat(this guy has a good sense of humor already) and write and application for us that figures out if what you have is a palindrome"
My mind: Blank........
FUCK What do I do? Palindromes aren't hard. It's just taking a string and......and......what the fuck do I do with a string? What is a string? What is C#? Why is the sky blue? Why do dogs bark? Oh brother where for art thou? I had no clue what I was doing.......I pull up Notepad++ (which they said was fine) and I start to try and code something. Start with an a public/private bool isPalindrome(string input). NAILED IT! SWEET! Next~........what do I right after that? Well for my own taste at the top I put bool foundPal = false; Why do you ask? Because I just like to return a variable in the case something weird goes on....not the most efficient sometimes, but it's my style. THEN!.....then.......for some reason I start with a Dictionary..........and it all goes down hill from there. I'm just typing with no real idea where I'm going, I'm trying to think how I'm going to work this. i'm used to testing this as I'm coding them because I'm a bad coder that hasn't tried to work in a TDD way yet.
Finally after watching me struggled for about 5 minutes Roland speaks up: "So why don't you explain what you're trying to do here". I start rambling and realizing how stupid my Dictonary idea was at first (I know a way to make it work now, but it's too late). Then Roland says "Now what if you were to think of things in a different way. You know how palindromes can be read the same way backwards?"
My mind this time: YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT SG! YOU KNOW C# HAS A STRING REVERSE FUNCTION.
Me out loud: C# has a string reverse function and I could just check that against the original input and make it return true if it's a palindrome.
Roland: That's right. Another popular way would have been to use an index at the end and at the beginning of the array and make your way to the center and check if each letter matches until you hit the center or if you pass the beginning and end.
My mind: IT'S LIKE A FUCKING WALK CLOSING IN ON ITSELF WHILE CHECKING CHARACTERS. YOU'RE BETTER THAN THIS SG!
I was devastated and almost slammed my head against the desk. I have a feeling that Maranda and Gloria could tell because they quickly changed the subject to telling me more about what I would be doing if I got the role, how many interviews they had left, Roland brought up Relocated back to Rochester which before was a tricky subject (I had just moved to AZ from Rochester back in August 2018) and even though I fought it tooth and nail before I said I wouldn't be opposed to relocating because doing something I enjoy and wanting to further my career was more important than my hatred for snow. This seemed to ease everyone.
Final thing just before the interview because I wanted to at least poke fun at Roland is:
How do you write your code blocks?
if(statement){
}
or
if(statement)
{
}
Well shit, I threw down the gauntlet and restarted the holy war!
Roland: Well you're the one being interviewed. What do you think the write way is?
He got me.
Me: I would use what ever the team or company standard of coding would be. Readability is more important than my own personal input to the way code should be written.
Roland: Well that's a trick question and you just got it write. I like it.
Very unsure how this will go now. I failed the whiteboarding part, passed(I think) the technical question and was able to prove I do have at least some knowledge in how a team of developers work within a company. So.....Yeah. That's how my interview went. How was your day?
TLDR: I think I did well, but I think I failed, but I think I did well. You should just read it for the real feeling of failed and did well.
Submitted June 19, 2019 at 06:16AM by SG_Moto http://bit.ly/2x5pC5q
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