Over the past 2 months I have interviewed with several companies and 2 of them stood out at rejecting me. Let's call them Company A, and Company B!
I know right? Developers are bad at naming!
I guess part of it is my fault too! I am old and slow. Doesn't like competitive programming and already forgot most of how to answer algorithm question. I can't even answer some of the algorithm question I've flawlessly answered back when I was fresh out of University.
Company A
When I got chance to interview at Company A, they require me to answer HackerRank style interview. It's my first time in nearly a decade of working in the industry to feel like I'm in a classroom exam again. I hate it, and I deliberately voiced my distaste to the answers comment:
// Paraphrasing
// I'm sorry, I'm dumb!
// I never faced anything like this in real world work...
// ......
But guess what? My answer still pass the score, have a call with their VP, which proceed to have another call with their Lead Engineer.
Talked about my experience with Event Driven System and CQRS+ES and they decided that I am:
- Arrogant
- Too RND in my tech stack
- And overkill in CQRS+ES
And decided they don't need me.
They hate me for having a headstrong personality which translates as Arrogance to the perceiving end.
Company B
Another HackerRank style interview. Guess I passed their score this time without me typing some strong comment and proceed to have another test with their Lead Engineer.
This time they want 5 question answered in google docs within 60 minutes.
Two of them stood out to me for being impossible to work on 12 minutes (60 / 5 if you're wondering). Or maybe I'm just old and dumb?!
The others are just questions copied word for word from Geeks For Geeks.
One of the question requires me to write a password brute force attack to an imaginary API.
The other requires me to find a combination of math + or - operation from a strings of numbers that results in a number.
My Arrogance kicks in and I start typing a comment
// Paraphrasing
// I am sorry but I feel this is impossible for me to think of in 12 minutes
// (60 / 5 if you're wondering)
// But I know you guys got this question from Rosseta Code!
// Here's the link, but I don't know the logic behind it
See? I've worked on this question back when I was still a University student and remember where to look at.
Unsurprisingly, I've heard the feedback that I was rejected although I've answered one of their question FLAWLESSLY. I know they are being sarcastic at this point. haha.
I was trying to be honest about what I can and can't do in the N minutes timeframe and the Industry hates me.
I guess The Industry love people who can grind GFG or other algorithm websites, remember the solutions out of their head, and quietly answer their genuinely original question without pointing the flaws back at them.
Top comments (3)
Or company look for google level genius while paying pennies?Or ordinary company thinks they are FAANG and looks for google level genius?
There are other ways to gauge skill levels.
None of them are ideal for both sides.
This is the game the industry plays right now and I am content to say that I apparently just suck at the game.
I can just keep my hands shut and maybe they won't mind having me? We'll never know I guess?
Each team searches not only for a great professional, but also a teammate. It might be that you still haven't found folks, that are close to you by spirit and will welcome you to their family. Good Luck!
I know the feel.
I love coding web-apps in React that are beautiful and useful. I also have a couple of them used by a lot of people that ask me updates everyday, but I still get rejected if I don't code correctly the Reverse Polish Notation calculator in 15minutes.
It doesn't matter how good you are at your job, or how well your experiences and side projects tells about your skills. If you are not the rockstar they want you are not worth of consideration.