Tech Jobs and Interviews

It's a challenge to outperform all the other candidates in a competitive tech job only, but there is hope. You can improve your performance with practice and watching out for these gotchas: Make absolutely sure you are solving the right problem: I ran into this the other day. It is entirely a communication issue. When doing an initial screen over the phone, this problem is compounded. For example, maybe an interviewee is hacking out a function that returns the k highest priced products when the interviewer is expecting the kth highest priced product. One can squander a lot of time due to these misunderstandings. A good interviewer will try to guide you back to the right path, but you can't expect this. Be sure to ask questions. Confirm that the input and output are exactly what you expect. Use examples. Don't ever give an interviewer the impression that you are avoiding writing real code. This is an impression thing. This is a coding interview so you should be expecting...

Why Code Reviews? Code review is a practical and important skill that truly distinguishes the highly experienced engineer. Knowing what are the common pitfalls, where to look for them, and how to understand someone else's code quickly is an invaluable skill to have. It is also a skill that is rarely taught in school. To really ramp up your programming skills, get out there and read other people's code. Reading high quality code is a good learning experience. Occasionally reading poorly written code is also insightful. What are the most common errors and where do you find them? Through code reviews, software engineers can spread knowledge through their teams as well as improve consistency and code quality. For the interviewee, you have to review your own code, so it helps to know what are the things you need to double check. One great way to evaluate a team's culture is to probe and understand their code review practices or lack thereof. Below, I will cover some of the be...

There is no shortcut. You have to know your stuff cold. However, keep it manageable. You have a finite amount of time to prepare so find out what are your weaknesses and double down on those until you know the material cold. I mean, to ace the interview, you really need to feel comfortable and be able to knock out problems with confidence. There are some important steps to take to improve your chances, but they all revolve around making yourself comfortable and knowing the material. Here are a few ideas for small steps that could make your next interviewing experience better: Get comfortable with the environment You can't control much about the environment of the interview. Who knows, maybe you run into a particularly pathological scenario where the AC just happened to break down and the interviewer is unwilling to open the window despite sweltering summer heat. There is little you can do about that except dress with contingency plans. More practically, you need to get comfor...

Many interview prep books focus on the bread and butter coding interviewing questions, but in real interviews your interviewer may pose other types of questions. It is important to be comfortable and come prepared for these other types of questions which depart dramatically for coding questions yet still may bear considerable weight in your interview evaluation. Behavioral & experience These are the standard non-technical interview questions where the interviewer asks about what you did in particular scenarios and how you performed in the roles listed on your resume. Language specific knowledge questions There is a manageable set of questions for each common programming language. There are questions for uncommon languages too should to encounter a company that emphasizes their use of some of the lesser known languages. Usually these questions attempt to probe for your knowledge of some differentiator and key feature of the programming language. For example, virtual functio...

You past the gauntlet, having nailed every single question your interviewer threw at you, and now the interviewer asks if you have any questions for him or her. Still recovering from the ordeal, your mind draws a big blank. You blurt out something incoherent about benefits and their mission. Before you get yourself into this situation, just as with coding questions, it is helpful to be prepared to interview your interviewer. Though we never can be sure of the outcome of interview, organized interviewers will leave time for you to ask questions about the company, nature of the work, and their experience. It is important that you make the best of this opportunity to show your sincere interest and to learn more about the company and team to determine if it is a right fit and what to expect. Of course, given this is a team member or even the supervisor, you may have to take what they say with a grain of salt, but asking some well thought out questions can help tease out what the work an...