Why I Didn’t Get the Job. 5 Bitter Software Dev Experiences

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

As software developers, we all need to interview for positions at some point. This is usually a stressful time where a team of developers makes a judgment on a candidate to find out if they reach a ‘bar’. If you don’t make it for any reason you’re out. This article represents 5 times The Secret Developer failed to get a job they applied for.

” As I write this article, I imagine that someone is freelance and doesn’t need to interview for their career ever. I’m sure we’ll see them in the comments announcing how WRONG The Secret Developer is.”

That time I didn’t Remember How to Implement a Heap and then sat silently for 15 minutes

“I remember this one, from way before the pandemic. Towards the start of my software career, I spent quite some time practicing data structures and algorithms despite having some rusty memories of how they worked from my university days. 

I found the issue with studying for these tests is precisely which algos and data structures you might need to be able to use. I always found the exact details of the implementation difficult to remember, specifically with heap, I needed to know the following trivia (at least for the question that I needed to answer in this interview) left child = 2i +1, right child = 2i + 2, parent =(index — 1) / 2.

In this interview, I couldn’t remember anything other than I needed to implement a heap. I told the interviewers that without some hints we were not going to be able to progress with a solution. They wouldn't give any hints, so we sat for 15 minutes. I still have no idea why they didn’t release me to go home. Awkward? It made me feel like I should quit being a software engineer altogether.”

That Time I passed 8 hours of interviews. Only for there to be another interview

“I went for an interview with a company that turned out to be an all-day affair. Spectacularly they had an hour interview session in a technology I didn’t use, so I had to use pseudocode.

I was a junior so felt pleasantly surprised I passed the 8 different interviews and lunch session.

However, since they hadn’t told me the interview process before I’d started, I felt surprised that they had another interview in their process. I needed to spend another half-day with the CTO. I prepared for behavioral questions and the like. 

Imagine my surprise when I had a whiteboard and a variation on the LeetCode medium spiral matrix challenge. IIRC I did ‘ok’, even accepting the CTO’s offer of a Kitkat as it got towards lunchtime.

For my trouble (after approaching 12 hours of interviews) I got a ‘dear john’ letter with no feedback. It seems silly to mention (the job was in Asia) but the English from the recruiter was so bad that I had to use a follow-up message to confirm they were not giving me the job. Yes, that happened.”

That time I told them how the problem should be approached. I discussed a ‘faster’ solution but didn’t finish it.

“The interview for this one was quite strange. This company advertises for positions without an accompanying job opening ‘We advertise, so we can get great people’. This means they can be choosy to the extreme and effectively are looking for reasons not to hire. 

Anyway, I digress. The interviewers presented me with a coding challenge, but their explanation was vague and incomplete. They expected me to ‘imagine’ an additional property in an API response. To add to the confusion, the task they set forth was somewhat nonsensical in its construction. I tried to confirm what needed to be done but the interviewers were quite evasive.

Faced with this scenario, I proposed an approach to tackle the problem. I suggested a ‘faster’ solution, acknowledging that it was a quick and dirty method. I intended to implement this as a temporary fix, with plans to refine and optimize it later when time allowed — and told them such. This approach seemed practical given the time constraints and the ambiguous nature of the problem.

The feedback I received post-interview was unexpected. The interviewers suggested that I should have approached the problem differently — they proposed the exact solution I had initially explained to them, but they hadn’t paid attention to my explanation. Why interview if you don’t listen to the candidate? I note that interviewing with this company included being ghosted for 3 weeks in the middle of the process, and they didn’t ask for feedback at the end of it. I guess they aren’t interested in improving?”

That time I completed a coding assessment without knowing the scoring system

“I got accepted for a screening interview with Capital One. They use Code Signal for their interviews which was a new one for me. Still, I can usually pass data structures and algorithms tests these days without too much trouble.

I found out what I could about the tests on the Internet as the instructions for Code Signal don’t really tell you anything. I took some time looking on Reddit and did a bit of study for the test itself.

I woke at 4 am one day to complete the proctored test (so had to wave my driver’s license in front of the webcam). I completed 3 of the 4 puzzles which could be better or worse, but I’d expect it to be a pass grade for an ordinary software development job.

When I got the results back, I have to say I felt disappointed. They rated the speed of my responses at an equal rating to the code passing the test cases. My score of ~800 didn’t get me an interview. I still figure I failed the resume screen after the initial resume screen with a recruiter but frankly, I should have been able to get a ~1000 score. Oh well…”

That time I told the interviewer that I already knew the problem

“I sat at an interview and got the famous 25 horses problem cribbed from Google. In my prep for the interview, I’d actually solved this puzzle. 

I told the interviewers that I knew how to solve the problem from my prep. They said it didn’t matter as they wanted to ‘see how you think’. 

Of course, I retrieved the answers from my medium-term memory and passed that stage of the interview. I still didn’t get the job.”

Also that Time I GOT the job (but nobody told me)

“This is a story about when I got a job, but nobody offered the position to me. Long story short, I applied for a multinational through an external recruiter. I went through a written test and a face-to-face technical grilling. I passed it all, but nobody got back to me about the position. I interviewed for another job at the same time and passed the Interview.”

Learnings

Assume interviewers don’t listen

“The importance of clear communication and active listening should not be underestimated. When I told an interviewer that my solution was suboptimal I should have recognized that they would not necessarily be listening. When dealing with vague requirements and the ability to swiftly adapt to situations as an interviewee you need to take command of the situation. The technical interview is not just testing technical expertise but your ability to manage the interview.”

Few companies telegraph expectations

“So many times, I’ve engaged in an interview process without knowing what is being looked for. This can manifest in uncertainty about what the next step in the process is. 

There never seems a good time to ask ‘what happens next’. The same actually applies to the trivia questions asked at the interview. Do you want the 15-second, 30-second or 1-hour explanation? I’ve actually directly asked for immediate feedback about the verbosity of my answer in a recent interview.”

Feedback is valuable

“When The Secret Developer fails at an interview it is typically because of lack of practice at any given time. The only way to get great feedback? That’s by interviewing. Even if there is no formal written feedback you usually get SOME feedback. That might just be the absence of a job offer but it might also be the questioning of the interviewers of their faces as you respond to their questions. 

It isn’t much but at least it is something!”

You need to practice interviewing 

“This is an important thing to remember when you are taking interviews. It seems you can never pass your first interview in a series. To get great at interviews you need some practice and to get better over time. Save your most ‘wanted’ job for the last one of a series of interviews in a 6-month block. You’ll probably get it then.”

Only the best companies consider the candidate

“Only during an interview process did the company coach me in what was expected during a subsequent interview. They seemed to want candidates to do as well as they could and help out those interviewees with limited interview experience who get locked out of many jobs because of bias in the interview process.

One company from 100+. Says everything about the standard of tech interviews.”

Conclusion

You might not always get it right. Given enough practice you should be able to make sure you get it right in the end.

“That should be enough. But it does get me thinking about what the point is in all these interviews as they don’t seem to be filtering the right people. Save that thought for another day though.”