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#jobs-discuss
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2021-09-01
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marciol15:09:09

I just declined an interview process because I think that I will be ashamed to show that I'm in fact a Google/Slack/Discourse/Ad-Hoc Driven Developer. Anyone experienced something similar?

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annarcana15:09:41

I would not be ashamed, I would blame the interviewer. Whiteboard/live-coding interviews are unrealistic measures of how real coding works. Every programmer googles stuff. Programming is too complicated to hold all of it in your head, and part of the job and the skillset is knowing how to find what you need. I hate homeworks but at least they allow you to work as you really would.

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Darrell15:09:53

@U28A9C90Q Can you describe what the interview process was going to be? I’m curious.

dgb2316:09:46

@U28A9C90Q you’re likely experiencing fear, specifically fear of failure. This is one of our greatest enemies. It can stem from many things, such as false pride, impostor syndrome, social anxiety etc. But it is ultimately a road block that can even choke you to submission. The only way to combat fear is to face it. Get out there, fail, try again. Maybe you’ll learn that you shouldn’t be afraid at all, maybe that interview processes are random/unfair at some places or maybe you will learn that you should be improving your technical foundations more (continuously). But if you don’t face it, you can’t learn any of those things, only that you didn’t try. Which is fine too, it’s a different type of failure, so my advice is: be glad you made this mistake and try again!

dgb2316:09:05

However this is all assuming that the process would be somewhat reasonable. I’ve heard many reports of very unreasonable processes. Depending on your situation an unreasonable process might be a signal that the job simply isn’t worth applying to. It’s an investment after all.

marciol17:09:21

Just a web server they said, in any language I feel more comfortable, but despite years of web development, I don't remember the last moment which I had to build a bare server, even more in languages that I am more experienced with. Maybe it would better just to assume that Google and Clojurians is part of my workflow, furthermore Clojure is a dynamic language with a dynamic environment, so a discovering approach should be seen as a good thing.

marciol17:09:03

Thank you @U01EFUL1A8M, all your words have to sense

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Darrell17:09:36

I’m not sure what they think such an exercise is supposed to tell them about any candidates skills, considering how easy it is to find code to do that on StackOverflow and Google. I think what @U01EFUL1A8M said is valid, however. Disobey the fear. 🙂

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dgb2317:09:43

Well if you have time to do it, it might be a valuable and fun exercise regardless. It might not be the best test of skill as said above, but especially since you’ve never done it you might gain some subtle insights and a chunk of confidence too!

marciol17:09:59

Yes, my main tool since 2007 is Ruby and I think that the low level stuff I had done with it is little sinatra services, almost all of my time was expended on Rails.

dgb2317:09:30

I feel you! I sometimes do little projects like these to break through abstractions that I have become comfortable using. “Toy” compilers, OSs, databases, editors and so on. It’s fun and valuable, especially since it dispels the magic, or rather lets you wield it like a wizard! I don’t have a degree, so for me these things are novel and kind of important as well. I highly recommend doing this type of thing!

marciol17:09:29

Yes, I built some time ago a bare server with Clojure, but being a something that I only do occasionally, its complicated to participating in a live code interview doing it, it’s hard even to know if google about how to do it is appropriate or not, so I left the process with a bitter taste, but ok, I’ll continue using Ruby and try to insert Clojure as another tool at my disposition when I feel that it can be a fit.

walterl19:09:19

> being a something that I only do occasionally, its complicated to participating in a live code interview doing it 💯 This thread totally reminded me of how, after many years of working on existing Django apps, I never really learned/memorized how to use django-admin to create one; I had to look it up every time. If a prospective employer expects me to know such seldomly used incantations by heart, it's probably not a great fit.

dgb2319:09:11

Oh yes I fully agree with this. I have a comparatively weak memory, so I tend to look up stuff that I don’t regularly use.

marciol19:09:50

Yes, and I have heard from recruiters that they are experienced a hard time convincing people to expend a lot of time in this kind of interview. Seems that a proven track record with referrals is not enough for a lot of companies, but rants will not lead us to anywhere, time to move forward

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sova-soars-the-sora04:09:30

lein new ring ... 😄

sova-soars-the-sora04:09:13

yeah might not be a company you wanted to work for anyway. you'll find a good one just keep looking and applying ^>^

seancorfield05:09:13

I've been a professional software developer for close to forty years at this point and there's so much stuff that's just pointless to memorize because we have such easy access to search tools and knowledge bases -- and even within the codebase I've worked on for a decade, I don't need to memorize much because the REPL lets me see docstrings with just a hotkey. Our brains can only hold a certain amount of information so why not optimize for the useful stuff that is harder to just lookup, and not bother with anything you can lookup in seconds...

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seancorfield05:09:49

It's my big objection to most certification exams: they're tests of what you can memorize more than anything else so, to me, they are absolutely worthless.

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annarcana08:09:25

> "Educated people are not those who know everything, but rather those who know where to find, at a moment’s notice, the information they desire.