Comments by "Christian Baune" (@programaths) on "The Worst Tech Interview Ever | Prime Reacts" video.

  1. I did interviews and also offered practice interviews. There was a guy who did everything wrong. I told him to dress like he would for an interview; his trouser zipper was wide open, and not all button on his skirt was buttoned. So, I had to tell him to go out and fix himself. During the interview, he lied overtly, knowing I read his CV and knew his track. During the interview, he gradually turned his head to the side; at a point, he was looking at his side while speaking to me. After a few interviews that mainly went ok, I told him we would get someone from the floor to spectate the interview. He started begging me to not do that while we walked down the hallway to find someone with some spare time. So, I couldn't do it because I sensed he would be broken. I called HR instead because he knew that girl from HR. He lied during the interview again. He was fired because he was terrible on all fronts. In an interview, I got someone so out of place that I asked him: what is the company's name? The CEO was sitting on my side and looked at me like, "Did I really hear that question?". I was so confused by the candidate's answer that I believed he went to the wrong interview. 😂 Another interviewee was a girl who thought she would get the job because no girls were on the team. I had to explain to her that she did poorly. I also had a phone screening. One guy laughed loudly and answered poorly after bragging. He was shortlisted by the CEO, to whom I explained the BS. In another company, we had an interviewee who did spit nonsense. So, we gave him a generated text from "pipotron" and asked the guy what he thought. He gave the same kind of answer to that. I also had a guy who didn't do great with English and couldn't understand Javadoc properly. But during problem-solving, he showed great intelligence, and when explaining the JavaDoc, what he said made some sense. So, we ended the interview; I gave the feedback and told him he would be hired if he wanted to move forward. His answer was heartbreaking. He asked if it was affirmative action at play because of his skin color. He did great. So, yes, interviews can be wild ^^
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  2.  @nnnik3595  It's not the end of the world ^^ But it is when you go to a practice interview 😂 In one company, I interviewed a guy in short, tongs, and vaping. The manager had already eliminated him, just by the look. As I use a protocol and don't mind the attire (except in training), I processed the guy. He did apply for a PHP role and flunked all the technical parts. He didn't know PHP 😂 So, I told him to use pseudo-code. He did pass the test (except the PHP part, of course) with flying colors. So, he was a hire. In 2 or 3 weeks, he learned enough PHP to be number 1 in the team. After six months, he wanted to go somewhere else because he did learn nothing new and wasn't challenged. I was also the QAM in that company and reviewed his production, which quickly became damn good 😂 He did stay because I told him it would be challenging to have someone like me, who takes the time to teach, in another company. Also, because he was a high performer, I didn't mind that he did some toy projects on the side between tasks. I caught him once; he was afraid, and I told him that I didn't care about that. All I care about is work being accomplished correctly and it's done. Way to keep your devs happy ^^ The manager also forced hire (i.e., ignored the interview results), and that guy was nice but did terrible work and didn't learn. The perpetual junior ^^ It's why I always use protocols and not guts. So, a free fly would have been a side note that would have been discarded unless there were real damaging things like lying or a bad attitude (which I tested partially). I was way harsher in mock interviews because interviewers tend to be superficial. My goal was not to prepare people for interviews that focus on their ability to do the work but their ability to answer stupid questions well. For example, while analogies are great, they are dangerous if the interviewer doesn't understand them. Another pitfall is speaking of people—especially individuals as imponderables. Another one is not being able to give practical examples that the layman can understand. A bad example is: «I used dichotomic search to identify records based on a time range, knowing that the unique id is monotonically increasing.» That's a pretty reasonable explanation, but it sounds like bullshit and misses the fact that it was done because the sole index was on the unique ID. So, you have to make it a story: «We had a table with only one index on the primary key. I noticed that as the id increased, the time was increasing too. So, I used a basic algorithm called dichotomic search. (ask if the interviewer knows and explain) That way, I could identify the first and last id of the rows to delete efficiently because it takes log(n) to find a row—a maximum of 20 queries for a million rows. Without that, the query to find the rows would have required a full table scan. We are looking at hours for one query.» Much less brief, but now you've: - The problem - The solution - Why the solution does better - How good is the solution So, instead of hearing some bullshit, the interviewer saw that you understood the problem and found an adequate solution with a proper estimate of its efficiency. When I did the interview and heard "BS," I would ask the candidate to expand a bit. Saving them from themselves 😂 And my usual note: your typical recruiter processes 10 to 20 people daily. So they have to find shortcuts. That's ugly and primarily unfair for everyone involved, but they have no choice. I was lucky to do recruitment while I was working at different places and dedicate a full hour (sometimes more) to candidates. I also have training in psycho-technics, which helps. And the technical background too. I think even ASD helps 😂
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