20+ year dev here, successful CTO, built many production systems, etc. I tend to bomb >50% of tech interviews.
I started doing better when I realized most tech interviews are not aligned with my brain, and that is ok. I have bad recall for syntax or even for things I've built in the past if I'm not currently engaged with them. This can come across like I am a bullshitter, or wholly incompetent. I also stumble through leetcodes - I remember enough to identify to right approach but fumble knocking out solutions in 15 minutes.
But this is fine! If everyone at a company has focused on powering through leetcodes to get the role, or the job demands photographic memory of HTTP codes ("what is code 428 used for?" An actual interview question I have seen...) I am probably not a good fit and won't enjoy the work or the culture.
Once you focus on the things you do well and find companies whose interview process emphasizes those aspects, things become much easier. Let go of the feeling that every interview is a minimal bar that any functioning SWE should be able to pass. If it was, they would be hiring every other applicant.
Some roles they give you a task and fail you quietly if you don't solve it using TDD, even if they don't mention that as a requirement. Or if you don't ask details about requirements, even for narrow toy problems. You are never going to guess all the gotchas that a company can throw up in front of you, so my advice is to confront each interview by working in the way you like to work. Show off your good attributes when you can. Listen to hints of course, but represent yourself honestly and assume at least half the companies will reject you no matter what you do, and that is fine.
Often that attitude will earn you more marks than trying to conform to what you guess the company wants to see.
Yeah, thank you for that response, I agree it’s more about how you and interviewer see some problems and solutions and if you match you can work together with great performance
Tech interviews have little (and less and less) to do with actual job performance these days.
Unfortunately, there also doesn’t seem to be an obviously better scalable way to assess candidates. So at some point the practical answer is to treat interviews as their own game and practice for that game. More LeetCode won't make you a better engineer, but it probably makes you better at passing the interviews.
How good do you think you are at verbalizing while interviewing? Even if you can't get question X actually finished/correct, you can get a lot of credit by having an easy-to-follow thought process that shows some directional correctness or creative problem solving.
Yeah, it’s a big problem, thinking and speaking for me 2 separate processes, and I can express this signals from brain as a code, but when I start verbalising it, it blocks ability to write
Some people's brains don't work the way that people who set up interviews think. If they require memorizing, they don't end up hiring those people (except strangely in upper management, where utterly different signals are looked for).
Practice. Use pramp.com. Do super super simple ones. If you can't do two sum or fizzbuzz or tree traversals with someone watching you, you're not going to have a prayer for harder stuff. Just start SUPER simple. Pracitce a lot.
It should be muscle memory to do the easy stuff. And then it turns out, the 'hard' questions are often just a combination of easy things.
Thank you for your reply. I trained some easy stuff of course, but it’s like arms race, I repeat leetcode things, they ask me system design, I repeat that, they ask how v8 engine works under the hood, it’s absolutely insane
Yes but with pramp.com you can get real feedback. Sometimes it's not answering wrong, it's cause your communication sucks. Or maybe you're coming across pompous. or maybe too timid. Or maybe you have glaring bugs for certain things. I dunno. You need honest brutal feedback that is actionable.
You're not a loser, you have 8 years of development experience across multiple companies. Nailing the technical interview does not guarantee you get the job. As you mentioned, luck does play a factor and being hard on yourself for not passing an interview is time better spent preparing for the next one.
Hate to say it because it is cliche but just a lot of practice. Find out the kind of interviews you are doing using levels.fyi, glassdoor.com, etc. or ask the recruiter. Then find online material to practice (or LLM - my last interview was pre good LLMs so didn't do much with AI but this time I would).
20+ year dev here, successful CTO, built many production systems, etc. I tend to bomb >50% of tech interviews.
I started doing better when I realized most tech interviews are not aligned with my brain, and that is ok. I have bad recall for syntax or even for things I've built in the past if I'm not currently engaged with them. This can come across like I am a bullshitter, or wholly incompetent. I also stumble through leetcodes - I remember enough to identify to right approach but fumble knocking out solutions in 15 minutes.
But this is fine! If everyone at a company has focused on powering through leetcodes to get the role, or the job demands photographic memory of HTTP codes ("what is code 428 used for?" An actual interview question I have seen...) I am probably not a good fit and won't enjoy the work or the culture.
Once you focus on the things you do well and find companies whose interview process emphasizes those aspects, things become much easier. Let go of the feeling that every interview is a minimal bar that any functioning SWE should be able to pass. If it was, they would be hiring every other applicant.
Some roles they give you a task and fail you quietly if you don't solve it using TDD, even if they don't mention that as a requirement. Or if you don't ask details about requirements, even for narrow toy problems. You are never going to guess all the gotchas that a company can throw up in front of you, so my advice is to confront each interview by working in the way you like to work. Show off your good attributes when you can. Listen to hints of course, but represent yourself honestly and assume at least half the companies will reject you no matter what you do, and that is fine.
Often that attitude will earn you more marks than trying to conform to what you guess the company wants to see.
Yeah, thank you for that response, I agree it’s more about how you and interviewer see some problems and solutions and if you match you can work together with great performance
Tech interviews have little (and less and less) to do with actual job performance these days.
Unfortunately, there also doesn’t seem to be an obviously better scalable way to assess candidates. So at some point the practical answer is to treat interviews as their own game and practice for that game. More LeetCode won't make you a better engineer, but it probably makes you better at passing the interviews.
How good do you think you are at verbalizing while interviewing? Even if you can't get question X actually finished/correct, you can get a lot of credit by having an easy-to-follow thought process that shows some directional correctness or creative problem solving.
Yeah, it’s a big problem, thinking and speaking for me 2 separate processes, and I can express this signals from brain as a code, but when I start verbalising it, it blocks ability to write
You have to actually practice the skill of communicating while solving a problem.
I become a programmer for decreasing communication, but unfortunately you are right
claude and ChatGpt are your best friends, ask them to act like "the company and the position u r going to interview for" and take ur interview.
Thank you, I tried acting like this but I should do it in infinite loop, for being in a good shape, or I forget all this stuff in a week
Some people's brains don't work the way that people who set up interviews think. If they require memorizing, they don't end up hiring those people (except strangely in upper management, where utterly different signals are looked for).
Yes, It’s very hard to recall something under pressure
Practice. Use pramp.com. Do super super simple ones. If you can't do two sum or fizzbuzz or tree traversals with someone watching you, you're not going to have a prayer for harder stuff. Just start SUPER simple. Pracitce a lot.
It should be muscle memory to do the easy stuff. And then it turns out, the 'hard' questions are often just a combination of easy things.
Thank you for your reply. I trained some easy stuff of course, but it’s like arms race, I repeat leetcode things, they ask me system design, I repeat that, they ask how v8 engine works under the hood, it’s absolutely insane
Yes but with pramp.com you can get real feedback. Sometimes it's not answering wrong, it's cause your communication sucks. Or maybe you're coming across pompous. or maybe too timid. Or maybe you have glaring bugs for certain things. I dunno. You need honest brutal feedback that is actionable.
Yes, agree, brutal feedback it’s the best driver, I will try this app
You're not a loser, you have 8 years of development experience across multiple companies. Nailing the technical interview does not guarantee you get the job. As you mentioned, luck does play a factor and being hard on yourself for not passing an interview is time better spent preparing for the next one.
Thank you for your support, but sometimes I think that working and pass interviews absolutely orthogonal skills
HelloInterview has helped me I think. Especially with system design
Thank you system design a real pain in ass
Hate to say it because it is cliche but just a lot of practice. Find out the kind of interviews you are doing using levels.fyi, glassdoor.com, etc. or ask the recruiter. Then find online material to practice (or LLM - my last interview was pre good LLMs so didn't do much with AI but this time I would).