The Interviews I Wish I’d Walked Out On
Photo by Андрей Сизов on Unsplash
This article is about my experience. It’s about my regret at my own behavior, which I guess is a running theme for my blog posts.
Yet usually I regret my poor behavior, and wish that I’d behaved worse in interviews. I wish that I could have had the bravery to protect my time and actually walk out of an interview when I knew that it wasn’t going well.
The One That Went On Too Long
I don’t know about you, but when I’ve an interview I often “go missing” for an hour or so. That might mean taking an hour-long lunch break and marking the same on Slack.
So when your hour interview goes to 1:15, it’s awkward for me. So can we please keep to time? As the candidate it’s very difficult, I can’t not ask questions for fear that you’ll think I’m disengaged from the process.
You know what. At 60 minutes I should have said it’s over. Said I need to work. Say goodbye. End the interview.
The First Stage Nonsense
If I actually walked out of interviews when the first stage didn’t work, I would never get beyond the first stage.
Because when recruiters ask technical programming questions they don’t know if the answer is correct unless you hit the key words they have noted for each.
Explain a different way of doing things? You’re out.
So I should be out whenever this happens.
The Insane Question
“Rate yourself in [programming language] out of 10”
When I got asked this I pushed for more information. What is the cohort? Where I work or against the worldwide population (of programmers and non-programmers).
The answer was disappointing. Score yourself out of 10.
There are whole web pages on how to answer this problem. Before the interview however I hadn’t read that.
My behavior is generally the same in most situations. I’m quite humble and have imposter syndrome right until the time I feel I master something. So unless I am the expert I think I’d rate myself as a “6” out of “10” because you never know the ability of the cohort you are compared against.
Yet in my heart I feel that it would be better to just say 9 directly. To say that I’m great, lose the humility. Tell what is (partially) the truth.
The problem is there are different interviewers. 10 out of 10 may mean different things for different people. It may mean any of the following interpretations
“you know by heart what the signature of main() is, and can list all concrete collection implementation classes in the Java 7 class library"
“you know the language and the class libraries, are up to date on the latest features and understand also the inner workings of the language and the JVM, not just the APIs”
“you invented Java”
and the thing is, you don’t know who you are being interviewed with.
So I wish I would have walked out of the interview. Or fired back with a calibration question, “what is the score you give your developers at work” or “score Bose products out of 10”. Then I would be able to answer the question.
Would You Block This Code In A Review
You’re given some code that isn’t great in the interview.
Then the question came. Would you block this code?
I asked for more information. What is the team culture like, do you usually block code? The answer wasn’t clear, it was framed as “don’t worry about that, would you block this code”?
I couldn’t get a clear answer. I just kept getting asked what I would do. Let’s just say things didn’t go well.
I wish I’d have left at that point.
The Insane Programming Question
When I got asked questions in a technology I didn’t want to use in my professional life this was a red flag.
I should have just said no instead of trying to “style it out” and get the answer “right”.
I should have just said no.
How Much Do You Earn?
I changed career and then started tech jobs at the bottom.
So when they asked me how much salary I received from my last job it far exceeded how much they could pay. This reads almost as if the question did not make sense at all.
Then I remember, the question never did make sense.
I wish I’d left the interview at this point.
What Are Your Salary Expectations?
I usually ask (politely) what is the salary band when presented this question.
One time the recruiter would not tell me. They told me if I did not say my salary expectations there and then we would end the interview there and then.
I needed a job, and decided I would tell them my number. After the recruiter call I thought about this, wrote an email to withdraw my application and moved on.
I wish that I had done this during the interview.
When they Couldn’t Understand
One of my worst experiences was when I asked an interviewer to repeat a question as I didn’t quite hear them, and they decided I didn’t know the answer so interrupted me to give me the answer.
Repeatedly.
I should have given it up right then.
The One I Got The Job
An interviewer went through resume line by line. They kept asking for each position why I’d left, if they’d offered me a pay rise to stay.
After all, if you’re good they’ll offer you more money to stay (the logic goes, I guess).
I wish I’d not been offered that job, and I wish that I had not taken it. But that’s another story.
About The Author
Professional Software Developer “The Secret Developer” can be found on Twitter @TheSDeveloper and regularly publishes articles through Medium.com
The Secret Developer hasn’t had an interview in some time, they fear it.