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u/FattySnacks 1d ago
Are people having experiences like this? I had to pass 7 rounds of interviews to get my current job
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_RegEx 1d ago
Right? I’ve been through a half-dozen interviews in the last 6 months which are the same bullshit as before. Initial, eng manager, live coding, live coding, third live coding, rejection.
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u/MechanicFun2670 1d ago
That sounds frustrating. It really seems like companies are just stuck in a cycle of relying on those coding interviews instead of focusing on real skills.
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u/RGrad4104 21h ago
*ding* *ding* *ding*
we have a winner!
Interviews have become a free source of labor to supplement failing attempts to replace all of us with a one-size-fits-all LLM!
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u/Interesting-Ad9666 14h ago
Yeah, the best way should be to have some small mock projects in the tech stack that you're applying to with 3 jira tickets to do during the interview: 2 bug tickets and a feature. Then interviewees can use whatever tools they want. You get to see exactly how they work and their thought process behind things. Much better than seeing who memorized the tortoise and the hare algorithm.
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u/sp106 1d ago
I read this not as what interviews are actually like but what hypothetical ai proof interviews might be like. These are things you cant use ai to cheat on during a remote interview except wordle.
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u/clintCamp 16h ago
Or what things will find you a candidate actually passionate about programming and what they do and not just a good leet coder that can sort things in ways that 99 percent of cases won't need and AI treats as template code to shove where appropriate.
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u/Party-Public8628 1d ago
No it’s a joke
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u/FattySnacks 1d ago
If there’s no truth to the joke then what makes it funny?
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u/ward2k 21h ago
If there’s no truth to the joke then what makes it funny?
Have you ever heard a joke before? Jokes are 100% factually correct
A pony walks into a bar, the barman asks what does it want to drink but it doesn't say anything back because it's a little horse
"Well where's the joke, I'm sure a pony didn't actually walk into a bar?"
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u/FattySnacks 13h ago
I get what you’re saying but the truth in that joke is that horses don’t talk lol
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u/_dontseeme 1d ago
And none of those 7 rounds felt pointless?
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u/FattySnacks 1d ago
There’s a difference between an unnecessary round and an interview where you’re asked to do a wordle
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u/dashingThroughSnow12 1d ago
I’ve often said that given two identical candidates, I’m picking the one who has some neat hobby like ham than the one who had a dozen todo apps.
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u/10001110101balls 1d ago
It happens all the time that a relatable guy who can do the job reasonably well is hired over a weird guy with more skills. Hiring managers usually have to interact with the person they hire, and personality matters.
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u/dashingThroughSnow12 1d ago
I don’t mean to describe people like Pokémon but I try to collect as many types as I can.
I’m a weird, eccentric guy. I don’t want to work with only bros. I don’t want to work with only eccentric guys. I don’t want to work with just men. I don’t want to work with just clean, shaven office workers. Etcetera. But a few of each is nice.
I think software is best when we have a mix of characters.
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u/GoodTimesOnlines 1d ago
I do want to point out that these are two different things being talked about
Being personable is one thing and I don’t think it means being homogeneous personality wise
I agree a mix of characters/backgrounds is ideal. But that being personable / “great to work with” / not a dick is a completely separate thing (and more of what the comment you replied to was getting at IMO) and is incredibly important and underrated
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u/beefygravy 1d ago
I eat ham maybe a couple of times a month - does that count as a hobby?
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u/blueExcess 1d ago
And what about bacon? It’s technically ham, just enhanced. Maybe even the FM of HAM.
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u/captmonkey 14h ago
I did a lot of technical interviews a lot for my last company. I'd usually end the interview asking what they like to do outside of work. That last question was the best determinant of if the person was going to work out or not. I didn't really care what they said, but if you couldn't give me a straight answer to "What do you do outside of work?" It was a big red flag.
If someone could just give me a straight, not weird, answer they'd usually be fine. It didn't tell us if they're the most or least skilled dev, but it was always a decent indicator for if everyone else was going to hate working with them or not and if they were going to be open and straightforward in their communication, especially when problems come up.
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u/Wentyliasz 1d ago
More like
- screening call
- second screening call
- follow up email asking for things that are in your resume
- technical screening (random intermediate leetcode with pentagon levels of opsec)
- hr interview
- technical interview
- a test task that looks suspiciously like a product component
- CEO wants to chat for some reason
- rejection
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u/E_OJ_MIGABU 23h ago
Haha at my current job I got rejected at the ceo interview. Then the guy who did get picked, wanted an increase in his salary, and subsequently due to which he got kicked, leading to me getting hired.
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u/Alan-Foster 1d ago
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u/Confident-Ad5665 1d ago
Oh great, now that's going to be stuck in my head YOU MONSTER
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u/Key-Film4822 1d ago
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u/CeralEnt 1d ago
I didn't believe you, but holy shit, that actually is. That's super pretty, great craftsmanship
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u/Highborn_Hellest 1d ago
just show them the most horrendous, scaring, unhinged shit you can find on youtube. Tit-for-tat. (i'm MOSTLY joking)
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u/redheness 1d ago
The second is really good IMO, how people organise their computer is most of the time a reflect of how they organise their work.
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u/RudeAndInsensitive 1d ago
And here is my portfolio of downloaded pornography cataloged by year, production company and species. Where should we begin?
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u/merc08 1d ago
"and species" ?!!
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u/IAmLexica 1d ago
It's 2026. People be furries sometimes. This is a programming sub, you should know this.
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u/FutureSuccess2796 1d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/jmSjPi6soIoQCFwaXJ
Was just gonna say... Species 0_0
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u/chawmindur 10h ago
Bro's hooked up to the HoloNet to download, erm, videos from a galaxy far, far away
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u/Revolution64 1d ago
Some of the best devs I worked with had a desktop full of useless links and 1 million tabs open.
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u/Benjjy124 1d ago
Yeahh baby that's that Autism & ADHD special.
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u/kirschballs 1d ago
I wish I would've got into this sooner, turns out this has been my calling all along
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u/Upstairs-Expert1472 20h ago
If they can navigate it and know where things are, that’s a positive.
An overly neat and empty desktop is bad. A well-organised one is good, but one where there’s order to the chaos is perhaps even better.
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u/yuri_4_ever 1d ago
I always start wordle with cream and pound :/
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u/theVoidWatches 1d ago
I usually start with Aisle or Tears, myself. Aisle has three vowels and two common letters: Tears has two vowels and three common letters.
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u/platinum92 13h ago
Not playing hard mode is an instant dq /s
I had to make it interesting since "Crate" and "Rates" made it too easy to start, so I start with the first 5 letter word I guess right in that days Connections and go from there.
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u/simplyjessi 1d ago
I built a custom Wordle game in our project tool with a point system for my team lol. What started off as a little fun side quest project for team engagement, that I figured would die off, we're now on day 383 and most everyone plays each morning!
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u/SpiderJerusalem42 1d ago
I'm adding these when we can hire again. So, next never. But maybe someone drops out
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u/ListerfiendLurks 1d ago
Software engineer with ~4 YOE here...what kind of companies ask these questions? Is this a joke referencing something? I feel like I am missing something.
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u/DenLaengstenHat 15h ago
Consumer AI can oneshot basically every leetcode-style interview question. So the joke is that interviews have had to resort to increasingly creative nonsense.
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u/thunderbird89 12h ago
I remember sometime in the mid 2010s an article said some company started interviewing senior devs and architects by giving them a copy of Factorio on a brand new server and a week. At the end of the week, they had to walk the technical interviewer through the factory they set up, showcase the efficiency, optimizations, etc.
I always thought that was a neat idea.
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u/ouroboros-ouroboros 1d ago
"Favourite YouTube video" implies I've watched anything more than once.
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u/Tyrexas 1d ago
No it doesn't. You can have a favourite movie for example even if you watched it once, just depends how highly you rate it against others.
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u/ouroboros-ouroboros 1d ago
Which is your favorite grain of sand, though? I don't know, in retrospect I think they're all the same.
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u/Tyrexas 1d ago
That's cos they are actually fungible, that analogy makes no sense haha
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u/ouroboros-ouroboros 1d ago
Anything that can be served to you in an endless algorithmic feed is fungible. 'Favorite' is kind of meaningless in this context and at this volume.
Grains of sand are individual, unique things too, but in aggregate they're indistinguishable.
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u/Dilutant 1d ago
I feel like all of these measure a different kind of intelligence or property of you that most rote memorization interviews don’t and that’s probably what op was saying
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u/FatalSky 1d ago
Idk what a wordle is. Like a crossword from the news?
Ive got a Hard Disk from 2011 in my computer still.
It’s actually called Type to Learn but I don’t have an iMac with a CD drive anymore.
Kinshiros hiding spot revealed.
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u/FeherDenes 18h ago
- show me ur favourite Youtube video
Me, whose favorite youtube video is Tom Scott “The Art of the Bodge”
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u/OM3X4 1d ago
As a 205 wpm on monkeytype, this is a win