This Tech Interview Setup Really P*SSES Me Off!

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Hey folks, I'm just headed to the office and I got a topic that pisses me off. Um, but not because of the person that sent it in. I think just because um it's like I don't know. It's a problem. It's a big problem. It affects a lot of people and I think it's pretty unfair and then it's like really messing people up. So, I'm going to talk about uh rejections and specifically around um going through the interview process with uh my absolute favorite type of uh question to answer like lead code style questions. I'm being sarcastic for those of you that don't know. I absolutely cannot stand lead code style questions because they're stupid. So, um, this person wrote in on LinkedIn, uh, and rightfully so. I feel like they're pretty they're pretty beat up. They're pretty upset and, uh, feeling pretty helpless and, uh, I'm not reading it out.

My phone holder is all busted, too. So, like my map is like down here in my cup holder. Just like not it's not a good not a good start. can't even stay upright. I have to get on Amazon as soon as I'm at the office and order a phone holder. Like I it what do I even do with this? Um anyway, I know how to get to work. I just I like to use it for checking the traffic. the um person that wrote in. What I was trying to say is I don't have their message pulled up in front of me, especially because I'm driving a car, but the uh the gist of it was that they had um done an interview and I think the way that this worked was kind of like their first round. Um I can't recall, they did just clarify for me and I've forgotten already.

I don't know if it was a recruiter or like a like a tech recruiter or a uh even like a you know another software engineer from the team or something but basically it's like a screen plus a coding question and and then there's supposed to be like manager interviews and stuff that come after that. So the um the idea was that they they were given a coding question um and without going into the details of they they walk me through what they did but the the point is like what they wrote to me was essentially like okay walked them through like how I'm thinking about solving the problem went on to solve the problem explain the steps wrote test cases explained the test cases um and and went to like go run it and like all the test cases work and then I found an

edge case so I explained that and then we you know I implemented it fixed it and basically it's what I would call if someone is going to answer or ask a question like this those are all of the steps that I want to see like if I am going to ask a coding question I don't give two shits if you get me the most optimal answer that's ever been created. Um I just or whatever like you don't even necessarily have to finish it because the whole point if I'm asking a question like that personally is that I just want us to have a conversation about how you think through problems the problem that I happen to put in front of you is like it's almost irrelevant. So that's generally why when I do ask coding questions I just keep them like quite simple. quite simple, literally zero tricks.

And then it's simple enough that when you implement it, I go, "Great, you know, explain to me like why you're doing that." And I go, "Awesome." And then I say, "Here's a different set of constraints. Like how might your your choices change?" Because again, I don't it doesn't matter what the question is. I just want to give you some different constraints and then see how you go. Hm. like okay before we had this constraint that we needed to have like trying to optimize for time but now we've we've lifted that uh and now we have a memory constraint or the other way or we're stacking up two constraints. Okay, like what else do we have to give? Um like do we just go for a like really complex solution? Maybe one of the reasons you didn't pick that in the first place was you were optimizing for simplicity which is totally valid.

um you know and I I might say okay this code is going to be running in this type of environment versus this one of those environments you know if you're making a library method one of those environments might not be you know the highest throughput and like good enough we'd rather have more simple code maybe for something embedded or for like super scale like you know what you're going to be doing some weird crazy tricks in the code and like hey we're trying to squeeze out all the performance we can possibly slap a little comment in there and it's like, you know, sorry, this code is maybe a little bit more unreadable, but it's like this because we needed the extra 3% performance, right? The the context makes all the difference. And when I ask coding questions is just to navigate that.

Back to the question though, the situation here is that they walk me through it um in like in their message and like I said, I feel like it was all a rational approach and then uh right at the end of the interview, I guess they're kind of running out of time, but you know, a couple minutes left and they person who's interviewing just wanted to make sure that there was a a little bit more time for any final questions. So, okay. Then basically a couple hours later they get a rejection email and then the the follow-up interview with the manager is canled. So this person got rejected from their uh based on their first interview. I mean that's what it looks like, right? So this person is pretty devastated because they're like look I have a job already. And they're trying to I guess switch jobs which is why they're interviewing.

and they're like, "Not only was this like did it feel ridiculous to me because like what else could I have possibly done in this situation to answer this technical question, but like what about all the other people that are going through this that like they don't even have jobs? They're not even employed and they're probably stuck in similar situations like this where they're they're finally getting the interview going to do it. you know, they've brushed up on their lead code style questions and then, you know, rejection. Um, so I think from when I asked them, there was no other feedback. Um, because I wanted to get a little bit more detailed because I I have a suspicion. I know I don't want to say I know what's going on, but like a reasonable explanation for it. It's not doesn't make it any doesn't feel any better, but I think I understand what's going on.

So, before I start walking through that, if you have questions you want answered, please write them below in the comments if they're software engineering or career related. Otherwise, you can do as this person did and send me a message on uh my social media. Uh so, Dev Leader is my main YouTube channel. It has uh C tutorials for programming. It's got a podcast where I interview other software engineers and it has a live stream that I do every Monday at 7:00 p.m. Pacific. Uh, and otherwise, if you can't find me on other social media channels for some reason or you just want to use LinkedIn, it's just Nick Cosantino on LinkedIn and I'm happy to try and answer. So, the uh the reality is here when you're the the candidate like you only have visibility for what they show you, right?

So um your lived experience is that you go through this you do the coding round you're like I did well so your expectation is high and I like you know I rightfully so if you feel like you did a good job in that you didn't like flounder they didn't ask you questions and you were like oh I have no idea what's going on and fumbling if you're like nope feel confident going through it able to explain things I feel like those are good signs in a coding Right. I've had coding rounds in my interview experience where I have gone in and like I don't actually understand even what they're trying to get me to do. So I'm like I don't even know how to start walking through the algorithm cuz I don't even really understand the question. So then I end up wasting Oh man, please don't be stupid.

You can't fix stupid. Sorry, someone trying to move over a bunch of lanes. Um, so like I wasted a bunch of time just trying to clarify the question because I if I don't know what I'm doing, how am I going to go build it? Um, so you know, I've had some some bad coding rounds and I've had some great ones where um my first job out of uh university, I literally finished the interview and they went their their one like more senior engineer was like, "Should we probably like ask him a technical question?" And the the founder was like, "Yeah, like I guess that's probably a good idea." I think they were I think they were already impressed enough, not to toot my own horn, but it went very well that they were like sold on it, but they're like, "Sure, like, let's ask them a technical question." So, they we're in a room, they get a whiteboard, and they're like, "Okay, here's the question.

I can't remember what it was." And I said to them, I'm like, just want to be totally transparent, like because it's like a lead code style question. I said my last internship that I did at university. I said this was the same interview question that I had for that. So I can like I can write down the answer and basically you know I I I just have the steps like already done. So I said I just want you to know because I don't want it to look like I'm cheating and number two I don't know if you're actually going to see what you want to see just because I already kind of have it. and they're like, "No, that's fine. Like, just go ahead." And so, you know, basically from memory, like step by step, here you go. Um, and whatever, right? So, I've had some good ones, but when you're going through this kind of thing, like you only have what's in front of you.

So, did well on the coding round. Um, no reason to believe except now you're kind of second guessing, right? Cuz you're like, well, they did cut me off at the end. like is it because I was doing so terrible or did I mess this up or what should I have done differently? But I've also I've interviewed plenty of people and you know in the technical part I'm looking at the time and I'm like okay I want to use some time at the end just to make sure we can answer other questions but I've seen enough in the technical part to make a decision on that. And again, from my perspective, I've already said it, a lot of the time it has nothing to do with like getting to the end because I could keep the question going and going. So, it's just like I just want to see how you're thinking through stuff and once I have a good understanding of that or I feel comfortable in my understanding of that, we'll move forward.

So, then you get the rejection. So, you're like, "Okay, well, what the hell?" like the only sort of interaction we had was around this coding thing and I thought it went well. So that feels obviously very off. Um you know just your if your expectations aren't aligned here things are going to feel like not good. So that's part one. Part two is then there's no feedback. So now you're just left in the dark like well what the hell? Like what could I have done better? And that's exactly what this person jumped to, right? What could I have possibly done better in this interview if I walked through it? Things were good. Like should I have gone faster? Did I just completely butcher the thing? And like somehow I don't know.

Like is there another tier of optimization in the lead code question and because I didn't get the ultimate trick that was like oh all you had to do was like a bit shift and like that solved like the entire mystery of the universe and if you don't get that you fail the leak code question. So, you know, you're trying to grasp at anything you can to understand what's going on. And the reason this pisses me off is because I just think that it's stupid that we have questions like this and that we have people that get put into these situations where they're like, like in my mind, the fact that this person's like spiraling on this trying to figure out what they could have done better in their coding question is now just completely wasting their time. that it's so unfortunate and they're not the only one.

And I'm not saying that because like I'm not speaking ill of this person. Like I get it. I understand why. I'm just saying like it pisses me off the way things are set up to kind of put them into this situation where they feel so shitty. I feel like there's no reason there's no reason for any of that. Now, the same same thing could have happened with different sets of questions that weren't like this. and you know they think they do well and then they they don't get feedback or they're kind of ghosted. So there's a couple of different elements here, right? One is the whole lead code thing. Like get rid of that It is so useless. It's so useless. If you want to do lead code, I have no problem. If you enjoy doing lead code problems on the side or you want to go to competitive programming competitions and do lead code, that is so like that's super cool.

If you enjoy doing it, I would never tell you to not. But it's not what we do. It's not what we do in software development. I've only been doing it for like 15 years and, uh, approximately zero days have ever looked like a lead code problem. So, uh, kind of interesting. I just don't think that they're relevant. So, two things we got going on are the lead code and then we have um like no feedback, right? So, this person's now in this situation where they're like, I just don't know what to do. I'm kind of at a loss. I think honestly what's potentially happening here is nothing to even do with this individual. And I've talked about this in previous videos. So, if if you're like, "Hey, this like kind of aligns with my experience," have a scroll through the channel because there's probably other ones, I think, at least two that talk about this kind of thing where I think it's not the individual.

I think it's everyone else that showed up. Okay? And it's really hard to like acknowledge that that's in the realm of possibility, but like we have to consider it. Okay? Let's assume let's assume that this person answered the question the best way that it could be answered. They had great explanations. They nailed the technical part, right? Even though like they're like, "Oh, I got cut off or whatever." Let's just assume this was the perfect way to answer this technical question. Okay. Now, we don't know how many other people were interviewing. We don't know how many interviewers there were. So you you're going to notice what I'm starting to do is introduce other variables here that have nothing to do with this individual. Okay? We don't know how many other people that there were interviewing. We don't know how many interviewers there were. We don't know what those other people's resumes look like.

You can keep going down this path now and add in what whatever other variable you want. We don't know if this interview was before the person ate lunch or after. I'm pretty sure there's data on that that actually illustrates that how people score candidates changes. But there's so many factors that are not just this individual. So if we assume perfect answer now, how many other people? We don't know. Assume there's several others. Let's assume there's one other person. Okay, that one other person also happened to answer this question perfectly. Now you have two candidates that on paper, given the one question that's been asked, they are perfect. Now, what if their resume was just better? What if their resume had more experience that was more aligned? What if what if these candidates had the exact same experience and one person happened to write about it in a more clear way on their resume or a way that made them look better.

So even with only one other person with one other person you can basically completely rule out a candidate. We don't know how many open positions there were. If there was one open position and only one person could take it, you know, one other candidate, it's two in total. For those of you that are struggling with the math, there's two candidates total. It only takes one other person to have something slightly better in some aspect and rejected. My point with walking through a scenario like that is you might say, "Well, that sounds contrived." And I'm like, make up whatever scenario you want. Then my point is that it's in the realm of possibility that it's completely not even this candidate's issue. It could just be the other people that showed up. And this kind of thing happens all the time. This kind of thing happens even at the resume screening section, right?

If you think about the n like think about this right the number of people that apply to jobs if there's a thousand applicants do you really think really do you really think the best candidate or set of candidates say they're going to interview I'm making numbers they're going to interview 10 people out of a thousand I don't I don't know do you think the 10 best people out of that thousand truly the 10 best are going to be the 10 best that get selected based on their resume. I I don't think so at all. I would be surprised if half of the actual thousand the the 10 best be surprised if half of those actually make it into the the 10 that get selected based on their resume. It's like it's not an effective system and it gets ridiculous when the volume of applicants goes through the roof.

So, when I talk about this in other videos, this is the part that sounds kind of like I don't know, like if you're beat up over this right now, it probably doesn't sound like it helps. The reality is like you literally can only control the things in your control. So I'm not trying to tell you that you're not allowed to feel upset by this. Absolutely not the case. I think that any feeling that someone has, they are they they can and should have that feeling, right? It's it's an emotion. Emotions are responses to things. So, I think that if you ignore emotions, you're ignoring some other types of signals. You got to speed up if you're merging on the highway there, buddy. So, it's not about like, oh, you're not allowed to feel that way. No, you are 100% allowed to feel whatever the hell you want to feel.

And you should right so it's not don't feel some way but when you continue like when you go to take action if the action you take is to continue to dwell on it that's where I say look you start to have a decision here you can continue to put okay have to pass this My god, there's two fast lanes and we're going under the speed limit. No, thank you. Um, when it comes to taking action, you can continue to put energy into being upset about something that I don't think you have a lot of control over. in this case, right? Like what what parts do you have control over? You have control over how well you perform, how prepared you are. You have control over how you've drafted your resume to call out your um your experiences, right? How you explain yourself. You have control over all these things.

And if you did an awesome job, that's great. Now, could you reflect on that and and ask yourself, are there things I could do better? If there are, great. Like, work on those. And it's not to beat yourself up about, cuz we can always be better at anything. There's always room to improve. It's just a matter about you finding the the right allocation of time to go invest in the right things. So, if you're like, "Okay, just to make up an example, like using this person's scenario, okay, I did do a good job on that question. I feel really good with my answers. Um, okay, I got cut off at the end. Is there some way that I could have um uh made my uh explanations more succinct?" Right? Did I repeat myself a bunch?

like is that like it's not even technical but is there stuff that I could be doing that like to when I'm interviewing just to be more aware of the time right is it like oh man you know what I actually felt really uncomfortable doing that coding question I got to the answer I feel good about it but oh boy was that like a grind did that feel like awkward and uh because I was unsure of myself um even though I got to the end like if that's the case okay like maybe go brush up on more of those styles of questions even though I absolutely hate them. My point is I would it way easier said than done. I I don't mean to like to minimize it, but you got to focus on what you have control over. Okay, so that's the the the point that I want to get across to this person.

It's actually two parts, right? is one just because you like when you get the rejection email it does not um what's the right way to say this? It is not uh that it's not a direct reflection that you failed. Okay. And I realize how do you how do you make a rejection letter not sound like you failed? because there's a there's a difference here because it's you didn't get the job which feels like failing at the thing you were doing but you could have passed everything that was put in front of you. It's just that someone else happened to pass it better and there's only room for one. So that's part one. Part two is like now that you're through it, how much time and energy goes into you have no control over? Because I would strongly encourage you like have those feelings, listen to them, and then try to move on from them.

Try to turn it into how do you become productive out of that? Because if your energy is spent being frustrated and then not being able to drive progress in areas, you're you're kind of missing just opportunity for growth. And again, you might have you might have nailed it and there is no like you're feeling like there's minimal room for improvement on the lead code stuff. That's fine. What else can you go improve on? Right? You you still need to get interviews. Can you uh brush up on your resume more? Is there more you can refine there? Are there, you know, are there behavioral interview questions you should be practicing? I realize you might not have gotten to them necessarily in this interview round, but maybe that's still something that needs work. Move on to the things that you have control over. Okay, so that's my my two pieces of advice as like a takeaway for this person.

But um I'm Yeah, I'm sorry, right? like it's hard. The I think the extra crappy part about a lot of this stuff is like there's so much time and effort that goes into like resumes and job applications. There's so much time and effort that just goes into interviewing. Then you have to perform at the job. And like I think those first two steps I mentioned, the resume writing and the interviewing, sometimes I feel like the amount of um direct overlap with how to do well in your job, it's pretty small. Um like it's disproportionate. I don't think it's a like an effective use of invested time, but you kind of have to do it to get the job. which is why it's crap. I don't know how much I'm allowed to swear on YouTube, so I'm trying to be careful. I don't think I can say the f word.

There's probably some other colorful words I can't say, but I think there's a couple I can get away with. I don't know. But anyway, I hope that helps. Um, I think something that I like reminding people too, cuz I know some people are pretty vocal in the comments, which is good. Even if you, by the way, even if you disagree with the things I'm saying, please be vocal in the comments. Like I uh I like to encourage this kind of thing because I think that there's a difference between like if you want to disagree with anything I'm saying, I am absolutely open to that, but it's also a good opportunity to practice how to disagree with people in a constructive way. So, for example, if you want to disagree with me, just talk about the thing that I said where you're like, I don't think that's the case.

Here's why. Here's my perspective. and here's either a lived experience or some data that backs it up and here you go. Like that's my stance on it. That's great. Like I would love to hear your lived experiences that don't align with the things I say for this video and others. Or if you have data, like I'm literally driving a car and I can't just be like, "Hey goo or Google or chat GBT or whatever, like pull up some data for me." It's why sometimes I say things and I'm like, "I don't have data for that." But it's an anecdote. share it in the comments, right? A way to not a way to have uh you know a a screenshot of your comment getting uh roasted on Twitter is to say dumb things like, "Wow, look how stupid this guy is. You're worthless." And then like here's here's some opinion I have.

Like I don't know, man. Like that's probably not how you would have a conversation with uh anyone. So don't do it. Just don't do that. It It's really weird. This is how I talk to people. I'm literally sitting in a car filming a video the way I still talk to people. So the things I say are the things I say to actual people. If you're typing mean things and then going That'll show him like, "No, it's not. I've made like 600 YouTube videos. You don't think I've seen some shit?" Like, I I've seen some dumb comments come in. If you'd like yours to be added to that list, feel free. I just make it into more content. It's totally cool, but I would much rather that you disagree and like give me give me something to work with cuz I I want to have conversations about this stuff.

Right? A lot of the time I'm talking about things and it's from my perspective in particular. I got got one brain in my head. Generally, it sees things in a particular way. I do try when I can to include other perspectives, but you're also part of this, right? if you don't mind, if you want to spend a couple minutes and leave a comment, I think that's totally awesome. The other people, so there's a couple people that comment pretty regularly, but I scroll through. I can I see I read all the comments. I scroll through and I can see that other people are leaving comments and then other viewers are engaging with them or liking them, right? Like you are part of sharing your experiences too and helping other people. I'm just one dude with one camera. Maybe I could get more. I do technically have my Insta 360 now.

It's getting warmer. I should get this this bad boy back on top of the car. I'll I'll charge it today and I'll film on the way home. But, you know, I just wanted to say like your perspectives are very valuable, too. uh when I do videos on imposter syndrome and stuff man sharing imposter syndrome stuff so helpful for other people but if you have lived experiences like these interview ones that we just talked through share them if you don't mind right you don't have to say company names or anything you don't have to crap on anyone in particular but you know what what worked for you what didn't cuz that kind of stuff is helpful Okay, I'm going to I'm going to say this on video cuz it might help as a commitment. I got a week off work coming up. I don't know who watches to the end of these videos.

Devin, I know you watch to the end of these videos. I know you do. Probably Infected FPS probably does, too. It's probably a couple people, but you know, they're long videos. I don't expect everyone does. Um, but I'm going to record this so that I have a commitment to it. I have a week off work next week. I got to film a lot of YouTube, a lot of YouTube content. I'm behind. I want to make sure that I put some more effort into it. I got to do some programming stuff. But I had this idea and it came from the thought around like, you know, a lot of people talk about building a personal brand. That's what I'm doing by the way, but they're talking more for general like software engineers. Hey, like this can help you with getting jobs and stuff.

And I was thinking like I already make a ton of videos, but what might be kind of cool is if I made a YouTube playlist and the vid each video was basically like one behavioral interview question. And what I would do is kind of like read out the question and then just answer it like I was being interviewed. And there's two reasons I think this would be kind of cool. One, maybe a couple reasons. Um, one is it's more content. Two is it's I think pretty easy content. Three, I think it is probably helpful for people so they can see how I might navigate stuff like that. Not that I'm the um, you know, the leading authority in the universe on this stuff, but like I'm just another person you can refer to for it. But the other thing is, doesn't that kind of let me have a video resume?

Or if I ever needed, I could just say, "Hey, if you want to know anything, literally, here's a playlist where I answer everything that you might care about." And I could do different answers for the same questions and just have like a bank of them. I could probably crank out like I don't know like 200 short YouTube videos. So, if you watch to the end of this, let me know what you think. If you think that'd be a cool idea. I think I'm going to do it. Maybe not all next week, but we'll see. So, thanks so much. Remember, if you have questions, leave them below in the comments. If you disagree with stuff, you're wrong. Just kidding. Leave that in the comments, too. Otherwise, reach out to me on social media. It's Dev Leader. It's a main YouTube channel. We're Nick Constantino on LinkedIn. I will see you next time.