31–35 of 35 posts
- talk about things where you took initiative
- how did you identify the problem?
- how did you get support from your team/management?
- how did the project go?
- what was the outcome?
- what went well, and what would you do differently knowing what you know now?
For many reasons, I recommend creating a brag doc like Julia Evans mentions here: https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/ It can help you keep track of what you've worked on. Got an interview coming up? Take a few minutes to review your brag doc and look at the largest/most complex/coolest sounding projects to refresh your memory. Combine that with the practice that other commenters have mentioned.
This is probably going to sound weird, but I was reading an old post on your website, and wanted to say thanks because it helped me out a lot. It was the post about pitch detection. Thanks, it helped a bunch with what I was trying to do.
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"Tell me about a project you worked on." is not a specific question "why did you choose to order the members of this struct in your C code the way you did" is one.
> "Tell me about a project you worked on." is not a specific question Exactly. That's the point. > "why did you choose to order the members of this struct in your C code the way you did" is one. Neat! I'll leave this chain now. This does not seem productive.
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> "Tell me about a project you worked on." is not a specific question Exactly. That's the point. > "why did you choose to order the members of this struct in your C code the way you did" is one. Neat! I'll leave this chain now. This does not seem productive.
Good. Take this as an opportunity to treat people you don’t know more fairly and don’t assume everyone is a liar.
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How else is someone supposed to learn about your work experience, other than directly asking about it? How much research are they supposed to do ahead of time? Not everyone's code is publicly available on GitHub, and no sane interviewer has time to sit around reading every single line of code that each of their candidates has written. Summarizing each of your major professional projects of your career in a few minute…
"Tell me about a project you worked on..." That's not asking directly. It's vague. It's ambiguous. It's lazy. It's a cover for not having taken the time to prepare for the meeting (read: interview). On the other hand, "I see Project X on your CV. Sounds interesting. Tell me more about that...." Is a legit question. And no one expects every line of code to be looked at. That said, my CV has a section with links to rep…
I beg to differ. I think the more ambiguous the question to start with, the wider the field of possible followups. Perhaps project Y is something that the candidate is more excited about than project X, and maybe had a bigger role in.
I believe that, in a friendly setting, one can pick up a lot of information about the candidate's ability to work with ambiguity, from the clarity with which they have organized their thoughts, the concision with which they have presented it, their humility about their contribution, about the things that excited them. Or lack thereof. The interviewer need not be familiar with the details of that project to pick up on this.