Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

STAR is not just for Amazon. It's a great way to answer "behavioral questions" at any company. On the other side of the table, as an interviewer, I can recognize the STAR format instantly and am very appreciative that the candidate has taken the time to structure his or her answer in this easy-to-digest way.

Also, and I don't know if there is a nice acronym for it, but I like the formula where you:

1. Say what you're going to say

2. Say it

3. Say what you said

So if the question is "Tell me about some things you consider when you need to do task ABC," You structure your response like this:

"I'm going to describe the top three things I consider. 1. Foo. [Details here]. 2. Bar. [Details here]. 3. Baz. [Details here]. In summary, Foo, Bar, and Baz are the things I consider in that situation."

Is a much better response than unstructured word salad that contains the same detailed content but jumbles it all together and kind of trails off, leaving the interviewer wondering if the candidate is done talking.

Yes, true regarding the very last part.

My first "real" CS-related interview, which had technical questions, I had on the very same day that I had taken my final exam in our data structures and algorithms class. And because our DSA class was quite rigorous, I knew the material in and out.

I absolutely aced those questions, but did poorly on the systems design questions because, well, I simply did not have much experience designing or building complete systems/software.

Years later, it was the other way. I stumbled my way through the DSA questions, while acing the systems questions.

But with that said, I think also the order of your performance matters. If you walk in, and absolutely bomb the first topics, I think there's going to be a bias against you. Maybe they'll think you're a moron, or something like that.

At one company where I was the interviewer the company used a few simple java questions for each screening (not great I know). It was basically just a way to make sure they did have experience with Java at at least a junior level. This became an issue when we started getting candidates from recruiters. One candidate bombed on the first question. Then when we asked the second question they answered the 3rd. Clearly the recruiter was trying to coach the candidates based on past questions.

Any significant system will take months to learn. Your statement is probably only true for some trivial system.

A senior engineer comes with years of experience designing and coding systems that took years to develop and run at scale. Given time to learn they should be just as good at solving day to day bugs but if you assign them that you are wasting your time and money on experience. If you don't value experience you are wasting your time and money on experience.

It's pretty normal to have more junior engineering staff help new senior staff learn the ropes. It's also common for those less experienced staff to learn from the more experienced people even in that situation. I'm not saying senior hires should be respected from the first second because they are over 30 or have a long resume.

The obvious counter to this is: Which will give the worse impression: Canceling for a good reason or showing up and being distracted and performing poorly? Companies like the usual FAANG are nice enough to merely give you a 1 year embargo. In other companies I've worked at, you interview for a team and if you do poorly, the team will simply never interview you again (although you could interview for a different team at the company).

Also: Do you really want to date someone who doesn't care that your cat may have a life threatening problem?

Finally, even if it's not that serious (cat emergency): Do you really want to work/date someone who is that susceptible to this bias? I know it's the norm to fall for first impressions, but for me, it's also a signal of problems I'll have with them in the future.

BTW, my cat had a serious health problem once. She needed lots of immediate care for a few months (at home, away from work). And the vets were telling us that even if she got through it for now, it will come back soon and we should really consider euthanasia - the condition would eventually kill her - not many cats would last a year with it, and chances are her she would be in pain for much of it.

And this all started a few days before I started my new job.

I went straight to my new manager (before my official start date), and explained to him that the cat was my priority - I could take a leave of absence or whatever was needed, but I needed to figure this out (either euthanasia, or time off for treatment options, etc) and could not be anywhere close to 100% at work.

Fortunately he was sympathetic and said I should not worry and do whatever was necessary.

The job turned out to be crappy, and I stayed there longer than I should have entirely because of this.