FWIW every company I've worked at would be glad to hire someone that gave an answer like the one you gave.
Ask HN: How to handle interview when you do not think like other programmers?
11–20 of 24 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to handle interview when you do not think like other programmers?
#12Actually, you sound very much like me, and I had a successful programming career before becoming disabled. As noted by others, you perhaps could improve your verbal interviewing skills, but interviews like this one are useful for filtering out companies you'd be unhappy at (and I'd add a good fraction of the technically doomed ones).
However I'll note that's one caveat to your "can do almost anything" concept: learning new paradigms, like functional programming if you only know imperative and OO (for me, learning OO when I only knew the other two), can take longer than most reasonable companies will be willing to give you.
Since you do know imperative and OO, if you don't know functional programming it could be worth your while to learn it on your own. Try something like SICP and you'll probably learn a few other worthwhile things.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle interview when you do not think like other programmers?
#13"I like to make stuff that solves a real, concrete problem."
How does the idea of spending 30% of time on refactoring sound to you?
Re: Ask HN: How to handle interview when you do not think like other programmers?
#14There exist many companies which quietly make an awful lot of money and which employ people much closer to you than to the stereotypical Silicon Valley Mobifotosocialgame Hipster Programmer. Get a job at one of them.
Absolutely. There is nothing wrong with the interview that you describe. You are learning exactly what you need to learn. Better to learn it today than six weeks into the job. It is important to be polite, though, so to make it out of the room the usual talking points are: 1. "Our lousy platform was [mandated by management/chosen before I arrived], but I cheerfully got the job done with the inferior tools at hand." 2…
This is great.
A lot of people forget that interviews are two-way streets.
If the company culture indicates that you won't be valued, look somewhere else.
In this case specifically, I'd rather learn how to provide value than use some shiny new tool. It's much easier to learn the new tool.. that can be done when you need it.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle interview when you do not think like other programmers?
#15They just want you to explain your reasonings. They aren't really interested in if you're "right" so much as how you got to your conclusion (e.g. "I decided to use Java 1.7 because of XYZ."). Random aside: You should look into Aerospace Engineering/programming. You sound like you'd enjoy that type of development (functional programming, huge amount of docs, huge amount of testing, entirely fault tolerant end to end,…
Aerospace is definitely a field to look into. My only problem with it is that I found the working environment miserable. All my direct experience is with massive companies (Raytheon, Northrop, Boeing), though.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle interview when you do not think like other programmers?
#16There exist many companies which quietly make an awful lot of money and which employ people much closer to you than to the stereotypical Silicon Valley Mobifotosocialgame Hipster Programmer. Get a job at one of them.
Unfortunately, many of them are so quiet you can't tell they need people like you unless you really dig around, and sometimes not even then.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle interview when you do not think like other programmers?
#17They just want you to explain your reasonings. They aren't really interested in if you're "right" so much as how you got to your conclusion (e.g. "I decided to use Java 1.7 because of XYZ."). Random aside: You should look into Aerospace Engineering/programming. You sound like you'd enjoy that type of development (functional programming, huge amount of docs, huge amount of testing, entirely fault tolerant end to end,…
As an interviewer, if I heard
* someone picked java 1.7 because 1.8 is new and she or he wants to let some other suckers find all the crappy bugs in it (remember when 1.7 made lucene crap itself? I'm sure someone got to have some fun times with that, and I'm glad it wasn't me.)
* or she or he chose php because it was fast, easy, and had easy access to charting tools (I dunno if this is true or not) and for an internal dashboard what does it matter...
* I already know how to use it and can get the work done very quickly (always a great reason); there's no such thing as software finished too soon
* the company already has a large codebase in X and I wanted to say in the same language, libs, and deployment tools
I love people who say I like to lag versions a year, because it means they've been burned, learned the lesson, and want to let someone else do the debugging. You'll more likely than not get a strong hire vote from me. As parent said, it's about explaining why you picked something.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle interview when you do not think like other programmers?
#18If the interviewer is truly confrontational (as in, you're being asked something like "why did you do stupid thing A when thing B is clearly better"), then you're better off not working there.
However, I'll often ask questions similar to those you posed (without thinking/telling the candidate he's useless, of course).
Let's take the "why not Java 1.8" example. If I asked you that, and you were prone to being defensive, you might think I'm attacking you. In reality, though, I'm just probing for more information. Are you familiar with Java 1.8? What would be the benefits/drawbacks of using it? If you can explain why Java 1.7 is fine for your project (I don't know Java, but I assume there are good reasons not to use the latest version), then I'm satisfied.
Basically, my goal is to learn as much as I can about you. This often involves direct questions. When I'm asking direct questions, I'm not attacking, and I suspect it's the same for many interviewers.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle interview when you do not think like other programmers?
#19"1.7 met the needs of the project. We considered 1.8 but decided that it wasn't necessary and that taking on the training costs during development, and fracturing our platform, would not be a good trade-off to make."
Re: Ask HN: How to handle interview when you do not think like other programmers?
#20Seems to me that you were being interviewed by a technocrat not a business person. My reading of the interview suggests to me that you are a person who can see an opportunity for business improvement and implement a valuable and reliable solution.
If this project is representative of how you look at the world, then maybe you should be focusing on how you can solve business problems. That is you are valuable for that level of insight and execution. Arguing over Java 1.7 vs 1.8 and PHP vs AngularJS doesn't increase business profits and doesn't recognise your true skills.