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Also just to add - many REALLY good engineers have some form of anxiety disorder, and the standard practice for an interview is to put them in a pressure cooker situation.
Why do people study for interviews? I feel like if I have to study for an interview, then I’m clearly not good enough for the position. Is this common in other fields of study?
Sometimes its necessary to learn more of a board sense of something. Even if you've used it before. For instance, we use Mongo DB at my place of work but, we do not take advantage of ALL the features Mongo has to offer at one time. If I were to interview at another company that also uses Mongo it might be to my benefit to dive a little deeper and look for features I may be unfamiliar with on a day to day basis. This…
Source: I interview lots of candidates for SWE positions.
Why do people study for interviews? I feel like if I have to study for an interview, then I’m clearly not good enough for the position. Is this common in other fields of study?
IMHO, the biggest challenge is to decide what aspects of oneself to focus on. Depending on the context, I could present myself as a technical know-it-all, a process-oriented team-builder, a collaborative problem-solver, an engineer focused on delivering business value, or something else. All of these (I hope) would be accurate representations of myself, albeit incomplete by themselves. Since I don't have the time to showcase all of these facets of myself, I pick and choose based on what I think the organization's interview process is selecting for.
Though I was recently rejected after an all-day onsite interview, so maybe I'm taking the wrong approach; or perhaps I misread the company's hiring objectives; or maybe it wasn't the right fit.
BTW, I hate trivia-style tech interviews, and would be hesitant to work for any company that utilizes them—not because I wouldn't want to go through the process personally (I actually kind-of enjoy them), but because they're optimizing for a set of skills that is very much out of line with the requirements of 99% of software development teams. Our industry needs more wholistic thinkers; most of us face many more people challenges than technical ones.
Why do people study for interviews? I feel like if I have to study for an interview, then I’m clearly not good enough for the position. Is this common in other fields of study?
that is true only to the extent that the interview is related to the position... Whereis most interviews in our industry are akin to a hazing ritual, and it stands for a reason that "Google interview" got it name from that and is also religiously practiced in the other frat-companies like for example FB or stereotypical startups with young founders.
Wrt. the ritual aspect it is thus natural that at Google/FB you first have to pass the interview and only after that you are getting to the project assignment stage ( not sure about specific details at FB as i failed there, while at Google the offered projects were pretty crappy (as well as the offer itself))
Why do people study for interviews? I feel like if I have to study for an interview, then I’m clearly not good enough for the position. Is this common in other fields of study?
If you do something, whatever it is, you might as well put an effort to do it well.
In this case it means studying. If you don’t want to, state it upfront.
And the comments:
It is highly unlikely that you already know, or god forbid, remember, everything you need to know in order to be a productive contributor to the task at hand.
It is also highly unlikely that the technical interview is correlated, even remotely, with the task at hand.
You study and perform given the above.
If the employer likes your effort, attitude and skill, they’ll hire you.
If they don’t, the problem solved itself. You did your best and they are not a good match for you.
Onwards.
Regardless of whether you consider yourself an imposter, do ask clarifying questions! They are generally expected from candidates. If you're not asking them, you're probably hurting your chances. Source: I interview lots of candidates for SWE positions.
Even if the problem is fully specified, asking clarifying questions is considered a good signal in any interview I've ever conducted.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Initially I didn't study, then I failed to land a great job that I easily would have acquired with some dedicated studying.
^ This happens too too often :/
A good developer doesn't optimise for a specific problem or even group of problems, they optimise for the meta-problem, which is how to quickly find the solution they need no matter what the problem happens to be. No-one can possibly know everything, and these gotcha-type questions say more about the interviewer than the interviewee.
Why do people study for interviews? I feel like if I have to study for an interview, then I’m clearly not good enough for the position. Is this common in other fields of study?
In software, it's full of the bullshit "Cracking the Coding Interview" types of questions that have very little to do with the actual job. You must study for these because you won't really learn about them in your job as they don't really have anything to do with the actual job, and still have a very high impact on wether you'll get hired at top places or not
Maybe the coding interviews which have nothing to do with the job are the problem. I'd say if you're going to be tested on something you don't actually do, for a job you are qualified for, it is rational to have imposter syndrome. Also just to add - many REALLY good engineers have some form of anxiety disorder, and the standard practice for an interview is to put them in a pressure cooker situation.