Comment by segmondy
11 hours ago
I was told to use ANY language in an interview. I asked them if they were sure, so I solved it with J. They were not too pleased and asked me if I could use another language, so I did prolog and we moved on to the next question. Then the idiot had the audacity to say I should not use "J and Prolog" but any common known language. I asked if assembly was fine, and they said no. Perhaps python or javascript. I did the rest in python, needless to say I didn't get the job. :-)
Reminds me of https://aphyr.com/posts/340-reversing-the-technical-intervie... (and the follow-ups to it)
We had a programming language class at college and wrote the same program in everything from Java to Lisp. The lisp was way nicer.
You're a hero!
I find it hilarious when people brag about stupid shit like that. Congrats on sabotaging your own interview process I guess??
If the candidate asks if you're sure you want them to use any language and you say "yes", and then get pissy when they do, the candidate isn't the one who sabotaged anything and they're dodging a bullet if they "fail".
I feel like I'm entering a whole different universe on HN. Maybe things are this equal and fair on the senior, high-paying part of the spectrum that most people here seem to occupy, but in general there's a huge power imbalance in job interviews. Unless you're special and the company wants you in particular, it costs them nothing to turn you down in favor of the other 10000 perfect applicants, while you must find a job to survive.
As someone just starting out, the general feeling among my peers is that I must bend to the interviewer's whims, any resistance or pushback will get you rejected. If this is dodging a bullet, then the entire junior field is a WW1 trench, at least where I am. Why would a company hire someone who gets 9/10 on the behavioral portion when they have a dozen other 10/10 candidates? Of course when the interviewer asks me to use "any language", I'll assume they want Python or Java or C++ or Rust, not Bash or ALGOL 68. Stepping out of line would just be performatively asking them to reject me.
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Interviews go both ways ... I don't think they lost out on anything they wanted.
That is what people miss about interviews. Often when you interview you don't have reasonable leads on any other job and so you don't feel like there is a choice since you likely need a job (unemployment rarely pays as well as a job). However interviews are not only about the company deciding if they will hire you, they are also about do you want to work there and convincing you to take the job if one is offered.
So make sure you use those "do you have any questions" time to ask questions! What is it really like to work there. How much notice do you need to give before taking vacation? Do they really give pay raises? How often do they lay people off? What is the dress code? Do they let you take time for your kids school activities? And so on - these questions should be things that are important to you - find out.
In the best cases the interview is only about convincing you to take the offer - generally because someone who you worked with at a previous job said "hire this person" and they trust that person enough to not need any other interview. So keep your network open.
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Use the right tool for the job. Thats engineering.
Instead you insist we should solve a nieche problem with a ill suited tool, while inventing a costume solution when a standard solution exist.
They dodged a bullet. It would have been hell working there.
Why would you ever want to work somewhere that clearly employs such unqualified individuals? And not only that, but allows those individuals to be the face of their company to prospective hires?
A company's interview process tells you a lot about how the company thinks and operates. This was was surely a dumpster fire.
> Why would you ever want to work somewhere that clearly employs such unqualified individuals
Because you're unemployed and need to work to get some money.
Do you think you're a super intelligent person when you couldn't even figure that out?
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What's the point of doing well if you already determined you wouldn't even look at their offer?
Sabotaging? The candidate learned that their interviewers, and probably the company as a whole, isn't curious about languages or stuff that is outside of their wheelhouse.
What if the interviewers decided to ask the candidate about their language choice and trade-offs between different languages? Wouldn't that actually give them more signals into the skill of the engineer, rather than just blindly following their script?