The interview that has changed my life

How could interview not to change a life? You get rejected and learn new things, you pass it and get a new job and new experiences. But this is more about the results of the interview or maybe the interview might change the way you prepare to the interviews, but I want to tell a story about the interview which changed the way I work in general.

I have been interviewed multiple times and interviewed many people as well. And most of the interviews feel the same.

First, you get through the initial filter. Some companies just send someone to ask you super generic questions. Other companies ask you quickly about your experience without too many details. There is also a big group that will give you a test task (this happens more often when you are a junior developer). The first step is very annoying, especially if you are doing an active search. Questions are quite repetitive, tasks are quite boring. I usually try to learn something new when doing test tasks because otherwise my time is wasted. (This doesn’t increase chances to get hired).

Usually, companies are looking for people who already know the tools and ready to work. So, in the second round, you might get asked about tools and commands. But toolset can be quite limiting and then companies are looking for smart people. You will get a tricky task to solve in such a company. There will be something that requires you to use create or remember algorithms. However, this focus helps to find people who are really interested to work in given companies and spent at least several months going through leetcode or “Cracking the coding interview” or something similar. So this won’t let you find smart people, people who can think rather than know lots of tricks. The requirement to prepare for a long time for the interview seems unfair to me and it filters out people who don’t have time. Interviewers tried to find a better way to find people are can come up with the solutions. For example 15 years ago brain teasers were popular. (I gave a couple of puzzles when I interviewed people as well). But brain teasers do not correlate with actual work, add more stress for the interviewee and give a feeling of superiority to the interviewer who was able to solve the teaser on their own with pressure.

All such interviews do not show if the person will suitable for work. The only way to test it is to give a person actual work. During one of my favourite interviews, I had to code review and give polite feedback to the person who wrote the code. The code was bad and had many mistakes, but as a reviewer, I had to focus only on important ones, ask questions and point to important things to learn. Additionally, some things could be easily found by static code analyzer.

I was almost ready to say yes to the position. But I had one more interview left. And I was waiting for it because the screening interview was mind-blowing.

The interview was something I never did before. It was a single-day test period. I had to do something similar to the actual work task in a usual working routine. So you can see what people do during the working day, you can feel how is it to work in the company. The first half I was programming using the language I never used before. I learnt tricks, I learnt best practices, we discussed the way to test the task. The second part was quite strange. The internet connection was terrible, so I have to do vim commands with a terrible delay. I met people during my first day, we discussed a lot and I didn’t feel that I was interviewed. It was the first day of my new job. I‘ve learnt a lot that day.

I won’t be able to ask trick questions again, I won’t be able to demand the candidate implement complex algorithmic tasks in one hour. It is all not important.

I rejected all other proposals I had, even though the company was going through legal stuff and haven’t said yes. But the interview changed my life already and I could not think about working in other companies. I wanted to work in the company which gives me opportunities to grow even during the interview.

I believe this was the right decision. I keep learning and Pivotal is the best company I ever worked for.

I have 4th anniversary today and I am happy to be Pivot.