74
dfox
4y

My favorite kind of interview question/challenge is anything that is highly practical for the job. At the current company I work, the coding test/interview challenge was to design and implement an API very similar to the core functionality of the actual product. It’s fair, tests for skills relevant to the job, and is much better than irrelevant silly brain teasers and cs questions, I feel.

In terms of specific questions, one of my favorites is one that one of my colleagues suggested I ask to potential candidates: describe what you think your biggest failed project/task was in your engineering career, and what happened/what you learned. I think it’s a good reflective question that can tell a lot about someone.

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  • 37
    So yes, welcome. Your first question will be to debug this TOTALLY NOT CURRENTLY IN PRODUCTION code. It has a bug... somewhere... and it's really tough.

    ...please.
  • 2
    @dfox i am curious about the question end part. What do expected to hear?
    Honestly in 5 years I dont think I failed at anything, i delivered what was planned otherwise i would be fired if i failed?? Dont know.
    The only thing i would consider close to it, was at the first years i didnt know how to structure css along with components (angularjs) and made a total and not reusable mess 😅 but it kinda part of the process if u dont have anyone more experienced to teach u better
  • 5
    @WorstVarNames good question. I think the relative size of the “failure” can be almost anything.

    Ex. Over-promising, launching a feature that didn’t scale well, team conflict, missing something during planning stage, scope creep, cost, unexpected errors, building something that failed to address issues in a larger system it was meant to help, etc. so many things. I don’t think there’s any dev who hasn’t encountered some of these.
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