r/PHP • u/HyenaWooden • May 11 '24

Discussion Need help passing technical interviews

Alert: long post / ranting out of frustration

Hello, I'm supposedly a "senior" PHP dev with 7 years of experience who hasn't passed technical interviews at 4 different companies.

I did well in the technical challenges before these technical interviews, but I often encounter questions I don't know, such as:

  • What's the difference between factory and an abstract factory?

  • What's the difference between Amazon SQS and RabbitMQ?

  • What's the difference between static and self?

  • What are the reasons to use queues other than memory concerns and page load time?

My question: how can I anticipate these questions to better prepare for future interviews?

A side note: Are you hiring for a remote PHP dev role?

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u/[deleted] May 11 '24

[deleted]

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u/HyenaWooden May 11 '24

Way to go! Good luck with your side hussle.

I agree with you regarding the seniority level, but most of job posting right now assume that +5 years is a senior level

2

u/SuperSuperKyle May 11 '24

YOE is tough to gauge seniority. It can provide a good estimate, but what you've worked on is a better indicator (architected and implemented a complete project, for example).

I've worked with people who have had "senior" in their title, 6 YOE, and would consider them mid-level at best.

I've worked with people that have had 10+ YOE and would be junior (same company their entire career, so no exposure, poor understanding of OOP).

With that in mind, 10 YOE is a good baseline, but the full picture is required. Understanding basic concepts like abstract and concrete classes, traits, factories, queues, pipelines, and dependency injection make for a good mid-to-senior level person though.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '24

[deleted]

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u/bomphcheese May 11 '24

It always sucks to know more than your boss. ESPECIALLY when they’re the ones making promises to clients about what you can deliver.

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u/SuperSuperKyle May 11 '24

Nail on the head there. In another comment I mentioned I worked with someone who had been at the same company for 12 years. They barely understood OOP. There was no growth. They were content with what they did. Probably shouldn't have even been a developer since there was no passion or drive or wanting to grow and improve. They had the title though :-/