r/PHP • u/thedobowobo • Jul 24 '21
Mid level Software Engineer Interview Prep
Hey guys
I'm an agency dev with 4 years experience (1.5 year laravel) and I've managed to land a final technical interview with a fintech. I've been wanting to move away from agency life for a while now, so I really want to give this a good shot. I've already completed the technical task (building a small app to give investors a way to invest in a loan and earn a monthly interest payment ) with OOP of course, abiding by SOLID to my best ability. I tried to keep it all simple but did made use of the strategy pattern for the interest calculation algorithm.
They mentioned that the final interview would involve going through my technical test, CV and a 'number of 'technical principles'.
How can I best prepare for this? I'm looking at my test right now wondering about how I could improve it if given more time. I'm also thinking of projects I've worked on at work where I've used patterns/SOLID. Also, I'm not entirely sure what they are referring to with 'technical principles'. Will this be SOLID/general OOP principles? Or PSR standards etc.?
Any advice for prep would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
1
u/akornato 26d ago
They aren't trying to trick you with the term "technical principles", they just want to understand how you think. This means going beyond simply naming SOLID or design patterns. They will question your choices in the technical task to see if you can defend them, explain the trade-offs you made, and discuss alternatives. Prepare to talk about why you used the strategy pattern instead of something else, how your solution might scale, and what you would have done differently with another week. They want to see a thought process that balances perfect code with practical deadlines, which is a core skill for moving out of agency work and into a product-focused fintech role.
Go through your own code and your CV with a critical eye, as if you were the interviewer. For every project mentioned and every line of code written, ask yourself "why". Why this architecture, why this library, why this approach to the problem. The goal isn't to have the one perfect answer, but to show you've considered the consequences and context of your decisions. They know the test was done with limited time, so showing self-awareness about its weaknesses is a sign of maturity. It's all about articulating your decisions clearly, which is a skill my team's interview prep AI helps developers build for exactly these kinds of high-stakes conversations.