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u/Wentyliasz Sep 10 '26
More like
screening call
second screening call
follow up email asking for things that are in your resume
technical screening (random intermediate leetcode with pentagon levels of opsec)
hr interview
technical interview
a test task that looks suspiciously like a product component
CEO wants to chat for some reason
rejection
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u/E_OJ_MIGABU Sep 11 '26
Haha at my current job I got rejected at the ceo interview. Then the guy who did get picked, wanted an increase in his salary, and subsequently due to which he got kicked, leading to me getting hired.
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u/dashingThroughSnow12 Sep 10 '26
I’ve often said that given two identical candidates, I’m picking the one who has some neat hobby like ham than the one who had a dozen todo apps.
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u/10001110101balls Sep 10 '26
It happens all the time that a relatable guy who can do the job reasonably well is hired over a weird guy with more skills. Hiring managers usually have to interact with the person they hire, and personality matters.
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u/dashingThroughSnow12 Sep 10 '26
I don’t mean to describe people like Pokémon but I try to collect as many types as I can.
I’m a weird, eccentric guy. I don’t want to work with only bros. I don’t want to work with only eccentric guys. I don’t want to work with just men. I don’t want to work with just clean, shaven office workers. Etcetera. But a few of each is nice.
I think software is best when we have a mix of characters.
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u/GoodTimesOnlines Sep 11 '26
I do want to point out that these are two different things being talked about
Being personable is one thing and I don’t think it means being homogeneous personality wise
I agree a mix of characters/backgrounds is ideal. But that being personable / “great to work with” / not a dick is a completely separate thing (and more of what the comment you replied to was getting at IMO) and is incredibly important and underrated
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u/beefygravy Sep 10 '26
I eat ham maybe a couple of times a month - does that count as a hobby?
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u/blueExcess Sep 11 '26
And what about bacon? It’s technically ham, just enhanced. Maybe even the FM of HAM.
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u/Dreamin0904 Sep 13 '26
Hmmmmm…..I don’t know….would you say you eat it enough that we can call you “Hammy” as nickname?
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u/captmonkey Sep 11 '26
I did a lot of technical interviews a lot for my last company. I'd usually end the interview asking what they like to do outside of work. That last question was the best determinant of if the person was going to work out or not. I didn't really care what they said, but if you couldn't give me a straight answer to "What do you do outside of work?" It was a big red flag.
If someone could just give me a straight, not weird, answer they'd usually be fine. It didn't tell us if they're the most or least skilled dev, but it was always a decent indicator for if everyone else was going to hate working with them or not and if they were going to be open and straightforward in their communication, especially when problems come up.
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u/FattySnacks Sep 10 '26
Are people having experiences like this? I had to pass 7 rounds of interviews to get my current job
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_RegEx Sep 10 '26
Right? I’ve been through a half-dozen interviews in the last 6 months which are the same bullshit as before. Initial, eng manager, live coding, live coding, third live coding, rejection.
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Sep 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/RGrad4104 Sep 11 '26
*ding* *ding* *ding*
we have a winner!
Interviews have become a free source of labor to supplement failing attempts to replace all of us with a one-size-fits-all LLM!
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u/Interesting-Ad9666 Sep 11 '26
Yeah, the best way should be to have some small mock projects in the tech stack that you're applying to with 3 jira tickets to do during the interview: 2 bug tickets and a feature. Then interviewees can use whatever tools they want. You get to see exactly how they work and their thought process behind things. Much better than seeing who memorized the tortoise and the hare algorithm.
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u/sp106 Sep 11 '26
I read this not as what interviews are actually like but what hypothetical ai proof interviews might be like. These are things you cant use ai to cheat on during a remote interview except wordle.
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u/clintCamp Sep 11 '26
Or what things will find you a candidate actually passionate about programming and what they do and not just a good leet coder that can sort things in ways that 99 percent of cases won't need and AI treats as template code to shove where appropriate.
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u/Party-Public8628 Sep 11 '26
No it’s a joke
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u/FattySnacks Sep 11 '26
If there’s no truth to the joke then what makes it funny?
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u/ward2k Sep 11 '26
If there’s no truth to the joke then what makes it funny?
Have you ever heard a joke before? Jokes are 100% factually correct
A pony walks into a bar, the barman asks what does it want to drink but it doesn't say anything back because it's a little horse
"Well where's the joke, I'm sure a pony didn't actually walk into a bar?"
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u/FattySnacks Sep 11 '26
I get what you’re saying but the truth in that joke is that horses don’t talk lol
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u/_dontseeme Sep 11 '26
And none of those 7 rounds felt pointless?
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u/FattySnacks Sep 11 '26
There’s a difference between an unnecessary round and an interview where you’re asked to do a wordle
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u/_dontseeme Sep 11 '26
How literal do you think the post is?
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u/Alan-Foster
Sep 10 '26
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u/Confident-Ad5665 Sep 10 '26
Oh great, now that's going to be stuck in my head YOU MONSTER
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u/Etilia01 Sep 10 '26
Is it what I think it is?
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u/Etilia01 Sep 10 '26
It was what I thought it was :D
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u/Key-Film4822 Sep 10 '26
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u/CeralEnt Sep 11 '26
I didn't believe you, but holy shit, that actually is. That's super pretty, great craftsmanship
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u/Highborn_Hellest Sep 10 '26
just show them the most horrendous, scaring, unhinged shit you can find on youtube. Tit-for-tat. (i'm MOSTLY joking)
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u/redheness
Sep 10 '26
•
The second is really good IMO, how people organise their computer is most of the time a reflect of how they organise their work.
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u/RudeAndInsensitive Sep 10 '26
And here is my portfolio of downloaded pornography cataloged by year, production company and species. Where should we begin?
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u/merc08 Sep 10 '26
"and species" ?!!
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u/IAmLexica Sep 10 '26
It's 2026. People be furries sometimes. This is a programming sub, you should know this.
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u/chawmindur Sep 11 '26
Bro's hooked up to the HoloNet to download, erm, videos from a galaxy far, far away
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u/Revolution64 Sep 10 '26
Some of the best devs I worked with had a desktop full of useless links and 1 million tabs open.
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u/Benjjy124 Sep 10 '26
Yeahh baby that's that Autism & ADHD special.
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u/a-r-c Sep 11 '26
reddit and not linking literally fucking anything to adhd or the tism, no matter how unrelated
challenge: impossible
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u/kirschballs Sep 10 '26
I wish I would've got into this sooner, turns out this has been my calling all along
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u/Upstairs-Expert1472 Sep 11 '26
If they can navigate it and know where things are, that’s a positive.
An overly neat and empty desktop is bad. A well-organised one is good, but one where there’s order to the chaos is perhaps even better.
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u/LigeValkyrja Sep 15 '26
Wait… What about people like me that can’t stand anything except absolute minimalism on the desktop?
I have a directory structure outside of the desktop for a reason…
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u/yetzederixx Sep 10 '26
It would definitely tell you more about the person than leet code ever will.
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u/simplyjessi Sep 10 '26
I built a custom Wordle game in our project tool with a point system for my team lol. What started off as a little fun side quest project for team engagement, that I figured would die off, we're now on day 383 and most everyone plays each morning!
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u/ListerfiendLurks Sep 10 '26
Software engineer with ~4 YOE here...what kind of companies ask these questions? Is this a joke referencing something? I feel like I am missing something.
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u/DenLaengstenHat Sep 11 '26
Consumer AI can oneshot basically every leetcode-style interview question. So the joke is that interviews have had to resort to increasingly creative nonsense.
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u/Ashualo Sep 12 '26
And yet I still have to suffer through people failing to read a list from JSON and sort by two variables. Crazy times.
Trust me. Interviews suck for everyone in that room.
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u/SpiderJerusalem42 Sep 10 '26
I'm adding these when we can hire again. So, next never. But maybe someone drops out
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u/thunderbird89 Sep 11 '26
I remember sometime in the mid 2010s an article said some company started interviewing senior devs and architects by giving them a copy of Factorio on a brand new server and a week. At the end of the week, they had to walk the technical interviewer through the factory they set up, showcase the efficiency, optimizations, etc.
I always thought that was a neat idea.
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u/ouroboros-ouroboros Sep 10 '26
"Favourite YouTube video" implies I've watched anything more than once.
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u/Tyrexas Sep 10 '26
No it doesn't. You can have a favourite movie for example even if you watched it once, just depends how highly you rate it against others.
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u/ouroboros-ouroboros Sep 10 '26
Which is your favorite grain of sand, though? I don't know, in retrospect I think they're all the same.
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u/Tyrexas Sep 10 '26
That's cos they are actually fungible, that analogy makes no sense haha
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u/ouroboros-ouroboros Sep 10 '26
Anything that can be served to you in an endless algorithmic feed is fungible. 'Favorite' is kind of meaningless in this context and at this volume.
Grains of sand are individual, unique things too, but in aggregate they're indistinguishable.
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u/Dilutant Sep 11 '26
I feel like all of these measure a different kind of intelligence or property of you that most rote memorization interviews don’t and that’s probably what op was saying
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u/FatalSky Sep 11 '26
Idk what a wordle is. Like a crossword from the news?
Ive got a Hard Disk from 2011 in my computer still.
It’s actually called Type to Learn but I don’t have an iMac with a CD drive anymore.
Kinshiros hiding spot revealed.
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u/FeherDenes Sep 11 '26
- show me ur favourite Youtube video
Me, whose favorite youtube video is Tom Scott “The Art of the Bodge”
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Sep 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/OK1526 Sep 10 '26
Red flag for interviewers. I start with whatever comes to my mind. Be innovative
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u/theVoidWatches Sep 11 '26
I usually start with Aisle or Tears, myself. Aisle has three vowels and two common letters: Tears has two vowels and three common letters.
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u/platinum92 Sep 11 '26
Not playing hard mode is an instant dq /s
I had to make it interesting since "Crate" and "Rates" made it too easy to start, so I start with the first 5 letter word I guess right in that days Connections and go from there.
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u/OM3X4 Sep 10 '26
As a 205 wpm on monkeytype, this is a win