Interviews suck specially for senior developers. Why should I have to prove myself over and over again by doing idiotic basic algorithm type of questions on the whiteboard? After having worked for over 25 years as developer in major companies, shouldn't interviews be about a conversation? - can you imagine interviewing medical doctors the same way we interview in the tech industry? DR. Smith, please show me how you do open heart surgery in this dummy here... (because most interviews happen at the whiteboard)...

> If you spent one day working at Google, in the worst case you can now be called a "former Google employee". Next time you hand out resumes, you can just hand out a blank sheet of paper that says "I worked at Google" scribbled in crayon and you'll still get interviews.

Pretty funny and also sadly true. The author is the same person that is currently building a C compiler for the one page CPU: http://recc.robertelder.org/. Suffice it to say this person should just be hired on the spot. Any interviewing is a waste of time for both parties.

Having gone through similar experiences as an fellow undergrad @ waterloo ('14), I wish I had read this back when I was in first year.

"During your interview, your interviewer is likely to be testing the limits of your ability, and not just whether you meet a certain bar. Naturally, they will pick a problem that they think they know better than you do. If they stump you, or point your mistakes, the way you react is likely more important than the fact that you made a mistake. "

I couldn't have said it better.

> the interviewer asked "What is your favourite language?". My head wasn't in the right place at the time, and I said "Latin", and I went on to describe why I think Latin is such an interesting language.

Hire this man. Stat.

My recommendation for preparing for tech interviews at the big tech companies is to answer as many questions as you can from here:

http://www.programcreek.com/2012/11/top-10-algorithms-for-co...

Use coderpad.io to write code for practice passing the phone screen.

My favorite is the ONANDA interview: the first time they ask about cycles in linked list and he tanks completely... then the next year he tries again, they ask the exact same question and he aces it.

So the trick to a good interview is... know the questions in advance so you can google them beforehand?

Wow. That seems like a lot of work to get a software job. This guy seems pretty knowledgeable too. Has it always been this hard to get a job as a programmer, or is this just a symptom of the times?

Well I just reading about Jan Kuam and how he was rejected at Twitter and Facebook and then founded WhatsApp. And came over here to see interviews stories. I guess the process is not that great. I have interviewed with a few big companies myself including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! and must say that sometimes the result of interview depends upon who is interviewing you. So I guess the lesson here is to keep giving interviews till you find(or make) the job that you want.

> I will claim that startups (say less than 20 employees) are more likely to be seeking talent

I've always had the impression that start ups are looking for skill because they can't afford to pay someone while he/she ramps up on the technologies used.

I am 42 years old and own and manage a successful bootstrapped online business. I "grew up" in an IBM community, going from IBMer, then the business partner community, and I haven't been on half this many interviews in my entire career.

I love the comment about being prepared for many types of interviewers.

I had an on-campus interview with Microsoft last year for a pm internship. The interviewer immediately said, "your resume says you know F#, implement xyz algorithm with this function signature." He had a thick Russian accent and a mean face. Normally I would have had no problem answering, but I was caught off guard and panicked. Its good to be prepared for that kind of unusual circumstance and I will be next time.

He ended the interview with 'Maybe try again next year.' Ouch.

The author brought up some very valuable points I thought which aren't often talked about. Namely whether the requirements are skill based vs talent based and the time horizon of the employment. They also have a good sense of humor. This was a good read.

As an incoming CS student who is terrified of interviewing this is an absolute treasure-trove. But this also makes me wonder--should I forego interviewing until after having taken an algorithms and data structures course?

For the caliber of companies on this list, overall that's a really shitty experience.

The takeaway: treat interview prep as simply learning the realm of possible questions. (Sounds impossible, but not really.) Rote memorization FTW!

The author is a great writer and in addition to this article, I also enjoyed his biographical write up of his time at the University of Waterloo and his co-op terms:

http://www.robertelder.ca/my-uw-journey/

I like his anecdotal style, punctuated with his perspectives. He's quite humble, despite clearly being quite smart (in my estimation) and hard-working. I particularly liked his section on Interviews.

This is very well written. Thank you very nuch on this! I will read it few more times and write thinga down in my notebook as a reminder!

My own story of how I got hired at Amazon, back in 2008: http://brunozzi.com/2008/05/22/how-i-got-hired-by-amazoncom/