PROGRAMMING // INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

The One Question That Every Software Developer Gets Wrong

Or… How to humble brag about how clever you are without actually determining whether the candidate is going to be an asset to your company.

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

The Interview

I work in an industry and have interviewed countless number of people, and of all of the hundreds of people that I interview, I always ask them this question:

“Given that you are applying for a role in this company, which works in this industry…. What do you do when a specific thing happens, how would you solve this?”

They always get the answer wrong, and if they get it partially correct, it still isn’t the perfect answer.

So, I run them through a good answer, just to show that there is a simple answer at a low level, and that they should be feeling shame for not knowing it.

Then, I give them a better answer — because, this builds on the previous answer, and solves some edge cases that may occur in the very odd situation.