
Ask HN: Afraid of interviewing - amatxn
I have been looking for a new position but lately I am paralyzed with fear over interviewing. I&#x27;ve been a generalist developer in small shops (wearing many hats) for 13 years and programming in many different languages.<p>Previously seeking a new job was not a problem, but now I am afraid to pursue positions past initial contact because I feel like I will completely fail due to lack of skills. I see people less qualified than me switching positions but I can&#x27;t get out of the starting gate. Even turned down an in person interview in Austin because of this fear.<p>It seems that many HN jobs and other developer jobs test on CS fundamentals.  I don&#x27;t remember a lot of algorithms&#x2F;data structures&#x2F;discrete math&#x2F;etc and&#x2F;or use them much day to day beyond basic needs (list&#x2F;array&#x2F;hashmap) - my current job simply doesn&#x27;t require advanced knowledge.<p>I&#x27;m currently reviewing CS fundamentals and practicing code challenges on code eval - which I enjoy because I like solving problems and learning.<p>I would like to pursue a new&#x2F;challenging opportunity - is my fear unfounded or should I study more before interviewing?
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tptacek
Everybody is afraid of interviewing.

I've been rattled by every job interview I've had. That includes interviews
for roles that I'd been courted for. It includes interviews for jobs I didn't
even _want_ , where I was interviewing mostly because a friend had asked me
to. One of those interviews was for a company I actively disliked and would
under no circumstance work for. I didn't sleep the night before! I did a
multicast streaming media company in the late 90s and owned the router; later,
I interviewed at a friend's company, got asked how to implement Towers of
Hanoi without recursion, and for the rest of the day forgot everything I knew
about routing protocols --- despite having spent the preceding two years doing
nothing but implementing them.

Job interviews _suck_. They're hostile processes that involve complete
strangers not just sitting in judgement of you, but also working under the
delusion that their job is to break you so they can avoid hiring "B players".

I basically interview people for a living now and pay pretty close attention
to this, and have come to the following conclusion: there is zero correlation
between how people comport themselves in job interviews and their ability to
do a job.

My best advice is, know the stuff you know. If you want to bone up on
algorithms and data structures, don't cram. _Implement them_ in your most
comfortable language and watch them work, and go to the interview knowing not
that you can recite them from memory, but that push-to-shove you can in fact
throw down and get them working. Then just answer questions honestly.

The hardest interviews you take might be for the worst, most dysfunctional
teams; a mean (or even just wicked) streak in interviewing candidates is a
sign of broken teams, not weak candidates.

Good luck!

~~~
kohanz
_Everybody is afraid of interviewing._

This is a generalization that doesn't always ring true.

As I've gained experience, I've come to enjoy interviewing at times.
Especially when I'm going into an interview where I feel quite comfortable
discussing that particular domain.

If you're someone who doesn't mind social interaction and who doesn't lack
confidence (for better or for worse), interviewing can be an enjoyable
experience.

I doubt that I'm the only one who feels this way.

~~~
tptacek
Maybe not. It hasn't worked that way for me. Also: no correlation between how
strong I feel in the problem domain and how well I'll interview for it. And
I'm just fine getting up in front of a room full of clients and selling
consulting services, or getting in the face of a lead developer and telling
them what they're doing wrong.

It's something about the "set and setting" of a job interview.

I'm unsurprised if there's a lucky cohort of people who just don't have this
problem. Enjoy! For my part, I'm looking forward to spending more and more of
my career beating the tech job interview to death with my bare hands, because
I loathe it --- from both sides, as a candidate and now a hiring manager.

Death to interviews!

~~~
read
_there is zero correlation between how people comport themselves in job
interviews and their ability to do a job._

Agreed. What is your approach to finding good people given this phenomenon?

~~~
CocaKoala
tptacek's approach to finding good people is fairly well documented, as it
happens. I'm sure he can jump in and summarize it better than I can, but in
brief: his company has several pipelines which generate quality candidates for
the type of work his company performs (he is a co-founder of an application
security consulting firm; the pipelines are a series of crypto challenges that
are designed to teach you how to implement and how to break common crypto
algorithms, and www.microcorruption.com, a ctf that teaches you to reverse-
engineer assembly code and craft malicious payloads to take advantage of
legitimate exploitable code, while defeating legitimate exploit defenses).
These pipelines are, according to tptacek[1], very good at producing
candidates who are interested in security work and are capable of doing same,
regardless of prior experience. He has also refined his interview process in
an effort to generate quantifiable and comparable information about each
candidate, as opposed to e.g. asking candidates to solve brain teasers because
it makes the interviewer feel smart.

[1]: I'm phrasing it in this way not because I don't agree with him, but
because it's new enough that I don't think it's been established as objective
truth. I'm of the opinion that the pipelines are very cool and fairly
effective as recruiting tools.

~~~
tptacek
w/r/t/ interviews, I would say that the outreach programs are less important
than standardized interviews and work-sample tests.

------
CocaKoala
Are you terrified of actually going through the interviewing process, or are
you terrified of getting rejected?

It seems like you feel that you're afraid of getting rejected, but if you're
turning down in person interviews, that seems like you're worried about the
interview itself and not what happens after.

It's important to clarify because they're two very different problems. Turning
down offers to interview is silly; if you get rejected from the job, you
haven't lost anything (because you don't have the job now anyways) and you get
the experience of interviewing. Based on how it went, you can then start
pinpointing where your weak points are and start trying to shore them up.

Don't be so concerned about nailing the first interview out of the gate;
interviewing is a skill like any other, and it's okay to need some practice.

~~~
amatxn
I believe it is a bit of both. I have a high expectation of myself and haven't
really failed before - I've been offered the job after all but a few
interviews in the past.

Then I decided I wanted to shoot higher and had phone screens at Amazon (1)
and Google (2) - 2nd video interview. These rejections have skewed my view.

------
loumf
I am a consultant that advises companies on tech interviewing. -- I have done
100's and 100's of tech interviews. I would be happy to mock interview you and
give you feedback and advice. Contact in profile.

You are doing absolutely the right things to succeed at it -- you just need
practice at doing it live.

------
czbond
"Believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear" \- a quote that
really applies here. I've seen quite a lot of developers who are good at
talking, and being critical to show knowledge - but usually it's a
psychological cover for feeling insecure. This is why some developers brag
about knowing obscure things, for example. Anyways, my point is - that if you
haven't used it in 13 years, it doesn't matter anyways - don't feel insecure.
In addition, many of those coding questions are usually created by
'inexperienced developers' who don't know how to gauge talent, so they put
together 'obscure, factual' questions.

~~~
amatxn
Thanks, that makes me feel better. I've met developers like that and was even
asked a trick question over MySQL and stored procedures years ago.

I will continue to learn for the sake of learning which I've always done - not
so much for interviews but to learn how to solve problems in different ways.

~~~
adamcw
Also, in my personal experience, "I don't know" is a valid answer to those
types of questions, as long as it is followed by an explanation of what your
methodology would be to fill that gap.

~~~
amatxn
I'm not afraid of not knowing an answer. If I don't know the answer its just
an opportunity to learn. Each interview I've been in has produced topics or
technologies I do not know. I research each and every one after the interview.

------
fivedogit
Engineering interviews are fundamentally flawed. Let me explain:

3 weeks ago, I had an interview at the big G. I wanted the job sooooo badly
that I was insanely nervous during the interview. The interviewer asked me to
write a piece of recursive code and I fell flat on my face. In my nervous
state, I couldn't keep the problem and variables in my head. I had no
concentration/focus whatsoever.

When the call was over, I did the task in about 20 minutes. No problem.

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND why coding under pressure, while someone is watching and
judging, should be a part of coding interviews. Some people may be highly
affected by the pressure. Others may have no problem with it at all. This
means that people who are naturally more nervous are going to underperform
lesser engineers who don't get nervous.

Now, if coding under pressure is part of the job, great. Then this method is
appropriate. But it never is. Coding is a solitary, concentrated, focused
effort. To test someone outside that natural environment is to not test them
at all.

I honestly don't get it.

------
voorloopnul
My suggestion to you: get interviews in places where you don't want to work,
or for jobs that you don't want to do. (of course you must keep at last in the
field of interest)

This will ease your rejection fear, and train you to handle it.

~~~
amatxn
That is a great idea, it will also help me learn you to say 'no' if an offer
is extended.

~~~
syntheticlife
This is also a good time to hone your negotiation skills with regards to
salary. It's a lot easier to ask for something ridiculous when you don't want
the job. Once you figure out what the threshold between 'reasonable' and
'ridiculous' is it sharpens your ability to get what you can.

Some people think they're worth more than they deserve, most think they're
worth less. Being able to navigate the negotiation of my value has always been
the hardest part of interviewing for me.

------
wikwocket
It sounds like your main problem is confidence. The simple act of having more
confidence revolutionized the way I look at interviews.

Look at it this way, if you've really been developing that long, you're a
fricken veteran. Unless you've been writing up TPS reports in Excel for 13
years, you've seen and used a wide variety of tools to build projects, and
_get things done_. New grads may know the difference between a tree and a trie
and how to optimally traverse each, but you know how to define a project, what
to expect as you scope it, what types of tools tend to work best for different
approaches, how to develop with an eye to scaling and maintaining, how to test
things, how to deliver them to end users, and so on.

There are probably dozens of types of projects that I could ask you about in a
social setting, and you could immediately deliver a 5-minute sketch of how to
design and build them from scratch, pros and cons of various approaches,
likely problem areas, etc. That comes from the experience of having lived it
for a decade, and the confidence to recognize that you can do these types of
things, because you have done them, and because you're smart and resourceful.

This sort of confidence in one's abilities is such an asset when interviewing.
Just assess your skills, know what you can do, and talk like you know what you
can do. Sure you don't know _everything_ about these skills, but who does?

The thing about CS fundamentals and interviews focusing on them is just a lame
facet of the industry. It's hard to assess complicated skills in a
standardized way, so instead people ask about data structures and language
syntax. It's like interviewing an architect by asking him minutia about
specialty hammers, but it's just the way it is. Look at it as a flavor of
FizzBuzz, read through some books on the topic. If you're asked such a
question, try to get behind the question, see what the interviewer is really
assessing, and speak to that out of your skill toolbox.

If you want some CS theory book recommendations, here are my favorites:

\- "Cracking the Coding Interview" by Gayle Laakmann

\- "The Algorithm Design Manual" by Steven Skiena

------
kobey
One thing to be aware of is imposter syndrome
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome)).
From your description, it sounds like you may be selling yourself short. I
don't know about the prevalence in CS, but this seems to actually be pretty
common in academia.

There's a good talk on the subject from PyCon
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i8ylq4j_EY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i8ylq4j_EY)).

~~~
amatxn
Interesting... this could apply, by traditional standards I would probably be
considered successful (BS, MBA, MS).

Definitely going to check out that PyCon talk.

------
JSeymourATL
Here's a solid book recommendation on dealing with Self-Limiting Behavior
(especially fear) - "Your Own Worst Enemy", by Ken Christian.
([http://www.amazon.com/Your-Own-Worst-Enemy-
Underachievement/...](http://www.amazon.com/Your-Own-Worst-Enemy-
Underachievement/dp/006098872X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398808520&sr=1-1&keywords=your+own+worst+enemy))

------
fredophile
Pick a few different positions that are in your field but you aren't very
interested in. Try to get interviews for them. If you do poorly, think about
where things went wrong and how to do better in your next interview. If you do
well it should improve your confidence. Once you're more confident start
applying for the positions that you really want.

------
dpweb
The only solution I've found for intense fear of something is to keep doing it
over and over. For job interviews I've liked Larry David's concept of
'flipping it', start interviewing them for the right to hire you. Of course
there a tactful way to do it, but getting myself into that mindset has helped
with the nervousness.

~~~
amatxn
Good suggestion - it's easy to focus on the interview being one way when in
fact its is also for the candidate to vet the company.

------
fsk
Just keep interviewing, keep trying. You're going to have to interview with a
lot of people who are clueless or rude before you find someone you want to
work with (and who wants to work with you).

If you get stumped by a question, look it up when you get home.

------
jason_tko
I'd also be happy to help out and hop on a call with you. I'm generally pretty
good with this sort of stuff. My contact details are in my profile.

------
palidanx
I used to do tons of interviews at my former companies, so if you would like
to do a mock interview, drop me a message (via my profile).

