Well Paid Geek - Tech interviews suck

I haven't been looking for work, but with the recent employment boom recruiters have contacted me with a few offers that were too good not to interview for.

I didn't get any of these. I actually find it really hard to get jobs when I already have a good job and aren't set on leaving. I think I need the fire in me to do well.

Over the course of the few interviews I did I have had some thoughts about interviewing for tech jobs, so I thought I'd share them.

This is not an interview how to guide or anything like that, just my unfiltered, unordered thoughts.

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Interview toughness over time

Over your career tech interviews go full circle in terms of how hard they seem to you: Hard => Easy => Hard. The hard part at the beginning is because you're a junior.

The easy part is when you're around 5 - 8 years in and you feel comfortable as an experienced mid level or senior dev. The interviews never got easier, you just got better. The hard comes around again when you start to go for the top 2% highest paid tech jobs in your local area and you're competing with the best out there.

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The how is almost as important as the what

The way you give your answer is almost as important as the answer you give. An immediate answer is better than a hesitant answer. A confident tone of voice is better than a worried tone of voice.

In tech, this shouldn't be true but it is. Right should be right and wrong should be wrong. But people interviewing you overall often want to get the feeling that you know your stuff. This comes across as much in your demeanour as it does in content of your answers.

If you knock the content of the answers out of the park it shouldn't matter, but if you're more borderline appearing confident and quick to answer can mean the difference between getting the job and not.

This is a little bad IMO, since people misread people (ie he doesn't seem confident, therefore doesn't know his stuff) a big percentage of the time. For more info about this "Talking to Strangers" by Malcolm Gladwell. Great read.

The takeaway is to prep the stuff you *do* know, not just the stuff you don't. Rehearsed / polished answers will be better received.

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Look at the similarities, not differences in interviews

When deciding what to prep for the future, that one question in one interview may weigh heavy on your mind, and so you chose to prep that area hard in the future. On the surface, this makes sense. I think it's a bad approach. This is because there are so many things you could be asked about in tech, that it makes sense to prep based on things that come up the most often, not the black swan questions that through you.

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The best paid jobs out there want all rounders

I don't so much mean they want a laundry list of technologies, more that they seem to want specialised generalists. An example of this is that all the positions I went for were UI (frontend) but yet they wanted me be able to architect at an application level, which includes backend knowledge. Some of the key areas I seemed to fail in during a couple of interviews was databases / backend scalability which I, as a UI dev going for UI roles, haven't tackled in years.

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Refuse to do take homes

Enough said.

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To get the best jobs, you have to excell at the basics

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