Strength in Critiques

I had an interview with a Staff Engineer and I knew I wasn't going to progress afterwards. It was still one of the highlights of my week.

Feeling down about yourself when searching for a new job can be pretty easy - especially with the tech market being what it is today. Two weeks after being unceremoniously laid off with my team, the hope of finding something fast had started to be replaced with feelings of self-doubt. Not all hope was lost though, as I had made it to a second round at a company I was familiar with, in a tech stack I'm comfortable with. "Surely I can land this one"...

The interviewer, a Staff Engineer with more experience under his belt than I've been alive, got right into it. He showed me this method on GitHub and asked, "If this came through on a PR, what would you do and say?" I thought for a minute and answered with my gut reactions: "Repeating if statements, no Javadoc, didn't really follow SOLID principles." It felt like a decent answer, but they didn't seem enthused. That really set the tone for the rest of the interview. I would take a second to speak about what I was thinking, finish with a direct answer, and then feel like I had missed something based on their reaction.

At the end of the interview, they kindly gave me the opportunity for questions. My last question was, "Based on our conversation today, what is something you think I could improve on regardless of the position?" Their response was quick: "You need to talk through your thought process more. You also didn't mention AI at all." I wasn't really ready for that answer. They ended by saying the recruiter would be in touch in a couple of days. That was the clue that made me sure I hadn't landed it. In my experience, if you're moving forward, they tell you directly and set up the next interview. Not "we'll be in touch in a couple of days."

I've spent the last couple of days self-reflecting on the interview as a whole, and here's what I'm walking away with:

• They were right. I had not brought up AI in my answer or thought process the whole time. Despite using it every day at my last position and truly believing that my first instinct would be to ask an AI tool to "review this code," I hadn't presented myself as AI-forward. That is obviously a big focus for most companies today.

• While I had thought I was explaining my thoughts, I had really just rambled. I was too worried about dead space, when I should have been more collected and given responses that showed I could stay organized and collaborate well with others.

• Here's the biggest point: I need to seek and value time with more experienced engineers. In my last role, I mainly worked with people my age who had similar experience to mine. I did learn a lot from them in the beginning; however, much of my progression came from self-learning and taking on projects even when I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have a mentor or connection with the level of experience this interviewer had. I think that kind of connection is invaluable, and moving forward I need to be extra intentional about learning all I can from people with that kind of experience.

A couple of days after the interview, I got the dreaded "we regret to inform you" email from the recruiter. It stung, but I get it. There are a lot of people with similar skills and experience, and I didn't sell myself well enough. I'm walking away from this one on a positive note though. I've got some key points to improve on for the next interview, and I'm honestly grateful that I had time with such an experienced engineer to learn that from.

I want to hear more from other engineers! What would you say in a PR to the code snippet in the link above? Let me know by reaching out through LinkedIn or my email - contact page.