The Mental Impact of Tech Interviews

tech interviews are utterly exhausting.

stop me if this seems familiar:

you interview with some company, no luck. you think to yourself, "ah, I should spend some more time going through Sedgewick, that priority queue problem didn't go so well. that was probably what did me in."

you interview with another company, no luck. this time you think, "hmm, they seemed heavy on probability and statistics. i should brush up on that too. how could i have forgotten the 68-95-99 rule for normal distributions! how silly of me..."

but it's not just the interviews, though they're a keen reflection of the nature of the industry.

since jumping is the only way to keep getting decent raises, you go through this process with several companies, every couple years or so! and eventually you have this long list of things you absolutely have to be grand wizard at -- because who knows exactly what you'll be asked each time? -- much of which you don't really use on the job, and thus you have to waste^H^H^H^H^H spend your time studing in the evenings.

not to mention that this is the only industry where experience actually counts against you. you are competing with people who are fresh out of college ... and, oftentimes, being interviewed by people fresh out of college.

fuck it. i should've been a business major.