Show HN: The Best or Worst way to decline a technical interview

As a fellow self-taught developer, I feel your pain. I've been there, many times.

However, there's no reason that you can't also teach yourself the necessary CS fundamentals required to ace these types of interviews. There are plenty of people out there who have done it. "Cracking the Coding Interview" is a great book that if you dedicate enough time to it will help you totally nail those questions (once you have the fundamentals down).

The real secret is to avoid the technical interview altogether. How, you ask? Networking. And not the typical schmoozing type, either. A quick way to start is just to connect with every single developer at your current job. As they make their way to other companies, they're going to either be in a position to hire or at the very least able to strongly recommend someone (and many companies don't actually do these crazy white-board interviews).

If you know you're interviewing, you should at least review some concepts. But you're excusing yourself for not studying/reviewing by saying that you are self taught.

There are plenty of actual cs degree senior devs who fail just as hard as you on technical interviews when they go in thinking "I got this. Been doing it for X years". The only thing you and those cs senior devs have in common is the lack of preparation.

btw, I'm self taught and I'm going to be spending the next few days or so studying these things and key terms.

If I received this email, I would be confused more than anything else.

Candidates turn down interviews all the time. You don't have to justify anything to the company - all this looks like is an attempt to justify something to yourself. Also seems like the email was hastily written given all the spelling/grammar mistakes.