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Comment by DevKoala | Hacker News Reader

Back when I was younger, I would bullshit on software interviews with great success. I say "bullshit" because I would talk with a high degree of "confidence" about topics and technologies that I had barely read about or had experience with.

"Scaling a service to millions of requests per second? Sure, you will need X, Y, and Z."

Now, on the other side of the table, I am quick to spot the bullshit.

Also, I realize how criminal those interviews were back then. I was answering architect level questions asked by a senior engineer when applying for a junior level position.

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I worked for a number of years in a custom software dev shop and one of my later responsibilities was to be the tech guy during the sales cycle. Essentially my job was to look and sound smart and help convince the potential customer that we're really good and the best choice for the job. I do think we were pretty good but as you can imagine most of my job was bullshitting.

I can't remember the numbers of times that I would quickly read up on a topic / language / technology the prospect was using the night / morning before the meeting, then during the meeting try to sound like an expert in the topic. I know exactly how convincing I was, but I was never called out enough during the meeting to out me.

> I know exactly how convincing I was, but I was never called out enough during the meeting to out me.

I'm the technical guy on the other side of the table. We don't call people out of politeness - just smirk and enjoy the ride. After the meeting we talk freely to people in charge and destroy all your hopes of sale.

He did it for a number of years so I imagine he got some sales.

Perhaps in spite of, not because of.

Perhaps.

We knew we (collectively as a team) weren’t experts in everything, but the prospects called for expertise in x, y and z. Most of the time we knew a lot about x and y but not much about z. But at the same time we also knew no one is a perfect fit and we were pretty good for the job. In a lot of ways it’s very much like most interviews. It’s a back and forth of some BS and attempts to detect BS. The BSing wasn’t always successful I’m sure, but seemed necessary in most cases.

This definitely adds some useful nuance.

I certainly understand that when expertise in topics A, B and C are necessary to get in the door, you do the best you can. Getting a handle on the basics of a tertiary topic so you can start the conversation and focus on your legitimate strengths is a far cry from throwing up a smoke-screen in front of a potential client to push a sale.

Thanks for the follow up.

I mean - assuming you passed the interview how BS was it? Either the guy interviewing you had no place asking those questions or you were accurate enough in your response to get in is my take.

I'm in my current project because I read the right articles about ngrx an hour before the interview.

We had a laugh about it with our line manager the other day. He was leading that interview.

I find it hard to imagine I was accurate in my replies when I also feel I have learned so much in the past decade.

Most likely I was not asked for real details, which makes me question the effectiveness of the interviewers back then.

Would you hire you?

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