How to Crack Your Next Software Developer Job Interview: An Actionable Guide

No, just no. I've spent enough time in my career honing my skills. If I have to study for a job interview, the company that's doing the hiring is probably not a good fit.

For companies doing hiring, please observe the following checklist:

1. Do I have to enter all the information that's in my resume into a web form? Hard pass. I'm not supposed to make it easier for your crappy HR system to weed me out of the candidates list.

2. Take home coding test? Pass. I have better things to do with my time. You get my time when you pay me.

3. Obscure coding trivia question looking for a specific answer? Lame. I know my fair share of coding trivial but when I've given you several other efficient ways of solving the problem (including using the CPU instruction via inline assembly that was added to solve exactly that problem), you're just being a dick.

4. Looking only for recent experience with whatever new framework or library you're using? Come on. Codebases are like libraries. Once you've read a few dozen of them, it's easy to adapt.

There's more, but those are some of the worst I've encountered. A good developer can adapt, and filtering out too aggressively too early is a poor way to build a team. Everywhere I've worked has involved teams. People with different traits are needed to make an effective team. Try to see if/how my skills and attributes can help contribute to that team. Don't filter people out prematurely.