Comment by cnp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cnp | Hacker News Reader

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I'm absolutely one of these people who melt down. Give me a task and leave the room and I'm on it, but while being watched I loose all ability to think, which I think has a lot to do with the fact that I never went to college and jumped right into the industry directly after high school essentially bypassing a very important skill you learn there: test taking.

Two weeks ago the position of my dreams -- literally, exactly what I wanted to do, and at a totally rad and well-regarded company -- vanished during my second interview after (what I believe) was a killer and detailed coding challenge submission (which we discussed at length) and an excellent first interview.

Why?

Function.apply -- LOL

"Describe event delegation" -- LOL

Stuff you learn during DAY ONE of JavaScript coding (I've been programming for over ten years in a number of languages, and have built many, many large-scale applications). It was absolutely humiliating, and I'm still recovering from it in the worst of ways. My brain just froze up completely.

Thanks for putting the site up because I'm sure there are many people that will benefit. I've got an interview at Amazon at 3pm and those are notoriously difficult; wish it were already live and running! I'm not looking forward to it.

Not to be a downer, but Amazon isn't that great of a company to work for in the grand scheme of tech companies. Very few perks for engineers and penny pinching on workstations, monitors, etc. It really starts to wear on you after a while and you feel like nothing more than a 'necessary cost'.

I most definitely do not want to work at amazon :) This is a contract position till I find something that is right.

Dude, if you're that passionate about that job you just described then I'd suggest calling the company up and explaining what happened. Having interviewed many people I'd certainly be open to giving someone a second chance if they explained a situation like yours to me.

After the second interview I had an entire email written out that I was going to send to their lead, but honestly, given that the app that they asked me to develop prior to the interview was well done, detailed, commented and modern, complete with a PR flow that me and one of their devs went through via GitHub, I felt that if they were willing to pass due to me obviously locking up on a Skype + Google-Doc shared whiteboard, and on the most basic of JavaScript skills (which were clearly elaborated upon within the project), then it wasn't the right fit anyways.

For those interviewers and candidates looking for a better solution than the "google doc shared whiteboard" - I suggest checking out a product I make: https://coderpad.io/

You can think of it as a much higher fidelity Stypi, Etherpad, Collabedit, etc, except that you can run the code in the browser as you write it. It really helps alleviate the choking sensation of being asked to write out an entire problem on a whiteboard without any of the modern affordances we've come to know and love.

Yeah, this actually did seem to lead to some confusion, which was the first bad sign. Google Docs obviously doesn't know how to format code, and the indentation was getting messy during the typing process leading me to have to break, think, fix indentation, resume thought, then answer to the questioner about my "preference for three spaces or two"... ? It was an obscene process that could have definitely been refined by your app and possibly led to a better outcome.

You wrote that? I love that site! I actually saw it for the first time last week when a company I was interviewing with used it as part of the interview process.

I loved how smooth and fluid it made the whole process, that they could switch between languages during the interview and the rewind functionality.

"I felt that if they were willing to pass due to me obviously locking up on a Skype + Google-Doc shared whiteboard, and on the most basic of JavaScript skills (which were clearly elaborated upon within the project)"

Or it could be a simple miscommunication, or they thought somebody else done the app given your performance on the interview. Reaching out and asking will cost you little compared to potential windfall.

Exactly. I mean, it would take a fairly skeptical person to think that you submitted someone else's code but maybe they just weren't willing to take the risk.

Either way, I think you've nothing to lose by sending that mail/picking up the phone. Regardless of the doubts the interviewer may have in you post-interview they'll know that everybody is prone to a bad day every once in a while.

I blew a technical phone screen with Zynga and not only did the interviewer not respond to any of my follow ups, the in house recruiter actually blocked my calls. Radio silence seems to be fairly standard after deciding to reject a candidate.

It's also Zynga, though. They've gotten flak before for not being the most considerate toward their employees. Maybe that attitude extends to candidates as well?

Pretty much the same thing happened to me a year ago, I was at an onsite interview, did really well 4 out of the 5 rounds, but 1 round I just completely choked some basic linked list question and looked like an idiot.

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