Rejected from a job i thought I was about to get
Posted by CuteNegotiation3937@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 64 comments
Hey everyone, title sums up the situation. My concern is regarding the feedback.
In the technical interview, I was asked to build an api and a front-end.
An api to add an entry to an array and a front-end to send that entry.
I have done it and got slapped by CORS policy when testing , by then, the time was up and had to end it.
While creating the front-end, i was quiet shaky on the syntax while typing and making some minor errors that I fixed up with some google searches during the interview(which i was allowed to do).
There was no errors in the code and didnt have much time to debug the cors policy error.
Today, I learned I was rejected for the reason I mentioned. I also learned that everyone in that process was rejected as well. The feedback was very generic ‘Not very familiar with the syntax of the tech stack fundamentals and projects made and explain during the interview doesn’t match the coding skills presented.
I am numb and not sure how to interpret this feedback. I have worked for 5 years, done projects, several tech stacks. I type slow, and I don’t remember everything , I need docs and google. I understand I might need to sharpen my skills, but when? When i have no time and energy driving a taxi around to make ends meet.
Funny thing is, the recruiter mentioned every one in the process was rejected. This is a company in Australia.
vbrbrbr2@reddit
It hasppens. Recently I had
Coding round - I had some doubts about how I did, got positive feedback.
System design - I thought it went great, got positive feedback.
Product sense round - I thought it went great, got positive feedback.
Behavioural round - I thought it went great.
After all of this "we have concerns about lack of passion and gaps in your product thinking based on rounds 3 and 4".
I'll just never know to what extent I was way off in my perception of my own performance, or their expectations were completely different, or they rejected me for some other reason and just gave some vague bs excuse based on the nontechnical rounds.
Great way to spend 6 weeks.
goldiebear99@reddit
what is product thinking even supposed to mean? who comes up with these terms?
JimDabell@reddit
This is a very common requirement and important for a lot of organisations.
Some developers just want to crank out tickets all day long. Some developers are really interested in the product and want to participate in the discussions about how features should work from the end-user’s perspective.
Neither of these are wrong in general, but depending upon what stage your company is at and the current makeup of your team, one is more valuable to you than the other. An early stage startup is going to struggle if none of their dev team cares about the product and all want to focus on the code. A large enterprise can have many people like that though.
db_peligro@reddit
the 'lack of passion' thing, oh my god.
people who are passionate about their work want ownership of it.
passion in the tech industry means basically willingness to work long hours and buy into managers' bad decisions with no pushback. basically 'passion' means you need to project heavy beta energy, someone who is smart but can be pushed around.
csanon212@reddit
One time I rejected someone because I was leaving the job in a few weeks and they were too ambitious and good to be sucked into a bad project. It was a mercy killing.
akehir@reddit
That sucks, a 6 week process and time invested for barely any feedback :-(
AccountExciting961@reddit
I do not think it's anything wrong with you - you dodged the bullet, and I'm not saying this to placate you. I'm currently interviewing myself and I'm noticing a clear pattern of non-technical managers having expectations that a technical expert will have the right answers right there and right now. With some of them going as far as simply not taking "I do not know" for an answer because "we need to move fast".
You do not want to work for such people, trust me. I tried. Never again.
JimDabell@reddit
This response is incredibly overused here. It’s trotted out practically every time somebody doesn’t get a job. Not every instance of somebody not getting a job is a red flag.
They had a tech challenge to implement a simple API call from front-end to backend, and they failed it. It’s not a red flag that the employer rejected them. They didn’t “dodge a bullet”. They need to improve.
Telling them that this is a red flag from the employer doesn’t help them, it hurts them. If you can’t make a simple API call to the backend, then practice this until you can do it without stumbling over syntax and hitting an SOP brick wall.
It doesn’t mean they are a bad person, or a terrible developer, or anything like that. But it does mean that they didn’t hit a reasonable bar for entry. The response to that is not to complain that the employer was unfair, the response to that is to improve to meet that bar.
LordRybec@reddit
Sounds like a recruiter who doesn't understand how tech or development work trying to defend one of the most horrible practices ever to be invented.
The fact is, the vast majority of people aren't great at testing. "Tech challenges" don't filter out the people who aren't skilled. They filter out people who test poorly regardless of skills. They are absolutely idiotic, and do not achieve what is intended. There is no defense for a company that uses these "tech challenges" rather than asking for existing work samples. No company looking for an artist makes applicants sit for an hour and make free art for them. They look at their existing portfolio.
Asking for a "tech challenge" indicates incompetence in recruitment. So if you want to work for someone incompetent failing the challenge maybe isn't dodging a bullet. If you want to work for a competent company that doesn't rely on superstition as a form of assessment though, they totally dodged the bullet!
JimDabell@reddit
A lot of people don’t have work samples to offer. That’s where things like this are useful.
So pay them.
Would you hire a chef without eating anything they’ve cooked? Would you hire a band without hearing anything they’ve played? I’m not going to hire a developer without seeing code they’ve written.
If they’ve already got code available I can read, then great! But if they haven’t I’m not going to refuse to consider them and I’m not going to hire them blind. Which is where things like this are useful.
You’re way out of line. Stop being so deliberately insulting.
LordRybec@reddit
If an artist doesn't have work samples, it suggests they have no actual art experience. If a developer has no work samples, it suggests they have no development experience. Work samples are easy to produce. If you are too lazy to produce work samples, that's your problem! Go do some actual work. If you haven't, I'm not hiring you.
Paying them does make it more fair. It doesn't remove testing anxiety and the other things that cause most people to test at a lower level than their actual competency or skill.
Your chef and band analogies highlight the problem perfectly. A competent person looking to hire a chef doesn't bring the chef in and have them cook part of a single dish in isolation. They go to the location the chef currently works at and orders something there anonymously. That way they see how the chef performs in real life A competent person hiring a band will anonymously observe the band in the kind of real-life work situation they intend on employing the band for. This is what actual restaurant and musical recruiters/agents do! A musician might be able to get a gig based on a sample tape, but sample tapes are mostly garbage even for excellent musicians. Even if an agent does like a sample tape, they'll typically visit a venue the band is performing at, without informing the band, to see how they perform in real life situations, because they are competent enough to understand that testing isn't an effective assessment technique. Cooking varies more, because the end product is perishable, the most successful restaurants don't just have applicants cook during the interview. They take significant pains to sample the chef's work in a real-life work situation.
Coding isn't like live music production or cooking, where making a single mistake can have immediate, massive consequences though. It's not necessary to observe a developer in action like it is a band, where one mistake can ruin a song, and a few mistakes can ruin a concert. A developer who doesn't make mistakes constantly is a liar. The important part is the end product, not the events that happened along the way. This is also true of artists, which is why chefs and bands are terrible analogies, while artists are excellent ones. If you are rejecting an artists because at some point in the process there was a streak across the drawing or painting that is not visible and doesn't affect the finished product, you are an idiot.
And as far as even considering hiring a developer without a portfolio, you would also have to be an idiot to hire an artist who doesn't have any art to demonstrate their skills. If a person has sufficient coding skills to be worth hiring at all, then they've done work they can show you. If they don't bring it, either they know it is terrible and you shouldn't even consider hiring them, or they are lying about having any experience at all. I started out as a self taught programmer. I had plenty of code (including very high quality, recent code) I could put together into a portfolio (and I actually used some in such a portfolio at one point). Then I went to college to get my degree, and I produced a lot more code of similar high quality. There does not exist a competent programmer who has not produced sufficient code to demonstrate their skill. It's impossible to gain those skills without actually writing code. So the idea that they don't have that code is absurd. Again, you sound like a recruiter who doesn't understand the domain. If you had any actual technical experience, you would already know all of this!
JimDabell@reddit
You really have to figure out that just because somebody disagrees with you, they aren’t incompetent; and how to disagree with somebody without insulting them.
Try replying again, without the insults, and maybe I’ll take it seriously.
finpossible@reddit
Maybe this is a conspiracy and we are ruining it... Better to agree that OP is hard done by and keep the industry to ourselves...
besseddrest@reddit
What OP was asked to demonstrate and the issues they ran into isn't some unique use case or something they just pulled from leetcode - those are things you deal with in your daily tasks, regardless of the company or industry.
LordRybec@reddit
Again, most people don't test well. In other words, some people perform very poorly on tests doing tasks that they are normally extremely good at. It's completely irrelevant whether it is "daily tasks, regardless of the company or industry", the point is most people perform more poorly on tests, even in skills they are extremely good at than they do in the real life situations those tests are intended to simulate or evaluate. This sort of testing is and always has been a poor way of measuring competency, whether it is a test taken in school or a "tech challenge" done as part of an interview. No competent hiring manager will require such a test or put significant stock in the outcome of one.
Gortyser@reddit
Yeah, that’s not the point of interview to do everything perfect. You’re showing what you can do, and even if you fails you can still talk through solution and whatnot. And that’s basically what OP did (‘explain during interview doesn’t match coding skills’ part). We’re just different, and I stressing as hell during live coding. Doesn’t mean I will do the same at actual work or what I can’t code lol
finpossible@reddit
Disagree.. interview should be prepped for like an exam.
Rocking up to an interview making excuses like "oh yeah sorry I didn't write JavaScript for a while" for a job that needs those skills is lazy and entitled.
If they ambush you with questions on some random domains without warning then fair enough, but I suspect OP isn't interviewing for a c++ role here and knew very much that he is supposed to be selling his web dev skills.
Not sure why people are walking on eggshells here - from the sounds of OP performance there's no way I would hire them.
We need people who can write code, not talk about writing it...
Gortyser@reddit
It should be prepped, but it doesn’t mean you can’t fail something. If we’re using exam analogy, well, we have grades, not just pass/not pass system. No one saying that OP is great developer - we can’t be sure about that based on reddit post, lol. Same as you can’t really call them lazy, you don’t know that. Software development is not about only writing code.
finpossible@reddit
Correct, we have two passing grades: "strong yes" and "yes".
OP says he has no time to practice for the interview and is confused why he didn't get the job.. imo it's disingenuous here to say that he "dodged a bullet" and the company is "wrong" for requiring good performance in the interview.
In our interviews, this stage where you write a trivial piece of code is literally the "shit filter" - if you can't breeze through this there is no hope.
There is much room for failure and difference of opinion in the actual interviews covering systems design and discussing how you would approach profiling and optimising some code (for a role where that is literally the point of you being there)
There's very little room for failure on the type of question OP describes, it's so fundamental... How is he going to write an actual complex feature if struggling with this.
Kemilio@reddit
You think handling CORS flawlessly on a first attempt in an interview setting is trivial for 5 YOE?
ObscurelyMe@reddit
For cors issues,
It’s always a server configuration concern.
Your header should have
Access-Control-Allow-Origin “[domain you want to allow here]”
It could also be a “*” wildcard and you should be able to explain why you’d use a specific domain vs wildcard or vice versa.
akehir@reddit
Yeah, but it shouldn't happen if you develop on localhost; so they were probably coding in some interviewing platform / deploying somewhere?
Anyways, during an interview / coding challenge it's weird to have CORS errors.
JimDabell@reddit
You’re assuming they are using a full-stack JavaScript framework or have some form of proxy in place. If your front-end is calling an API implemented separately, then in most development environments, you’ll have the JavaScript running on one port and the backend API running on a different port. This means the SOP will stop your requests, and you’ll need to open it up with CORS.
finpossible@reddit
Nooooo this shouldn't happen and it's unfair to expect a senior dev to know this! CORS issue means the interview process is completely broken and OP should be hired by default.
If a candidate demonstrates the motor skills needed to press buttons on a keyboard that should suffice to believe everything claimed on their CV and make a hiring decision.
akehir@reddit
We don't know what the job description was or what how the interview went, so we shouldn't judge.
I had to laugh at your post though 😂
akehir@reddit
Yeah you're totally right, I forgot that the port might be different/not proxied.
Personally I always use a proxy for development (as that would be used in a prod env anyways) or an interview, you could just launch the browser without web security enabled though; if you wouldn't just configure the header in the backend. CORS really shouldn't matter for more than 30 seconds during development.
No_Indication_1238@reddit
He's right, no point in downvoting him.
JimDabell@reddit
Yeah, this is important. If I see you add
*without calling it out as a potential issue, then that’s a yellow flag I’d follow up on with more questions.carrick1363@reddit
I'm confused why the mods thought this was excessive venting.
hippydipster@reddit
If they're searching for developers who live and breathe at the level of syntax, then I guess that's what they'll get. And they'll probably never understand what they're missing.
ExperiencedDevs-ModTeam@reddit
Rule 9: No Low Effort Posts, Excessive Venting, or Bragging.
Using this subreddit to crowd source answers to something that isn't really contributing to the spirit of this subreddit is forbidden at moderator's discretion. This includes posts that are mostly focused around venting or bragging; both of these types of posts are difficult to moderate and don't contribute much to the subreddit.
theunixman@reddit
They’re looking for somebody very specific and if they’d have hired you they would have hazed the shit out of you because you weren’t.
besseddrest@reddit
honestly based on your description of how the interview went, as the candidate I would have no expectation of being made an offer. As an interviewer I wouldn't have hired you.
They're looking for someone with exp, and at 5 YOE this is stuff you should just know how to put together. Creating an endpoint, calling it from the client, updating the array. almost every FE project has this. You almost always run into CORS especially when you just introduce the new API into your application.
It's totally fine to not know everything - I have a lot more experience and I still have to google things every once in a while. In fact - CORS as an example - since I'm anticipating that already; I know what the problem is, I just have to google the exact format of the header.
I don't think you should be hard on yourself. You obviously understood the task, you were able to move fwd, you might have not run into CORS often and so that doesn't trigger any muscle memory for you. There's room for minor hiccups
What I'm reading is that they company wants someone who is just strong in these regular FE tasks and you just didn't have the fluidity of someone who has done that for 5 yrs. No offense, but that's what I imagine from your desc.
Obviously, to build that muscle memory you just have to do it all the time til you get to that comfort level. It doesn't mean you have to learn how to type fast. What they don't want is someone that has done it before, but relies on looking it up along the way to complete the task. That's just reality - you have to start retaining that info - you have to start anticipating what you might run into given the context of your interview question.
nasanu@reddit
Every FE has endpoints? You know what an FE is right?
besseddrest@reddit
Yes, it's that thing that's begging for data to be fed to it
nasanu@reddit
From...? Endpoints, provided by an API.
besseddrest@reddit
right, that's not what said
No_Indication_1238@reddit
"But when?" is up to you. Not being able to code an API that adds an entry to an array and then displays the array is a yikes moment. It's basically a POST and a GET request, usually paired into a single API entry point. CORS is a different matter and easy to set up once you have dealt with it once, so I wouldn't put much emphasis on it, but having to google for a simple API that takes about 10 minutes to do is a red flag.
LineageBJJ_Athlete@reddit
They want the role filled by an h1b. In order to do that they need to demonstrate that their needs aren't met by the current talent pool. They never had any intention of hiring you even with an immaculate interview.
SituationSoap@reddit
This is in Australia. Read the post before you start spouting conspiracy theories.
JimDabell@reddit
No, they want the role filled by somebody who can make an API call from front-end to backend without stumbling over the basics.
Not everything is a conspiracy against Americans FFS. This is a job in Australia.
nasanu@reddit
I am sure I would stumble over basics yet it wasn't long ago I created a comprehensive C#, sql server, asp.net CMS with a Vue FE, all in 8 months with live FE editing (meaning users with a correct role could do some limited wysiwyg editing while still on the front), customisable user roles, infinite language support (with correct seo tagging for each language), live transcoding of video (with sockets progress updates from ffmepg) with also live embedding and editing on the front, same for images, output caching and full load balancing and redundancy via elastic beanstalk.
Yet I would fail the interview, like I failed an interview because according to the interviewer who saw me write correctly working code in front of them "I do not write code" << because when they gave me a pencil in one section I said I haven't actually written in years... lol. Unless you ask the right questions in interviews you don't actually know shit about a candidate even after a coding test. Interviewers can be quite dense.
chaitanyathengdi@reddit
Did you send your request via a browser to a backend that you wrote?
CORS error is no surprise here: you will get a CORS error when calling an API from localhost directly within a UI.
Use a REST client to make API calls.
throwaway_0x90@reddit
I'm kind of confused why you had high expectations when the assignment wasn't 100% completed. Even when I 100% complete all questions in a tech interview, I wonder if someone else did even better/more optimal. If I ran out of time and couldn't get a 100% functional solution, I'd assume I failed.
But fortunately none of this matters because this interview process sounds like garbage and, unless you're super-desperate, you probably would have quit that job in a few months anyway. I don't think recruiters normally tell you info like that and this particular bit of info I think reflects more on their interview process than the candidates.
akehir@reddit
From the feedback it seems you're not necessarily lacking coding skills (your projects seem good), but rather you're lacking interviewing skills. You were not able to demonstrate your thinking/working process well enough during the code challenge to convince them. I'd suggest you practice live coding challenges (and what you want to say during coding demos) in order to convince.
It could also be that they misunderstood your experience / projects, and they expected something different to what you were demonstrating.
If they rejected everyone, it means they were probably looking for a very senior dev, maybe even having unrealistic expectations.
Ok-ChildHooOd@reddit
Everyone from that recruiter was rejected? I'm sure some people got through. You're judged relative to others whom interviewed.
Factory__Lad@reddit
For me, the successful tech interviews are the ones where you demonstrate the ability to work through problems together with other people via intelligent discussion, possibly around an unfamiliar tech stack.
Companies sometimes deal themselves out of the game with a substandard interview process, or they inadvertently reveal their own dysfunction. We learn and move on.
flavius-as@reddit
Syntax or semantic errors?
I would not expect someone who's worked for years in a language to make syntax mistakes.
As in, forget the ; at the end, type ( after if, etc.
HugeSide@reddit
What? It’s completely normal. I have 8 years of software engineering experience and still have to look up the syntax for a for loop every time I write a bash script.
flavius-as@reddit
Right, so your position is a bash engineer.
Either way, use xonsh.
Snipercide@reddit
Just move on to the next one. This isn't a reflection of your skills, it's just another example of how poorly designed technical interviews are in our industry.
You got tripped up by a CORS issue, something that, frankly, says very little about your real-world capability as a developer. I suspect the main reason for the rejection was that you didn't come across as confident enough with their stack.
I get that, but it's frustrating how many companies still don't seem to understand that candidates are typically accustomed to the codebase and tooling of their current or previous job. You should be evaluated on your potential and proven experience, not your ability to instantly perform in unfamiliar territory.
I also suspect they don't fully appreciate how differently people perform when someone's watching them versus working in their normal environment.
Andy it's funny how people doing interviews will often look something up themselves, then suddenly expect every candidate to know it offhand. I've seen it before with co-workers, they Google some obscure detail, then act like it's a fundamental every developer must know. Meanwhile, they just read the MDN page five minutes ago.
If everyone got rejected, that says more about the company's expectations than it does about your performance.
It sucks. But don't let one flawed process define your worth.
alien3d@reddit
just cors issue . small thing man... nobody remember all syntax and pattern.
LordRybec@reddit
You've successfully avoided a terrible employer. Celebrate, don't lament. Any competent employer will understand things like time limitations and that interviewers won't always automatically have all of the knowledge it will take the first few days of work to learn. Companies like this don't tend to last super long, and their company culture is horrible. You don't want to work there.
Keep in mind that the interview isn't just them seeing if you are suitable. It's also your opportunity to determine whether they are a good fit for you. If everyone was rejected, that suggests the company isn't a good fit for anyone. So like I said, celebrate the fact that they saved you from a horrible job with them.
pipipopop@reddit
There will always be something you don't know while others know. Just take note and move on to the next interview. Some people are bad at interview but good at work, some is opposite.
OkLettuce338@reddit
I’ve been through a lot of interviews in my decade of experience. As it turns out, MOST people are bad at interviewing. You know your own skill set. Don’t let one interview make you second guess all your first hand experience of being able to do what you do
Idea-Aggressive@reddit
They’re probably not expecting an experienced dev to get stuck on CORS. Have you applied as a senior? Maybe lower your expectations and don’t over promise.
horserino@reddit
As unfair as it seems, it is not in the company's interest to give clear feedback on why you were rejected. This is why companies at best give some generic feedback or some version of "we're moving forward with another candidate". Don't try to read too much into it.
Maybe there was just someone more experienced. Maybe you did indeed perform badly. Maybe not knowing what a basic CORS error means was the main reason or maybe it was just a scapegoat.
Engineering-Guy-185@reddit
Sorry man. Could be they already knew who they wanted and had to advertise the role anyway, or they're just looking for some sort of ninja that remembers all the syntax. Sounds like a stupid assessment tbh.
originalchronoguy@reddit
Depends on the role. I still think it is silly question / assignment. But if you do regular architecture work and triaging production issues, that stuff will in your face all the time. It becomes motor memory if you have observability logging/ CICD deployment fail because someone forgot. After the 10th one, it is drilled in. No matter how long you haven't used it in 10 years.
VacheMax@reddit
Happened to me twice in two weeks so I’m taking a small break from searching. It’s hard out there. I’m convinced once I’ve interviewed the jitters out of myself I can finally get a job.
You got this, interviews are brutal.
originalchronoguy@reddit
Depends on the timing. Was it 2.5 hours like taking an SAT test or 30 minutes? 30 minutes is rushing it.
2.5 hours, You can have an nginx proxy proxy pass to the API that covers whatever else bullshit they wanted -- CORS, X-FRAME-OPTIONS, HSTS. And triggering 405 response codes if they wanted PUT (returns 201) vs POST (the one that return 405)
But this type of question doesn't test seniority. It is a midlevel task at most. And factory grunt type work.
You might have dodged a bullet.
serial_crusher@reddit
Writing interview code is definitely a different muscle than writing normal job code, and you have to practice with it before you can really succeed at one of those interviews. Look for similar problems to that one and just grind through them for a couple hours a week in your free time. You’ll speed up, you’ll learn to quickly recognize common bugs, and you’ll have more syntax fresh in your mind.
Failing every candidate in an interview cycle is not surprising. Not sure how many that is in this case, but at my company we’ve usually ended up scheduling batches of maybe 3 or 4 candidates near each other and telling the recruiter to hold off on bringing more into the pipeline in case one of them is a good fit. Believe me, it takes several rounds of that process before you find a winner.
Gortyser@reddit
Don’t take it too seriously, that’s just one company. Make some conclusions regarding what can be done better (don’t mess up with cors next time?) and do better next time. Point about syntax is kind of dumb, no one remember syntax of everything and no one (expect these guys probably) expect such thing. I think it easy to mess up if you’re switching context.
Kantsuu@reddit
Not sure what tech stack you were using but in springboot assuming no API gateway or anything you can use @crossorigin on either your controller class or the mapped method in the controller. Hope this may help in the future