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The worst impression I’ve ever seen was from a younger coder, whose persistence was beginning to falter and just a little bit determined for his or her first actual coding job. The younger coder was known as about an interview at 8pm on Tuesday, solely to find Wednesday morning that the present job as an Accounting Pleb was being eradicated in merger-related layoffs, together with all of the coder’s friends. That additionally meant the younger coder couldn’t ask to go away early that day till ~quarter-hour earlier than the final doable minute to go away and nonetheless arrive on-time, as a consequence of department-wide conferences and soon-to-be-ex-employee counseling periods.
The younger coder hadn’t dressed up greater than regular that day, in order to fly beneath the radar–that employer had a status for aggressively managing out workers who interviewed elsewhere. As an alternative, the younger coder had meant to rapidly change clothes at dwelling (which was on the best way to the interview) and seize a fast sandwich for lunch–solely to find when arriving dwelling that the ability had been out in the whole neighborhood since about half-an-hour after the younger coder had left.
The interview outfit had been washed within the washer in a single day and was drying within the dryer when the younger coder left the home. It was nonetheless there and nonetheless soaking wet. The subsequent most suitable choice had been washed in the identical load. So the younger coder frantically assembled a makeshift interview outfit (that was, reality be advised, nearer to “enterprise informal” than “I’m right here to make a superb impression”). The short sandwich was summarily forgotten.
This was earlier than smartphones had been ubiquitous, so no Google Maps alongside the best way. The MapQuest (or Yahoo! Maps?) printout from the evening earlier than was from outdated/invalid satellite tv for pc photographs, so the younger coder was ~quarter-hour late from getting misplaced in a literal one-stoplight city. The younger coder didn’t have the hiring supervisor’s contact information, and the contact information that the coder did have was for a recruiter in one other state.
About quarter-hour into the interview, the younger coder’s telephone rang and was rapidly silenced. It then rang a second time instantly, which was the household’s code for “pressing,” so the younger coder, brimming with embarrassment and dread, tried to take the decision as gracefully as doable beneath the circumstances. It was the younger coder’s sister, nonetheless in school and wanting the younger coder’s recipe for potato soup, and her voice was loud sufficient the hiring supervisor simply heard the request.
The in-house recruiter who scheduled the younger coder for the interview had the flawed programming platform, so the younger coder had zero expertise and had by no means even heard of the headliner talent for the job.
So, in abstract, this younger coder confirmed up emotionally frazzled and distracted from the layoffs, late, dressed semi-haphazardly and excessively informal, with no clue methods to do the job, abdomen grumbling from starvation, confused, confidence shaken like Anchorage in 1964, and even had the interview interrupted frivolously.
That younger coder was me, and the twist to the story is that I used to be truly supplied the job, labored there for 3 years, and when my supervisor left, she skilled her alternative that I used to be one of many two finest programmers on the group. I left that interview utterly relaxed; I believed I’d bombed it past any shadow of a doubt, and actually fell from my chair when she known as me that Friday to debate the job’s pay charge and negotiate a begin date.
I’ve posted that earlier than.
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