programming interview horror stories

One horror story is when the interviewer was constantly interrupting the candidate. The candidate was trying to explain their solution to a coding problem, but the interviewer kept cutting in with their own thoughts, not letting the candidate fully express themselves. This made the candidate very nervous and they couldn't perform at their best.

One common type is the unprepared interviewer. They might not have a clear understanding of the skills they are supposed to test, so they ask irrelevant questions or misinterpret the candidate's answers. Another is the overly strict time limit. For example, being given a very complex problem but only a few minutes to solve it. It doesn't give the candidate enough time to think and code properly.

One horror story is when a developer made a small change in a critical function without proper testing. It led to a cascade of errors in the whole system. Hours were spent debugging to find that one innocent - looking line of code was the culprit.

Another threading horror is starvation. This occurs when a thread is continuously deprived of the resources it needs to run. For instance, in a system with a priority - based scheduler, if high - priority threads keep getting scheduled all the time, low - priority threads may starve. So, a thread that is supposed to perform an important background task may never get a chance to execute.

In an interview once, the room was freezing cold. The employer didn't seem to notice or care. I was shivering while trying to answer their questions. And on top of that, they were asking really personal questions that had nothing to do with the job, like about my family's financial situation. It was a very uncomfortable experience.

One horror story is showing up late due to a transportation glitch. The millennial was all set for an important interview but the subway had a delay. By the time they reached, the interviewers seemed unimpressed and cut the interview short. It was really disheartening as it wasn't entirely their fault.

One common element is unprofessional interviewers. For example, they may be late, rude, or not prepared. Another is unexpected and inappropriate questions, like asking about your political views when it has no relation to the job. Also, a bad interview environment can be part of it, such as a noisy or dirty room.

I heard of a case interview where the technical equipment failed. The candidate was all set to present a complex data analysis case, but the projector didn't work and there was no backup plan. The candidate had to struggle to explain the graphs and data just verbally, which was a nightmare as it was hard to convey the full picture without the visual aids. It made the candidate seem less prepared than they actually were.

A student walked into the interview room and immediately felt an intimidating atmosphere. The interviewers were very serious - looking and didn't give any reassuring smiles. Then, during the interview, they were constantly interrupted while trying to answer questions. This made the student lose their train of thought multiple times and they felt like they couldn't get their full ideas across. It was a very disheartening experience for them as they thought they could have done much better if they had been given a chance to fully express themselves.

A student had prepared extensively for the wrong topic. They thought the interview would focus on a particular area of their subject based on some misinformation. So when the interviewers started asking questions on a different area, the student had no clue how to answer. They tried to bluff their way through but the interviewers quickly saw through it, and it was a really embarrassing and horrible experience for the student.