Stop suspecting developers in imposture. Learn to better interview

Well hello. I just got off the ground and I was bombing. How many do not write on Habré, how to properly interview - it does not get better.

I threw a proposal - Senior full-stack .NET Developer, remotely, cool project, a lot of money. The list of requirements is a fucking mountain of unrelated things from the .net world and js / ts. It looks as if they just piled up everything that they boiled up in 10 minutes - and with little understanding of what it was.

Anxious, but nothing. Interview, I think, will be the developer - a person with whom I speak the same language. I'll tell you about what I did, we will discuss approaches to solving problems, problems in .NET, C # perspectives. Let's talk about data structures. I'll tell you why I like structural typing more than mnemonic. If it goes well, I will even share my fix idea - always use structures instead of classes as models. I compare FLUX with MVVM, I will tell you how unrealistically beautiful is the symbiosis of OP and OOP in TypeScript.

In general, looking forward to a good conversation.

I was answered and offered an interview on Skype, for some reason necessarily with a webcam. My laptop is broken. It was a few minutes, and I decided to run to the nearest store. There, people apparently understand that no one needs a webcam. But what to do - I take an expensive action camera, pick it out of the shell, attach it to the monitor to the gum.

When the interview began, I understood why a webcam is needed - so that I can immediately see what kind of smug topography sits in front of me - “Yes, I can see from a half-look how profane you are”.

Send "Signor" questions. What is protected internal? I answer. What is ref, what is out. I also know, but I already suspect that he does not need detailed answers. How is dynamic different from Object? I feel like in school, but okay, I tell. What is virtual?

Bam!

Kill don't remember. I look - the top is blurred with pride, glows. Arrogance and flows out of the screen. Glad I ate another boob who doesn't know “basic” things. Self-affirming, you can look for the next. The interview naturally ends.

I close Skype and, of course, immediately remember what virtual is. But the company is already sure that I am 100% unprofitable.

And it seems to me that what happened is a very unhealthy symptom in the world of developers.

Most recently, there was an article about the fact that when hiring only functions are seen in us. What if the developer did not memorize everything, even the most unnecessary things to memorize, they don’t take him, and this is terrible. But I think the problem here is quite different. For some reason, business is terribly afraid of impostors, but has no idea how to sift them.

And she is so afraid that now she sees them everywhere and inflates the problem to attention, which she does not deserve at all.

Those. these people are seriously working on the scenario that some kind of left dude, who has never worked as a developer, will come to them as a senior. Seriously? They do not just get stuck on this approach, they put it in the design center of the first interview (more than one interview is in itself a problem, but this is not about that now).

But by reducing the risk of hiring impostors, companies reduce the chance of hiring good developers. Worse, they demoralize good developers.

Now my words to myself that I should not remember virtual, even for me sound like a ridiculous excuse for my own non-professionalism. The money I was ever paid for my work is a mistake. I deceived everyone around. I need to learn the specs of all the technologies that I dared to shove in my resume.

And it does not matter anymore that I actually try to avoid classical inheritance, preferring composition to it, and design my classes and systems in such a way that they are not required to make heirs. It does not matter that I remember the behavior of virtual and its purpose, I do not remember only the word itself. What I regularly develop using four programming languages, and I can not remember thoroughly all their most dusty corners.

I can shove my stupid skills of writing good code wherever I want. The market asks virtual for virtual.

This is very bad. You are afraid of impostors, and I am afraid of the next guard.

But I'm not ready to be crammed. I want to be - and I am - a developer. I am the guy who takes this business problem, looks at what tools I have, corrects it, decomposes and maps to the solution through a competent analysis of these tools and their application.

The memorization of keywords, mechanics, principles and patterns is an optional skill. Thinking and anticipating is a good skill.

But instead of learning things that seem important to us, we gain skills that are important to the market. We turn into kids, sharpened not by the work of the head, but by the decision of the USE.

Here is my point:
We not only trade in this market, we also define it. Developers will be interviewed by developers, it is they who create lists of requirements and questions for candidates.

Boys, that's enough. Talk to the man. Ask what you did, how and why.

Want to understand that this is not an impostor? Give a very small test task. If you don’t have one hundred lines of code to understand what kind of developer it is, you may not be good enough for the interview.

And yes - now, until my code is behind me, I will not go on security.