Programming exercise during job interview (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by i_am_a_cardboard_box@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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How do you guys do it? I just had my first encounter yesterday for a data engineering job and I sincerely fucked up. My mind went completely blank, I was thinking along all the wrong lines and I think I didn't even correctly understand the question, because there were all these words that I've never heard of.

How do you even prepare for something like that?

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[-] Tetsuo@jlai.lu 6 points 3 months ago

I understand AI is really unpopular over here but for that I think it can be a good training partner.

Give it the name of the business the job description and let it work a preparation plan.

Also a reminder that sometimes we all fail interviews and that's the nature of this exercise. And sometimes interviewer will purposefully put you in an impossible scenario just to see how you behave under stress. So remaining calm and humbly saying what you dont know or understand can be a good thing to do. I did get a job for an interview I felt I had completely failed.

Anyway don't give up and good luck for your next interviews !

[-] rufuyun@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Agreed. I suggest the free tier of chatGPT voice mode as a rubber ducky - prompted something like, "ask me software dev interview behavioural questions".

I didn't even really bother with getting input on my answers from the LLM, you can reflect on your own how you sounded. It was just good practice being asked a random unexpected question and coming up with a good response.

[-] planish@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

If you want to practice being asked baffling questions you can't understand, AI might actually be the right tool for once.

this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025

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