I guess maybe the part about him chastising me, which maybe isn't fair to him or I took it the wrong way.

he did say in the beginning of the interview that he'd worked in the industry for "longer than he cared to admit" and when I came in he was working on a game in unity and seemed quite frustrated/tired with it. Maybe he was having a bad day.

yowsa, leetcode is $35/mo. If you guys swear it's worth it, I'll get it

Here's a few things I got from the interview:

- Grumpy, very senior dev, prone to chastising interviewees as the only person he spoke with.
- Several questions that are essentially trivia, two of which jmakin got (derivative set to 0, and gravity being squared) while in his own words kinda guessing and grabbing at the answer, and the interviewer being impressed.
- Chastising jmakin for an on the spot || instead of &&
- Creating an environment where jmakin is so nervous and uncomfortable that his glasses literally fall off his face and break

I'm not surprised that jj thinks an interview of this sort is fine because of previous convos we've had about hiring in general and his wrong takes there.

But this strikes me as a jaded, ego-maniac senior dev who struggles through his typical workday. The fact he was already in a bad mood because of work he was doing with unity beforehand wasnt a good sign.

That isn't the experience I'm going for as a founder/ceo of a company interviewing an intern-level person, clearly things there are fairly toxic. I wouldn't be surprised at all if their code is horrible and they are only good at monetization and have a few addictive games.

Its a bull**** interview at a bull**** company. Real company interview: we want to see if you can do the job we need filled, we'll ask you questions that can show if you can do it with maybe one "can you code" question. Bull**** company interview: ask whiteboard questions that have zero relevance to day to day development work at this company or any company for that matter. Have interviewers who are more interested in proving they're smarter than you than seeing if you would contribute well there.

Larry your read is spot on about what the company does. The owner even told me that they're not games that the average gamer would love to play. I looked them up and they are pretty ****ty. He said he got into this market space because he doesn't have 2 million dollars and 2 years to wait on a game that maybe wouldn't pan out. However, he said his long term plan was to move into the more competitive smart phone market and they are working on improvements on their existing games.

However, I need a job and some experience. I need to learn practical stuff. i want to make games and the industry seems like it's extraordinarily hard to get your foot in the door. Seems like a good opportunity for 6 months to a year to get my feet wet and learn some stuff.

Of course, I may not get the job and am getting ahead of myself. Their willingness/preference to hire me part time is really appealing to me as well.

I did sneak a peek at my surroundings while I was there. They had their monthly budgets and profits on the whiteboard in the main room, lol. Budget is about $50k/month so i can't imagine I'd be paid much and that's probably why they're interviewing someone like me in the first place.

As grumpy as the dev was, the owner was very likeable and personable.

I'm actually cracking up right now envisioning jmakin in his first interview for an intern level role, being chastised by a senior super grumpy and terrible to work with ego-maniac, feeling so nervous his glasses fall and break and trying to play it off cool, and then people itt being like "yea I don't see what's so bad, seems like a solid interview".

Please don't tell me grue has any type of minority opinion on this. These dudes are tire kickers of the highest order.

the glasses thing is fairly standard me having a bad anxiety problem and making an ass out of myself stuff. I don't get embarrassed easily. I was far more embarrassed about the '&&' screw up.

i appreciate the feedback and will probably need more as this job hunt goes on, i feel i am pretty bad at this. I've been a blue collar worker for 13 years and am looking at starting positions as a nearly 30 year old person. right now i'm going to focus less on school, more on sending resumes and practicing my coding/interviewing/working on my resume.

Agreed these aren't good, but seem like a pretty minor part of the interview given he said there was a bunch of actual coding. And the interviewee's take on how things like that went is unreliable (for obvious human nature reasons).

It's also all relative. These things are all fairly standard at a lot of places.


Blatant misstatement of my position.... random insult... no actual constructive points on how things should be done. Thremp???

Note, my comments was "I also don’t get why the interview was particularly bad. Interviewing sucks most places."

That's not at all a statement that I think the interview was good or "fine". It's also not what I think an interview should be. BUT, if you got your head out of your ass, you'd realize that its sadly pretty typical. And the idea that it was bad enough to walk out of or start burning bridges with snide comments about their product is just absurd.

Maybe you're a rock star and only need to put up with amazing interviews at amazing companies. But not everybody is.

It's particularly ironic because your and Grue's take about this interview from the employee side is the same sort of take that leads to all these really bad interviewing techniques. Only looking for perfection, not realizing choosing an employee or employer is hard, over extrapolating one short interaction with a human, etc. etc. etc.


Again, this is the sort of over extrapolation that makes interviewing hard. And its definitely not enough to burn a bridge with this company.

No wonder my takes are so bad on interviewing, I'm missing these kinds of magical powers that would make interviewing much easier.

I feel like it should be stated that my current job I work with actual Nazis. It is hard for me to imagine any environment that is worse than the one I am currently in

Place with a low budget spent 1-2 hours of a senior dev and founder's time for an intern... is a tire kicker?

That’s for premium subscription. You can still use free questions I believe.

Also if they try and make you work for free, tell them to **** off. Keep interviewing and applying. I applied close to 100 places when I was looking for internships and full time roles.

You know me pretty well, I don’t think I have the energy or time to do that many applications and interviews. You’re a way stronger programmer than me too.

Honestly jj, I know it isn't the best form, but I tossed that insult out there because I wanted you to more fully explain your thoughts on the matter. I realize it is a dick move, but I didn't mean anything personal.

I just personally think interviewing and job changing is an incredibly emotional and psychologically draining experience and when people treat other people poorly in the process it really upsets me.

In my world these guys are very likely to be tire kickers. Not everyone sees it the same but flip-phone to android ****ty mobile games (probably targeted at elderly) with 50k/mo budget... might as well be flipping burgers.

So in complaining about ****ty interviews you post ****tily to someone. I don’t if that’s brilliant or Trump...

I use the forums as a way to arrive at truth, sometimes you have to crack a few eggs.

LL, I don't take any of this seriously (and even if I did, I don't think it was a big insult). But I think its weird, especially in this thread, to think I wouldn't explain myself unless you threw in an insult.

Lol I wouldnt want any of you interviewing me

Hah, and that's why interviewing and getting a job is hard!

Although, let's be honest, I'm a great interviewer and everybody else sucks*.


* Says just about every interviewer ever.

It was a minor insult

But putting someone on the defensive is usually a great way to get a more thorough response (or have them drop and break their glasses from anxiety).

You're not supposed to admit your sociopathic tendencies right up front like that :P

Really? (As in, is this a thing you do in real life?)

I'm skeptical of this whole approach. I think challenging someone is good, but I don't think insults rarely add to better and more thorough responses.

No I would rarely do that in real life because the dynamics are so different and if you are engaged in a real life convo with someone the information flow is so different than online.

It's kinda like posting the wrong answer so that someone posts the correct one, but just asking the question may be ignored.

Say the first thought that comes to your mind for the following scenarios:

1) Heavily documented code base
2) Sparsely document code base
3) No documentation of any kind