Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@cheesesashimi

cheesesashimi/how_to_turn_down_a_technical_interview.md

Last active May 16, 2017 12:12
Show Gist options
  • Star 2 You must be signed in to star a gist
  • Fork 1 You must be signed in to fork a gist
  • Save cheesesashimi/856949bff29664869d2ef35a057b5847 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save cheesesashimi/856949bff29664869d2ef35a057b5847 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Download ZIP
How To Turn Down A Technical Interview
Raw
how_to_turn_down_a_technical_interview.md

Hello $recruiter,

Thank you for reaching out to me about this position. While the job description sounds like something I would be a great fit for and would excel at, I realize that should I interview for this position, the skills evaluated will be my interviewing skills instead of my technical ones. For example, $company is currently found on http://they.whiteboarded.me, a curated list of tech companies known to use high-pressure interview tactics such as live-coding and whiteboarding. Not only that, setting aside the outcome, my previous interview experience at $company was not a positive one. While I admit I could have done better, I do not believe the interview process allowed me to put my best foot forward.

I had significant difficulty working with my interviewer who was very challenging to communicate with and who constantly interrupted me. I was asked to live-code a problem in a web browser, which is a very unnatural development environment for any programmer. Given the context, limited time and poor tooling, this makes coming up with a solution unnecessarily difficult and stressful. I got hung up on some minutiae and was penalized for an incorrect assumption about how something worked. In the real world, I could have easily proven or disproven my assumption. When the inevitable rejection came, it was unnecessarily condescending, stating, “We are pursuing stronger candidates than you.”

Needless to say, this does not portray $company in a positive light. In closing, I apologize if I came off as negative or condescending, which is not my intention. I’m known for being candid, sometimes brutally so. Looking forward, I’d like to give something back. I’d like to point you to a talk I gave last year about the deleterious effects technical interviews have on tech workers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIrKC41NwC0). Additionally, I’d like to provide a curated list of links about why current technical interview practices are flawed with some recommendations on how we can fix them: http://they.whiteboarded.me/additional-resources.html.

I enjoy working in this industry and because of that, I’ve taken the time to provide you with this candid feedback with the hope that $company can improve its process.

Sincerely,

Zack Z.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment