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.