In one sentence: A company of code monkeys is looking to hire a code monkey.
I interviewed over the phone for a position of a senior Java developer. My interviewer had an Indian name and (thick) accent. It does not bother me per se, but it usually means that the company is looking to hire cheap workers, and that Indian approach to development is dominant — essentially, that we want to write a lot of code fast, that somehow works, even if it is designed horribly.
I was not wrong — I was interview by a code monkey who was looking for another code monkey. He gave me a coding test to do while he was looking at what I do (it was over an online IDE site). The task was simple, but he said I have 20 minutes and must finish by then.
The "must finish" part raised my concerns... I do not think writing code should be with a stopwatch.
I asked him if he wants me to tell him over the phone what I intend to do. He practically said "No, just get the damn thing done." That was weird.
I told him the task description has contradictory requirements... he thought for a while about it, and said I should then do something a little different... which made the question more complicated.
The task was very simple to anyone who have some experience... just write a simple algorithm. But it still needs some design.
So I was taking a few minutes to think and write some basic sketch of my design on a piece of paper. He did not like the silence and urged me to start typing. I asked him — "but you said you do not want me to share with you my thoughts..?" He interrupted me: "Start typing, time is running."
I thought — what a weird approach to writing code... start typing without first having the basic design, and then correcting over and over....?
Anyway, by 20 minutes I had most of the code there, but not all. He sounded very disappointed.
He continued to asking some trivia questions on quite not very important details on Java libraries APIs, like the exact name of some method, or its signature, the hierarchy of some class — all those details that nobody is supposed to remember (especially if they work with several languages) — you just google them when you come to the point that it's relevant to your code.
Absolutely nothing was asked about understanding and logical thinking.
He sounded quite disappointed that I did not memorize all the details that he seemed to think are very important to constantly retain in your head if you write code...
I never heard back from the company again. Absolutely no feedback or follow up.
These companies are a waste of time. Go there only if you need the money,