I will refuse live coding interviews from now on.
Greg, The JavaScript Whisperer

Greg, The JavaScript Whisperer @jswhisperer

About: Specialist in performance oriented javascript architecture for web, mobile, client and server side. Passionate about realtime web.

Location:
London, UK
Joined:
May 13, 2017

I will refuse live coding interviews from now on.

Publish Date: Nov 1 '24
2 3

Buy Me A Coffee

Prelude, articles:

Against them https://dev.to/meseta/live-coding-interviews-essential-or-discriminatory-11kd

For them https://www.codewithjason.com/live-coding-interviews/

I have social anxiety I usually make that clear; but you wouldn't know it. I go out and I'm really great with people. I used to waiter and bartend and excel at that.

For me it's debilitating in certain scenarios like unknowns or being watched and evaluated. Once I'm comfortable with a place or people it fades; I love pairing and mentoring. I even makeself give public talks at my previous meetup fullsack_js. When I'm in a safe space the code and conversation will fly from me.

Most recently I accepted a live coding interview because "it's less about the code and more how we work together".... yeah not the case. At this point I've researched and invested my time for 2 previous interviews; a common pattern.

So my brain freezes a bit, I don't catch every optimization and I run out time before say adding tests. But I gel well with the developers testing me we figure out some issues and I display the right attitude of accepting advice and listening to my peers something I didn't do well as a junior. I'm open I'm raw which I value when hiring someone, it's more about someone's Attitude than their Aptitude in my eyes.

So I realise there was a lot of optimisations and practises to iterate on, I got bored waiting for feedback and spent two hours with a clean less stressed mind and implemented them. I mean I went above and beyond. Added PWA support on the fly image format optimisation (AVIF), keyboard monitoring (ESC to go back), cleaned up and reused functions as composables / utils, Prisma schema and auto Zod types generated, even in this case very custom validations against ISBNs which failed with their sample data... cough cough amature hour so I found real ones etc...

heres the code if you want a peak https://github.com/gregpalaci/nuxt-demo-books

and a preview https://lambent-fenglisu-27a5c4.netlify.app/

I'm 100% not mad I don't really get mad I'm disappointed they were short sighted. but wish them all the best luck finding that developer they want probably less EQ and more IQ.

This was a learning experience and I advise all developers set your boundaries and if the company isn't flexible to accommodate your safe space, don't bother

Comments 3 total

  • Greg, The JavaScript Whisperer
    Greg, The JavaScript WhispererNov 1, 2024

    I mean 100% performance for a live coding exercise, DO YOU EVEN SCALE BRO?
    Image description accessibility need some love tho.

    oh and obviously I wrote custome to prerender a dynamic api and prefetch all the remote images and assets.

  • Mike Bybee
    Mike BybeeNov 3, 2024

    I've blasted both live coding exercises and terminology quizzes for well over a decade now (and the "senior" devs who continue pretending they're useful in any way whatsoever).

    I've been on both sides (unfortunately, I didn't always have the authority to scrap them when I was the interviewer). Candidates get nothing but unnecessary stress and a bad impression of their would-be employer, and interviewers who've conducted more than a few should have quickly figured out the only things such interviews tell them: That they favor candidates who have spent more time on leetcode and interview question practice, while disadvantaging the candidates who are actually busy building on a daily basis.

    The format is unnecessarily high-pressure, and (hopefully*) not at all representative of the work environment you're actually providing.

    * If such a contrived, high-stress, micromanaged scenario is at all representative of your workplace, you should probably run away yourself, and encourage the candidate to do the same

    • Greg, The JavaScript Whisperer
      Greg, The JavaScript WhispererNov 3, 2024

      I can't say how much I agree Mike, and really appreciate your comment. I think that's funny enough an agreed intersection of both the for and against articles I posted at the beginning. They are looking for a scripted response you don't know is the first possible issue; and secondary (in the interviewers perspective) is the anxiety and unreal environment they cause and impose on the interviewee.

      Agreed if it's inflexible best to run and that is what I will do going forward. When in a hiring position I've been happy to talk tech or high level white board issues, without specific code examples or framework language. But I think a take home test can settle any lasting fear they might have.

      Super shame they ask for so much time from candidate then make a rash decision on the 3rd or 4th round. (in my case don't even let me know what they decided 🫨)

Add comment