I had always wondered why I passed my interview for my first job.
Barely a month after graduation, I went to a company headquarters for a coding interview. I was given a desktop computer with a JBuilder installed, and asked to code something. Fresh out of college and without Google then, it was difficult to code in a language that you were very much unfamiliar of, or hated. We were taught Java in our sophomore year but I just intentionally forgot it after passing the subject (I would avoid Java and use a different language then to complete projects).
I finished my coding exercise with lots of “red” lines or markings that indicated syntax errors. Surprisingly enough, I passed and had to start the next day. I badly needed the job so I took it, but had always wondered why I passed. I perhaps put in a lot of “green texts” or comments. Being in a more senior position today I realized that you would normally judge interviews by the way the candidate think – so my pseudocode could have attributed to it.
I never got to ask my then-tech lead why they passed me despite. But I just assumed that..
- My code comments saved my ass – at least they knew what I was thinking about and what I wanted to do, I just don’t know how to execute… yet.
- They just badly needed a warm body
The project was an intense one, so I just took #2 as the main reason.
