The Interviewee’s Perspective:

I sat in the interview room by myself. Well, calling it a room was a stretch. It was more like a glass display for showing off my massive pit stains to every employee on this floor. Fuck the open workspace revolution.

I shook my head to regain focus. I had to seize this opportunity. I didn’t want to end up in IT, or worse…technical support. I shuddered. In the past few weeks, I solved so many Leetcode problems that I dream of algorithms and big-O running times in my sleep.

I closed my eyes for a brief respite. Lines of code cascaded down the inside of my eyelids like the Matrix digital rain. I quickly opened my eyes and took another sip from the black-and-white bottle in my hand. Thank god for Coffiest, the unholy lovechild of coffee and Soylent, and the only reason I was functional right now.

“Oh shi-!” I realized in horror that I forgot to re-memorize quicksort. No way they’d ask me to code that right? I scrambled for my phone to look it up. In the midst of my breakdown, the door clicked.

My interviewer stepped in. His yellow company t-shirt and pallid skin cast him in a sickly light. Combined with too-large blue jeans and my grandfather’s white sneakers, he was the skinny techie archetype I never want to become. I briefly wondered if it’s been longer since he saw the sun or had sex.

Despite his unimposing figure, my heart began pounding. He was the crucible between me and the most coveted job in the world. By world, I mean the Bay Area, the only world that matters. He didn’t waste any time asking about my background. The interrogation began immediately.

As soon as he gave me the prompt, I blanked, suddenly and inexplicably. It was as if Elliot Alderson hacked into my mental directory and decided to hit “rm -rf /.” All my careful preparation escaped me in a flash.

The first tumbleweed to cross my barren mind was: How is it that I can come up with mind-blowing memes when I’m bored but go brain dead when it actually matters? I should just apologize to him and take my leave now. Wait, why am I thinking about this instead of brainstorming data structures?

A couple million more useless thoughts flew by before my brain finally jumpstarted. I began recalling fragments of what I studied. According to the sacred text of all aspiring software engineers, Cracking the Coding Interview, the first step was to clarify the question, so I did just that.

My interviewer looked up from his laptop. He stared at me quizzically for a second before affirming my clarification. Shit, he thinks I’m stupid. But hey, at least it bought me some precious brainstorming time.

Time for step 2, running through examples. “Now, I’m going to run through some examples,” I repeated aloud so he knows how logical I am. As I wrote down basic examples and described them in way too much detail, I begged my mind to come up with a solution.

Funny how all interview guides leave you out to dry at step 3. Step 1: Clarify the question, easy. Step 2: Provide examples, piece of cake. Step 3: Solve the problem, are you kidding me?

“Can we start writing code so we don’t run out of time?” my interviewer cut through my thoughts, his tone laced with impatience.

The flash of anger at his interruption quickly morphed into despair as I realized I still didn’t have the faintest idea how to solve the problem. “Sure! Can you give me a minute to think?” I responded with fake enthusiasm. My interviewer didn’t even grace me with an answer before returning his gaze to his laptop.

In the ensuing thirty seconds, I traveled through all five stages of grief, starting with denial, this can’t be happening, and ending with acceptance, I’m truly an incompetent POS.

Amidst my self-pity, I vaguely recalled I should communicate my thought process to my interviewer so he knew what I was thinking and could provide hints. So I started spouting words. Actually, it was more like a nonsensical gibberish of variables, for-loops, and helper functions. Spray-and-pray works for Call of Duty and short answer exam questions. I hoped it’d work now.

A few minutes later, my interviewer spoke up. “Good work, but we’re out of time. You can email me any questions you have later. Best of luck.” He booked it before I got the chance to ask for his email.

My heart sank. I flunked, no question. This twenty-minute interview felt like an eternity of torture. I took a gulp of my Coffiest. I was going to need it for the next fifteen rounds.

The Interviewer’s Perspective:

Another interview in 15 minutes? What are those clowns in recruiting doing? My daily foosball game is at 2! Let’s make this quick. Fail-fast, ain’t that right?

On my way to the interview room, I realized I didn’t have a question prepared. I pulled out my phone and entered “dynamic programming problem” in the Google search box. I clicked on the fifth result – some monstrosity that took a real world analogy, stacking boxes, and converted it into an interviewee’s worst nightmare. Perfect.

I saw him through the glass box before he saw me. Another pale, greasy-haired kid in a sweat-stained t-shirt and faded blue jeans who showers as often as he does laundry.

I entered the room, sat down, and introduced myself. I almost asked him to “tell me about yourself” before realizing I didn’t really care, so I told him the question right away.

I flipped open my laptop to “take notes,” and clicked on the Techcrunch tab. Oh shit, Slapcat was just valued at $25 Billion? Kevin Spangel is my idol.

I started daydreaming about cashing out of my own startup one day, before my interviewee interrupted me.

He wanted to clarify the question. I took another glance at the question I asked him and realized I barely understood it myself, so I just repeated the prompt to him.

I returned my attention to my laptop. Facebook notification! It was a message from a girl I met on The League last month. “Wanna go to spin class tomorrow?” I hated spin class. “I’d love to! :)” I responded. According to Buzzfeed, a smiley emoji ups engagement by 31% and drops churn by 17%.

I glanced at my watch, 5 past 2. I was late for my game. I tried to speed things up, “Can we start writing code so we don’t run out of time?” Shit, did I sound too impatient there? Ah, who the hell cares. I probably won’t ever see him again.

After finishing my routine survey of Hacker News, Product Hunt, Quora, and Reddit, I decided to pay attention to my interviewee for the first time. He was discharging some verbal diarrhea about for-loops. For all I knew, he could’ve been on the right track, but this was taking way too long. I had serious business to attend to.

I cut him off. “Good work, but we’re out of time.” I didn’t feel like answering any banal questions, so I told him to email me later.

On the way to the game room, I left a one-liner for his recruiter, “He was okay.” I checked my calendar. Two more interviews tomorrow?! My job is the worst.

A big thank-you to SH for editing.

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