Design me a House (by David J)

Like most sane people, I absolutely despise the whole Job Interview 2.0 thing. Now, I'm usually good at sniffing these types of companies out before wasting their time and mine with an interview, but recently I got caught up in one when looking for a Java position at a mid-sized consulting company.

After twenty minutes or so, I tried to gracefully exit with a "thank you for your time," but the manager didn't seem to get it. Ten minutes later, I tried again, but he was just too caught up in his brilliant questions to hear what I was saying. As the hour mark approached, I started to get more and more frustrated.

"Design me a house," the interviewer cheerfully demanded.

"Ugh," I groaned, "what do you want your house to look like?"

"But aren't you going to ask how many floors it should have," he glibly responded.

"Fine. How many floors do you want?"

"Two!," he shouted, "no, three! I mean, one! Err... no, I want six, maybe sev--"

"You get one floor," I interrupted. "That's how David Constructions work. One floor, that's it."

"Ahh," he smirked, "but that's not a very flexible design now, is it?"

"There's always Ryan Homes. They actually have, you know, building architects and what not. I'm, well, just a Java programmer."

After a confused silence, the interviewer responded, "soooo, on my house, I'd like some rooms - can you sketch those on the whiteboard?"

I grudgingly got up and walked to the whiteboard. It was the sixth time that day.

"I like rooms," he perked up, "lots and lots of rooms."

"What," I grumbled, "like, six or something?"

"Maybe," he nodded, "but what if I want to add more later? Or combine them."

"I don't know," I sighed, "hire a dry wall guy?"

"Ewww," he flinched, "that sounds expensive! I'd like to do it on my own. Can you design a--"

"Look," I interrupted, "I don't mean to be rude, but you haven't asked a single question about programming."

The interviewer scoffed, "you've got a lot to learn about developing good software if you don't see the relavence here."

Thankfully, the interview ended shortly thereafter. And while they never did extend me an offer, they did end up going out of business later that year. Aparently, they had issues delivering software to their clients.