You're Not Interviewing for the Job. You're Auditioning for the Job Title
8 days ago
- #job-interviews
- #engineering-culture
- #system-design
- Job interviews often prioritize theoretical complexity over practical simplicity.
- Interviewers favor candidates who discuss scalable solutions, even if they're unnecessary for the actual job.
- Real-world engineering values simplicity and maintainability, contrary to interview expectations.
- The interview process is structured to assess knowledge of distributed systems and scalability, regardless of the job's actual needs.
- Candidates who suggest simple solutions may be overlooked in favor of those who propose complex architectures.
- Once hired, engineers often spend time simplifying over-engineered systems created to pass interviews.
- The best strategy is to play along with the interview 'theater' to get the job, then advocate for simplicity afterward.