Can the entire R&D pass this interview?

Spoiler: NO

TLDR; There’s no way all the developers in the place you are interviewing at can answer all of your interview questions RIGHT NOW, no preparation, no Googling. Don’t believe me, look at the statistics.

Are all the developers here better than me?

I remember the feeling I had when I was applying for a job, entered an office and had a look at the R&D department.
I though to myself – they are here, so they probably passed the same interview I’m about to do. I guess they know all the answers. What happens if I fail? What does it say about ME?

That felt pretty intimidating. But wait, do they all really can pass the interview I am about to have? Right now?

In this post I would like to address this issue and claim that there’s NO WAY that all the developers in the place you are interviewing at know all the answers from the top of their heads, no google allowed.

In other words, If you would randomly pick a developer from the R&D of the company you are going to, and make them take the interview RIGHT NOW, it might not end so well for them.

Some good news

Understanding the structure of the interview and practicing similar questions (technical and non-technical) can improve your chances of passing it.
This is what this blog is with tips for:
# Solving a coding question in an interview
# Talking about your latest project

And, we are hosting a job interview preparation course for both junior and senior developers. Interested? send a message or a WhatsApp.

Do all developers here know how to answer the interview questions?

Our goal now is to show that some of the most popular interview question are ones that both junior and senior developers need to think about before answering.
Once we will show the above, it will be clear that there’s a good chance some of the developers in the R&D in the company you are entering to are also googling about these subjects.

When I worked at a large company, me and the other team leaders discussed the way we interview.
Each one share their perspectives and the questions themselves.
For EVERY single question, there was at least one team leader that would say “hmm.. that’s an interesting question, no way I would could answer it in an interview”.
The same thing happened when we discussed these questions with our teams to get feedback.
It doesn’t mean they wouldn’t pass the interview, it means that some of them (me included) would have to prepare before one.

What can we learn from Stackoverflow

Stories are not enough to convey the message. Statistics are much much better for proving this point.
I thought of a more interesting way to show that some of the most popular interview questions are ones that even senior developers google for. Or should I say stack overflow-ing for??

This is the logic (programmer logic, sorry):

1. A question that has tons of views in StackOverflow, means that many people bumped their head trying to figure it out.
2. If the number of the views is very big, I assume that developers in multiple levels and years of experience used the answer.
3. Hence, question with many views are ones that might have been viewed by developers in the place you are interviewing at.

Examining top 3 Javascript interview questions

We will dig into the statistic for these 3 popular Javascript interview question.

To be clear: I am not arguing the importance of the knowledge behind this question. I am trying to show that it is not something all the developers in the company you are going to can answer to from the top of their heads.

Question #1 – What’s the difference between call & apply

This is one of the most popular JS interview question of all times.

There are multiple stackoverflow answers to this one, each one with hundreds or thousands of up votes, and many many views.

Take this one here

I highlighted the number of unique views, and upvotes (SOF’s version of “Like”).

Nearly 700,000 times people searched for an answer to this question! (10 views by me for writing this post, sorry for messing with the data, this is not a valid research anymore).

Question #2 – setInterval vs. setTimeout?

Common variation: show some code with different setTimeout calls, with different timeouts (0, 1000, 2000) and ask about the output.

The StackOverflow question is here

A related question, can be this one: Why is setTimeout(fn, 0) sometimes useful?

These questions combined have ~700K views. Pretty impressive. At least some of them are by senior developers also right?

Question #3 – What is a closure in Javascript

Many websites and blogs that help you prepare for job interviews state that this question is the most popular one. Agree?

Here it is on StackOverflow:

Great answers by the way.

1.4 million views, that’s a number pretty hard to argue with.

That kind of make you think, doesn’t it.. Why is it that complicated that so many people searched the answer for this question online? Does it have to be this way (got it? a “this” joke?)? Well, that’s a subject for another post.

Conclusion:

There are developers that eat, sleep and breath code. Their dreams are full with images of closures, Promises, Event Loops and their mind travels through a virtual DOM.

They are the ones that can answer all the interview questions in any given moment. Most developers (including me) aren’t.

The mini research above demonstrated that even experienced developers look for assistance when they really need to know about closures, scopes and more hard to remember and understand areas.

I am not sure what this say about the relevance of these questions in an interview, but one thing is sure: Practicing for an interview is different than sharpenning your day to day skills, but it worth it.
Even experienced developers use the internet to find out about things you are required to answer during your interview.
It’s hard, but – don’t let bad interviews make you underestimate yourself.

That’s all for now, hope you found this article helpful, I would appreciate your sharing and subscribing.