My very first Engineering Interview
Date: July 17, 2015
Started at 11am finished at 2pm. Hungry / Nervous / Too much Excitment
That was it. I had first a Software Engineer interview! It was... magical. Exactly what I pictured. Whiteboarding whiteboarding whiteboarding. No 'soft' interview, no 'tell me about yourself'. It was pure technical interview with two back-end and two front-end developers.
How did it go? I don't know.
Lessons Learned
If there is one focusing area for me now, it will be JavaScript. I am still struggling with its concept, syntax and scope. Since my strength is ruby, I have better understanding of OO side of JavaScript and that's not enough. I really need some help on this.
I thought that database and SQL interview went quiet well although I wasn't prepare for it. They asked me to build a library(a real library where we keep books and DVDs) and then find the books that checked out in 2014. Basic SQL command part went fairly well but I totally forget how to join the tables. The interviewer was kind enough to hold my hand to go all the way but I need to brush up these as well. Perhaps creating twitter schema challenge would be good
Because I've done the first question, the second one was easy. I have one table called 'parts' with parts name, price and then get revenue total from particular date. The tricky part was that the revenue is not the parts price. Because there will be delivery, tax and other costs being associated to the sales, I had to create new table called prices and stored these. This is one of the good parts of the interview.
There was one 'cultural' interview with a front-end engineer. I explain about my experience with SASS and other CSS frameworks which I think mean much but wasn't bad. It may not be a good idea to play with some front end CSS tools.
Overall, I am pretty happy with the experience. After all, this was my first engineering interview! Everyone was very nice and made me comfortable. The only complaint was that they didn't provide me lunch (or perhaps nice to offer some break) during 3+ hours interview so I wasn't able to focus much on last part of the interview. I also drink way too mcuh water (because I was extremely hungry and nervous) so I have this 'want-to-go-bathroom' kind of feeling for awhile. Very Important Lessons Learned. Eat plenty of food before an interview and don't drink too much water during an interview.