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by loeg 4895 days ago
Now, maybe I've gotten lucky, and I've only interviewed at a few companies (well-known ones include: Google, Amazon, Facebook), but I've never had an experience as bad as that painted by this analogy.

In general, the interview questions I've gotten are designed to test general CS knowledge and the ability to translate an algorithm into code. This is important, and as an interviewer myself, a lot of candidates fail at the translating to code step.

Design questions are (at a high level) maybe even closer to "how would you do your job?" than coding questions.

I have yet to see a company ask for specific experience with VB.net 2012 edition and exclude candidates like myself who are only familiar with C/Python/Java. If they do, I'd recommend straight out lying (for languages). You can pick languages up really quickly. For platforms, maybe you really should know it and it is actually relevant to your potential job.
2 comments
MartinCron 4895 days ago
I have yet to see a company ask for specific experience with VB.net 2012 edition and exclude candidates like myself who are only familiar with C/Python/Java

I've absolutely seen it, but I've stopped looking at it as an injustice that must be mocked, but rather a useful indicator of an organization that isn't a good fit for what I have to bring. If the economy were worse, I may have a different perspective.

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elbear 4895 days ago
If a company asks for specific experience with a technology and exclude candidates familiar with other technologies, I recommend getting out of there.
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loeg 4895 days ago
If the job you are applying for is to work on a rails site or develop a mobile app, I would argue that it is pretty important that you are already familiar with those technologies (and their pitfalls)…

I wouldn't exclude someone unfamiliar with a specific framework, but as an employer you understand that ramping them up to speed is going to take a significant amount of time.

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elbear 4895 days ago
Right and my point still stands. If you don't have the expertise that they require specifically, don't waste your time, or worse, lie.
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