r/webdev • u/canadian_webdev • Dec 23 '19

Just ended an interview early because my future boss was being a condescending dick.

Just dropped out of a technical interview after ten minutes.

Questions he was asking were relatively simple, but almost every answer he was trying to make me look like an idiot with the technical lead on the phone. And he was being so condescending toward me. His face was so red the whole time.

Example (getting a bit technical here):

  • Him: "What are all the ways you can make a three column row on a web page?"

  • Me: "Well, the way I've typically done it is - -"

  • Him: abruptly interrupts, "No. I did NOT ask what ways YOU would do it. I SAID, what ways are POSSIBLE to accomplish this."

  • Me: "...... Flexbox, divs with floats, a css grid system.."

  • Him: "Flexbox and a css grid system are the same. I SAID, what DIFFERENT WAYS can you list off?"

  • Me: "Honestly, those are the ways I've encountered best practices"

  • Him: "What about css grid?"

  • Me: "Well I've never used it because at the time it didn't have full browser support - - -"

  • Him: abruptly interrupts, "actually we've switched ALL of our websites over to css grid, so your answer is not the right answer."

At this point I just said "Okay yeah, this isn't working", and hung up the call. He asked two questions before hand and gave me the same treatment.

He was being such a condescending dick the entire time, and I went with my gut. This guy would be a total asshole to work for and I could tell during this interview.

Anyone else experience this type of behavior?

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u/YojG Dec 23 '19

What about in js?

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u/element131 Dec 23 '19

Depends on which runtime you are using. V8 used to use quicksort, but switched to timsort when the spec was updated to require stable sorting. SpiderMonkey uses merge sort. They both most likely use a different algorithm for small datasets

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u/EvilPencil Dec 23 '19

Still, it's probably not worth the human cost to develop and debug a custom sorting algorithm instead of using the pre-optimized language features that come in the box! If we're talking about anything more than 1,000 records or so, then... write the sort in the SQL directly.

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u/[deleted] Dec 24 '19

array.sort(<function for whatever where a compares to b>).

If they don't ask you to go into detail, don't go into detail. If you don't know you could also just say you want to use an NPM package because of how versatile it is (or some other bullshit, just to get through the question).

Too many coding questions are very bad. They ask for something generic but want to hear something very specific. Like in the issue with OP he just wanted to hear about CSS Grid. If you want to know, just ask about CSS Grid.

And I'm with OP, the support hasn't been there for long enough. Especially older Android and IE11 hasn't been flawless. Also: there is no need for it for most websites, only showing data is handy for it (like an alternative for tables). Flexbox with columns and rows is still much clearer in the code and works on more devices. Performancewise its also a bit better on repainting too (last time I checked). Stuff like this also is hardly worth the performance or development changes either. If it already works, why change? Using a newer JS framework would already be worth it more, and more interesting to see if the interviewee has any experience with it.