💾 Archived View for stillspinning.cc › t › Screening%20interview%20questions%20and%20answers captured on 2021-12-04 at 18:04:22. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

View Raw

More Information

⬅️ Previous capture (2021-11-30)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The idea: publish my answers to questions that might be asked in screening interviews to save everyone's time.

What are your career goals?

I don't have a 'goal' or an end state that I'm working towards. I've found that software engineering is something I excel at and I feel home at; I'll likely continue writing code for a living.

In terms of aspirations: I have a finite amount of time until I am no longer able to work and I’d like to use the time in a good way, on something worthwhile. Worthwhile means that the work is something I love and can do well and is about a cause that I identify with.

What I hope to focus in the immediate future: help people, groups, and/or society with transformative growth; think better, gain broader views, act with compassion - as opposed to horizontal growth like optimization of a singular value.

What are you really good at professionally? What are your strengths?

Seeing and creating systems and structures; be it software, work process, or framework of thought

• "She'll solve anything that's thrown her way"
• "You tell her about a problem in any disorganized way and everything comes out neatly sorted out"
• Have a knack for decomposing a problem down to concrete steps toward a resolution. "This must be some kind of talent of yours"

Thinking from first principles, asking penetrating questions; this might not be obvious as my voice is small. "Everyone's doing it is not enough reason" is my shtick

• "You've got a track record in thinking clearly"
• Also love drawing diagrams that illustrate the essence of a thing or a system

Going deep and staying with a problem until it's solved; read source code, trace system calls, and inspect packets

• Found a bug in glibc while experimenting with Nix packaging via source reading and gdb
• Diagnosed a mysterious connectivity issue between Jenkins and GitHub via strace and tcpdump
• Fixed a daily growth in CPU usage of the primary MySQL server by flipping a server config when others assumed that was a bad idea

Autodidact; quickly get productive in a new tech stack as if I have prior experience

• "Quickest I've seen anyone pick up Rails"
• At my last position, I learned Haskell, Nix, and Terraform, and set up a personal Kubernetes cluster in my own time for learning's sake.

Written communication; excel at short-term and long-term asynchronous communication from answering questions to maintaining wikis and documentation

• "[You've produced a] well-structured document, as usual"
• I like answering questions and explaining things. Coupled with my drive to create order and write things down, this trait helps with disseminating my knowledge to current and future teammates.

What are you not good at or not interested in doing professionally? What are your greatest weaknesses?

Speaking in a 'normal' cadence; I need time to think before responding and this may be a disadvantage when it comes to client-facing work.

Blogging or giving a conference talk hasn't been something I do proactively; recently started writing in a private space to build my muscle.

These may be more like a quirk and whether to consider these weaknesses may be subjective:

• I tend to ask lots of questions before stating my opinion and that can be (mis)interpreted as a sign of dissent. To counter this, I state my intention in asking questions upfront -- "I'm curious…" or "I'd like to understand…" -- to make sure the conversation remains amicable. This might sound like I'm sugarcoating a strength, but I believe anything good can turn into something /not/ good if it’s done excessively or without consideration.
• When I bring up multiple perspectives, it may seem overly detached or objective. I think there is room for me to grow in expressing loving-kindness at all times.