Interviews on @zhisme :: signal over noise

The Constant Frozen at Boot Bug: A Ruby Exercise For An Interview

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I like interview questions that come from real incidents instead of a puzzle book. You can’t google your way out of them, and the candidate’s reasoning maps directly onto the job. This one came from a payment service. It looks trivial. It is not.

I’ve stripped the production code and rebuilt the same shape around a fake payment router. The bug is identical; the names are not.

The Question

Here is a class that routes payments to a gateway. Occasionally a charge is
written to the database with method_id = NULL, even though the payment method
clearly exists in the payment_methods table. No exception is raised. The only
thing that reliably fixes it is restarting the process. Find the bug.

LLM Strikes Back But Not The Way We Wanted

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

AI strikes back, but not the way we wanted.

Recently I had an interview with a recruiter — a very interesting and unexpected interview for me. It’s a funny story that can teach you something and make you vigilant.
The interview started in a very cliché way: asking me about my experience, why I left my previous company, what I’m looking for, and what my goals are for a new workplace.

Theory vs Practice: Why Technical Interviews Go Wrong

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

TL;DR

Match interview complexity to job complexity.

Interview for what the job actually requires
System design interviews test interview prep, not engineering ability
Copying FAANG processes for non-FAANG problems is cargo cult
Knowledge you don’t use, you lose

An Exaggerated Hiring Story

HR contacts an engineer and asks them:

Hi, %username%
We are fast-growing, extra efficient, super sufficient
LIST of Fortune 500 FORBES %company_name%

Want to enlarge our staff and hire one another scintillating developer (YOU) to join our super friendly team
Let’s schedule a call to share the details and proceed with next steps