State of the Market

[GhostofTarbera]

Not rubbish advice though I always have a few examples to refer to in memory to draw upon if interviewed or even in a more casual conversation with a client decision maker - it's all part of the sales pitch to convince the client that you are the person to make the challenge/problem(s) they have go away.

Majority of clients in my travels don't differentiate their interview questions for contractors/consultants and always ask the same scenario or experience based questions that they would for a permanent position. I also have a response for the why do you want to work for this company question.

What you need to say

Your company vision has inspired me, I have followed the company for years on twitter/linken and have kept my eyes open for an opportunity just like this.

In reality you did not know they existed before yesterday


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[suityou01]

I applied for a permie gig. 3 day technical test. Yes, 3 days. I had to rewrite their project as it was for a much older version of. Net that would only run on Windows, and they agreed it was OK for me to do it in. NET core on Linux.

They wanted the app to run on local host, and to be secure. Yet they also wanted me to crank their Web api to retrieve a JWT, which had CORS turned on so refused connections from local host. I asked them if they had changed their config recently, and the answer was no. They sent me some code using an httpclient in the asp.net controller to hack around this and get the token.

I thought about this. For 1, they wanted to use Razor views, so JWT isn't a good fit, how do you pass a bearer token to a Razor view? For 2, ASP. NET has its own Identity tokens baked in, so to have two separate tokens is madness, both have their own claims, scope and expiration times. The extra effort to reconcile the 2 is just insane.

So I knew they wanted to move their tech stack to docker. So I dockerized the Web server, dB server and created an Nginx reverse proxy server to do the CORS munging outside of the app code.

I explained why I did what I did, why I don't think coding hack arounds is a good idea, and this solution could be reused for future scenarios where you may be waiting on a vendor to configure their Web APIs properly and yet now want to have hacked execution paths in your production code.

They made me wait over a week before telling me they offered it to another candidate as he did the technical test in a morning. Good for him. He was also 5K cheaper apparently.

I also was alarmed at face to face interview when the interviewer said it was a young team and he was worried I wouldn't be able to adapt to the fast pace of working. Yes folks, I am too old at 43 for coding roles.

The future is very bleak at Benger Towers and I am now under the care of the crisis team at the Luton and Dunstable Hospital.

Thanks Sajid, you slimy lying tulip.

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[BritishLad88]

I also was alarmed at face to face interview when the interviewer said it was a young team and he was worried I wouldn't be able to adapt to the fast pace of working. Yes folks, I am too old at 43 for coding roles

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No offense but by the sounds of it seems like they don't think you're a good fit to their team overall (whether it's age or your technical test). I guess regarding your test, you went a bit overboard in improving the solution to the max, following good coding best practices/solutions but their team doesn't believe in that philosophy...

Sometimes, these things happen afraid. I once interviewed for a position, and apparently the team I was looking to join consisted of a team of developers of the same age group (40ish - 50). They looked at me and felt I looked a bit young (i had just shaved that day) and concluded I'm no a good fit for their team because their team would be too 'old' for me even though I excelled in the technical test.

[wattaj]

...I also was alarmed at face to face interview when the interviewer said it was a young team and he was worried I wouldn't be able to adapt to the fast pace of working. Yes folks, I am too old at 43 for coding roles...

I had something similar to this during an interview for Shell in Den Haag: "how do you feel about working with younger colleagues?"

I was 30.

[jamesbrown]

Den Hagg

The mother in law?

[PlanB]

I applied for a permie gig. 3 day technical test. Yes, 3 days. I had to rewrite their project as it was for a much older version of. Net that would only run on Windows, and they agreed it was OK for me to do it in. NET core on Linux.

They wanted the app to run on local host, and to be secure. Yet they also wanted me to crank their Web api to retrieve a JWT, which had CORS turned on so refused connections from local host. I asked them if they had changed their config recently, and the answer was no. They sent me some code using an httpclient in the asp.net controller to hack around this and get the token.

I thought about this. For 1, they wanted to use Razor views, so JWT isn't a good fit, how do you pass a bearer token to a Razor view? For 2, ASP. NET has its own Identity tokens baked in, so to have two separate tokens is madness, both have their own claims, scope and expiration times. The extra effort to reconcile the 2 is just insane.

So I knew they wanted to move their tech stack to docker. So I dockerized the Web server, dB server and created an Nginx reverse proxy server to do the CORS munging outside of the app code.

I explained why I did what I did, why I don't think coding hack arounds is a good idea, and this solution could be reused for future scenarios where you may be waiting on a vendor to configure their Web APIs properly and yet now want to have hacked execution paths in your production code.

They made me wait over a week before telling me they offered it to another candidate as he did the technical test in a morning. Good for him. He was also 5K cheaper apparently.

I also was alarmed at face to face interview when the interviewer said it was a young team and he was worried I wouldn't be able to adapt to the fast pace of working. Yes folks, I am too old at 43 for coding roles.

The future is very bleak at Benger Towers and I am now under the care of the crisis team at the Luton and Dunstable Hospital.

Thanks Sajid, you slimy lying tulip.

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If they were stupid enough to say that in an interview then you have an age discrimination case right there.

Realistically people with 25 years to work before state retirement have to be given equal opportunity or the entire pension system will collapse.

You can’t pay for an extended holiday of 50 years off 20 years work.

This needs to be treated every bit as seriously as racism and sex discrimination.

[GhostofTarbera]

If they were stupid enough to say that in an interview then you have an age discrimination case right there.

.

In contractor land ??


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[KinooOrKinog]

In contractor land ??


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He was interviewing for a perm job.

[BR14]

He was interviewing for a perm job.

he still has hair, then?

[KinooOrKinog]

he still has hair, then?

Haha a nice demi wave