Interview practice
Software developer: interview practice
Software developer interviews tend to probe how you reason about code, not only whether it works. Expect questions on design choices, debugging, and how you work with a team.
Matched to O*NET: Software Developers (15-1252.00)See this occupation on O*NET OnLine
Commonly asked in this field
Questions commonly asked in interviews for this field, not by any particular company. Your practice interview mixes questions like these with questions from your own résumé.
- 01Tell me about a project you're proud of and the part you personally built.
- 02Walk me through how you'd track down a bug that only shows up in production.
- 03How do you decide when code is good enough to ship?
- 04Describe a technical decision you made that you'd change now. What would you do differently?
- 05How would you design a simple URL shortener, and what would break first as it grows?
- 06Tell me about a time you disagreed with a teammate in a code review. How did it end?
- 07How do you keep your tests useful without slowing the team down?
What the interviewer listens for
From the rubric Hmmlo uses for this job family.
Technical accuracy
Correct terms and concepts, and honesty about limits, like saying where a cache could serve stale data.
Depth
You explain why you chose an approach, what it trades away, and how you'd check it works.
Specifics
Real systems, rough scale and numbers, and a clear line between what you did and what the team did.
Clarity
A non-specialist could follow your explanation without losing the thread.
One tip
When you describe a system, start with the problem it solved and its rough scale before the tech stack. It gives every detail after that a reason to be there.
From the blog
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