Software Engineer Interview 101 —What Kind of People Does The Company Really Want?

Tony
7 min readJul 27, 2024

Why discuss this topic? Have you ever experienced this: sometimes interviewers ask very strange questions, and you don’t know which direction to answer to hit the mark?

After the interview, you felt good but still inexplicably failed? Interviewers’ questions naturally have purposes, sometimes deeply hidden, so how can we “know the enemy” and understand the deeper meaning behind them?

The interviewer’s judgment is naturally based on the needs of their position and team, and they are definitely not deliberately picking faults. It is hard to say whether the specific approach of the interviewer is appropriate, but one thing is very clear: there is a huge difference in interpretation of the same question between the interviewer and the interviewee.

Therefore, to increase your chances of passing the interview, you must clearly understand the scope and requirements of the interview. This is very important.

Valuable Employees in the Eyes of the Company

What makes an employee valuable to the company and the team? I think it can generally be measured from two aspects. One aspect is the work results, including:

Quality and Value of Individual Work

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