I applied online for a Release Engineer position and attended a Tableau open house event. I had been interested in the Tableau product before and had researched the company. I had four interviews with this company.

The first three interviews were mostly fine. They focused on cultural fit, what the job entails, my background, and how I approach work. The people there seemed happy and good to work with. I was a little concerned that they did not have the current version of my resume that I had supplied them (I am not sure where they got the other version). I gave them paper copies during the interview and re-emailed an electronic version later.

The fourth interview was a nightmare. The HR recruiter, ***, had told me that they wanted to bring me in for a C++ coding interview. I thought this was odd for a Release Engineer position, but confirmed that yes, they wanted to screen on C++, and yes, this was for a Release Engineer job. One of the interviewers the recruiter mentioned, ###, turned out to be an expert in C++ (I looked up background info online). While not in the job description, C++ is listed on my resume as something I programmed in years ago, so I figured they were evaluating the half-life of my brain and whether I knew what Object-Oriented programming was.

I spent several days solid reviewing this subject to the exclusion of other topics since my purported interviewer was an expert, and I had not programmed in C++ recently. When I showed up onsite, I found out that a different group of people would be interviewing me. One of them said, smiling, "I told *** not to have $$ [me] spend the weekend reviewing C++." I looked at this person and said, "*** said this was on C++ and that the interview would be with ###." This person expressed surprise. Hmmm. While in general the coding questions were reasonable ones involving software requirements and creating different types of logs with scripting languages, I was obviously not prepared and had trouble answering even simple questions, as every language I was familiar with had merged in my mind. I could not figure out if they would really accept it if I said "I don't remember" (this is a tech screen!) or that I needed my references (Google, tech websites).

Remarkably, this interview lasted most of an hour. Everyone was relieved when it was over. They were all polite. I was able to drive home without a police escort. Perhaps I am naive about the different types of technical screens that employers use, but I am surprised they went this route for a non-developer position.

Answering questions on scripting languages when the expectation was C++ questions.