epic tech interview strats (100% real) (not fake)
so. yeah. barely-sexual, extremely vague 3rd-person hypnosis story rambling about a job interview. Slinks away. Good fucking night
There were hundreds of characters Andie could play. Which one should she choose? Usually, that answer would have already solidified by this point in the interview, even if merely congealed, as could describe those few times she'd been too tired to really think, slimily sleepwalking through a recruiter screening. At this point, a few minutes in after having absorbed the general feeling of the building, the initial introduction to the company, and various unspoken attributes of the interviewer's demeanor, she would have landed on something: the curious but awkward nerd, the smooth professional, the eager student, or some other easily readable role.
This, however, was not happening today, for fuck knows what reason. It could be something about the persistent incongruity of the surroundings. This was, she had to consciously remember, an office like twenty or twenty-one floors above ground, and the company took up the whole floor, but the place - despite having no baked goods in sight, no office donuts or anything like that - smelled, in an on-and-off, unpredictable way, like a tiny, warm, even cute, bakery. It was far too pervasive to be the interviewer's perfume. Andie had expected a more clinical smell, specifically. Perhaps that was it. That part of her brain was just expecting something, constantly scanning for that something, taking up valuable CPU.
"So, Andie," and jesus fuck, she almost jumped out of her chair at Selene's voice. Selene, who was right in front of her, had been right in front of her the whole time, asking fairly normal questions. And so for what reason did she startle? No reason. The interviewer continued. "I see you have experience with both Django and FastAPI. Would you mind describing your experience with API design?"
After a long and terrible pause was filled up slowly with that swirling, darting, unplaceable croissant smell, the description Andie produced was similarly vague, following a convoluted path, tracing back to retrieve some information, coming back only to realize that she'd already said that, searching in airy, disappearing places until she finally found the right way to summarize her previous work on a web platform.
"Perfect. Very cute."
"EâŚexcuse me?"
Selene's "cute" did not deviate one bit, tonally, from any of the pleasantries and politesse that they'd passed through earlier in the interview. Still, it was not⌠what people said, surely.
"I said: perfect. Very good." Same tone.
Let's just move past it, some fleeting bit of Andie whispered. Then, another remaining bit spoke. "Ah. Okay."
"So, we've already gone through the logistics, you've told me a little more about your experience, I'll now just tell you some more about what we do here. Unless you had any other questions for me so far?"
"Nope, I'm⌠I'm good for now."
Either the smell of vanilla and cardamom was stronger now, or Andie was just searching for the nonexistent hand-sanitizer smell more scrupulously. She pictured an aerial-view video of herself running around an almost comically picturesque field, an exaggerated version of one near the mountains where she'd played soccer as a child, chasing an oven-fresh butterfly in rich warm colors, trying to get a closer look. As that tiny Andie chased the tinier butterfly faster and faster, the butterfly picked up speed at a rate exactly matching tiny Andie's. The butterfly seemed to be adjusting faster than the information could possibly transfer. Spooky action at a distance. But big Andie's brain-eye couldn't really perceive that, so⌠let's call the whole thing off?
As tiny Andie and the butterfly collapsed into nothingness, big Andie's internals lurched out of nowhere at the idea of waking up in a hospital, having dreamed the whole thing, the overwhelming explanation flooding in, that's why she'd expected a clinical smell, that's why⌠But this explanation, as dramatic as it was, did not hold. She was still in the office with odd, short, square-glasses Selene, and she still inhabited an upright body in an uncomfortable chair, trying not to audibly sniff at a half-empty carousel of baked good scent. And she was interviewing for a fucking medical imaging company: a more boring explanation, perhaps, but one she could not escape. And she was going to get through this.
"Perfect. You must be familiar with our famous patented algorithm for classifying different cells in liver tissue. We do far more than that nowadays, though. We've developed a large number of similar classification models for other organs and tissues. Some are just in the research phase, not yet in clinical use. And in fact - you almost definitely don't know about this - I've just been cleared today to tell the public, including you, that we're currently building a suite of models to understand types of cognition that are shared across multiple people. The official announcement should be going out as we speak, actually."
"Like⌠fMRI analysis? Or wait, you said multiple people, so does this involve network analysis or something?"
Selene gave a small, almost pitying smile. "It involves finding correlations between measurements in a large number of different domains." Okay, not much of an explanation there. That could mean pretty much anything.
Something didn't feel right about this. There were the usual suspicions about companies like these using network analysis in unsavory ways, but going further than that, Andie hadn't even seen anything on the company website about any neurological software products, let alone this "cognition across multiple people" stuff. She wasn't too familiar with that. Like egregores and shit? No way, too mystical. Why the hell did Andie's brain immediately go there? Just because Selene hadn't bothered to use a more technical, specific term than just "cognition across multiple people"? Come on, focus.
Focusing, however, was still blocked by the spinning, ever-disintegrating invisible bakery.
Mercifully, Andie thought, Selene switched on a large monitor to show her a demo. Finally, something to latch onto. But Andie's anticipation of comfort blew apart instantly when the screen lit up with the most dizzying user interface she'd ever seen. More colors collected densely in one place than any thing she'd seen in a long time. Andie's eyes widened and chased anything that looked like an identifiable UI component, anything resembling a fMRI image, a heat map, anything recognizable. Part of the moving image would almost resolve, but not quite, and Andie would have to squint and peer into the part, only the part, like it was the whole image in itself, and then find another almost-recognizable component, and thenâŚthe process of mentally "zooming in" like that reminded her of something she was ashamed of, and she looked away, slightly to the side of the monitor, without moving her head.
She pictured tiny Andies, who chased tinier Andies, who chased still tinier Andies, who chased even tinier Andies, forever, in an impossible field.
Response caught before it could be blurted: "What the fuck am I looking at here?"
Response spoken: "So, whatâŚmetricsâŚare you using here? For this particularâŚvisualization?"
Selene's smile slowly grew, slowly warmed. "It is both of us thinking about a specific set of words."
Andie nodded, slowly, and did not understand.
"Would you like to know what those words are, Andie?" Same tone as before, though the words were unmistakably incongruent. Same tone as "cute". Same tone as all the pleasantries. The words were also reminiscent of something Andie was ashamed of. But the tone. Always the same. It was yet another thing Andie couldn't figure out. This, on top of theâŚvisualization. On top of the bakery smell, which danced in and out, playing the role of one baked good, then another, which Andie had almost forgotten about, but which was still here.
A businesslike Andie bubbled up from the layers of disorientation and said "Sounds good!", cheerfully, out of nowhere.
Selene shook her head, then, still smiling, almost glowing. "That happens later."
"LâŚlater in the interview process. I get it."
"No. In a few minutes. Andie, do you want this job?"
"âŚYes."
"Do you want to do something fulfilling?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to know more about the cognition project?"
"Yes."
"Do you want me to tell you about it in a specific voice? You know what I'm talking about."
There was no way. There was no fucking way.
But it was at least somewhat consistent. The recent memory reverberated: "Perfect. Very cute." Same tone. So there was a different tone she expected instead, obviously. A hundred tiny Andies all knew exactly what big Andie refused to think. And their revolt, their conspiracy against big Andie, started from the tips of her ears. That region was the first place where she'd noticed blushing the first time she was hypnotized by a close friend. There was simply no way, but yet it was. What happens, Andie thought, if I say, just for fun --
"Yes."
The excruciating warmth spread now throughout the ears and down the neck, and Selene hadn't even answered yet. Andies chased butterflies throughout Andie's body at delirious speeds. When would the answer come? When would it come? When would it come? When would it come? When would it--
"Good."
It flooded into every part of Andie's body. It reached into her brain, her spine. It reached into other places, too - places whose felt experience Andie had painstakingly designed through hormones, conversations with lovers, and prior conditioning. All this just from hearing the new texture of Selene's voice and knowing her intent.
Now, asking any question, let alone asking what the words were, was far out of reach of any Andie.
"You wanted to know what the specific words were, Andie. So curious. It's actually a trick question. The words don't matter. Only the structure matters. But we can think about those words, too. And you can repeat them, if you wish."
The wavefunction collapsed, now that this part of Andie was seen, touched. All Andies now moved in concert as one Andie. They spoke and felt:
"The words don'tâŚmatter. Only the structure. Matters." Every syllable set off sparks, in all the places that the warmth now inhabited.
"Again. The words don't matter. Only the structure matters."
"The words. Don't matter. Only the. Structure matters." It had become difficult to breathe. She kept forgetting how.
"Again. The words don't matter. Only the structure matters."
Time passed. A lot of time. It became evident, over this time, that the statement, even though it, yes, didn't matter, was completely true. Perhaps you had to consider the truth of the statement as completely accidental. Indeed, she wasn't thinking about the words, but the feeling of saying them, of hearing Selene saying them, was overwhelming to the spine, almost enough to make her cry out. But rather than a cry, it came out as clarity:
"The words don't matter. Only the structure matters."
"Very good, Andie. You've done so well. You can relax now. That's it, melting into my hands. So good at this, Andie. You can drop now. You can sleep."
And so she did, twenty-one floors above ground, in the flickering light of the visualization, in Selene's arms, Selene's office.
