How I Failed My Netflix Interview | Prime Reacts

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Reviewed video: • How I Failed My Netfli...
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[@TheCodingSloth]

Got rejected by Netflix btw

[@seanm8715]

you're the guy

[@cmelgarejo]

That's a badge to wear proud. You're the best, Sloth.

[@omerdvir1709]

Just like the gut in the video. Crazy

[@timnicolas1987]

3 months posting videos, and you are already being featured on this channel. Congrats, friend.

[@Kane0123]

Imagine getting rejected by a company and then getting a 30min video analysis of your experience… is Prime secretly Karen?

[@vincentlius1569]

your channel really able to made boring engineering topic into intresting, nobody share enough high-level tech chat on youtube nowadays. Really enjoy watching your content as a platform product manager, computer science grad

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

:)

[@deniyii]

I relate to this so badly. I forgot how to map over a list of items in JSX. Literally blacked out and forgot how to write a ternary. It got so bad that I began laughing and muttering about how much I hate interviews. Top 3 most embarrassing moments of my life.

[@adityaanuragi6916]

I forgot something similar in react to, though it wasn't in an interview I just entered 2nd year With event listeners we can get an event from the browser but I was wondering when when you give arguments and the browser gives an event to a function how does it know which parameter to go to? Then after thinking this I started coding and it immediately came back When sending arguement to a function you'll probably write e => handleClick(e, 10) and that's how it works This was a dumb thing for me to get confused on

[@bravin_w]

Dayuum

[@afghanistan9002]

what are the 2 others?

[@falinoluiz5962]

@@afghanistan9002 I don't think we want to know.

[@kmsskyquake7330]

i have never set in a iinterview but i can totally see myself there

[@oitan]

I love when you share your personal experience in life. Especially with family. Thank you.

[@JoshSaintJacque]

Practice interviewing with places you don't have your heart set on is on is really good advice. So much less emotional baggage helps you focus on improving your interview skills.

[@EpicBunty]

for me that applies to jobs and women I think.

[@kaatlev]

holy smokes the FIRST piece of advice you gave, interview at a bunch of places you don't care about first is HUGE YUUUUUUGE. Well done. Also i'm new and have been binging, hilarious.

[@B1SQ1T]

Would be great if I could get interviews to begin with 😢

[@kaatlev]

@@B1SQ1T If you know anyone that works anywhere that has a software development team, get a referral even if they aren't IN software. Be super open to taking anything close and then moving into what you really want as well. Intercompany moves can be powerful. Just make sure you ask if that's possible when you interview. Otherwise spam that resume to shit that even remotely fits you. Many companies don't write the job requirements well so just apply and see. Good Luck!

[@CivilizedWasteland]

@@B1SQ1T it's over

[@alexgabriel5877]

17:37 yes please do leetcode stream! would be interesting to see how you solve medium/hard stuff, also can plug your DSA course with good solving :)

[@nealiumj]

The Chinese professor antidote was funny! I also had one I couldn’t understand at all.. but!- man, this guy LOVED his job and the topic. It was truly infectious!

[@darkopz]

I was really hoping these two would find each other. The other guy is a pretty good candidate, he just psyched himself out. Here’s to him getting another chance at some point.

[@TheVideogamemaster9]

It's so hard to even get an interview in the first place. I've applied to several roles at netflix, amazon, google, meta, and about 800 other listings on every site I can find. No interviews, despite having a substantial portfolio and a good resume.

[@notsheeple-ih6hl]

​@@realbuttersany LinkedIn profile tips?

[@realbutters]

@@notsheeple-ih6hl I wouldn’t say I’m an expert. Just relaying some real world anecdotes. That said I’d try copying the basic format of someone already within the role at the company you’re looking at. Preferably hired within the past year.

[@khatdubell]

@@notsheeple-ih6hl just got to make it buzzword friendly. Keep in mind, the people doing recruiting, generally speaking, know nothing about programming to technology. Also, if you feel you need to, you can always buy likes (or whatever they are called) on your skills, as well as recommendations. I know it sounds sleezy, but companies have no qualms about lying to you about the company and/or job. Turnabout is fair play.

[@urisinger3412]

You suck

[@geldan]

Are you interviewing remote or in-person? You might need to go on-person if you are just starting out.

[@anfelrosa5661]

I just discovered your channel and I LOVE it !

[@techbytes5]

I’ve had a very similar experience over the years with profile changes, every time I make a change it feels like all of a sudden my profile is boosted for a few days

[@rushirajrajeshirke6221]

Your channel and content is gold

[@nexovec]

Prime, the ultimate mustache analyzer.

[@srijanraghavula]

I learnt so much, so many important things from a few ThePrimeTime video reactions than I ever did in my last 2 semesters. Damn.

[@brianviktor8212]

With 7+ years of coding experience, I can confidently say that these interview questions are needlessly hard and useless. They are rather some academic exercise, some puzzle, than actual problems. As a C# programmer I can probably solve most of those challenges, but they look like being in some university is more accustomed to such menial puzzles than someone who is experienced is. I'd be much more confident if they'd ask me questions they don't know the answer to.

[@khatdubell]

A lot of them are. Some can be interesting: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mnesooGQbbuViLs That is an example of one that is hard and academic but has no single answer and is actually useful. My last interview the interviewer had some stupid leetcode style challenge that as soon as i explained the approach i wanted to take he stopped me cold and made me do it his way. By the end of the interview he had literally taken over coding and couldn't get his own chosen solution working. The solution i had picked wasn't optimal, purposefully so, but it didn't need to be, and i guarantee i would have it working long before the end of the interview. Talk to me about optimal solutions when you have actual use-cases for an actual problem and we can do performance testing to compare different approaches.

[@Kane0123]

DOTNET LETS GOOOOOOO

[@71Jay17]

Skill issue. >C# saynomore

[@brianviktor8212]

@@71Jay17 > Assumes interview riddles aren't worthless

[@georgehelyar]

FizzBuzz style questions are good for screening candidates, but that's about it. The amount of people that say they have 10 or 20 years experience but can't write a for loop is insane and it's a complete waste of everyone's time. My work uses a question that says for a given string does every opening bracket have a corresponding closing bracket. We don't care about time complexity and you really have to go out of your way to mess it up, but the question is there to stop us wasting the next 1-2 hours on someone who clearly has never written a line of code in their life.

[@apollolux]

This feels like what likely happened to me during my technical screening for Bloomberg earlier this year, though for me it was after a string of failed interviews for a variety of reasons the nerves probably finally got to me and my inability to come up with a satisfactory solution to the problem was the culmination of all that built-up feeling of inadequacy.

[@BlueSquareInWhiteCircle]

The problem with high stakes situations is that (perhaps for some atleast) the brain can interpret it as a lethal situation which can create a freeze response where one loosese access to the cognitive side of the brain. There is little room for reasoning once in such a situation. Some tips that helped me is to downplay the importance of the situation by #1 Thinking it’s not a job you want even when that is quite the opposite and #2 Think that it’s not an interview but actually a job assignment (one of many that you have every day)in your mundane job or school setting and that the interviewee is just you classmate or coleague. Which it actually might be if you get the job anyway, believe (or attempt to convince yourself) that you already have the job and that might give you the confidense that you need to keep your cool in that situation.

[@BlueSquareInWhiteCircle]

Post mortem: What is your risk evaluation before heading in ? How do you prepare yourself and your mental body state before heading in ? You are good enough as you are as a human being ! It is okey to do mistakes, don’t ruminate on it it’s not the end of the world, but what will you do different next time ? Focus in what is in your control and let go of what is not in your control !

[@derekbaker_]

This whole video was just gold

[@James____-sc5dc]

Please do like a leet code stream. You seem like you do know a lot and i would really appreciate seeing your thought process and what you prioritise when approaching problems :)

[@peterm.souzajr.2112]

i was so nervous during my amazon interview that i went into a spiral and i forgot what a 'string' was.....

[@MiniKodjo]

That feeling of being stuck. And solve the problem immediately after the interview hangs up....

[@pencilcheck]

The fact that they are able to get an interview without knowing how to code tells you everything about hiring process. But you also have people who are nervous, the thing is, don’t sweat about it, just move on and perhaps your next one is better. Because knowing how to code doesn’t necessarily mean you will get hired

[@UNKNWN96]

I have my first SWE interview today and I'm not even nervous lol I don't even know how I got here being 100% self-taught but I'm just hoping for the best... Once I get my foot in the door a lot will change. Until then, just gotta keep grinding and practice as much as I can.

[@gickygackers]

So when do you start?

[@ant-dev]

update?

[@grddavis]

The people need to know!

[@michaellk2254]

How did it go?

[@ant-dev]

@@michaellk2254 bro died

[@seanknowles9985]

Primos face when he joked about passing the technical test.

[@ChaosTherum]

I feel like the biggest thing that has helped me in interviews is learning how to be comfortable saying "I don't know" don't try to get tricky and secretly look things up, it never hurts to ask if you can, and if not just be honest that you are always trying to learn, or even that maybe you're a bit rusty from being on one codebase for some time. The last two jobs I landed I thought I completely bombed the code interview but they both said that they really appreciated my honesty and willingness to say when I'm not sure and need assistance.

[@WedgeTalon]

I hate interviewing with a burning passion.

[@jonniem]

I genuinely wish someone like Prime existed when i was in college

[@stanrock8015]

Agreed. Same applies if you haven’t interview in a few years!

[@michaellk2254]

I got rejected by Amazon 3 times, Google 2 times and I hate myself because I got to the final interviews.

[@Lintlikr1]

6:24 hilarious the leet code question in the background lmao

[@ricardodragon]

About that last muted part 28:50 . I also completely agree. Twice. Was perfect!

[@ora10053]

I applied to exactly one company, which i really wanted to join, and i got the job. But yeah in general practicing the interviews by shopping jobs which you don't care about is a good idea.

[@laxlyfters8695]

Another thing to do is to also send a follow up email with a solution and include detailed comments and explanation for the solution. Hey it helps and shows that you care worst case u still get rejected.

[@EricAngle]

First thing that entered my mind. If you quickly solved it a few minutes after the interview, email it to the interviewer.

[@crustydev5561]

I like the idea of practice interviews, but how do you time it that the company you want is later on when each application takes a different amount of time to get responses?

[@khatdubell]

There are companies that do practice interviews, often by current and/or ex FAANG people. Even better is the fact that they will tell you in detail what you need to improve on, which you can't always count on from "real" ones.

[@txdmsk]

I've LARPed as a team lead for years and interviewed dozens of people. Some of them are super freaked out in these situations. I had two guys who basically forgot how to speak, even though it was clear to me for other reasons that they are intelligent and competent. I'm one of those people. In "exam" situations I almost always brain freeze and hyperventillate, so I need to stop talking for 5-10 seconds and focus on breathing. Even though I'm a cool, accomplished, brave, hypercompetent, manly man, I just shut down during interviews. So it is really difficult for me to sell myself. Nowhere else in life or during work this happens. If I need to talk to a gajillion dollar contract Customer and explain to them why their gajillion dollar service is down, I'm completely fine and on top of everything. As an interviewer I always try to reduce interview jitters in creative ways.

[@hifiandrew]

"Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast"

[@egor.okhterov]

The first interview question should be: multiply 13×12 in your head, just to break the ice and warm up the brain.

[@cashflowinvestor23]

Just got into amazon as a manager (non coding). In the 3rd interview, the hiring manager said "Oh it's your 3rd interview, I'll go easy on ya" and then proceeded to ask me the absolute most difficult and nuanced questions imaginable. It was pretty intense but at the end he said "good job" lol. Got the offer yesterday.

[@user-yz3uy2om4q]

wow congratulations 🎉

[@namesas]

Imagine some one from Netflix sees this because prime saw it and they try to re hire this guy

[@notapplicable7292]

I'm a bit fan of slowly chipping away at problems. It never feels hard doing the next little bit, it feels impossible trying to build the solution from a black page.

[@Lordacin]

Listening to your comments about interviewing initally at the location you don't really care about was the same advice that I give people in a completely different occupation. I explain that the interview process is pretty standard in my industry and when you are solid in the process go test with the organization you want to be with. If you get offered a job on the way, take it.

[@coreykuehl8519]

I interviewed without prep and it was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. I looked worse than a junior dev even though I'm in a mid level position. Huge lessons learned from it though and sometimes you need a kick in the ass to be better in the future.

[@wurf5336]

3:45 had to like the video after that. That is legendary xD

[@ZettaiKatsu2013]

It took me 2 years of applying before even getting a Safran interview (shows you how French market sucks) and I walked away because I didn't want to fail the trial period (I was not into front-end Javafx) and get black-listed. But I'll try again. An in-house position in the holy grail here. I do dummy interviews with Capgemini and Accenture all the time.

[@AlexiBee]

I don’t know how good you have to be at a junior level to be picky about which interview to take first or second etc. I can’t say I don’t get interviews at all, I get some and I try my best at all of them. Unfortunately my brain is just not capable of coping with the stress - sometimes I fail on very simple questions answers to which I wouldn’t even have to think about in a normal conversation. My anxiety gets really bad and I don’t know how to deal with it. Because of this, every new interview is an even bigger stress because I feel like I can no longer trust myself to know things. Recently I had an interview and couldn’t even remember http request methods when asked which ones there are.

[@kuhluhOG]

21:45 And at some point you are going to meet somebody whose testing anxiety is so strong that they immediately get a mental breakdown to a point where you need to stop them from literally falling to the ground. If one's testing anxiety is weak, your solution helps, don't get me wrong. But if it's a strong one it doesn't.

[@darkopz]

The only way to get over it, is it do it a lot. It takes practice.

[@kuhluhOG]

@@darkopz depending on person even that's not a given

[@KuldeepYadav-jw7jn]

Practicing without LSP, code assistance for coding interview preparation is the most useful advice, it immensely helps during interview.

[@ScrotoTBaggins]

The fact they hired Prime makes it clear they'll hire pretty much anybody if they interview güd

[@71Jay17]

Welcome to job hunting. Are you new?

[@ScrotoTBaggins]

@@71Jay17 na just bein salty for the shits

[@JeromeDemers]

I moved from Canada to Bay Area this Saturday with wife and 2 kids. It’s awesome! I now understand the meaning of expensive!! 😂

[@latertheidiot]

Interviewer: Tell me about yourself. Interviewee: HASHMAP!!

[@LetsbeHonest97]

joma.....!!!

[@denissorn]

What kind of books are these? Here in Europe most people/students read what we called 'scripts', like study guides, summary notes, and 'questions' (when available, basically most important chapters that will almost certainly appear on exam.) students prepare then share among them selves. Professor will give you a list of books/literature one can use to prepare an exam, but I have yet to meet a person who have read Modern Operating Systems (~1100 pages) or Computer Networks (800-900 pages) from Tannenbaum cover to cover, or even used them to study for exames. I did try doing that, but it's next to impossible when you have several other (more or less interesting sometimes useless and stupid) subjects to worry about.

[@knuppelwuppel]

This reminds me of when I had to mesmerize stuff in school. Honestly, it's stupid. Having an understanding of how the language you use works is enough, everything else is remembering vocabulary.

[@hec70r]

I still remember my interview with Netflix, the training manager was such a horrible person. Years later I'm glad I was not recruited into that team

[@pif5023]

Mustache analysis was and still is the perfect skill

[@KangoV]

I suck majorly at online tests. My latest employer set me a project to do over a weekend and i aced it. Now a technical architect. I would never get employed at Netflix. I'm actually now more into data Engineering though with Spark, Kafka, Databricks, Snowflake etc. Coding on those is great fun.

[@shklbor]

19:52 This is so damn true !!

[@TheMet4lGod]

This reminds me of when I interviewed for a SQL Server Database Developer job (for a career change) last year and then in the middle of the interview I said "using view tables is bad". Never got called back lol.

[@MyGroo]

Imagine applying for Netflix and the person that interviews you is Prime

[@gerardsk8ordie]

On those interviews, can you use syntactic sugar like "filter", "contains", etc...?

[@joshix833]

I often code in nano, just to train my brain.

[@alviahmed7388]

You doing a leetcode stream would be awesome!! It would be a fun video to watch!

[@Geomaverick124]

The thing about the KZbin Projects is that most people dont finish them and if you at least change it around enough, it should be enough to put in a portfolio.

[@DurduSM]

an hour after i watched this. I did the exact same thing for a ''transition to dev'' tech interview at the company i currently work as a qa. 🤦

[@khatdubell]

I'm hoping the twist to the story is that he is the person who rejected the candidate.

[@joelpww]

That interview story if funny as hell

[@technomancer2203]

Out here with a year long internship and I can’t even get an interview

[@Alkis05]

"People will think I'm a cage fighter... I better get serious and change my skills" New skill: Mustache analysist.

[@icankickflipok]

Thanks for reminding me that I’m not risking my life. It’s not like failing a coding interview means you’re gonna get shot in the head by the recruiter.

[@NathanW2009]

Ahh, good ole' Binhai... too true sir... too true

[@DexterMorgan]

It's funny because I was helping my friend Andrew Dempsey with his Linkedin and we thought it would be funny to setup his profile as professional goat herder. He's changed his profile since to actually be a real Linkedin profile, but he does still have his user image as him feeding goats.

[@moamber1]

So... First, interview at Netflix, and then, when you feel comfortable - at the place where you'd actually like to work.

[@Salos1]

I went to MSU as well. Took one coding class but dropped out. I continue my coding journey outside of that. I just do coding for fun.

[@myronwoods40]

Good advice. But the only flaw in this is theres no guarantee that you'll get an interview at the place you want. You just gotta keep firing off applications and hope one randomly goes through.

[@alextrollip7707]

Damn as soon as he said Know how to join a string I INSTANTLY forgot how to do it in any language.

[@markusmachel397]

I just started to learn c in vim without anything except line numbers, not having anything to give you clue makes a difference.

[@beaker071]

Just curious, was the python solution right? because the problem asks for the FIRST non-repeated character right?, and if there are more than one single character then when you iterate the hashMap, you lose the original order.

[@kristianmaglasang3123]

The advice at :38 makes a lot of sense, but I don’t think it quite works in smaller markets like NZ

[@user-ss8km6qp5u]

the best channel

[@davidmac451]

18:05 - 18:35 so real. PSO was sick but hard

[@valseedian]

i got to third round interviews at a google subsidiary... failed the coding portion because they gave me 45min to write functional c++... no libraries allowed... not sure i could type all that code in 45 min if i was copying from known good. if i was programming in js or python the questions would be simple. it was clear none of my interviewers knew much c++.

[@MixturaLife]

It just LEGS 😂

[@BiggusDingus325]

Bro i got anxiety just watching this video

[@keithp6054]

😂ThePrimeTime sounds like Bill Burr who became a dev 😂😂

[@wew8820]

bombed a microsoft interview today, a little bummed, but this is the advice i need

[@anon746912]

In my experience, even on the phone screen step, it's better to just be honest when you don't know something instead of trying to bullshit. Focus on what you can do, if it's a problem you don't know how to solve you can try to explain how you would go about doing research on how to solve it. Or how you've solved something similar in another language before. Interviewers are also looking at your personality and attitude - and those also count a lot.

[@houndsol]

oh my God those sloths were terrifying

[@BeamMonsterZeus]

I am a hyper-pleb normie. Thank you all for sharing these experiences and an honest look into the lifestyle/workflow/hiring challenges

[@mwnkt]

I interviewed at a place i wanted 4 weeks ago. i failed. will probably wait until im done with my degree

[@marcsteele8368]

Must say I’m amused by the fact you get the same chancers we get in the rest of the industry. Yet I never got past the wall of silence from the initial application to big tech. 😉 That said, everyone’s best interview answers come in the drive home afterwards.

[@ferinzz]

I like to have a comment section at the bottom of my file that lists out the large points of what I want to/need to do to get from start to finish. That way I don't need to worry about remembering what my next step should be. I just check what I wrote down.

[@ddddddd5425]

22:40 dang i been writing JS like 10 years, but i still have to look up basic string methods and shit all the time because i've worked like 6-7 languages and now they're all spaghetti in my brain. Do people think i actually don't know how to code because of this?

[@funbucket09]

Yea probably

[@ddddddd5425]

@@funbucket09 :(

[@dewanataarmoon4523]

Yep.... Most of the time we rely on documentation and now every programmer atleast able to code in 3 different langugae

[@lucastsen]

OMG the "stop memorising the solution" thing happened to me 100%. If only I had this before I looked like a dummy not being able to GET request an API in code. FFS

[@jzmmm]

Aiiyo. Bee tee dubya. I work at Netflix. - prime

[@JanosEsztergomi]

22:30 bro i am a developer since like 2014, and i still google up js substring xdddd although i have the necessary information to solve the problems, i just can't remember the name and args of an api, i use like 3 times a year

[@low-key-gamer6117]

Just wanted to share how I got into Intel as a chip designer. I failed a lot of companies I cared about, Nvidia, Samsung, AMD and all. I lost all hope, went for an interview with intel, didn't care if got selected or anything and boom, they selected me.

[@chrisjohansson9971]

Why does prime remind me so much of michael scott lol

[@Jamiered18]

Asking somebody to code using none of the tools they or the company they are interviewing for actually use in the real world, on a coding question that won't actually come up on the job, has got to be one of the most infuriating and dumb things these companies do

[@ant-dev]

agreeed but i see why they take the training wheels off for roles with high supply of applicants

[@RedOchsenbein]

I'd love to have an interviewer only once asking me if I'm "more comfortable with X or Y" and then adjust the exercise trying to set me up for success... Nah, I got gotcha questions and interviewers trying to prove they know something I do not. And then people wonder why I hate tech interviews as they are today.

[@frankhaugen]

I only got this second hand, but apparently someone was interviewing an indian person for a C# position, and they got the code task done, it was very weird structure, but some companies have weird guidelines so whatever, but when they got into the review of the code, the candidate couldn't answer why they structured it in such a manner and, then after some prodding it turns out that their brother had written the code... They weren't expecting a technical discussion about the code, they thought it was was just a final HR interview, so no brother to whisper in their ear... Why? It would have taken 5 minutes into the first technical discussion after getting the job and you would be out the door... 😢 Its such a waste of resources