As a follow-up from yesterday’s mail about job interview preparation, I thought I might share my personal list of red flags and deal-breakers when it comes to applying for jobs. I don’t want to suggest that your list should be the same. I only offer this as food for thought, and to encourage you to think about your own list. Your list is likely to change over time, too, and that’s completely appropriate. If you’re looking for your first job out of school, or if you’ve been laid off and simply need to pay the bills, it can be completely appropriate to take the first job that comes along. So take this with a grain of salt!

1. HackerRank-style challenges.

   I have nothing against HackerRank or any of its many clones, for fun, for educational purposes, or even for competitive programming. But I believe this type of test has no place in the screening process for engineers for the simple reason that it doesn’t test the skills that matter.

2. No choice of development environment.

   Most of us have a particular development environment we’re comfortable with. This usually includes an operating system, an editor or IDE, and maybe even a monitor, keyboard, and pointing device. I’m very wary of companies that try to force their choices on these matters upon me. Most frequently this is a company requiring me to use their operating system of choice. Sometimes it’s a rule against bringing your own keyboard into the office.

3. “Gotcha” interview questions.

   Once while interviewing for a Site Reliability Engineer role for a managed infrastructure company, the CEO asked me the RGB value for yellow, the difference between XHTML and HTML 5, and how long it would take light to travel from my location, through the center of the earth to my antipode and back again. During the interview, I repeatedly said “I don’t see how this relates to the role, but…” I withdrew my application from consideration.