3 Coding Interview Horror Stories (And What You Can Learn From Them)
If you’ve been through the job hunt as a developer, you probably have at least one horrific interview experience. The kind that makes you reconsider your entire career, your life choices, and whether or not you should go live in the woods.
Well, I have a few of those stories.
And while they were painful in the moment, I like to think they each taught me something. So, here they are — my top three interview horror stories, along with the takeaways that might just help you avoid your own nightmare scenarios.
1. The Time I Tried (and Failed) to Cheat at Google
Ah, yes. The Google on-site. The Big Kahuna. The interview every dev dreams about.
Except, I did not study nearly enough.
I was still early in my career, full of misplaced confidence, and I walked into Google’s offices completely unprepared.
The first question involved a binary search tree.
1 problem:
I had zero clue how to implement a binary search tree.
And then, something magical happened.
The interviewer literally dropped a piece of paper out of his pocket that had the answer on it. Right there. On the floor.
Was this a test?
Now, any rational person would have taken this as a sign from the universe. A gift. A miracle. So, naturally, I copied it as best as I could.
Did it help?
Not at all.
This guy was an ass-hat of the highest degree. He told me that Google doesn’t hire self-taught developers, and then spent the next 30 minutes explaining binary search trees to me while I just sat there in silence.
Lessons Learned:
1. Know your interview format. I’m shocked how many developers I’ve worked with don’t ask a simple question like “What will this interview be about?”
2. If an interviewer spends half the session teaching you something, you’re probably not getting the job.
3. Self-taught developers can get into FAANG (my business partner is one of them), but you have to be prepared to fight against bias.
2. The “Bad Culture Fit” and the Office Full of Dogs
This was one of those interviews where you realize — almost immediately — you do not belong there.
I walked into the office and quickly realized:
There were dogs everywhere (I don’t like dogs — sue me).
The team had a sense of humor that was non-existent.
At one point, I made a tiny, completely innocent joke about ReactJS vs. Ember. Nothing crazy, nothing offensive. Just a lighthearted comment.
Silence.
No one laughed. No one even smiled. Just blank stares. It was at that moment I knew:
I. Was. Doomed.
The rest of the interview was a formality, but my fate was sealed. Also, 2 dogs got into a fight and had to be pulled off each other during the system design round.
I wasn’t getting the job, and honestly?
I didn’t want it.
Lessons Learned:
1. Culture fit is real, and it matters. If you feel like you don’t vibe with the team before you even start, that’s a red flag.
2. If you make a joke and nobody laughs, just pack it up and go home.
3. Dog-friendly offices are great — if you like dogs. Otherwise, prepare for chaos.
3. The Time I Had a Panic Attack
Final-round interview. Senior position.
I was hyped. Over-prepared. Ready to crush it.
I was gonna traverse the shit out of any trees that came my way.
But there was one problem: I had way too much coffee.
I don’t handle caffeine well. At all. And on this particular day, I had so much coffee that I was practically vibrating. I jumped on a zoom call with the VP of Marketing, and right as the interview started…
Panic. Full-body panic.
My brain shut down. My mouth refused to form coherent words. I froze.
All he asked was what I knew about e-commerce.
Seriously.
After about 30 painful seconds of silence, I finally blurted out:
“I am so sorry. It’s like my brain stopped working for a minute. I’m a bit nervous. Can we start over?”
Shockingly, he agreed. We restarted, I somehow pulled it together, and in the end… I actually got the job offer.
Lessons Learned:
1. Know your caffeine limits. Seriously. Interviewing is already stressful — don’t make it worse by jittering through it. Interviews are only weird because we never do them. So practice. Make them mundane so you don’t freak out. I personally use pramp.com (not sponsored but I should be)
2. You can recover from a bad start. I was sure I was doomed, but I was honest about what happened, and that helped.
3. Sometimes, the worst interview isn’t the end of the world. Even after that disaster, they still made me an offer.
Final Thoughts
Interviews are weird, stressful, and unpredictable. You WILL bomb them. Sometimes you get curveballs. Sometimes your interviewer drops the answer on the floor and you still fail.
Every bad interview is a lesson in disguise.
So if you’ve had your own horror story, don’t sweat it. Learn from it, laugh at it, and move on.
Also check out this site with engineers who failed who you might recognize: https://rejected.us/
Join me and my smarter half who actually did nail the Google interview. We work with ambitious career changers who want to break into tech. Apply here.
