Welcome to the technical interview with Defacto.

This is the first time we will meet technically. We know it can be intimidating... To make it easier, we change the traditional format.

YOU will ask us a technical question that we'll implement in the first 20/30 minutes. Then, we'll give you back the lead and you will finish the question. Or if we have already finished it, we'll ask you another question related to what we just did.

We believe this is a good exercise because

• interviewing is hard: as an early employee, you'll interview many people and we want to see you in this position.
• give the best of yourself, as you control the subject of the interview.
• collaborate on same codebase: we'll both touch the same code
• you should be interviewing us. As we're looking for long-term teammate, we want you to be sure of the quality of the team you will be joining

How to prepare for it ?

• [ ] Find a 1-hour time window in your schedule and book a time in one of our calendar
• [ ] Prepare a technical question:
  • [ ] the goal is to code here and not to solve a complex algorithm
  • [ ] if possible, avoid common questions that we’ve probably done many times before. See questions we liked from past candidates.
  • [ ] avoid exercises that rely on familiarity with a specific code library or framework that your interviewer might not be familiar with. In case of doubt just ask :)
  • [ ] ideally, the exercise would be not too simple (e.g. fetch some data from a public API) and not too complex (e.g. code an entire web application from scratch). It should allow us to write between ~100 and ~300 lines of code with several functions/modules/classes.
  • [ ] do not prepare the solution too much ahead of time, the goal is to have both you and your interviewer work on the solution as if you had never seen the problem before
• [ ] During the interview, we'll code on https://replit.com/. You will need to create an account first before the interview.

What are we evaluating for ?

• technical: code interface, debugging, testing, variables naming...
• recruiting skills: type of question you're asking, how to guide a candidate
• productivity: how far can we go
• cultural fit: ease of discussion
• Wow factor: we want to be impressed by at least one aspect of the interview. It can be anything from the bullet points above.

Examples

In the past, our previous candidates made us