I’ve been taking interviews for \\\\~6 years now (total 8 YOE), and recently I’ve been noticing a pattern that’s honestly a bit concerning.
(Wrote this properly with a little help from ChatGPT 😅)
Some recent examples:
Started with basic Java theory — executor framework, design patterns, @Transactional, HashSet working. The candidate blanked on most of it.
Then I gave 5 very simple coding questions. One of them was just: iterate over a collection using a for loop and remove elements — what happens / what’s the output?
All 5 answers were incorrect.
Then we moved to system design. The candidate mentioned Saga pattern themselves, so I asked them to explain both approaches… again blank.
Asked similar fundamentals, then went deeper into system design — how to design a scalable system.
They kept defaulting to simple API calls even for real-time use cases, no understanding of sharding/partitioning for storage, and didn’t really know how indexing works.
⸻
In the last 1 week, I’ve taken around 10 interviews.
0 selections.
Not trying to rant, but it genuinely feels like a lot of people are just skimming topics or relying on buzzwords instead of actually understanding things.
There are plenty of opportunities out there if you actually go deep into fundamentals. Just naming patterns or tools isn’t enough — you should be able to explain and apply them.
Curious if others are seeing the same trend while hiring?