Phil Choi describes his first interview after being laid off: a full-stack developer coding test with three questions, including one in Korean that tripped him up, then a technical round and CEO interview. He talks about prioritizing family over intense work, what he looks for when hiring, and why coding is still worth it if you like solving problems.
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I just had my first interview after getting laid off for a full stack developer position at a company here in Seoul. For right now, it's not really about the job itself, but what's best for my family. Being there for my wife, being there for my son and having enough time for them. I think when I'm working a lot of the time, wanting to work so hard, figure out everything and understand everything about the code base, but right now my family should come first. The interview itself was okay. I did the coding test and there are three questions. Two of them were doable, but one of them was it was a Korean prompt. And my Korean reading and writing is not the best. So the next process is to sit down, have a technical interview with a developer or a team lead. Next, if they like that, I'll go interview with the CEO for my personality fit and if it's all good, then I'll be working there. As for these interviews, I've done a couple times and I've been on both sides. My experience of being interviewed, I like to lay out the skills that I have which would be like front end and back end development and see if I can contribute to the team team and talk about what they as a company need and seeing if I can help. And if not, it wouldn't make sense. So that's kind of the attitude I have when I am interviewing. I say I can do this and this and this. Is it going to help your company? If so, then let's work together. So I've given the interview as a team lead. Being on the other side interviewing, I have always just looked for good personality fits, people that can learn and people that will work hard. And I think that's what I was always looking for. Every company is going to be different. The coding landscape is pretty weird right now because everyone's getting laid off, including me. But it's definitely a good skill and I would say it's definitely worth it to learn if you like solving problems and fighting with the computer and looking things up and figuring things out, and if you can do that and not give up, can have fun while you learn, make money while you learn. And that's the most important thing. So I started programming around when I was 30. The landscape was much different at that time. Everyone was hiring, but now it's a bit different. But I think as long as you like to do those type of things, as in coding and figuring things out, it's a great career path.
