Skype Interviews

News & General Discussion
1

Have you ever had a Skype interview for a Unity developer job? I had one last week and it was terrible. It kept cutting out and I couldn’t hear a word they were saying. Worst thing was the office was only 100 metres away so I could have just done the interview in there. :face_with_spiral_eyes: Also the camera was perched so high it was like sitting in a tree.

Also here’s a tip if you’re going for a Unity job. Make sure you have brushed up on obscure C# things you will probably never use like:

ref keyword
passing an array to a function by reference
using keyword (well you might use that)
generic classes e.g. class A (because we use them all the time right?)

Because even though you will probably never use these things day to day the programmers like to try and catch you out to show you who is the alpha male in the room. :face_with_spiral_eyes: Also don’t mention singletons. That is bound to raise their shackles. :stuck_out_tongue:

As you can tell I’m still annoyed for not getting the job.
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2

What were they asking about these? These are things I use most days, and I’m not really a programmer(Ok I don’t use ref as it worries me)

3

It was more like “Tell me about…”

yeah I don’t use ref. Why would you do

void square(ref int x){
    x=x*x;
}

instead of

int square(int x){
   return x*x;
}

unless you are trying to confuse people?

I just said I’ve never seen that word. Because in all the time I never had and never seen it used in Unity. But I’ll know for next time. I didn’t get why they were asking me that except to catch me out.

4

because you can do:

void squareThreeValues(ref int x, ref int y, ref int z){
    x=x*x;
    y=y*y;
    z=z*z;
}
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5

Both ref and using are very commonly used things in general however I can see that if doing only basic Unity C# scripting you might not need or ever see them.

In an interview it’s not a good sign if you did not had much to say about em depending what was the exact position you applied :eyes:

6

Try lambda expressions, the shorthand for if…then…else, and Events.

7

Show me one Unity tutorial or demo project using ref.
Show me one Unity project where you need to make a generic class.
Exactly. :eyes:
I rest my case.

8

Why would you want to do that? You would want to do:

Vector3 squareTriple(Vector3 X){
   return new Vector3(V.x*V.x, V.y*V.y, V.z*V.z);
}

or something. Why would you ever need to square three values? When has that every happened in a Unity game?

Well I’m glad I didn’t get the job if all their code will be filled with refs. So there.

9

I don’t have any of them installed so can’t do a file search but you can see it used in the Standard assets for example. Most of the Learn section stuff is very basic on purpose so I don’t expect them to be found there in other than its own article.

10

I hate to break it to you but those aren’t obscure… That stuff is even used in unity’s examples everywhere.

I’d for sure fail anyone on the spot in an interview if they didn’t know those. I guess you need to know C# really well, I mean why not? it’s the job :slight_smile:
11

Thanks. You always brighten up my day and bring happiness into the world with everything you write.

12

It’s just being realistic, I mean you’re applying for a C# job but don’t know C#, what do you expect :slight_smile:

2 Likes
13

Exactly. But I wasn’t going for a job as a standard asset writer.

Why fail someone who doesn’t know what ref is. Something you can learn in 1 minute?

14

Well you can’t go for the CEO position because that’s my plan.

15

That’s not the point in interviews. In a team environment you at least need to have basic knowledge of core language features even if you might never need em. Someone else involved in the same project might use em.

16

I wouldn’t apply for the CEO of that company anyway. It’s net worth is about -£600. It’ll probably go bankrupt in a year or two. I think I had a lucky escape.

17

It’s not just that. It’s the fact that if you don’t know something so fundamental as that, who knows what else you don’t know? It’s like hiring a chef who doesn’t know what pepper is but knows what salt is. It’s crazy.

But at least you can fix that now and maybe get a whole new world of coding possibilities, it might be fun learning all those bits you missed out on - positive vibes - :slight_smile:

18

True. So anyway. Next interview I have I’ll learn a stock reply to ref and generic class questions. Then I’ll have precisely 5 minutes more knowledge than I did in the first interview.

19

If it was an indian chef who never used salt and pepper but used 100 other spices and had a track record of running 10 restaurants I would say. “Hey, you don’t know what salt and pepper is. But you can cook. You can pick up what salt and pepper is along the way.”

20

Generics are very common and used all over the place in Unity packages

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