A job opportunity in Web Development

Hi everyone,

I don’t know if this the correct place to post this topic, but I would like to share with the community this past experience I had.

Recently I contacted a company based in South London for a job opportunity as a Web Developer. I phoned to discuss the above mentioned and emailed them my CV and even managed to get an interview a few days later.

Speaking with the head of the HR was no sweat and I made a good impression. But before offering me a job of course they required me to do a test. A small exercise in php.

What they asked me was to do a simple set of pages on which I had to do a user registration and login app with some validations using MVC pattern without turning to frameworks. I had to do everything in less then 3 hours.

During the time I downloaded the advanced template, created the database, customized the register with the validations required on the exercise and explained to him every piece of code involved in the process. That is since I wasn’t able do it without yii and I would not give him an empty folder for my sake. Also noticed that on the laptop I was working I saw older folders by other people doing the same exact thing as me.

I don’t know about most of you, but I learned the MVC pattern with frameworks. I understand it but without a framework I can’t achieve what they required. I think the HR also misses the point of frameworks in general, which is to make development faster and easier. Another thing he has to realize is that developers nowadays are swimming in frameworks. He don’t have to repeat the same procedure for every project. We want to reuse our code for later projects. We provide digital solutions to real world problems and we have to use the most cutting-edge technics.

During the interview he stated that the developers also used them so I don’t understand on why he wasn’t so happy that I did use a framework for the exercise. He didn’t tell me directly that but he gave me a cold shoulder. I made sure everything was working in front of him whilst explaining that I have done. He told me that I should get a feedback from them until the end of this weak, beginning of the next one tops.

Well at least I hope that what I have made there is seen by a developer with both feet on the ground with some common sense and not these ignorant HR people who can’t do anything tech related but still getting big fat paychecks for doing brain-dead jobs compared to developers. I like the facilities and the work environment and I am in a serious need for a job.

Thanks for reading. This helped me to get this feeling out of my chest. Leave your comments and thoughts bellow.

The issue here is that the HR guy gave you an order (“do not use frameworks”) and you didn’t follow it.

I know in the real world you would use a framework and have the the chance to discuss what tool to choose, but that was just a test.

As a HR proverb say: you are hired because of your competences, and you are fired because of your misbehavior.