You’re Not Interviewing for the Job. You’re Auditioning for the Job Title
31st May 2026
I once had a job interview for a backend position. Their stack was Node.js, MySQL, nothing exotic. The interviewer asked: “If you have an array containing a million entries, how would you sort the data by name?”
My immediate thought was: If you have a JavaScript array with a million entries, you’re certainly doing something wrong.
The interviewer continued: “There are multiple fields that you should be able to sort by.”
This felt like a trick question. Surely the right answer was to explain why you shouldn’t be sorting millions of records in JavaScript. Pagination, database indexing, server-side filtering. So I said exactly that.
…
My crime? Prioritizing real-world efficiency over theatrical scale. The interviewer didn’t see a practical engineer, he saw a candidate who “lacked vision.”
I wish I had known this when I was interviewing for jobs. It would have saved me a lot of grief.