INTERVIEWER: Thanks for coming in. Let's start with a quick coding exercise. Can you reverse a binary tree on this whiteboard?
CANDIDATE: Sure. But first, can I see your production codebase?
INTERVIEWER: (nervous laughter) That's... not how this works.
CANDIDATE: Why not? You're evaluating whether I can write code. I think it's only fair I evaluate whether you can write code. Professional courtesy.
INTERVIEWER: We really should focus on the exerci...
CANDIDATE: (already has laptop out, screen-sharing the company's GitHub) Oh. Oh no.
INTERVIEWER: What?
CANDIDATE: There's a file here called "utils.js" that is 4,300 lines long.
INTERVIEWER: That's... legacy.
CANDIDATE: Your login endpoint has a SQL query built by concatenating strings with user input.
INTERVIEWER: We have a ticket for that.
CANDIDATE: The ticket is from 2019.
INTERVIEWER: We've been busy.
CANDIDATE: There's a comment on line 847 that says "TODO: fix this before launch." Your app launched in 2020.
INTERVIEWER: (sweating)
CANDIDATE: You have no tests.
INTERVIEWER: We have one.
CANDIDATE: It's commented out. And it says "test that thing works" with no assertions.
INTERVIEWER: ...
CANDIDATE: I have one more question. Is the binary tree you want me to reverse in production? Because honestly nothing in your codebase suggests anyone here knows what a tree is.
INTERVIEWER: We'll be in touch.
NARRATOR: They were not in touch.