I am a junior at UNM studying computer science. I went to the SWE conference. I had an
interview with Boeing. Here is how it went. (this is definitely not presented verbatim, lol)
At the MASSIVE career fair, I went to the Boeing booth and started talking to a recruiter. I
handed him my resume, while not-so-subtly flexing the fact that I have a sEcUrItY cLeArAnCe.
The recruiter then says to me “Alrighty then, you want an interview? Come to the third floor
ballroom tonight at 8pm and we’ll see if you’re a good fit.” Heck freakin’ yeah I will.
I show up at 8pm to the third floor, and there is a SUPER long line. I thought, “there’s no way
that ALL these people have interviews right?” I start to understand that this was just a screening
process to see who will ACTUALLY get an interview. Everyone is handed two tickets, and they
can use those two tickets to talk to two different tables inside the ballroom. We are handed a
packet that describes the teams at each table. I scan the packet for software engineering
internship positions, and have it settled: I will talk to tables 28 and 29.
When I eventually got into the ballroom, I go right up to table 29. I hand the manager at that
table my resume, and he starts going over it.
Manager: “HmmMMmm, I see you have some experience at Sandia National Laboratories. ”
Me: “Yeah, I’ve been there for two summers now!”
Manager: “Okay tell me about some of your work there.”
I explain to him some of the work I did, and answered some more generic interview questions.
Manager: “Well, you’ve got a nice resume here, but I don’t think you’ll be a good fit. We’re
looking for data systems engineers. You just don’t have the experience.”
At this point, I am definitely upset. HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT I DON’T WANT TO
SWITCH UP THE WORK I DO AND TRY SOMETHING NEW!?!? JUST BECAUSE I DID
ALL THESE THINGS ON MY RESUME IN THE PAST, DOESN’T MEAN I WANT TO DO
THOSE THINGS FOREVER!!!!!! I CAN LEARN TO BE A DATA SYSTEMS ENGINEER
OR WHATEVERRRR
Anyways… I move on and go to table 28. These two nice ladies take my resume, and ask me
some unapologetically generic questions.
Recruiter: “Describe a challenge you had in the past, and how did you overcome it?”
Me: “Well, I-” blah blah blah
A few more rounds of these questions occur. Finally,
Recruiter: “Well, I don’t think we’re a good fit. You just don’t have enough experience with the
type of work we do”
WHAT THE HECK?!!?!?!?! I’M FREAKING APPLYING TO BE AN INTERN. OF COURSE
I DON’T ALREADY HAVE EXPERIENCE WITH WHAT Y’ALL DO.
Me: “Ok, well thank you for your time.”
Recruiter: “May we take your ticket?”
I had completely forgotten about the ticket system. I hand the ladies a ticket, and I go off on my
way. I still have one other ticket to spend, since the first table forgot to collect one from me, so I
find yet another software engineering table. I want to take this moment to apologize to the
Boeing lords for breaking their little hiring rules.
The next table I talk to are very polite, but they admit that none of them are computer science.
They say that they COULD take my resume and give it to the computer science person who
WAS supposed to be there, but my chances might not be great like that. They tell me I should
spend my ticket on a different table.
So I find my FOURTH software engineering table, and queue up behind someone who is already
speaking to these people. This poor person is getting DESTROYED by the manager. All I can
see is that the manager is writing some problem with integrals on a piece of paper and the person
isn’t able to answer it. They tell him he’s not a good fit, and he starts asking questions for how he
can improve himself. He eventually leaves.
At last, I got up to the table, hand the manager my resume, and… things go fine at first. The
manager asks me about some of my work at Sandia, and I give him a high level overview of it. I
tell him about a project I did where I implemented some sensors on a Raspberry Pi. And then,
things take a turn.
Manager: “Diagram out the program you wrote for the sensors on the Raspberry Pi,” the
manager said, as he flips my resume over to the back and hands me a pen.
Me: “Uhhhh, okay, so here we had this sensor that was detecting radia-”
Manager: “No. I don’t care about what the sensor was detecting, diagram out all the threads and
processes in the program you wrote.”
Me: “Okay, so uhh we have this, um, main thread which would call this thread, and we’d also
have um a different thread that is”
Manager: “There’s another thread!? Then why didn’t you diagram that one out as well?!?!”
I stumble my way through the diagram. He continues to interrogate me on all the details.
He eventually has heard enough of this story and switches gears. He takes my resume, and starts
writing C code. Not just pseudocode, like actual C code that would compile if you typed it
character for character into a compiler.
Manager: “Tell me what’s wrong with this code.”
I answer this fairly obvious problem, but he starts hammering me on the details.
Manager: “Okay, so we are continuously allocating memory, but what happens when we
eventually run out of memory?”
Me: “Uhhhhh, the program crashes?!”
Manager: “And how do you fix it?!”
Me: “Uhhhh, free the memory?!?!”
This goes on for a while as he switches to more coding problems. I don’t think I have said uhh
and umm this many times in my life. I understood and had solutions for all of his problems, but
the way he was pressuring me felt like I was being forced to cure cancer at gunpoint.
Eventually, the manager sets the pen down and looks at his hiring buddy. They nod at each other,
and he says to me:
“Alright. When do you have time to interview tomorrow?”
I felt a massive wave of relief. I had wasted an hour and 45 minutes here in this ballroom by
now. This event closes in 15 minutes along with all the other fun events in the convention center
that I was missing out on. But I finally landed an interview. In the words of 21 Savage at Camp
Flog Gnaw (later that weekend): “my throat dry.”
The next day, I showed up to the Boeing interview booth. I’m called into a room, and the same
manager from yesterday sits me down, and says, “Do you know what a structured interview is?”
Me: “Uhhh, I guess, I mean isn’t that just an interview?”
Manager: “Yes, I will ask you 4 to 5 questions, you will respond to them, and I will take notes on
your response.”
Me: “Okay yeah, so it’s just an interview?!”
Anyways, the questions start coming and they are pretty generic. A few questions go by, and
eventually he asks, “Describe a time where you faced a problem, and had to go to someone more
knowledgeable for help.”
I rack my brain really quick, and offer a decent story:
“I once had to install linux packages onto a Raspberry Pi at work without being able to connect
the pi to the internet. I was still just getting familiar with linux so I struggled a bit. There was this
one package that I couldn’t get to install on the pi. I then went to a mentor, and realized that my
mistake was that I was building the linux package on my windows machine , and then moving
it onto the pi.”
I thought it was a pretty good story, but I didn’t realize the one logical fallacy I stated. You can’t
build linux packages on windows machines. The interviewer immediately pounces on that.
“You built a linux package on a windows machine? What are you talking about? That is not
possible. Do you understand how linux packages work? Do you know what the difference is
between a .dll and .so file?”
He proceeds to explain the differences between .dll and .so files. I reiterate to him that I was (and
still am) pretty new to all this linux stuff, and that I wasn’t lying (AND I WASN’T). So he asks
me once again: “HOW DID YOU BUILD A LINUX PACKAGE ON A WINDOWS
MACHINE”
Me: “I… I um... I used Cygwin…”
The interviewer pauses for a few seconds.
“Oh... Okay. That makes sense. Okay, carry on.”
WHEW. I won’t get bogged down in the details, but basically, Cygwin is a tool that makes the
process I described possible to do. At that point, I was no longer under arrest and I was in good
standing with the computer science laws. I feel a wave of relief and continue on with my story.
The rest of the interview went just fine. I asked a decent amount of questions at the end to show
my interest. When we were ending, the manager then made some pretty suggestive comments.
Manager: “Soooo, will you be around over the weekend?”
Me: “Uh, yes, I will be here until Sunday night.”
Manager: “Okay, just ummm, be sure to check your email and phone.”
Me: “HhmmmmMMMMmmm okay okay, I hear you my guy. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ”
Aaaaannnnnnnnnd so that is how my interview went. Later that night as I was getting out of an
Uber, I received an email from Boeing. It was like “congrats u got de job!” and told me to go to a
congratulatory brunch in a ballroom the next day. The brunch was pretty nice but it definitely
took out a chunk of my Disneyland time (smh). There, I saw the first manager who rejected me
and it felt empowering to give him that glare that was like “See, b***h, I’m worthy.”
As of now, I don’t know if I will take this Boeing offer, but I’m leaning towards it. All I know is
that it’s in Fairfax, VA, which is 30 minutes away from Washington D.C.
There are plenty of other interesting events that happened to me at this SWE trip, but I felt like
this is the one most worth sharing. Some other notable things that happened was having 4 other
interviews (Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin), going to disneyland,
and going to Camp Flog Gnaw. This trip was an absolute blast, and I would definitely
recommend getting in on this conference next year if you have the chance.
So, the moral of the story is: breaking a FEW rules is fine on your job hunt, and never fold when
an interviewer is drilling you.
Completely unrelated photo (from Camp Flog Gnaw):
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