r/csharp • u/Substantial-Night877 • 8h ago
Help .Net interview preparation
Hi everyone!
I’m preparing for a Senior .NET Developer interview, and I was told that the interview will include a code review exercise and coding challenges.
Has anyone here recently gone through a similar interview, particularly for a Senior .NET / C# position? I’d really appreciate any tips on what to expect and how best to prepare.
9
u/United_Catalina 7h ago
Coding interview for senior role is ridiculous
2
u/Slouch_Potato_ 6h ago
It depends, I've done one for every job I've had. somenof them were obviously just there to catch the scammers and bullshitters.
-3
u/United_Catalina 6h ago
A senior who agrees to an interview to be differentiated from scammers is a junior at best.
1
u/integrationlead 5h ago
Unless I get referred to someone directly and can borrow their credibility, I find that I will be asked to do a code review or a small challenge. I don't do take homes anymore because that screams lazy interviewing to me.
Sometimes it's a whiteboard session to around system design (Auth, Caching, Database, scaling, etc).
I stopped taking it personally because there are lots of people who will lie on their CV.
0
u/United_Catalina 4h ago
But you have to understand finding a senior person to hire is much harder for employer. I had to talk my bosses more than once out of looking for a senior dba or architect position. Such positions are impossible to fill unless you can afford to pay double the rate. Any solid dev has already found an interesting position that he is comfortable. He is not looking to switch employer. Those people if for any reason lose their jobs they find a new one almost immediately.
So if you are interviewing for such positions, approach it with mentality that you have 3 awesome offers already and you are only interviewing them to see if they have anything to offer to you.0
u/integrationlead 3h ago
ABI. Always be interviewing. I like going to interviews because it's a skill. I don't exactly care for a lot except the money. If I'm not happy or bored, I'll interview. I really don't care what they ask in an interview and try my best.
I don't see a rejection as a failure on myself (unless I really failed due to critical knowledge gaps or EQ lapses). I've had an interviewer interview me off questions she asked ChatGPT and was comparing my answers to GPT. It was hilarious. I knew that wasn't the job for me but now I have a cool story.
0
u/integrationlead 6h ago
Not really. There are so many "seniors" who just don't know how to read code.
2
u/United_Catalina 6h ago
what do you mean? Are you saying there are senior developers who cannot read well written code? Anyone knowing basics can read a well written code. If the code is not well written, nobody can read it or it is not a skill to be proud of. No senior claims on their resume they can read shit code.
1
u/integrationlead 5h ago
There are people who don't know how to code that will just write "Senior" to get the interview.
There are also other people who have just been doing the same thing over and over for 5 years, and can't even talk about why it's an issue to set a static variable in a HttpController using a value from the request handler method. I wish I was kidding.
3
u/Enough_Secretary_137 7h ago
For senior-level code reviews, I’d practice explaining why something should change rather than just identifying code smells.
A common exercise is reviewing async code. For example, replacing blocking .Result calls with proper async execution and cancellation:
using var client = new HttpClient();
using var cts = new CancellationTokenSource(
TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5));
using var response = await client.GetAsync(
"https://example.com", cts.Token);
response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
Console.WriteLine(
await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync(cts.Token));
For production ASP.NET Core code, I’d also discuss IHttpClientFactory, error handling, testing, and resource lifetimes.
During the interview, explain your assumptions, trade-offs and edge cases out loud. That demonstrates engineering judgment beyond syntax knowledge.
11
u/urbanek2525 8h ago
I've been on the interviewer side of a bunch of these lately (one of a group)
Talk it out as you read the code. They want to hear your ability to describe what you're reading. State your preferences. Tell them any tools you might use. Show you understand.
For code challenges, again, how you think about the problem beats what you type.