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Not the gotcha I was expecting

So there I was, starting a tech interview... 

I recently attended a couple of online technical coding challenge interviews (apologies to anyone reading my posts in chronological order, this is a fast-follow to the previous one).

To give myself a better chance of success in the second one I thought to ask for the initial requirements as text after I had made my initial attempt at interpreting what the interviewer had described.

To my astonishment, the interviewer said that he wasn't sure whether that was allowed, and that he would be able to clarify any points if I wanted to raise them.

Why was I so surprised?

I've attended a few online interviews over the course of my career, and it has never been about listening comprehension and recall.

Not so long ago I was on the other side of this particular type of interviewing process at the same company, so I thought that I had a solid grasp on how the interview works.

Does it matter?

I was bit caught off guard, as I hadn't expected to need to capture much information as notes.

As this was towards the start of the interview, it left me a little bit flustered, wondering whether I may have missed any detail from the initial requirements description.

Whether I make it through to the next round of the interview process or not, I may provide feedback to the company to ensure that future candidates - and interviewers - are aware of whether the requirements can be shared as text - for consistency and fairness to candidates who may parse information better from a textual representation.

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