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The Biggest Lie in Software Engineering

Phillip Johnson
CodeX
Published in
5 min readMay 22, 2021
Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash

How do you keep up with industry trends?

What’s the biggest lie I hear in Software Engineering interviews? It has to be the answer to the standard engineering interview question… “How do you keep up with changes in the industry and industry trends?”

Common Answers

  • Online courses on Plurasite/Udemy
  • Youtube Videos
  • Following influential developers/engineers on social media
  • Reading blog posts
  • Subscribe to curated mailing lists
  • Read books

OK, so reading books is a less common response these days, although it’s something I personally still find useful. The others though are pretty common and all are reasonable answers. Unfortunately, if you google engineering interview questions these are suggested answers. Even if engineers don’t do these now the chances are they would have at some point in their career so are aware of how to answer this question.

Digging Deeper

It’s normally really easy to expose people who are stretching the truth at this point with some really simple digging questions:

  • Can you tell me about a recent Pluralsite/Udemy course you have done…

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Phillip Johnson
Phillip Johnson

Written by Phillip Johnson

Over 20 years experience in software engineering, mostly in leadership positions. Passionate about software craftsmanship.

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