How many lines of code have you written?

Interviewer: How many lines of code have you written in firm X?

Me: Pardon? euh I don’t know I really can’t tell.

Interviewer: Say a number, 10, 100, 1000, 10 000, 100 000 ?

Me: I really have no idea, if I tell you it would be a random number, I don’t know I guess between 1000 and 10, 000 but again I have no idea.

This is one of the reason why I got rejected. According to them ‘the CTO was really scared’ by my answer.

The other reason why I did not get the job is because I lacked experience which a perfectly valid reason and I’m not here to argue about that.

But Lines of code ? really ? what about how many miles have you drove since you got your driver license ? how many french fries did you eat since April 28, 2004 ? how many times did you brush your teeth in the last 15 years ? what about any other random question ?

I don’t know I might be completely idiot to think that this is an entirely po question.

The worst is that this person sounded like a really good CTO and really experienced one. Why one earth would you judge a developer skills by an a random answer I gave.

Anyways, I think that people interviewing should base their questions based on actual criteria instead of the perimeter of the moon or the number of Dolphins living in the Pacific Oceans.

If you happen to go through some ‘silly’ questions as well in your interviews please comment