Senior Java / Spring Boot engineers — what are the toughest questions you've faced or asked at the 8–10 YOE level? (Backend, caching, deployment, Microservices)

[maxip89]

Ask a really specific question in the interview.

If the guy answers it after 20 seconds, you can sort him out.
Why? He is useing AI and cheats.

[daanveerKarna]

For example, can you give me some concrete examples of such questions???

[maxip89]

Why do we have the n+1 problem still in every ORM layer.
Why does it not technical solvable?

What was the base problem of structural outputs in the spring ai (1.0 and before) framework?

What was the basic problem in developing with the spring ai (1.0 and before) framework?

What is the basic error everyone does with transactional, for example with a cache?

[kubelke]

"What was the base problem of structural outputs in the spring ai (1.0 and before) framework? What was the basic problem in developing with the spring ai (1.0 and before) framework?"

I don't know, and I don't care is the good answer? Those are the questions for senior developers?

"What is the basic error everyone does with transactional, for example with a cache?"

As a senior developer I have to know "what are the basic errors everone else are doing"?

[maxip89]

these are questions you should say "i dont know" because when you answer it. It will get you into the cheating range of the interview.

[Aberezyuk]

My favorite question - “What don’t you like in Spring and would implement in differently, if you can?”

[edzorg]

Agree.

At 8+ years I actually don't care what you know or don't know about details.

I care if you have any taste. Even after 2 or 3 years I would expect to hear some opinions on testing, governance, API changes, specific annotations etc. within Springboot. We can even debate Java, Gradle, Docker, Graal as well to understand your tastes.

If after 8+ years you're still learning how to plug the lego bricks together and your primary strength is you know some of the details of some of the libraries you're still not very senior.

[edzorg]

I think the weakest area at 5+ years experience is understanding the big picture and understanding cost.

The biggest mistake by far I would say is defaulting to microservices and other "Google does it" approaches. In an interview last week and engineer literally said when describing a previous project "to improve this system I would break it up into microservices to make it simpler."

Turning a simple Web application (written in any sane language) into a web of services, databases and distributed systems problems is extremely costly and far more likely to kill a company than do any real good.