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I remember once being asked during a phone-screen how many lines of code I had written. Ever. Some of those things were on classified systems years ago, there is no way I'm going to remember that or even be able to look that up any more. Why would I ever log "wrote a net-worth of xyz lines of code today" for a personal record? I've never worked for anybody who had that as a metric but apparently I had a chance to now; I gave them an estimate and moved on.

The kicker was that the question had absolutely nothing to do with the job. Nothing.



It's a question to ask to weed out people who say "I'm a programmer" but a tually haven't written much code.


It was probably just a question testing your ability to estimate. Of the “how many manholes are in Seattle” ilk.





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