I just had a terrible interview experience. I feel like this guy was about showing off his skills more than actually interviewing me. He started by saying that he's been coding longer I have been alive. He is a super senior/tech lead at the company. So, his interview was gonna be different. He does not want to ask me typical interview questions but he wanted to test my understanding of things, rather than my memorization. Okay, that's fine, I said to myself, as long as he does not start asking mind-bending questions, I should be fine.
Thankfully, his questions were not too hard. But omg, his interview style sucks. He keeps cutting me off before I finish my answers. He kept telling me he does not want me to use fillers like "I think", "I guess", "I suppose" because he wants me to be sure of my knowledge. He talks about he expects this or that from seniors or mids working under him and how Juniors nowadays are just googling stuff without understanding them. Even when I answered the questions correctly, he always found something deeper to add to it. According to him, he does that because he likes me and he wants to help and guide me so I research those areas deeper. But deep down, it felt like he wanted to show off.
He asked me to code something for him. I said fine. After I finished, he asked me if he could control my screen. Okay? I said sure. He then proceeded to recode the problem and said that his solution was more efficient. "Of course, yours is more efficient. You made the problem, sherlock. I just saw it 30 mins ago."
If his management skills are like his interview skills, I pity the fool who works under him.
JA:
Feel you. Once had an interview with some ex-quant developer for a startup that contacted me for a quant research position on a freelance basis. I have good academic credentials and some publications in the field, plus a good perm gig, so it's not like I'm begging for work.
The recruiter was nice and all, but that quant dude was sitting there in a tank top, looking sweaty and unshowered, and then started grilling me. Like literally shouting questions at me military style. I was supposed to help them set up trading strategies and do modeling, but this guy started asking me about the difference between python2 and python3, questions on database administration, software engineering kinds of questions, and of course the obligatory probability brainteaser. I said to myself, okay this guy is doing a stress interview, not my style but I've had worse. After some back and forth we got over this and I already had a bad impression.
We started discussing technicalities like how many workdays could I put into this project, so I gave a ballpark of around 3 days per week. At this point he once again tried grilling me, asking weird questions like how would I imagine managing my workload in just 3 days, why could I not do 5, what if we need something done, ... and even bitching about my start date. My contract has a long notice period so nothing I can do about it anyway. Maybe a bit of background for those not freelancing: I would never commit to 5 working days as I need time to acquire new projects, do admin work, account for sick leave and vacation, it's just not possible. Additionally, there are some laws in my country that would make it tax evasion if I worked full time for just one client for a longer time.
At this point, I was so pissed that I told him I can handle stress test questions and that's fair game, but if we talk like that about technicalities I don't feel mutual respect and at this point, I'm gonna send the conversation and got the fuck off that call. The recruiter tried to bullshit me how he just wanted to "check whether I'm actually committed to the project" or something. We never talked again. This was by far my worst interview experience ever and I had many bad ones.