Got a hackerrank test with 20 questions. It had a lot of topics. I was interviewing with the WebApi team.
First round was with an SSE. Questions around c#, advanced level, SQL, DSA. Most questions were trick questions but fun. He was mostly respectful and by the end, it felt like he respects my knowledge in C#, microservices etc. We talked like we are already team members.
Second round was a terrible experience. The interviewer joined late and had his camera off. It was with a software architect of same WebApi team. He went through my github and asked me to find 5 mistakes in a piece of code I had written for my personal project. Then he said he could only find 3 mistakes, so I can tell 3 mistakes. Then he proceeded to only point out 1 mistake which wasn't even a mistake because it was not a production code.
Then he started teaching me how to register a HttpClientFactory, and said that I did not implement it. I had it in my code but he just could not analyse the code properly because it was built on DDD model. This itself showed me the negative attitude he has and that he suffers from a superiority complex. He was not taking interview to check my skills but instead to belittle me and prove how he knows more. He wasted so much time on this antics.
I should have ended the interview here politely thanking him which is a thought that crossed my mind. For some reason, I did not and regretted it later.
One question itself would take 10 minutes for him to ask. He would say unnecessary things to show how great he is and I kept waiting for when he would actually state the question he wants to ask. I hated every minute of this interaction but remained respectful, in suffocation.
He opened notepad in his screen and asked me how to test a service code which does not have interface. Took 15 minutes to just ask this and there was no purpose behind it because it is anyway a bad approach.
Then he opened visual studio and asked me to recite a LINQ statement while he types. What kind of interview was this? He thinks people code like this, is this a VIVA?
Then he again took 15 minutes to ask a basic question around distributed transactions. When I gave right answers, he belittled me. I gave another approach, he again spoke rudely. Then he made an unnecessary remark saying that I would never develop a fault tolerant system. I later checked and my answers were correct. It was 2 phase commit which I spoke about. I don't know what was on his mind.
We had 3 minutes left and he asked if I have any questions. I was really exhausted by him and decided to end my suffering and told him that I have no questions. I would not choose to speak with such a person voluntarily.
Outcome : Of course, he gave me a negative feedback. But recruiter never communicated it to me. Before this, recruiter would call me multiple times to schedule interviews. Later, after 10 days, I called recruiter myself and she simply said I did not clear second round and gave no other feedback.
It is a shame that a toxic employee with no interview experience is given the responsibility to hire candidates. The first interviewer asked some tough questions and tried to make me self doubt my answers but he remained respectful. I also have the relevant experience of working at the problem they are solving but apparently, they are not looking for good engineers but someone who can work with toxic architects.
One major take way is to end interviews where interviewer is being disrespectful just because they are on that side of the table. It is a nightmare working with such people anyway.