I was contacted by a recruiter to apply for a software developer position. I went through a phone interview and two rounds of in-person interviews.

The first round was great. The interviewer asked relevant questions to establish a basic competency level (algorithms and architecture design). I was asked to write some simple programs in C using vi. The interviewer was polite and friendly.

In the second round, the interviewer was nitpicky and wanted me to give answers using exactly the words and phrases he was expecting. He asked some obscure questions that were supposed to be regarding the C language in general, but were actually specific to the compiler and environment on his computer.

For example, he showed me some abnormal behavior in his program and asked me to explain it. I politely replied that the behavior is null by the C standard under those circumstances (I went home and double-checked). He asked me to explain it regardless, and I said I would probably be able to do so in a known environment if I could look at the low-level machine instructions.

He did not ask me anything about my many years of experience in designing software solutions and frameworks. I wasn't asked any design-related questions, as some of the other applicants were.

Usually, companies will send out a code test to work on at home or on-site, which should be sufficient to assess a person's technical abilities.

The interview was scheduled for an hour but started 10 minutes late, leaving only 50 minutes for what should have been a full hour. At the end, he commented that we only hire "very good" coders, which might have been a bit unprofessional for someone in a senior role.

Overall, I would question the interviewer's ability to correctly gauge potential employees based on the type of questions he asked.

Print strings backwards.

Some data structure related questions.