TLDR: Interviewer was lost and bounced the interviewee back and forth between front-end and back-end.

Man, where to start. I was interviewed by a junior software engineer (recent new grad). That's the big first mistake: why have a new grad/new hire interview a software engineer? The role was to design an internal application where you can schedule HTTP requests to be sent.

It seemed simple. As I started working through the design from the client-side to the server-side, 10 minutes into asking questions and writing my functional and non-functional requirements, I was told by the interviewer that I was wasting too much time and needed to start working on the server.

I paused a bit.

Okay, I guess. I started working on the server design and while designing my API endpoints, she stopped me and said I needed to work on my client-side.

Again, I was just... confused. So, I started working on my client-side again and informed her that I didn't have much experience in UI/UX design. I put together a small architecture, and she seemed absolutely lost.

It's a simple front-end: some input for an endpoint, input for a time, and an option to delete. But whatever, she then said, "Let's focus on the backend."

(Mentally told myself, "WTF is going on? Is this a joke?")

I was literally tossed back and forth between front-end and back-end for a back-end role.

At this point, I was mentally done with the interview and had no words to say, but I didn't want to crush her interview skills, so I continued, knowing I was wasting time.

We were maybe 30 minutes into the interview.

She asked, "Okay, what are your endpoints going to be?" I then went back to what I was doing and was literally stopped midway. She said, "Let's start designing your database."

I stopped.

I literally sat there for maybe 30 seconds and tried to comprehend what the hell was going on and asked her to clarify. At this point, we had maybe 5 minutes left.

I didn't care anymore about the interview, so we moved to questions. I asked her about work-life balance. She said it's not so good due to being on call, and you would need to wake up in the middle of the night at times. There is no schedule; you can work anytime, anywhere.

That was a big red flag for me. She then went on about how I would do better on the front-end because I seemed like a person who would want to work "4 hours a day."

What led her to that assumption? I told her my current team is not an "on-call" team.

I was just done. Like, done. So, I asked one last question I ask every interviewer: "Anything I should try to improve on?"

She said, "Yeah, you should look into joins in MySQL; I'm not sure if you are familiar with them."

I didn't even mention anything and just left the meeting.

Will I be pushed forward? I hope not; either way, it's not a company I would even consider anymore.

The interview was today, but I will be denying their next interview if any. Maybe I failed; who knows. But man, please don't allow junior engineers to interview for a role they have no idea about.

Oh, by the way, I forgot to add, somewhere in there, I asked about challenges the team was facing. She didn't even know.

I would not recommend this company to anyone.

Design an internal HTTP scheduling service.