It was a painful experience.

The interview started with bumpy introductions, which I found unusual as I interview candidates regularly and introductions are typically the easiest part. I initially assumed it might have been the interviewer's first time conducting interviews.

When the coding challenge began, I explained my thought process and the code as I wrote it. I pointed out that I almost never arrive at the optimal solution on the first attempt; generally, I find a solution and then optimize it. However, as the challenge progressed, it seemed the interviewer expected a minimal complexity, character-for-character solution from the outset.

By the end, the original problem of "find the intersections" had morphed into "count the occurrences" while simultaneously finding intersections, reducing complexity, and using a literal object—but not as a hash map, as initially suggested. The hints became so misleading that I lost clarity on the problem I was supposed to be solving. The frequent interruptions disrupted my ability to think through the problem effectively.

Needless to say, I did not pass the interview. Frankly, towards the end, I no longer wanted to. I was stuck trying to understand the requirements and the interviewer's expected solution. When I asked for clarification, I received the equivalent of "google it."

After a failed interview, there's no reason an interviewer can't explain the solution they were looking for, unless, of course, they can't explain it themselves.

Find the intersecting values of two arrays.

Same question: find the intersecting values of two arrays, but handle duplicate values.

Same question: find the intersecting values of two arrays, but handle duplicate values. This time, "handle" means include duplicates in the output.