The first interview was a 45-minute phone screen through HackerRank. The interviewer was very serious and not very constructive.

Initially, the interviewer gauged my understanding by asking random questions about software and finding bugs in C++ problems. I mentioned I was working in Python, but the interviewer did not know Python. He wanted me to find bugs in C++ examples first. He then attempted to convert these to a pseudo-Python version, but it was obvious he was unfamiliar with the language, which wasted a significant amount of time. This unexpected approach unsettled me and made me anxious, especially seeing him struggle to convert the problems to Python, which ate into my interview time. There were about three questions of this nature.

The second part involved solving a coding problem on array manipulation. It wasn't too difficult, but it felt like talking to a wall, and it was clear he didn't want to be there.

The third part was also a coding problem, more advanced. For all of them, he wanted to understand how I would optimize the solutions. This approach threw me off because he would try to trick me, which made me doubt myself. When I was confident I had the correct answer, he would ask, "Are you sure?" even though I was sure. I believe he was trying to gauge my confidence.

I did not appreciate this interview style at all. I don't know if this is typical, but it's certainly not how a real work environment operates.

The first part consisted of three questions designed to find bugs.

The first coding question was a variation of the valid palindrome problem. The second coding problem was a longest substring without repeating characters type problem.