Step 1: Phone Interview. Standard Core Java questions: Generics, erasure, recursion, GC. If you have experience as a Java programmer, there's little you can do to mess it up unless you curse the interviewer.

Step 2: Face-to-Face Interview. "Take me through the steps of what happens when you type a URL into your browser." Load balancing. I think these went okay. Then the next task was to write an algorithm to solve some continuous function. I definitely bombed that.

Anyway, I don't want to sound like a disgruntled interviewee who did not get the job. I would have really liked to work there, even though I don't really care about the location or the free chips.

But it looks like they don't really value your experience. When you code in a programming language or OS for a long time, it pretty much becomes second nature. For a contracting position, I'm not really sure how solving a problem involving continuous functions really helps anyone. The next interviewer asked me why I wanted to work at Bloomberg Law. You can easily BS this question (search on YouTube, and you will find step-by-step instructions). But is this really relevant for a 6-month+ contracting position? Calm down, dude; tell me a problem you have, and let me help you solve it.

I think this is best for people fresh out of school or probably 1-3 years of experience. If you have tons of experience, like over 10 years, don't bother. The market is great, and you will find a job anywhere.

My two cents, for what they're worth.

Something involving continuous functions and how to determine what points they cross the origin.

I tuned out when the interviewer drew the x and y-axis.

Really, is this the kind of problem you are solving every day?

Why don't you ask me to write some algorithms that make sense?