The first round was the best interview experience I've ever had, and the interviewer was the best I've ever met.

Initially, I encountered some connection issues, and the video conference was interrupted. When I dialed in again, he comforted me, saying it was alright. During the coding test, he first gave me an overview of the problem I needed to solve. Then, he asked me not to rush into coding but to tell him my idea first. When I got stuck with some compile errors, he asked if I understood the error message. When I said I didn't remember an API call, he said I could Google it as long as I shared my findings with him. My solution didn't entirely match the expected output. He asked me to take a step back and ensure each small part worked as expected to narrow down the scope of the problem. Even though I didn't find the bug eventually, he said he liked the solution and told me not to worry too much about it because we were almost there. When I got the chance to ask him something in the end, he grasped the point of my questions accurately and shared his experience very genuinely.

The second round was the worst interview experience I've ever had. First, the connection was bad. The video was constantly freezing, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't my network problem this time because it was the interviewer who left the conference and then rejoined. The first interviewer was in a meeting room, but it looks like the second interviewer was in front of his own desk. What made things worse was he was wearing headphones that didn't seem to have a microphone. Judging from the voice quality, he was very likely using the built-in microphone from his computer. I could barely hear a complete sentence during the entire interview.

The interviewer was not much of a talker like the first one, and after I asked him to repeat himself a few times, I could sense a bit of impatience. So, I was a bit scared to tell him that I couldn't hear him clearly and ask him to get a better setup. I figured it wouldn't really help because when he threw me the question directly and explained a little bit, he didn't ask me what my idea was or how I was going to approach it. It all seemed to me that this long overdue interview was something that fell on his head, and he didn't care at all. I decided to get into the question and not let these things interfere.

As for the coding session, the problem itself was not that difficult, as it was similar to the first round. Usually, there would be some problem description and starter code (as I received in the first round and believe is standard on most online coding practice platforms). It seems to me either he forgot to bring them up or did it on purpose. There was only a main() function, and inside it, an object calling a member function. The interviewer only told me what the problem was, but as I couldn't hear him clearly, I really hoped for a description. He didn't tell me what should be implemented, so I asked him, mainly wanting to clarify if my understanding was correct. But he just laughed and said that's what the test is all about.

I coded it up more fluently than the first time, as I believe the problem could be solved similarly. Again, the output of my solution was slightly different from the expected one, so I started to debug. The interviewer neither commented on my solution nor offered any help up to this point. I doubt if he cared to understand what I was trying to do. Quite often, I had to speak out why I did what I did, hoping he would listen. After spending quite some time but not getting the problem solved, he finally suggested that if I used pen and paper to do a walkthrough, I would be able to spot the little bug. I would think that is a good suggestion, but the current situation is I had already narrowed down the problem to these few lines of code; there was no point in doing a whole walkthrough, and no time. Anyway, I didn't argue with him and took his advice, but it just ended up at the same spot I was at before. I tried to discuss with him what I thought of those few lines of code and why they might be problematic. But he reassured me that they were behaving as expected. Then, he finally started to look into the problem together with me. He changed a little bit of the code, but that seemed to me just a different style of writing; it didn't get to the heart of the problem. I took my courage to say, 'Let's just try not to be smart and write these few lines in a stupid way,' and we finally both found the actual problem. Unlike the first interviewer who would ask me to evaluate my solution and ask if I had alternatives, this interviewer didn't ask me anything after the problem was solved, nor comment on the solution and the problem we just encountered.

I didn't pass the second round of the interview. My conclusion is: I feel very unlucky because I missed the chance to work with the first interviewer, and I feel relieved that I don't need to work with the second interviewer.

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