The first stage of the interview process was a 90-minute telephone and web browser interview that required me to discuss and solve live programming problems. I enjoyed the process, and the interviewer asked fair questions in ascertaining my experience level. At the time, I figured that with the technical interview being so thorough, this part of the process would be over and the on-site interview would focus more on the job itself. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

I received a message informing me that I could interview on-site and that it would take 3-4 hours of my time. Expecting it to be difficult, I spent about three days preparing for every eventuality beforehand and showed up confident. To my surprise, I was told that we'd be doing a technical test first. Having already completed a thorough technical test, this immediately put me in a frustrated state of mind, but I figured I'd play along and answered all the questions. This was actually less difficult than the phone interview, but the worst aspect is that it seemed completely pointless. None of the questions actually related to the job in any way, and I don't see how they could have assessed my competency to do the job by asking me questions about minor language aspects like type casting.

When they asked if I had any questions, I didn't really have any because I'd already done that on the phone. So I ended the interview by repeating some of those questions so that they didn't think I was disinterested.

Then it got worse. They couldn't find a team leader to interview me after I had sat waiting in the cafeteria for 20 minutes. Apparently, they checked the person's calendar (it was empty), and he was nowhere to be found and probably wasn't in the building. I had expected it, too, because there were some nervous glances exchanged when I asked who would be interviewing me early on in the process. I asked that the manager phone me so that I could complete the interview and then went home.

What disgusted me the most is that nobody in HR came to talk to me to explain the situation or apologize for what had happened (the technical guy had to do it). Three days later, I received an automated email of rejection and no explanation—no phone call—nothing.

So, in retrospect, all the effort I had put into preparing for this interview had been a complete waste. The 3-4 hour interview turned out to be one hour of questions of no relevance to the job. All I learned was that Bloomberg has no respect for a candidate's time, their entire interview process is suspect, and they're rude and unprofessional. A real shame, given that I was actually excited at the prospect of working there. Now, nothing could be further from the truth.

The difficulty ranged from easy to medium. However, I was concerned that, on occasion, they used methodologies that should never be used in modern practice.

For instance, recasting class pointer types in live code.

This raised concerns about what their actual code might look like, given that they expect such knowledge.