(Interviewed early August 2021)

Take this with a grain of salt because I'm sure other people have had positive experiences interviewing at Bloomberg. I did not at all.

Got a technical phone screen. The interview was cancelled multiple times, usually within minutes of the actual interview. The third time around, I get what I would describe as an intelligent person with zero interviewing skills or etiquette. He talked to me about a simple easy/medium LC problem, and I verbally gave my solution (he didn't want the implementation). He asked probably 12 follow-up questions, which I thought were pedantic at best. He asked me to implement a solution for a modified version of it (probably LC hard) with 20 minutes left. I talked through two approaches, and as I was heading one way, he pointed me in another – totally fine. I still had approximately 20 minutes left at this point, considering the amount of follow-up questions/discussion he gave, but I felt confident in how I was going to implement it. I could not initialize a variable without him questioning the 'Why?'. Look, I get it – you want to understand my thought process, but if you give me 20 minutes to implement a fairly tough solution, limit your follow-up questions to after I'm done typing a variable. I certainly had gaps in my knowledge (which I am focusing on improving as a 'positive' of this experience), but he talked about how it should be done as I was typing it, as if I were implementing it in a different way. Super bizarre.

I walked out having solved the problem but could tell he was not very pleased with the performance (he seemed apathetic to my follow-up questions about the company). I think (and hope) my situation was a one-off case, but my advice to HR: Have more robust training for your interviewers. I've had experiences where I've been rejected since I couldn't solve a problem, but the interviewers were sincerely good at helping me approach it in the right direction and were clearly trained. I've also gotten acceptances without getting the exact best solution. But this... I won't forget this.

Modified version of a common Medium LC question