A recruiter contacted me from LinkedIn. After an initial phone talk with the recruiter, a phone interview was scheduled.

Instead of the actual person mentioned in the coordinator's email, a different person called me. He asked several deep learning questions and some debatable classical machine learning questions. I provided the correct answers. The questions were cherry-picked and not ideal for assessing theoretical knowledge. I suspect the source of the questions was topics from the interviewer's own study schedule. The sentiment of the interviewer's reactions, as I perceived them, was not positive; I believe he did not appreciate receiving correct answers.

Then, he posed a programming question. It was a tricky tree question that I had not encountered before. I solved it, however, it did not work under the specific condition he asked for. More specifically, it performed well when the tree was complete but failed when there were missing nodes.

Overall, I actually liked the questions. However, the interviewer's attitude was not nice or friendly. I believe he did not want me to pass the interview. I found him very unfriendly.

Unfortunately, this type of situation occurs in interviews, but I suggest Bloomberg select more suitable individuals for interviews. Prospective candidates are investing time and taking time off from their work. The goal of a phone interview is to assess technical skills and theoretical knowledge in a short amount of time, not to debate or compete with an interviewer. A responsible interviewer should understand these aspects.

Tricky tree question.

Deep and machine learning questions.