INTRO: The recruiter set up a panel interview with the manager of the team I was applying to join, along with several others. Only the manager showed up to the Zoom call.

He (unintentionally) belittled the fact that I do not have a four-year degree and implied that I should return to college. I think it was his way of being encouraging, but it was inappropriate for the context.

FOLLOW-UP: Expect nothing.

I emailed him a thank-you email the next day. Nothing.

I emailed him a couple of weeks afterward to get feedback on how I might be able to improve in the future. Nothing.

Overall: The worst interview experience I've ever had.

OOP, DSA, & CS THEORY QUESTIONS:

Many of these seemed beyond what was necessary for the role. It seemed like he was specifically trying to ask "gotcha" questions and acted very disappointed or annoyed when I said I didn't know or asked for further context to answer him.

(WEIRD) ROLE PLAY EXERCISE:

There was a weird role play exercise where he pretended to be an investor, and I pretended to be the CEO of a tech startup. He then berated me on why our earnings statement was lower than expected.

Before starting this exercise, I tried to gain more information that I could work with, but he gave me little to no information and pressured me to start.

Within the role play, every time I tried to explain or defend the earnings statement, he would come up with some additional information about this imaginary earnings statement. The exercise started with having the last quarter being lower than expected, but when we were into the role playing, suddenly the earnings statements for multiple quarters were disappointing.

The whole exercise was an awful experience and just seemed like an excuse to make the interviewee as uncomfortable as possible.