This was one of the most disgusting interviews I've ever had in my entire life. I submitted my resume at a campus career fair and was contacted to set up an on-campus interview with one of the engineers.

Firstly, the HR representative was careless and misplaced my scheduled interview time. They called me a day prior and asked me to reschedule my interview as one of the interviewers was unavailable. I agreed and scheduled it for the first available slot the next day.

On the day of the interview: The interview was scheduled for 8:30 AM. I arrived 30 minutes early and was waiting. The interviewer was 20 minutes late and didn't even bother to apologize for the delay. Never mind!

Secondly, when I went into the room, he didn't have my resume and didn't even know what role I was being interviewed for. This was ridiculous; such a big company doesn't organize its interviews properly!

The interview started. He was least interested in my resume and always interrupted me before I could answer any question. He constantly googled for questions and continuously interrupted me whenever I attempted to answer. I'm not sure if he deserves to be interviewing candidates.

He asked me a simple linked list question for which I started to code in Java. Apparently, he didn't know Java and behaved as if what I was doing was wrong. He started asking questions like, "How do you represent a pointer for the head node in Java?" I tried to explain to him that there is no pointer concept in Java, only references, unlike C++. If he wanted someone who only knew C++, why did he shortlist my profile? My work and experience are in Java coding!

As a software engineer, I believe that language is just a way to express ideas. More importance should be given to logic than asking if I knew only C++ or some other languages. The overall experience was very uncomfortable. They don't assess intellectual capabilities; all they want are some mugged-up answers from C++ and the internet. May God bless Cisco with such employers! If you really want old-school programming guys, forget about new grad students. Please go and hire someone who knows outdated programming.

This was by far the worst interview I have ever had. I have attended interviews at Amazon, EA, and most of the best tech companies in the US. I would never, ever want to work at Cisco in the future!

Linked List question to remove duplicate elements.