Average to poor interview process.

HR people were responsive, but they don't understand the process of technical interviews and essentially 95% of their answers are predefined (robot-like).

For example, they will tell you to prepare for the interview and that on the interview they will ask you basic software engineering questions and Computer Science 101 questions. And on my reasonable questions "are you sure? for a senior engineering position, you should not ask CS101 questions as it is basic stuff."

As an answer to my question, I received 5 lines of text (predefined, I believe) and did not get an answer.

On the first technical interview with "CS101 questions," it will be only one person, and he/she will ask you about your past experience, and then a live coding exercise.

The quality of the coding interview was average to poor as well. The interviewer did not know what "standard library" means. I asked if I should write my own algorithms for everything or if I can use ones from the standard library. And I had to explain what the standard library is first.

Then, as always on coding interviews, you "think out loud," but they will not let you finish your thoughts and ask you about optimization right in the middle, and then, again and again, which is distracting.

So, essentially, don't bother to think out loud. I would recommend asking the interviewer to let you finish your algorithm first, and then if he/she wants to ask you to optimize it. It must be iterations, not constant chatting.

And, don't let them distract you right in the middle, as most likely the interviewer will be looking for you just to type in the answer right away, which you can do only if you memorize the solution from Leetcode.

But if you haven't seen this task before on Leetcode and are capable of coming up with a solution on your own, "the help" from the interviewer side will only kill your "flow" state and can be very misleading.

It seems people don't understand the concept of a good technical interview and are simply trying to copy FANG-level processes and make improvements over time.

1. Count of Range Sum