The process was one HR call, followed by a feature-building round. The feature building was an original idea (at least for me), which was basically a TDD live coding for an appointment availability feature. Until now the experience was great.

The negative experience was in the system design interview. It was done with one senior SE and an engineering manager. One of them was not taking the interview seriously as he was literally eating at the same time. Even though he apologized for eating and said that he would be eating during the interview, no, it is not okay. Imagine if I was eating at the same time. That was disrespectful.

Then, the following 1h30 was questions from start to finish. They ask you to prepare a high-level SD at home without much detail, and you are supposed to gather the requirements in this 1h30 session to refine the design. They don’t let you do that. They don’t even let you talk about the tables and entities you chose. They just start asking endless questions, and it was all over the place. And oh, they don’t want you to have an open conversation. If they don’t hear what they want to hear, it is done. You are rejected.

Design an appointment booking system that is scalable.