I applied for a senior engineering management role, and the recruiter reached out within a couple of days. She wanted to schedule a phone call but asked me to answer "some questions" beforehand "in the interest of time."

The questions were something you'd ask a junior person, like:

• What's the largest team you've managed?
• When was the last time you coded?
• And my favorite: What's unique about mobile development and testing?

Seriously? There were about 10 questions like this, none of which were a simple yes/no question, and all required a dialogue.

I told the recruiter that I'd be happy to talk, but I wouldn't have a spare hour to sit and answer these questions and then guess how she interpreted the answers. She replied back saying that it was fine, but we'd have to go slowly because she "types slowly."

So she called and started going down the same list of questions that she emailed. There was no dialogue, no listening to explanations, and she asked me to pause several times so she could write down my answers. She was only interested in filling in the blanks on the answer sheet.

Perhaps as a developer, things are different there; I won't know.

This was one of the worst interview experiences I've had in my 17+ year career in tech.

What's the size of the team you're managing now?