The interview process was not smooth at all. The HR department/point person was not equipped with basic information on the job, such as the job function for the position they were hiring for or the salary range. Upon asking for more details, I was asked to attend an online screening interview and ask my questions to the interviewer. The technical person who would conduct the interview was somehow supposed to provide job function and salary information. Needless to say, the technical interviewer didn't have a clue about either of those things.

The coding interview was scheduled for May 28th, 2021, and was standard for the industry: coding on a notepad, no IDE, and basic string manipulation using arrays.

After that round, I received an email from the same HR person on June 2nd, asking me to block off four hours of my time on a workday. I still did not know the specifics of what the position entailed or even a range of salary offering.

The cherry on top was the line in bold lettering in her email that read: "Please let us know if you currently have any offers from or are interviewing with any other companies."

I replied, stating I wouldn't be able to take half a day off unless they could answer the two basic questions I had been asking since before the screening: about function and salary range. The condescending/authoritative question about whether I was interviewing elsewhere and had offers was also answered in kind.

Suffice it to say, egos were hurt on the other end, as that was the end of our communication. I haven't heard from them since, and I don't expect to going forward.

Word to the wise: Unless you absolutely love a Kafkaesque nightmare and want to live under the mercy of an HR department that sees its people as a rancher sees its cattle, don't bother applying.

I am sure there are very talented people working in the IT department across Goldman, but the communication, and lack thereof, from the HR department makes it so much more undesirable to join.

Sequencing an input string based on consecutive letters without using collections.

Eg:

Input: aabbbbcccdaaa Output: a2b4c3d1a3