I took the IPAT, which tests number sequences and algebra word problems. The number sequences felt irrelevant, and the algebra word problems were timed too short. Some people might disagree and say to study first, but I had other interviews to worry about and did not have the time to study for the IPAT just for one interview. Long story short, I performed poorly on it (and I was at fault for not wanting to waste time studying for it).

Still, I was contacted the following day and asked to do a phone screen. The phone screen was scheduled for the next day and consisted of a few fundamental technical questions and some questions to get to know my background. It was a short 20-minute call.

Later that day, I was invited on-site. Two days later, the onsite interview occurred and involved meeting three people: a developer, the developer I spoke to on the phone, and the manager of the team. Both developers were nice; the manager was not.

The first developer I met with had me do some whiteboarding. The first question was too tough for me to handle, so we did a tree traversal problem to add every node at a certain level to an array. I completed about 85% of the question, as I was struggling after the failure of the first problem.

The next person I met was the developer I spoke to on the phone. He asked me only fundamental problems and some basic SQL. I nailed that section.

The worst part was meeting the manager. For some reason, I could tell he did not like me the moment he laid eyes on me. He started off by asking what I knew about C++ and Java. I told him I really only knew Java, and my only experience with C++ was in an intro programming class in college. So he saw the potential in grilling me, and he went down that route.

After that, he began asking me questions on Java. I was able to respond with correct answers, but with every correct answer, he would ask a question one level deeper. It got to the point where he was asking me how I would design a critical component of Java myself, something that I could not even find the answer to on Google. I kept asking him to elaborate on what he meant as I fed him answers he did not like. He kept saying, "No. No. I am talking high-level here."

He did throw in some fair questions that I did not know the answers to as well.

Look, I was at fault for not studying up on some concepts, but when a job is listed as "entry-level" and is looking for a minimum of 1 year of experience, do not expect someone to be able to answer some mid-level questions and act like they are a waste of your time for applying to a job that matched the required skillset that was listed.

How would you return the average of the sums for every employee per department in SQL?