A LinkedIn recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn.

A phone interview was scheduled for the following week. The recruiter sent me LinkedIn profiles of the interviewer. As mentioned by multiple other candidates, there are usually two people on the telephonic interview. The second person is usually shadowing the main interviewer.

I received a phone call at the scheduled time and was given an algorithmic problem. I started discussing my approach and had a working solution with good complexity. The interviewer kept pushing me towards his solution, even though it was not an improvement on my solution in terms of complexity. I did not push enough to keep my solution and tried to implement the approach suggested by the interviewer. There wasn't enough time to complete the solution, and I was stuck in between since I did not understand clearly the direction he wanted me to go.

This was pretty bad, that the interviewer was so adamant about directing me towards his solution. He was pretty rude as well and did not take time to understand my solution at all. I have interviewed with LinkedIn before (during my graduation) and had a really bad experience there as well. The last time, I even heard the other interviewer laughing as I was writing my solution.

LinkedIn, you are a great engineering company, and I really like some of your open-source projects. However, I would never want to work with arrogant and rude people on a team. I hope this gets communicated back to the interview panel.