The recruiter was very blunt and efficient, likely going down a checklist as they spoke. While not personable, this was acceptable.

I had an initial phone screen on CoderPad. The first interviewer was nice. I was given a very simple problem, but struggled to compile the code in my chosen language on CoderPad. I advise familiarizing yourself with CoderPad beforehand to avoid wasting time. Due to the time I lost, I couldn't complete the last part of the problem. They scheduled a second phone interview because of this.

The second phone interview went poorly, which I attribute partly to myself and partly to the interviewer. The interviewer was incredibly arrogant and stubborn. I proposed a solution with the same time complexity but greater space complexity than what the interviewer desired. Instead of allowing me to explore my approach, the interviewer insisted I abandon it and focus on their solution. I had never encountered an interviewer who only wanted a single solution when the problem had multiple viable approaches. While such interviewers may exist, this was my first experience with one. Overall, the interviewer was inexperienced, difficult to communicate with, and made for a bad experience. On my part, perhaps I was too slow to grasp the specific solution the interviewer wanted.

LeetCode questions / classic questions