First off, no NDA at any point in my process. Likely, if you have an on-site, there is one.

Very professional written message reach-out due to a LinkedIn profile. Initial phone evaluation upon reply. Referral to a salesperson-type internal recruiter, and a secondary evaluation. Coding interview. (I did exceptionally well.) Almost flown in for an in-person, but easily agreed to a "make sure" systems test. I had been in a highly developer-centric role for a while. Bombed the systems interview hard. Rather than a disjointed story, with the sections below, I'll lay it out here: vmstat, and only vmstat. Oh, you're rusty on vmstat? Explain vmstat to me for half an hour. European accent. Speakerphone. Half-assed "effort" to "shop me out" to some software development team by the internal sales guy. Long time no hear.

For as well-reviewed as the company is, I don't think that my experience is the case for well over 90% of applicants, but I honestly did fail the systems test as it was given. Holy something offensive was that a terrible test, but I failed it.

Coding:

Load two CSV files with "name,x" and "name,y". Sort names by f(x, y).

Systems:

vmstat. vmstat. vmstat. vmstat. vmstat. (This section appears to be a repetition of "vmstat," possibly indicating a focus on system monitoring or a placeholder.)