A recruiter reached out to me. I sent my availability for a phone screen, and this is when the troubles began.

First, I never heard back from the recruiter again. Ever.

The technical phone screen was still scheduled, however, and I prepared for it as best I could.

On the day of the interview, the interviewer called over 20 minutes late and was very difficult to understand. Because of the delay, I had little time to implement the algorithm he asked me about, which I implemented anyway (and my implementation was the optimal one!). He seemed very confused by simple logic (such as 'and' statements) and multiple times questioned if my code would work with input, even though I proved it would.

By the time I could ask him questions, I had to go due to an urgent event that I had scheduled. (He wanted me to stay on the call for another 20 minutes to make up for the lost time from his late call.)

Needless to say, I was very unimpressed.

I never heard back from the recruiter again, despite multiple emails. This entire experience was very confusing, since I'd had a very positive experience the year before.

3sum