From beginning to end, this was one of the most aloof interview processes I've ever been a part of. I applied online and didn't hear back until three weeks after. While this was fine, as I was willing to wait for Microsoft, what was most egregious was that my recruiter was nonexistent throughout the process.

It literally felt like a robot was just sending me things to sign and never actually interacting with me. I sent multiple emails asking questions and even left voicemails, which went completely unanswered. It wasn’t until I asked the interview coordinator, yes, a different person, who finally helped me get in contact with my supposed recruiter. She apologized and then promised to call me back, which again she never did. Oh well.

On the day of the virtual onsite, my first interviewer asked about how a JavaScript bundler works. This produced some awkwardness because I was not a frontend developer. He noted this and quickly pivoted the discussion to my Java experience, which made things even more awkward because my background wasn't in Java either (LOL). Clearly, he didn’t review my resume/profile.

The next interviewer was friendly but obviously not a native English speaker. We talked about situations where I had encountered disagreements and what I did to overcome them (pretty standard).

We proceeded to the coding challenge, and I recognized how a stack could be used to solve my problem. She told me that unless I could articulate clearly how I used the stack, I couldn’t use it. I explained that I wasn’t 100% sure but sometimes having the code written down let me visualize it and brainstorm better, mentioning we all have our unique ways of doing things. However, this was not allowed. I ended up going with a brute force implementation, which she obviously did not want.

For the third interviewer, we got into the system design portion, and I started drawing and talking about my approach. Again, it was hard to understand what they were asking, as English was not their first language.

In the end, they dinged me for not asking enough clarification questions and for not explaining my idea before jumping into the implementation. Sure, because I can certainly read minds and know what everyone's expectations are (sarcasm). If you don't outline your expectations for the candidate, you can't fault them for making certain assumptions and taking liberties with their answer.

At this point, I’d had enough and emailed the coordinator to withdraw my candidacy. I can honestly say this was unequivocally the worst and most unorganized interview I’ve ever been a part of.

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