I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks.

Interview For: Staff Frontend Engineer Interview Outcome: Rejected Overall Experience: Very Negative 👎❌

Interview Process & Details: I interviewed for a Staff Frontend Engineer role. The session was scheduled for a 30-minute slot but dragged on for a full hour. It was recorded via BrightHire, which is the only positive thing I can say about it, as there is literal video evidence of how completely abysmal this session was. 🎬🤦‍♂️

The Reality of the Interview:

• Completely Unprepared Interviewer ⏰🙄: The interviewer joined the call late, complained that he didn't know the session was scheduled for early morning, and explicitly stated to my face that he was "completely unprepared" to conduct the interview.
• Standard DSA Turned Into an Adversarial Debate 🥊📈: We started with a basic array duplication problem. I gave an optimized solution with O(n) time and space complexity. He insisted on an alternate object-based inline approach. When I politely pointed out the obvious memory overhead risks this would cause on large datasets, he took it personally. Instead of a peer-level architectural discussion on trade-offs (which you expect at the Staff level), the dynamic instantly became adversarial and defensive.
• Ridiculous Scope Creep 🎛️🤷‍♂️: This was a Frontend loop, but the interviewer clearly didn't know how to evaluate high-level frontend architecture. Instead, he shifted the entire interview to advanced backend topics, grilling me on database optimization, message queues, and high-concurrency handling. I gave strong answers despite explicitly telling him my backend skills sit at about a 6/10, but the scope was entirely decoupled from the actual job description.
• Mandating Bad Code & Anti-Patterns 🗑️💻: Every time I provided a correct, optimal solution, he modified the requirements on the fly without clear parameters. He actively forced me to write code that went against industry best practices. The mandated modifications resulted in non-production-quality code prone to memory leaks—the exact type of trash anti-patterns a Staff Engineer is hired to prevent during code reviews. It felt less like an evaluation and more like an exercise designed to arbitrarily manufacture a failure.
• Total Disengagement 📱💤: While I was speaking and walking through my solutions, the interviewer was visibly searching for questions online. He wasn't listening at all, which led to a complete misunderstanding of the code I actually wrote.

Advice to Management / HR: Train your interviewers on how to conduct an objective evaluation, especially for leadership and Staff-level roles. Having an interviewer show up late, admit they are unprepared, ignore frontend architecture to grill on backend infrastructure, and actively force candidates to write leaky, sub-par code is an embarrassment to your engineering brand. 📉🎭

Final Thoughts for Candidates: If you get an interviewer who is power-tripping and trying to manufacture a rejection, don't waste your energy trying to fight it. I didn't even bother emailing HR to ask for a re-review of the BrightHire tape—it is a complete waste of time. If you are actively prepping for FAANG and peer companies, protect your sanity, take the rejection, and move on to a company that actually respects the candidate experience. 🚶‍♂️✨

print duplicates in array with optimal solution

Silly question on console.log with this references