The interviewer was 35 minutes late and didn’t have my resume. His only recollection of my background was that I used to be a VP at my last few jobs. Based on that, he started our 17-minute conversation by advising me to look for a job elsewhere, since the position I applied for has only six direct reports. The remaining 15 minutes were spent on an extensive set of questions about the inner workings of Kafka. The interviewer spent an extra minute or two ensuring I understood that Kafka has no subscribers, only consumers. There was also an unexpected on-screen coding problem (I was on my phone) that he had a bit of trouble formulating. Approximately 17 minutes after the interview started, the hiring manager abruptly interrupted the conversation, stating he had to run to another urgent meeting (5:35 PM on Friday). I guess he wasn’t much pleased with the conversation either.

Why would I want to work for Oracle, especially since I managed much larger teams before?

Describe an architecture of a project you are proud of building.

How to scale Kafka-based infrastructure.

Merge two pre-sorted integer arrays in the most efficient fashion.

Are you sure Oracle is the best fit for your background? Have you considered other options out there?

Compensation.