After a team lead reached out to me, I had a 30-minute discussion with a recruiter about location and salary range. Following this, a call in which the team lead described in more detail the different teams in their engineering department and the ways they work together, and in which I was given a single algorithm problem. It is a pretty standard one, that I was mostly able to recreate from memory.

Unfortunately, I made a small but computationally-costly mistake, which would be easily noticed and rectified in the real world, but less so in a stressful 30-minute interview. Because the rest of the interview had gone so swimmingly, I'm left feeling like they prioritize textbook-problem memorization over anything else I have learned or done in years of work experience. Despite my disagreement on how best to interview programmers, everyone I dealt with was a joy to speak to: intelligent and passionate about the work. I sincerely hope we cross paths in this or another venture someday.

I'd prefer not to say. You would certainly recognize it from sophomore-year algorithms class, if not from an interview-prep book.