I was initially contacted by a recruiter from eBay/PayPal about a position in the Austin, TX office. He asked a series of standard questions, nothing out of the ordinary.

Following that call, I was scheduled for a phone interview with one of the Leads on the QA team at PayPal. I would have expected this call to be with a hiring manager, but nonetheless, the call went well. The next day, I was contacted by the recruiter to schedule an in-person interview.

The in-person interview lasted a couple of hours. I first met with the hiring manager, who was a very nice man and with whom I was able to converse quite easily. I felt we shared a similar vision for the position. So far so good.

The next person I interviewed with was the Manager of Development, who appeared to want to be anywhere but there. I don't think I've ever met anyone who was more boring and/or bored. He was completely disinterested in hearing what I had to say and kept looking at the clock.

After that, I met with a few of the Leads on the QA team. For the first half of this session, things were going great. I fielded all of the questions like a pro, until they started asking a hundred questions out of left field that had nothing to do with the job description at all. They clearly knew what was on my resume and clearly knew what was marketed on the job posting, so deliberately asking me technical questions that were not within my skill set was a bit unprofessional. They also came off pretentious and arrogant.

Even if I did get an offer to work there, I don't think I would have accepted it purely based on the people I would have to end up working with.

My advice to them would be to stick with the job description. If you want to hire someone with those skill sets, then put that information in the job description so you don't waste anyone's time.

Can you write for us a Java applet for testing data comparisons between two databases?

(Even though I made it clear to them up front that I was not a developer by any means, they proceeded to push these types of questions.)