A friend who worked at PayPal forwarded my resume to their internal recruiter, and she set up a phone screen for me.

The interviewer called at the scheduled time and, without bothering to introduce himself, plunged right into asking about my most recent project. Within two to three sentences, he interrupted me and jumped to another section of my resume. Within two to three sentences of that, he interrupted again and jumped to my education. I got the feeling he was not really listening.

I had taken a course in compilers several years ago, and he then asked me to describe how to write a compiler. I mixed up a lexer and a parser in the first sentence, and he got ticked off about that, rudely correcting me before I could correct myself. He then peppered me with questions absolutely irrelevant to the job I was applying for. For example, "What is a fast Fourier transform and how is it used in signal processing?" I was just taken aback. I'm not an analog/digital processing electrical engineer, nor do I play one on TV!

The interviewer came across as having a huge superiority complex, being rude and condescending throughout the interview.

I narrated my experience to my friend, and he confirmed that the interviewer has had several run-ins with co-workers and management because of his attitude. Oh well.

What is a Fast Fourier Transform, and how is it used in signal processing?

This was for a software developer position.