I was contacted by a recruiter and received a call to chat with the Director of Software over coffee. This meeting was pleasant, and the director explained their methodology, shared a bit about their product (mostly public knowledge), and their team structure.

Subsequently, I had a phone screen with an engineer. This screen went well. The question was sent in advance and pertained to the implementation of virtual methods in C++.

I was then called for an onsite interview. The first meeting was with the VP of Engineering. This was a quick five-minute chat, essentially rehashing what the director had said. After that, I had three interviews. Two of them went well. One focused on designing a data structure and error handling, and the second was about implementing some library calls.

The third interview was the infamous CTO interview about buddy bitmaps. I managed to solve this, but the code had some bugs, and the CTO had to point out several test cases a few times that would break the code.

After this interview, I was dismissed.

Following are my observations about the onsite:

• None of the interviewers asked if I had any questions for them. The process was: walk in, write a problem on the board. As soon as the problem was done, walk out. There were no discussions about anything else. Even if I received an offer, how am I supposed to make a decision without getting any information from the interviewers?

• The CTO literally walked out on me and did not even escort me to the door. I had to find the exit myself. This is incredibly rude. I should at least be thanked for taking time off to visit.

• If the CTO makes a decision on the spur of the moment, without any other feedback (I performed well in all other interviews), why not have him go first so at least my time wouldn't have been wasted?

• Someday your company will grow large, perhaps sooner than expected. Is burning the bridge with each candidate forever the right approach? You could at least be polite about it. I have interviewed at several successful companies before. Google was one of the best. Even if I didn't get an offer, the feeling I got was that I should work harder to get in because the interview process was so pleasant. The feeling I got at Pure was that I wouldn't want to work here even if I received an offer right now.

Buddy bitmap