This was one of the strangest, and worst, interviews I have ever had.

I was initially contacted by a recruiter in February and told they would contact me the next week. I didn't hear from them until late April, when I was contacted again by recruiting.

I proceeded to do a phone interview with a hiring manager, who was apparently not the hiring manager for the actual position. That interview was composed of a few technical questions and wasn't too difficult. All the questions were related to the job and my background.

The job had been posted as being available in Austin or San Diego, and I inquired about the location. The hiring manager responded that he wasn't sure where the job would be located. The location was important to me because I live in Austin and am not willing to move to San Diego.

After that, I was invited to their Austin office for in-person interviews. I was told that there would be 4 hours of interviews, consisting of 4 people for 45 minutes each, and 1 HR person. I ended up interviewing with only 2 people and the HR person.

The two people that I interviewed with apparently were not hiring managers; they really didn't take the time to explain who they were. Both of their interviews were 100% technical. The questions ranged from easy to difficult, although the difficulty would be relative depending on your experience and background.

It seems they were actually looking for an analog test engineer, not a product/test engineer. I don't have a lot of analog background, so those questions were difficult for me. Both interviewers acknowledged they realized it was not a big part of my background. Both also asked me if I was willing to move to San Diego, and I said I was not. The location of the position, it seems, was still up in the air.

I was really surprised that neither of these people asked any behavioral questions at all, or even "Why do you want to work here?". One guy didn't even tell me his title until I managed to squeeze in a question about it.

Speaking of which, they left no time at the end of the interview for me to ask any questions of my own. Not impressive.

After these two folks, I met with the HR person. After her, I was supposed to meet with the hiring manager. However, during my talk with her, the hiring manager notified her that he already thought that I wasn't a good fit and that I did not have the skills they were looking for, all that without ever meeting me.

At that point, I told her that was fine and we could end the process right then. To her credit, she felt bad and said that she felt it reflected badly on them, which it does.

What this tells me:

• They hire for skills alone, not personality or character or other traits. They don't care about one's ability to learn. They couldn't have cared less about me as a human being. I've always been of the opinion that skills can be taught, but character can't.
• They were not very organized; they couldn't even decide where this position would be located but were interviewing anyways.
• By not giving me any time to ask my own questions, they let me know that they were not interested in finding a mutual fit, just in finding a body that had the skills they apparently needed.

Given an array of 10 numbers, all 0 or 1, write code to turn the 0's to -600 and the 1's to 600 without using any if/then or switch statements.