The first interview was a phone interview that I passed with flying colors. It used CodeSignal and was a React problem.

I was invited to an onsite, and it was one of the worst interviews I have ever had. The first interviewer was barely paying attention, explained the problem poorly, and started me on an incorrect line, saying, "This is where you will start."

I assumed they were looking for a stack/queue-based solution based on that comment, which felt wrong in React. I tried to clarify that I felt starting above was probably better and that I was trying to think of a recursive solution using a graph. I was basically told, "You can do whatever" after I said that. It was confusing, to say the least. At the end of the first interview, I was literally asked, "Have you ever heard of recursion?" and was told I should have started up top where I originally mentioned it. It was beyond frustrating. I also forgot the name of a commonly used UI component (a virtualized list), but I described how it worked in detail. I was docked for that. I had also been studying data structures and algorithms mostly in Go, so my JavaScript was a little rusty, but I picked it right back up.

The interviewer spent time explaining how higher-order functions work. (Don't forget, this was for a "senior" level role; yes, I know filter, map, reduce, forEach, every, etcetera.) He showed an O(n²) time complexity way of parsing the data, and I could tell he thought I had no clue what I was doing. It was not an adequate gauge of my skills at all. I felt misled. I am usually great at interacting with interviewers and explaining my thought process, but he did not turn on his camera, and I could hear him typing during the interview.

The next interview was what I considered a "system design" interview, which seemed like common sense. I was beyond frustrated here as well because it's supposed to be an open-ended conversation and high-level. Most system design interviews do not want you to get too into the weeds. Apparently, from that conversation, it was gauged that I didn't go into enough depth. Yes, the questions were purposely vague, but it made absolutely no sense to me. We somehow got to a discussion about accessibility tags (which I have used) that I would just look up, but I forgot that they are "aria" tags. Once again, I was docked for not knowing some small, obscure piece of knowledge that I would just look up and is usually standardized in a material library. I was the one who brought up accessibility to begin with. I also did not know the proper name for a "debounce," but I knew and explained how to implement it.

Overall, it felt like I was guiding the second conversation. As a system design interviewer, you should be guiding the candidate on what you want to know and pushing them to describe in more detail what you are looking for. If you want specific implementation details, ask me. Don't hope that I bring it up and go down a million rabbit holes that don't have enough "depth." On top of it all, the second interviewer was having construction done in his house and kept getting up and moving around, sometimes losing focus on the conversation.

The last interview was cut off. I told the interviewer about my experience. I could tell he was very skeptical. Right after telling him that I am usually open and honest, I was told, "If you want me to be open and honest, you are just not up to the bar we are looking for." He canceled the onsite, and it was one of the worst experiences I have ever had. I tried to ask him for specific feedback, and he just said I didn't go into enough detail on the second interview (which makes no sense, as I was told not to go into too much detail and that it's an "open" discussion).

I signed an NDA, so I will not go into too much detail about the problems, but it blew my mind that they "gauged" my abilities from such high-level topics and couldn't figure out what they were looking for. I was told certain things would not be counted against me, but they obviously were. Their hiring process is full of confirmation bias.

Overall, a very toxic interview process. I was afraid to post this, not wanting to sour a future relationship, but I would never work in that environment.

I signed an NDA and will not disclose information to honor it.