At the start, everything looked great. Recruiters were very prompt and gave a very detailed walkthrough of the hiring process. The recruiter call also comprised some technical questions, such as:

• What data structures are database indexes based on?
• What are various isolation levels?
• What is the CAP theorem?

...etc. The focus was heavily on multi-threading, core Java, and database concepts.

The next stage was a live coding interview. I was asked to build an in-memory Load Balancer app. I followed TDD as advised by the recruiter.

The interviewer and I both had some network issues, hence some time was lost. However, I was still able to finish the assignment step by step.

Throughout the interview, the interviewer did not bother to tell me that there were certain functionalities to be completed, failing which would result in rejection. He seemed quite happy with my code and approach.

One day later, I received a rejection letter stating that I should expand my JUnit knowledge and not always rely on the assertTrue method. Also, I should improve my coding speed, as it currently impacts my ability to complete challenges on time.

Though I agree with the first point, the latter one seemed quite irrelevant. Looking at other very similar interview experiences, it looks like they are not looking to hire and are just doing it to make an impression in the market that they are growing.

I feel like I dodged a bullet. At the end of the interview, I asked the interviewer, "How does he find working at the company?" He let out a long sigh before saying, "It's hard." He then went on to share how people are overworked and there's a constant need for context switching for the engineers, etc.

1. What is the time complexity for insertions in HashTables, and how does it get affected if there's a hash collision?