The first contact was with a tech recruiter and took about an hour. It went well.

The second interview was live coding (instead of a take-home task, since I already have a job). The live coding portion made me think there was no intention to hire, like a conveyor belt interview. There were no guidelines on expectations. The questions asked were far removed from real-world programming. I have been working in this industry for over 10 years in global corporations and, based on the feedback, I felt like an intern with no experience. In other words, it was a waste of time.

The given task was easy, and I solved it; however, I was told it would run slowly. This really surprised me. If you are looking for an optimal solution (within 20 minutes), please state it clearly, not by responding to questions with phrases like:

• "That's okay."
• "It's fine." etc.

Write a service that generates tiny URLs and vice versa.

How would you design the index?

Do you ever analyze algorithms with Big O notation? Experienced programmers do that on a daily basis, even if they sometimes don't know the expression.