The recruiter was fantastic throughout the process, but the initial technical interview was the worst interview experience I've ever had. I am only providing this feedback in hopes that no one else has the same experience.

After joining the Zoom call with my camera on, I saw a different person join than the engineer I was supposed to interview with. They mentioned that they were calling from their phone from the lab, so they wouldn't be able to enable video. There was a lot of background noise. After asking them to repeat questions a few times, I asked if there was a different way we could continue the call. They called me back a few minutes later on my cell, but the audio on their end was still inaudible. I apologized for asking them to repeat themselves so many times; I simply couldn't understand them. They then said they would move to a different room so that we could try Zoom again.

Finally, I could hear them, and we were able to continue, but we had less than half of the time remaining. For the coding section, they copy/pasted a prompt, told me to solve it, and went on mute. There was no audio or video the entire time I worked through it – no discussion, suggestions, critiques, or guidance whatsoever. When I did provide a solution, they did not understand it. Four times I tried explaining my answer step by step, but they were unable to grasp my approach. I was and still am confident in my answer.

I was excited about this opportunity, so this was extremely disappointing.

The coding question came from LeetCode and involved manipulating a linked list.