My initial screening with a recruiter was great. It was very engaging, and I could tell she reviewed my resume in detail. It felt like a good mutual conversation.

The next step was a technical interview that should have been straightforward, but the interviewer was deeply problematic. The entire interview, he was openly angry and passive-aggressive at times.

The interviewer running the code assessment started by asking me several questions about JavaScript's processing stack. I answered all of them flawlessly with great answers. But it quickly became apparent the individual didn't know much about the subject. Multiple times, he asked me to restate correct answers or would tell me I was wrong when my answer was right. I later googled my answers just to be sure, and he was definitely wrong. This was quite frustrating, as the interviewer was hell-bent on trying to stump me instead of having a meaningful conversation.

I was specifically frustrated when the interviewer asked me a question about AJAX calls. I told him, "I need to do a Google search to review AJAX calls. I haven't done one in several years." The interviewer then ended that portion of the interview by saying, "It doesn't matter." I'm assuming this meant I had failed the interview before it was even over.

I was given an easy LeetCode-style algorithm. The interviewer presented it very poorly, but I was still able to solve it in about 10 minutes.

The following week, I received a rejection email. While I'm a big fan of Roku, I don't think I would have moved forward to the next stage even though I passed the interview. I believe I would have had to work with the interviewer, and they seemed very toxic.

JavaScript processing stack

Graph tree search