A consultancy reached out to me regarding an opportunity with Samsung Electronics for their E-commerce domain. I was quite interested as I've only worked in product companies and never really had experience in a service-based company. It was good to know that my profile got shortlisted, and since I was in Bangalore, they scheduled a telephonic interview as my first round. I cleared the first round and my F2F interview was scheduled in Chennai the same week. I went there and completed all the rounds.

Altogether, I dislike (you can read it as hate too!) Samsung Electronics. Here are my reasons:

• Standard: While asking the panel member who selected me for the next rounds, he said there would be two rounds that would focus solely on the technical aspects of my career. I prepared problem-solving questions, the product architecture I'm working on, testing concepts, TestNG, Selenium, and what not. Though I was asked technical questions, they rejected me by asking puzzles. My five years of experience were put into question by a puzzle that looked like random content that would be printed on some corner of a Sunday daily.
• Courtesy: The consultant was kind and stayed in sync with me until I completed the interview. Meanwhile, the company's HR acted as if I didn't exist. A small startup in Chennai that called me for an interview took responsibility for my travel and gave me options to choose my mode of transport to come to Chennai. These people never really bothered to ask how I would come to their office, especially on a working day.
• Mindset: The panel members were way too arrogant (I'm not calling this out of frustration). During my telephonic round, the interviewer hadn't gone through my resume. He immediately told me I was a better fit for a manual role than an automation role. The irony is that I'm an automation framework developer for a highly reputed investment banking firm in Bangalore. The second and third-round panelists acted as if they were worshipped as demigods in the programming world. Those poor guys couldn't come up with one better question in problem-solving.
• Miscommunication: If puzzles were the deciding factor, why did they tell me it was a technical discussion? God knows!
• Place of Work: The office was like a rotten dungeon. The moment you stepped inside, you would definitely lose the feeling that you're in a renowned product company called 'Samsung'.
• Interest: The people who interviewed me hated their jobs. It was pretty evident in the way they behaved.
• Work: I'm very sure Samsung Chennai has nothing much to offer. The following week, one of my close friends was selected for the same role (in fact, a much higher role), and he said that the company wasn't worth considering for joining. I repeat, not even worth 'considering joining'. There you go, Samsung Chennai, you're already out of the league.
• Ego: Big and bloated.
• Offer: They didn't consider my current offer. They stated they wouldn't even bother to match it, even if I were selected.

Round 1: Telephonic

• Brief about yourself.
• When will you accept a developer build to test?
• What kinds of testing activities do you carry out in your current role?

Round 2: F2F

• What is Cache?
• What is a Cookie?
• How would you debug a web application if it throws a "500 Internal Server Error"?
• Explain the automation framework you have written for testing REST APIs.
• Explain the product architecture of your project.
• Puzzle: There are 25 horses. You have 5 lanes. Find the fastest horse. Find the 5 fastest horses among the 25.

Round 3: F2F

• Requirements gathering for a Pizza Shop which has a discount on its deliveries.
• Puzzle: There are 10 water bottles. One of them is poisoned, and the poisoned bottle does not change its color. You are given an animal to which you can give the water and find out the poisoned bottle. The poison reacts exactly one hour after drinking the water, and within the next thirty minutes, the animal would die. So, you are given 1.5 hours in total to find which bottle is poisoned. How will you find it?