I received an email from a recruiter saying they were interested in me.

A couple of days afterwards, I had a one-hour phone interview which covered computer architecture and modeling basics.

I was then invited to an on-site interview, which I can honestly say was the most ridiculous interview I have ever had.

The schedule had 13 slots from 8:00 AM to 5:45 PM:

• 10 regular interviews
• 1 lunch interview
• 2 meetings with the recruiter

This is borderline inappropriate! I felt like a slave (no kidding).

At one point, I was so tired I asked for a soda and couldn't get one because I didn't have cash for their vending machines. The interviewer didn't have cash either, so he just shrugged and said to go back to the interview room.

Moreover, several friends have applied to the same team and expressed similar stories, so this is not unique to my interview.

Everybody seemed uptight. They wanted to get right into their technical questions and didn't care to interact with me first. My guess is this is derived from management and/or the culture at Samsung (not necessarily that the interviewers were uptight engineers themselves).

I actually wondered after finishing the interview who on earth would want to work in a culture like that. I guess if it's your only offer, you would?

I did well on approximately 9 out of the 11 interviews (the other 2 I did well but didn't ace them). Interviews were definitely above average difficulty, though.