A recruiter reached out in November 2021.

We scheduled an initial call. The next step was a technical screening over a video call with an engineer, which I scheduled for a month later, in December.

The interview question itself wasn't too bad and wasn't the standard LeetCode-type question.

However, the interviewer didn't introduce themself and didn't ask for my introduction either. We jumped straight into the problem.

When we got into the problem, it was mostly silent on their part unless I specifically asked a question. It didn't feel very collaborative at all, and like someone else here described perfectly, it felt more like a proctored test.

The technical screening was a three-part question, with each part building on the previous question.

1. Given a store log that includes closing times and whether or not customers were present, calculate a penalty score (i.e., add to the penalty score if customers were present after the store was closed or if no customers were present while the store was open).
2. Find the best closing time.
3. Given an incomplete log with possibly invalid data, find the best closing time for all logs.