The first screen was a chat with the hiring manager about the role, expectations, and to ensure I wasn't a "crazy person" – it was a very pleasant conversation.

Then, we set up a proper 45-minute technical screen.

The interviewer and I entered the Zoom chat simultaneously. There was no small talk; they wanted to dive right in, as there were many parts to cover. One peculiar aspect was using CoderPad because I couldn't use my IDE. The interviewer stated they needed to see my mouse, so we shared my CoderPad screen. However, I'm pretty sure CoderPad displays the cursor. Regardless, it was an odd requirement. Moving on.

They immediately pasted a large block of text and sat quietly. I was taken aback and asked if I should read through it, to which they nodded. Upon reading the interview question, it was essentially a string parsing problem wrapped in a lengthy backstory.

The subsequent questions were of the same caliber, building upon the first one and also presented as extensive text blocks. We went through this process three times. I became less invested with each iteration as the interviewer remained silent and disengaged.

I verbally explained how I would solve the third question, and we concluded the interview.

I was disappointed, as Stripe was a really cool company in my mind. However, if working there would feel like this, I'd rather pass. It turns out they also decided to pass on me, so that's that for now!

Parse an array of strings.

Do more things to this array with each question.