The interview process consisted of:

• 2 technical rounds
• 1 hiring manager round
• 1 director round

After seeing all the bad reviews about Visa on Glassdoor, I had some doubts. Still, I went for the interview as I was looking for a change, and Visa has a strong presence in the finance domain.

After going through the process, I realized why the company had such bad ratings and how true all those employee reviews were. The interviewers had the least Java language knowledge themselves. They had a fixed set of trick questions to ask (something they got from the internet). However, they themselves lacked the core concepts and understanding. They showed the least interest in any hands-on knowledge you may have. Most of them are contractual employees converted to full-timers and have brought a "services" culture to Visa too.

However, what surprised me was the people with whom I would have had to work (if I had accepted the offer), as in one of my interviewers – their team lead.

For starters, your resume should adhere to the US format, which only he knew. It should be 7-8 pages long (with 10 years of experience; mine was just 2 pages). Then, it should tell your marital status and clearly state your DOB.

So, according to the interviewer, in order to keep my resume to 2 pages, I had removed very crucial information from it, basically my marital status and DOB.

According to him, if I still wanted a 2-page resume, I should have removed the awards and achievements sections to make space for this crucial piece of information.

Little did I know that hiring at Visa is based on your marital status and age (could be looks as well, I can't say), and I thought it was illegal to ask such questions in an interview, particularly to a female candidate.

If this wasn't enough, the interviewer had the audacity to ask me my DOB. When I answered just the date and month, he explicitly asked for the year.

Working at Visa, is he not aware of PII – Personal Identification Information? As per US laws, Visa is not to share my DOB, but its employees themselves make a mockery of these and blatantly ask for such information. Also, it's basic manners to not ask someone's age, especially a female.

The manager and director rounds were good, and both were sensible people. For some time, I was in a dilemma about whether to accept the offer or not, as I really wanted to stay in the finance domain. However, knowing that the same interviewer would be my team lead and I would have to work with him daily, I chose to stay away from him and avoid facing any similar harassment in the future and rejected the offer at last.

Basic Java questions on multi-threading and exception handling.