Step 1 - Recruiter contacted me about an opening.

Step 2 - Recruiter interviewed and asked typical recruiter questions.

Step 3 - 30-minute technical interview. The interviewer asked about a project I liked in the past and asked questions related to SQL joins.

Step 4 - Onsite interview - 3 hours long.

• 1st Hour: Asked how to write code for all possible string permutations. I found that the answer to this question is readily available online. Both interviewers had much less experience than me. I didn't expect to get such a programming task, so I couldn't find a solution. Then, they asked about database-related questions: how to extend an existing database to add more features and how to write SQL queries. The second question was relatively easy.

• 2nd Hour: The interviewer was more senior than the previous one. They asked how to design a web browser, then how to convert numbers 1-99 to words, and subsequently how to extend this to numbers up to 999.

• 3rd Hour: The hiring manager also asked how to implement different kinds of problems. One example was how to write code to list the UNIX file system, essentially how to implement the 'ls' command.

After the last interview, the recruiter said they would provide feedback about the result.

Step 5 - Recruiter got back to me after two office days, stating that my skills and experience did not match the role as well as some other candidates.

I was disappointed with the feedback and thought I would receive a better explanation. I knew it wasn't a good fit since I had more experience than all the people who interviewed me. Therefore, they were looking for people who had focused primarily on programming (not architecture) in recent years.

Write code that shows all possible permutations from a given string.