I applied to Wayfair through their career website for an open SDET role. I was contacted by HR a day later. The initial conversation involved typical questions: why I applied, why I was looking for a change, and what I was seeking. This went well, and the HR representative was to present my resume to one of the team managers. A few hours after further email exchanges regarding my availability, a technical interview was scheduled.

On the day of the technical interview, I was ready and called in by the manager. The manager had another person, presumably the more technical individual, accompany the interview. We then went through the usual tech company interview questions, such as "What are your daily tasks like?" and "What are you looking to move into or change?"

He later introduced himself, explained what his team and the company as a whole do and are trying to achieve, and what they expect from someone coming into the role, along with details about the culture.

Then we moved on to the technical part. The other person in the room took over. He shared a Codepad URL via email. The first question, delivered with a thick Indian accent, was: "Can you tell me how you would write a boolean method that returns true or false if an item exists in an integer array?"

This seemed straightforward. I wrote out the algorithm/solution. He commended it but insisted on a more optimal solution. I then optimized the solution to O(n). He hesitated to respond, finally asking, "Why did you not do it that way the first time around?"

Question 2: "Write me an algorithm that removes the last item added to a list of items." (In my mind, I thought he was asking for a stack.) I wrote out a simple stack implementation (algorithm). At this point, my algorithm was a generic method (T) and was optimized. He glanced it over and then asked, "How would you test this code if it is only a few lines and does not specify which data type?"

My response: "Well, I would use all data types: String, Integer, and boolean, and test to see if they return whatever data type the list is made of, the last item inserted, and then remove it from the list." He replied, "Well, that would not be wise. But thank you for the effort; it is one solution, but not what I was hoping for. Any questions?"

I responded, "None, but thank you too for your time and best regards." Two days later, I received a rejection email.

1. Check for the existence of an item in the array before adding that item. If the item exists, return false.

2. Stack implementation of pop.