Got the interview thru a Staffing company.
Initial call was with a recruiter to get to know my experience. They liked my experience, then got a 1st round of interview with a Tech lead. It was mostly about my project experience which I explained in detail. He asked me a few good follow up questions surrounding my experience on specific areas and everything went well until that point.
Next round after a few days was a coding interview with the same person. He asked me to print contents of N-nary tree which I did using both recursive and iterative solutions. I showed him the recursive solution first and then iterative solution.
I was able to write the entire logic + all correct syntax on a notepad. (Yes!! notepad - It was supposed to be on coderpad but last minute he came up with a plain text pad instead ). I got voluntary hints from him once or twice during the interview though. (I didn't ask for the hints).
At the end he showed some positive vibes to see my end solution, but finally he asked me if i had any questions.
Then I was little suspicious about if he was really satisfied with my solution or something went wrong somewhere.
A few days later, I got a standard email saying they are moving forward with other candidates. Really??? What else they were expecting??!!
With so much of IT experience, now a days I am seeing expectations of employers are getting increasingly unreasonable (IMO). First they ask you to solve a problem which you would never solve in real work. Then they are asking us to solve that problem in an editor (coderpad, hackerrank, etc) that you don't use at work (our favourite IDE is much comfortable to work with and faster to get solution since time is a constraint). Then they ask us to solve the problem which reasonably takes 1- 2hrs to solve, you are asked to solve in 30 min. :).
Now they are asking to solve a coding problem on a word doc/notepad (due to COVID) with all correct syntax. I know this is similar to whiteboard but usually they don't expect 100% right syntax on a whiteboard, at least from my experience. Then there are system design interviews where expectation is to provide a complete solution (DB design, API design, draw component diagram, explain all design considerations like Scalability, Availability, Throughput, Consistency, Partitioning logic, etc ) under 30-40 minutes, lol.....
What NEXT?? You will be given a problem and you are expected to explain the solution in 3 MINUTES or you are out. I know that was sarcasm but you get the idea.
Finally, IMO the worst part is when we ask for feedback post the interview, we never get one. How are we suppose to correct our unknown mistakes (if any) ??!! . At least it would be helpful, if they can provide some indirect hints .
This particular recruiter, was least helpful from the beginning. He didn't even answer when I asked him what to expect during the interview - system design/ DS & A coding type of problem. But no answer. (Most employers at least are providing that info these days)
Long story, but hope it helps someone.
