I've had a ton of bad interview experiences, but my worst was still Google. This was circa 2012 or so, was my 2nd session of an on-site day. I guess I didn't grow up around a lot of people with thick accents because I could literally not understand a single word this guy was saying, and he didn't seem to understand me. He wanted me to explain the solution before writing any code, but since we were having communication issues I asked if I could write pseudocode.
He slammed (SLAMMED) his fist onto the table and yelled, "NO CODE!"
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Other bad experiences included Palantir telling me my onsite went really well, and that they'd like me to come in again to meet the hiring manager. Expecting to talk business, I instead was presented with 2 more algorithm questions. Those apparently went OK, so the next discussion with the recruiter yielded another "informal" (his words) meeting with 2 engineers via VC. Both ended up being 2 more DS/Algo questions.
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Another bad one I remember is a request to do a take-home coding test from Docusign (also circa 2012). They wanted me to program a "fully tested" elevator simulation using Stylus, Coffeescript, and Jade. I had never used any of these technologies, so I asked if I could write it in what I was familiar with (jQuery, Backbone, SCSS, ES5), which was denied. It would have taken me a full week to get up to speed on all of those technologies enough to submit a solution worthy of review. Absolutely ridiculous to ask a candidate to learn new frameworks just to complete the interview.
Had an interview yesterday where the guy was seemingly more nervous than I was, and he seemed to mask that nervousness with anger/being rude. I would answer his questions, and he would act like I wasn't understanding the question. In reality, it turns out I wasn't answering his questions using the _exact_ buzzwords he was looking for. I realized this when I happened to mention a buzzword after minutes of tense back-and-forth and he immediately perked up and we could suddenly move on. Went into the next interview feeling like shit because of this.
This whole process is so broken. Great devs get passed up on for terrible devs who know how to grind Leetcode and the like. I hate having to grind leetcode for weeks just to end up getting asked obscure algorithm puzzle questions that I could never prepare for. And all for a 100% React job? Jesus.
Same problem with a poor English speaker at Google back in ~2019. It took several minutes just to start understanding the words he was saying. I have many years of working/growing up with ESL folks and have a good ear for it and still struggled with this guy.
He slammed (SLAMMED) his fist onto the table and yelled, "NO CODE!"
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Other bad experiences included Palantir telling me my onsite went really well, and that they'd like me to come in again to meet the hiring manager. Expecting to talk business, I instead was presented with 2 more algorithm questions. Those apparently went OK, so the next discussion with the recruiter yielded another "informal" (his words) meeting with 2 engineers via VC. Both ended up being 2 more DS/Algo questions.
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Another bad one I remember is a request to do a take-home coding test from Docusign (also circa 2012). They wanted me to program a "fully tested" elevator simulation using Stylus, Coffeescript, and Jade. I had never used any of these technologies, so I asked if I could write it in what I was familiar with (jQuery, Backbone, SCSS, ES5), which was denied. It would have taken me a full week to get up to speed on all of those technologies enough to submit a solution worthy of review. Absolutely ridiculous to ask a candidate to learn new frameworks just to complete the interview.