Led with a discussion of who I was, then some background of the department and then followed up with technical questions to do with software development especially Java, python and other related languages

The interview felt less like an assessment of Java engineering ability and more like a pub quiz for obscure syntax trivia. Instead of exploring problem-solving, design decisions, debugging skills, or real-world development experience, the focus seemed to be on recalling exact language details that most professional developers would simply look up in seconds. It's a curious hiring strategy: rejecting people who know how to build software because they can't instantly recite syntax that modern IDEs autocomplete for them anyway Overall, the process felt outdated, disconnected from how software is actually written, and more reflective of academic memorisation than professional engineering competence.