The Hiring Manager approached me on LinkedIn and showed interest in my profile. He shared good things about his team, and I agreed to an interview since it aligned with my interests.
Had a technical round with a guy. He asked a medium LC question of recursion. The solution is not as lengthy as it is the case with the recursion problem.
I first discussed the problem with non-optimized solutions, and he asked about the memory and time costs that I explained, and he asked to improve, which I did iteratively first for time and memory. Wrote the straightforward code. Not much discussion on it.
He jumped on my current projects and experience. Asking some counter questions, and that's it.
The recruiter ghosted me. I knew I hadn't passed, but I wanted to have the feedback. After a couple of emails and weeks, the recruiter contacted me. The feedback was lame.
* My approach to the problem requires nudges from the interviewer and is not perfect the first time.
* The code was not up to the mark. The simple recursion code, on which he didn't discuss anything it was OK.
* My experience was not up to the mark of their requirements. My QPS doesn't match their system. Can ask the same earlier in the exploratory call and have not wasted the time.
I am happy that I didn't go through.
It is not a small company and should invest in training people for interviews.