Comment by telmop

I've had quite a few too:

* The most recent one: I was doing an "AI assisted coding interview". The problem itself was simple. I gathered clear specs, I explained what I planned to do. I was supposed to use AI so I wrote down the main function signatures I expected (the API boundary) and wrote in the prompt what I wanted Claude to do. I wrote no code myself other than editing the output. When I got rejected, I was told it was because "I wrote too much code myself".

* Once I was asked a brain teaser. I solved the initial problem, but one of the follow-ups made it significantly more challenging. I wrestled with the problem for a few minutes, and realizing I was going around in circles I stated so and told the interviewer I wasn't sure how to proceed. I was expecting a tip or at least an acknowledgement, but I heard nothing. Blank silence with the interviewer staring at the screen. Since it was a zoom call, I thought my internet was down, but when I asked "hey, can you hear me?", he replied yes, and went back to radio silence. This was a pattern of the interviewer throughout the interview. Later on, after this question I implemented an algorithm and was asked for its time complexity. I mistakenly said O(n) (I forgot the initial sort), and the interviewer literally just stared at the screen and said nothing until after 10 seconds or so when I realized my mistake and corrected it - at which point he acknowledged and moved to the next question.

* Another one that happened two times (at different companies) is getting asked a very vague question, like "how do you fix a bug in production" (to which I reply with 'I try to replicate it locally, I go through logs, etc') and then being told by the recruiter the interviewer didn't like that my responses were "too generic".