The Worst Job Interview I Ever Had (And How Not to Repeat It)

We've all been to interviews that make us want to crawl under the desk. But what happened to Oliverio takes the cake — or rather, the entire bakery.

A technical interview that lasted an eternity The candidate was asked to implement an algorithm on a whiteboard. Sounds standard? Think again. The interviewer demanded perfect syntax and criticized every comma, while getting confused about the requirements himself. Oliverio compares it to assembling IKEA furniture without instructions, with the assembler yelling you're putting the shelf on the wrong side.

Questions like 'why not red?' After an hour of torture came the behavioral questions — not about teamwork, but 'why aren't you using Rust for this Python algorithm?' It felt like the interviewer just wanted to show off rather than assess the candidate. Sound familiar? Especially when the company actually uses jQuery 1.7.

The grand finale — ghosting The funniest (or saddest) part: after the interview, the company vanished. No response, no feedback, no nothing. Oliverio suspects they hired 'that Rust guy.'

Takeaways for interviewers This story is a great reminder: an interview is not an exam, it's a dialogue. Don't try to overwhelm candidates with your skills; instead, see how they think. And yes, give feedback — even if the candidate isn't a fit, they deserve at least a couple of lines.

METABYTE studio comment: We've seen interviews where they ask 'write an O(n) sort' — and that's for a startup with three devs. Better invest time in proper onboarding than in mind-bending interviews.