The worst interviewing experience of my life.
After completing a coding test, I was invited to an on-site for the final stage.
The recruiter did not give me a contact detail nor informed to bring my own laptop.
Once at the building I was left waiting at reception for several minutes albeit being punctual.
The tech lead picked me up and led me to the interviewing room. He asked me to set up my laptop, which I told him I was not informed and I assumed they could provide me with one (all I need is VS Code and Node being installed). After 10 minutes trying to find a laptop (a tech company with no laptops available, that speaks for itself).
Finally they found an old laptop in a drawer with CentoOS but they fail to set it up as it couldn't connect to the network.
I am asked if I am okay to do the coding challenge at his desk (where he had a desktop pc).
This would involve me coding and talking aloud in the middle of the room where the rest of the team were working.
I told him that I didn't feel comfortable doing that and I have no intention of doing it.
(Do you really expect people to carry out interviews in the middle of a room where other people are working? People who are going to be your next colleagues?)
I should have left at this point, and that is my biggest regret on that day.
However I insisted of going back to the interview room.
After other 10 minutes they just gave up on trying to set up the laptop.
I was supposed to work on the coding test I did, but because of no network we couldn't clone the repo from GitHub...
At this point, they asked me to whiteboard an algorithm exercise.
No technical question about problems they are solving on their product, about javascript, react, front end practices. Standard non-sense interview where you are only judged by a single algorithm which you would never encounter in your day-to-day work.
They were just showing that they were bothered by not being able to get a working environment for me and they wanted to go home and mind their business.
After a while working on this algorithm, the tech lead said he 'had to leave' as he had tickets for a game.
I thought this couldn't get any worse but I was clearly wrong. He left me in the room with another colleague who also had/wanted to leave, I do not know whether they were unhappy with my performance or they just wanted to go home, anyway the way of handling communication in that moment just left me shocked.
To complete this utterly terrible and disastrous experience, the tech lead sprinted to his desk, packed the bag, and didn't even stop to say a word, a 'thank you for coming', 'we'll be in touch'.. nothing.
I got my backpack and left the office, to what has been one of the most unprofessional interview I have ever had.
The day after I received an email from the recruiter saying that Byhiras had a positive feedback and they wanted to see me for a final meeting and propose me an offer (?).
I blocked the recruiter, the recruitment company, and all of their contacts from all my network.
I wouldn't touch them or Byhiras with a barge pole.