I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at HARMAN
Interview
I received an unsolicited email from a company recruiter. After making email contact and learning a few details about the job, we arranged for a telephone interview. During the telephone interview we had a candid discussion about what I could do for the company and how the company could help me grow in my career. I was left with the feeling that the interview went well.
The next stage of the hiring process was to take an online skills test on standard C++. The test was very hard. It was full of questions with unusual and esoteric snippets of code that you were asked to analyze and state what the results would be. Even though I am a professional programmer with 15+ years experience using C, I totally bombed the test.
I never heard back from them.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The entire online skills test was very difficult. Only about 1/3 of the questions were 'sensible'. The remainder of the questions presented you with odd bits of code, classes with upside down copy constructors wrapped in sideways templates. Predicting the results of these snippets was difficult. My only thought was that this was a blunt tool if you were looking for a manager position. As a manager, if an engineer showed me any of the code from that test, I would mentor him on the importance of writing code humans can read and understand.