On the last months I had a couple of the most aggressive interviews on my current job hunt.
It started with one of the interviewers stating that I was being recorded and that all answers should be provided from the top of my head, that if I looked elsewhere it would be considered as cheating and against my candidacy.
Wait what? Are you serious? This is a senior or staff level position. If you do not trust me to even do an interview why start this process at all?
Then while talking about technology we were discussing concepts and this same individual starts to talk about specifics and "educates" the candidate and tells me to validate this afterwards. Come on, of course I will not contradict you, but if this is the kind of culture you are allowing count me out.
Then on to systems design on whiteboard. Here I'm asking lots of questions regarding the domain and all they answer is to make an assumption. Then they start asking how to develop the solution but there is a catch, the problem statement talks about an MVP which means this will not be the final solution nor will it handle all functional and quality characteristics by definition. This will probably be a discarded project that needs to reach production as fast as possible hence the important part is to understand the domain, the participants and the interactions, not the technology used.
I felt like I was being interviewed by my past self from 12 o 15 years ago I was a real pain for candidates. This and title inflation on many organizations makes really hard to be on both sides.
From this experience I can reflect back to my own path and how I handled interviews from the other side. I for sure was a real pain for the candidates. I apologize and commit to do differently from now on. Also being on the hunt for long months has also shown me a different perspective which probably I wouldn't have been able to see otherwise as this is something you can't learn unless you have to walk the path.
Whenever I find myself as an interviewer I'll do my best to keep all this in mind and be more understanding of both sides.