The worst job interview I ever had

A regexp basically comes with a compiler. Who knows what sort of optimisations they've built in under the hood. It wouldn't be surprising if there was a special fast-path for efficiently searching for a substring; that'd be effective in practice.

But more importantly it is hugely context sensitive on how often the function is going to be called and what IO needs to happen around it to decide if speed matters at all.

Using a regex as a first attempt is entirely reasonable. Especially in an interview about Python. If we care about efficiently doing substring matching Python isn't the language of choice. If a programmer just wants to remember how regex work and get on with their day they'll do fine at handling string problems.

My worst was right out of college. It was for a really small company that needed a web developer.

I showed up, and it was two guys that were around my age.

They seemed annoyed by the interview, it was completely unprofessional, and I was told I didn't get the job because I didn't like a specific sports team.

I found my next job the next week at 3x the pay.

I'd rather work at a company where the interviewer smokes a cigarette in the conference room than one where they give off rigidly hierarchical "nobody has any agency" vibes. Sure we might go bankrupt but I'll have to put up with a whole lot less dumb "we don't pay you to think" bullshit and morale will be way higher the whole way there.

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".

Indeed. I've had a bunch of jobs, and my experience has been that the job interview sort of reflects the people and structure / organization you'll be working with.

To put it this way: The best places I've worked at also had good interview rounds, while some of my least enjoyable employers had less enjoyable interview rounds. The absolute worst interviews have been at places I didn't get an offer, or I didn't pursue afterwards.

If the person interviewing me is rude, glued to their phone, uninterested, and in general indifferent to what happens - I'm going to assume that's a reflection of how the company culture is. I can also understand that not all people tasked with interviews will bring their A game every time, and that there may be external factors at play - but those places usually show a pattern.

I've yet to interview at a place where the interview was terrible all around, and then find out that the company is gold.