I had gotten through 6 interviews without a hitch. They were all culture related, personality-based, "how will you fit with our team" type. Young, scrappy kind of team, who didn't believe in big corporation-type interviews.
Well, the interview in question came. I'm a rockstar when it comes to interviews. I'm personable, confident, funny, and I carry myself really well in conversation. But what was different?
The guy I interviewed with previously held a position with Microsoft.
And he did things the Microsoft way.
I'm nothing but a loose guy. I don't have the college education to back me. I hadn't worked on any famed projects. I didn't commit to open-source projects, have a network to vouch for me. I had a few side projects, but they were nothing more than me just building things. I owned a few companies in my mid-late teens that sold for a good amount of money, but nothing I'd write home about. I'm a utility player that can wear many hats: front-end, back-end, sysadmin, marketing, advertising, copywriting, legal stuff, financials, client management, databases... I don't do any one thing particularly well (except for maybe back-end) but I do all of them pretty damn good.
And when I heard this guy was from MSFT I thought "well this is going to suck." Why? Because I thought that he may not care that I'm as scrappy as I am.
The position I was applying for wasn't anything specific. It was just that utility player. I wasn't expected to write gobs of code, I wasn't expected to manage systems. I was just expected to do what was asked of me, and take ownership of it.
So the interview began. He asked me some really, really low-level questions. Questions that you'd be asked on an exam if you're a CSCI major at MIT. I had no idea how to answer them, so I tried to explain them high-level and ignore the fact he wanted low-level answers.
That got me nowhere except him thinking down on me.
When it came down to me writing code, I just blanked. He wanted me to write a class for a shopping cart and he wanted to see how I'd apply a coupon code, how I'd manage the items in the cart, how I'd sort and group them together, etc. It lasted all of five minutes when I just disconnected from the internet, took the battery out of my phone, and sat there.
I suffer from crippling anxiety, and this was no exception. I've learned how to manage it better since, though.
About twenty minutes after my meltdown I emailed the CEO of the company. I was in tears, because I wanted the job so badly, and I explained that to him. I said that the guy was an asshole, really belittling, and didn't reflect the values of those who I had spoke with prior.
I still got the job, and I'm still with them today. It's the butt of a lot of the jokes we have with our team of five. "Josh, is this someone you'd consider hanging up on?" or "Well it's okay, because Josh once hung up on someone that was interviewing him. Thus, this isn't that bad in comparison!"
Damn right I take it like a champ.