A screen, then an interview — all three rounds in a single day, for a role at an SSD manufacturer. The candidate had done his homework and then some.
Round one went so well the interviewer ran out of questions and spent twenty minutes selling him on the company and the area. He passed the coding test in half the allotted time. He spent the gap before round two browsing real estate nearby.
Round two was unremarkable. Round three was the boss of the round-one interviewer, and it went badly on purpose. He was handed deliberately shoddy code and asked how it could be improved. The candidate said a hash table. The boss insisted they aren't, and kept pushing — everyone he interviews says hash tables, apparently, and he was tired of it.
Then came a question about memory addressing. Fair game, the candidate allowed, if it mattered for the job. He didn't have it ready.
“If you can't answer this, then you're too stupid to work here.”
He offered his best guess. The interviewer said they were done. A T20 university, for the record.