Worked with a recruiter who initially scheduled a one-hour meet-and-greet with an Engineering Manager over coffee. The two of us discussed the company, the position, and talked in general about web development technology. Was great. Loved talking shop with this guy.
A day later, I was scheduled for a technical phone screen with a Sr. Engineer. The interviewer described his role for about a minute, then went straight into having me do coding exercises.
We signed into an online code editor that allowed the interviewer and myself to see each other type in the editor, real-time.
The first question was FizzBuzz. I had heard this question before, years ago, and knew it was a simple loop with some modulus operators and if statements.
After that, we proceeded onto the next question: write the algorithm to generate the "look-and-say sequence." He explained it and showed me example output in the code editor. It was easy enough to grasp.
I stumbled for a bit, feeling panicked and nervous. He asked me to talk through how to solve it, which I did--and that helped a bit. I still struggled to translate my thought process to code under the pressure though.
After about ten or fifteen minutes, I came up with a solution that was approximate but didn't produce the right output right away.
The interviewer ended the call after this exercise. I felt like I was probably close enough that they would be fine proceeding, but they chose not to continue any interviews with me, ending my candidacy then and there.
After I got off the phone, I spent about five minutes looking over and modifying my algorithm before I got the correct output.
