Horrible Goldman Sachs Superday

Recently, I applied for an associate-level software engineering position through the company's website and was promptly scheduled for a superday interview. I had previously experienced a GS superday, so I was prepared for the typical structure, including a round called "software engineering best practices" or something similarly named. However, this experience was unlike any other. Here's an overview of what transpired inside "Software Engineering Best Practice" Round: - The interview began strangely, with one interviewer expressing disbelief about the size of a codebase I had worked on, which was larger than 10GB. The interviewer implied that I was lying and interrupted me with unrelated questions, creating an uncomfortable start. - How to Detect a Cycle in a Graph: I suggested using DFS or topological sorting to find a cycle in a graph, only to be interrupted with questions about the basic concepts of DFS. It felt as if the focus shifted from assessing my solution to questioning my understanding of elementary terms, interviewer literally shouted "WHAT IS DFS, WHY WE USE DFS, WHAT IS NODE etc etc". - The Coffee Shop Scenario: Asked what I would do as a software engineer in a coffee shop, I initially misunderstood this as a system design question. Once clarified, I provided an answer using a heap structure, but the interviewer shook his head, interrupting with scenarios that seemed to contradict the original question. - The most baffling part was when I was asked how to find the five closest people in a crowd (potentially of 1 million) in O(1) time complexity followed by previous coffee shop problem. The interviewer claimed it was possible using a Quadtree and criticized my knowledge of data structures because I wasn't familiar with it (is this even possible? correct me if I am wrong). Throughout the interview, I was continually interrupted, and the experience felt adversarial rather than evaluative. After the round, I was swiftly rejected. Reflection and Questions: This interview experience was far from what I expected. It left me wondering if the interviewer's approach was a testing strategy or simply a poorly conducted interview. Should I reach out to HR about this experience, or is it best to chalk this up to a learning experience and move on? Was I expected to know the specific data structure (Quadtree) that was mentioned, or was the assessment unfair? Or what are they expecting from these questions?