Ugly ugly interview. Like some of the other interviews on this page, I got the impression that it was a very political organization, and the CIO seemed very heavy handed. They asked a couple questions on very specific patterns, and seemed to have the mindset that there is only one correction implementation of SOLID principles.
To be more specific, I was contacted by a recruiter over a week ago and told that this was a very difficult interviewer. The CIO has read some books and had a very specific definition of SOLID principles he expected candidates to answer. And I'm not talking in terms of knowing things like single responsibility, but there are actually very specific object creation patterns they are looking for.
The recruiter said to avoid the interview like the plague because the CIO was very snobby and only hired 6 out of the 60 candidates that interviewed for prior positions. I accidentally applied to the same position a week later, and received a call from the HR Manager, saying the same CIO had requested to speak with me and skipped the first round of interviews.
I spoke with HR and discussed my concerns, both with the previous recruiter and the reviews on this website. He explained Chen Med's side of the story, which is basically that the reviews are from ex-Java developers who are bitter. I can't attest to that one way or another.
I mentioned to the HR manager that I did not want to attend a question and answer session on SOLID principles or taking the time to prepare for an interview that futile. I was reassured that the CIO was none of the things mentioned in the reviews, and he was very interested in having "a discussion" on engineering, but that it wouldn't be a quiz show.
I took quite a bit of time preparing for the interview. Created slides, prepared prior code samples, read books on SOLID principles and "The Agile Samurai" - all in hopes we could discuss code and I could demonstrate my capabilities as an engineer.
I didn't get a chance to discuss any of it. They answered a couple questions about garbage collection, using statements, and one about SOLID principles. The entire time they looked at me like I was a jackass who didn't even belong in the same room with.
About 10 minutes in I stopped the interview and explained that I had prepared code samples and was much more happy to show them code samples then continue playing through a quiz show. The CIO said he was going to have to cut this short because that wasn't how they conducted their interviews.
The whole thing seemed more like another exercise in "I know more than you" then it was any sort of actual technical interview/discussion. I wouldn't recommend wasting your time.
