JPMorganChase Mainframe Applications Development Manager/Senior Developer interview questions

I was contacted to come for an in-person interview approximately 1 week after submitting a targetted resume to an online posting on the JP Morgan website. I arrived at the appointed time and was escorted from the lobby to the IT department offices by the group administrative assistant. The office area consisted of DOZENS of empty cubicles (This was the former Bear Stearns IT department so that was hardly a shock). I was quickly introduced to three members of the techincal stafff who brought me into a conference room and commenced a "lightning round" barrage of technical questions. With the exception of several obscure SQL codes, the questions were reasonable. The nature of the questions indicated that the system they supported was barely functional and required a Herculean effort to keep it running. I came ot of this meeting with a gut feeling that I wouldn't mesh too well with these folks. After 30 minutes, I was brought to the office of the line manager who asked me about projects I'd managed and how I had dealt with release control issues. He asked about my experience with Margin processing and conflict resolution with external stakeholders. After half an hour, I was brought in to meet the Managing Director in charge of the area. We had both worked for the same investment bank prior to our respective current positions so we talked about how that firm dealt with certain issues. He also asked me about migrating a mainframe application to a JAVA framework using ORACLE database. I asked him about the current workflow to see if was even scalable but he was more interetsed in how I would approach the issue than any specific solution. I then met the MD of the client server area who asked me about my back office processing experience as well as a description of a recent initiative I had taked from inception to implementation. I then was brought back to the MD and manager for a couple of brief follow up sessions. When they concluded, the interview was over; I had been there approximately threee hours. I had a much more positive feel after talking to the management. About 10 days later, I was contacted to come in for a second round. I was again group interviewed by the three members of the technical staff and I felt a much better rapport with the team. I then met with the team manager who asked me some more general questions about change control management and a specific question about how to dynamically change JCL to avoid having to go through the turnover process. I gave him a back of the envelope response since a detailed answer was not possible unless I throughly knew their change control process. I got positive feedback from the manager and the interview concluded. Elapsed time was about two and a half hours. I never heard from them again. I subsequently found out from a family friend who worked at JP Morgan that the position was never filled. I don't think it would have killed them to send me an e-mail response that no offer was forthcoming after almost six hours of interviews.