Where to start:
I had the displeasure of interviewing for a SAS Software Engineer position and went through multiple rounds, including a coding assessment. The process was extremely disrespectful. I was given a simple coding question, which I solved correctly in Python, a language I am fluent in. During the final interview, the interviewer explicitly said I could choose any language I wanted—but they themselves were unfamiliar with basic Python concepts, such as dictionaries and variable swapping.
Throughout the interview, the interviewer repeatedly stated that they did not care about time complexity, efficiency, or syntax, yet they did not ask any follow-up questions to probe or understand my solution. Despite my correct solution, I was told it “was not what they were looking for,” even though there was no way to run or verify the code. This felt biased and unprofessional. What they should have done was acknowledge my fluency with the language and its libraries, and my ability to write code that handles edge cases efficiently. I explained my thought process, walked through each line of code with an example test case, and concluded with the time complexity of my solution. Yet the interviewer remained silent and extremely critical, as if it was my fault they could not understand my code. They also claimed my solution was overly complex, even though it was correct. Subjective judgments like this have no place in a technical interview.
After the final round, I was ghosted by the recruiter, receiving no follow-up communication for over two weeks—even after I reached out asking for feedback and updates.
Overall, the interview process was inconsistent, the feedback contradictory, and the interviewer lacked the necessary knowledge to fairly evaluate my solution. The ghosting was also incredibly disrespectful. I am someone who has solved thousands of LeetCode questions, and being treated this way is simply inhumane.
