Phone interview went well. Heard response within an hour, inviting me for onsite.

Scheduled onsite for about a month out. Took a week off to study 12 hour days, and each morning and evening for the rest of the month. Studied my ass off, and was feeling quite confident.

Nailed xfunctional, mangerial, and system design.

Code inverviews I got extremely nervous, and lost my brain in my recursion. As soon as I finished, like literally one minute after the interview ended, I realized my mistake.

I am most perturbed about misguidence from the recruiter. They explicitly told me I would be able to use my console and execute code during the interview. This was how i prepared every night. But when it came down to the interview, they disabled all execution. To me, this is absurd. One - theres no need to disable your console, its literally how we work. I shouldnt be crippled by not having a console, anymore than forcing us to use binary instead of integers. These are not crutches, they are an integral part of the development process. Secondly - IF the recrutier told me upfront that i would not be allowed to use the console, i would have respected it and prepared accordingly. The dymanic of studying and writing code changes substantially whether or not you are able to debug. Needless to say, I performed subpar due to this misguidance.

I was not optimistic, but after 2 days I received an offer for IC5. I thought i would have been an excellent fit for the team, both culture wise and the value I can add, but I could tell by the reaction of my interviewer that he was dissapointed. I suppose that was just one data point of many though!