Hi LC community,
I wanted to share my horrifying interview experience with the Apple IS&T team, so that people can give a second thought before engaging with them.

Starting with, I have a recruiter who has been extremely rude with me from Day 1. There were instances where this guy shouted on me for just asking him "how many total rounds of interview will be there". His words were - "You don't have to bother about upcoming rounds". I am not sure if he is this way or going through some personal crisis.

Moving on I had my DSA coding round scheduled. The interviewer looked sleepy and uninterested. There were no greetings and introductions and he went straight to the problem. He asked me an LC hard problem which is this - https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-runes-to-add-to-cast-spell/ . My initial thought was I wont be able to solve it. But after some initial trying I could code it and run it through some test cases. It took me 40 mins to think and code the solution. I solve it with O(n+m) time complexity. As the interview was of 45 mins, in the last 5 mins the interviewer tells me he wants an optimised solution. I ask him what degree of optimisation he wants to which he remains silent.

Exactly 2hrs latter I get a generic rejection mail. I reach out to the recruiter for the interview feedback. I was shocked to the core to see how exaggerated and false the feedbacks were. The interviewer mentioned that I retracted back on my original solution and contradicted myself (which is absolutely false as I stuck with a single approach all through). He told that I didn't come up with an optimised solution despite hints (he was silent for most of the interview and the only hint he gave was you can travel in a matrix in all 4 directions :P). I told the recruiter this thing and he started getting defensive and started giving rude criticisms to me. He told me that they are Apple and their interview panel are some of the most experienced people in the industry. Asked him to talk in a professional tone and ended the call.

At this point I feel extremely sad that I got rejected despite despite solving an LC hard question correctly in 40 mins. I have seen extremely negative reviews about the IST&T org, but never expected this level of unprofessionalism especially in the interview process. I feel people shouldn't engage with this org as professionalism and transperency is totally absent here. It will be an utter waste of time interviewing with them.