Samsung really was the worst interview experience.

One day, I suddenly get a call from a recruiter based on my profile from Naukri.com

On the call, the recruiter basically just asked me directly when I would like to have the interview.

I was initially impressed that they decided to move it fast but this feeling did not last long..

Immediately I got an invite for the interview.

I looked at it. And sighed.

For again, I realised that the interview was gonna suck.

Thing is … the first thing that was mentioned on the email was this.

This interview will require Internet Explorer. 
Please assure that you have a device that runs Windows 10/11.
You won't be able to give this interview from a Linux/MacOS

Ahh… The pain!!

The time booked was for 4 hours this Saturday. From 11AM to 3PM..

Feels like I wasted my whole Saturday for them.

I got my girlfriends old Surface laptop and hooked it up with my Apple Magic Keyboard and Apple Magic Mouse.

I had no way of connecting it to a monitor..

Since the charging port was occupied I could not connect my usual keyboard..

The Apple Magic Keyboard connected to that old surface laptop had very weird funcitonality..

The @ was mapped to "

The " was mapped to @

The # was mapped to £

All of this had to be done at the morning 9AM .

Given that I had zero time to configure the Windows laptop to my needs, I just said f it and went ahead with the hardware setup.

But nah.. this was not the only hardware setup that I had to manage!

I went ahead and opened Microsoft Edge and turned on Internet Explorer compatibility mode.

I opened their stupid shitty slow website.

It then installed 4 to 5 software on the laptop requiring admin priviliges each time to do so..

There was one place in the email where it simply asked me to disable admin priviliges escalation notifications so that I do not get pinged continously.

Things were definitely getting weirder.

After about 15 mins of all the installations I was able to spin up the Windows VM Server on Samsung Website from my Windows Device..

Then the email asked me to install some app on my iPhone . But this installation was not just simple.. It almost had a side loading thing.. It asked me to go to Settings>General>ProfileManagement and then click on “Trust Samsung”

God I had already lost trust in Samsung by now..

Using this I was able to join the meeting.

After a few minutes, I was met with a very rude proctor..

They checked my Government ID.. asked me to rotate the camera and show the room..

Then literally asked me to “throw” away my macbook!

My girlfriend was in the room.. The proctor rudely asked me to remove her from the room.

I was about to abort the interview.. The proctor literally threatened to shut off the interview. I was like .. Damn, I am not scared right now..

I am just scared that this entire process might have compromised the device and the data on it.

But somehow I still got to the problem statement. I had to mount my iPhone on a stand so that they could always see me typing.

And then the test and everything went silent..

The problem statement was really shitty.

Problem Statement

There is a cylinder it has m columns and n rows. Find the minimal number of rotations so that the stars in each row can be aligned in a column.

Oh god, I am not able to find this type of problem online.

I think it involves backtracking ? or DP ?

I had a brute force solution which worked for the sample problems and for the big problems too..

Somehow , it still exceeded the runtime allowed in Python.

I think if I had written the same solution in Cpp I would have got a better outcome.

Oof even writing about the problem statement seems so traumatic and might trigger PTSD ( dramatic much .. )

More about it later.

2 Hours later, I was just done with the whole thing.

This whole interview made me remind that my current job is not half bad lol!

Even if they do select me for their next rounds I am sure that I won’t be sitting for the next round.

I think this whole interview process really showed me the current corporate culture in Korea.

I think it’s quite toxic.

I should have not given the interview when I started to notice down the red flags.

Their first email itself was a major red flag!