In the beginning of the process, before any kind of technical interview, I received an assignment (which should have been my first red flag).
The assignment, though not too long (1.5 - 2 hours), still took some of my time. I agreed to do it because I was promised it would be relevant to the continuation of the interview process, and that we would review it together, which did not happen—not even a little bit. The first technical interviewer I encountered had no information regarding my performance on the task, and if he did know, he did not mention a single thing about it to me, despite the fact that I asked him about it.
Both the task and the interview reminded me of questions I was asked in the industry 10 years ago. Not very insightful, not very interesting, and more focused on remembering code by heart than on the actual logical thinking behind the solution or a process.
For the Python question, although I answered partly correctly immediately and gave the full, complete solution after a small adjustment considering negative integers, the only feedback I received when I was told I would not be hired was that the name I gave the function was not good.
Honestly? Thank God I didn’t make it.