After long delays from first hearing about this role from an agent, I had a long screening telephone interview for the role of contract embedded software developer, and was eventually invited to attend an in-person interview at Oncam Grandeye's poky office in Guildford Science Park - a pleasant, if inconvenient location. The interview was technical, but I will try to minimize those details in this review. The interview was one of the most bizarre experiences I've had. I have been a professional contractor for over thirty years. My experience with the C language covers a similar time, and I have used the C++ language for over twenty years. I'd have hoped that the interview be pitched appropriately. Like so many software development interviews these days, the interviewers were not competent to ask pertinent questions about development and instead concentrated on the minutiae of a programming language; this a completely different thing, and often these questions can only be answered if the candidate happens to know the same exact irrelevant minutiae (that any professional developer would look-up if needed). After a brief demonstration of the company's cameras by one of the interviewers, we were joined by another and the interview began. An initial discussion of my experience began. I mentioned one Linux kernel-level problem I had solved to the delight of my client as it was a show-stopper in a product that was due for release within days. I described the solution. One of the interviewers did not accept that my (proven) solution was possible. He gave an obvious "we've got a right one here" look to his colleague, and from that point on I felt that they considered me a fraud and a liar. I was given two A4 sheets of paper: one with tightly and faintly printed C code, and one with C++. These were packed with carefully crafted bugs, (and unintentional ones provided by the authors). I was asked to explain the code and point out the bugs. This I did, but the interviewers were not impressed by my highlighting their own unintentional bugs. Interspersed with this I was asked random technical questions, for example to explain the pitfalls of multi-threaded programming. All these questions I answered correctly. This went on for a full two hours. What was incongruously bizarre was that in the midst of this interrogation - for that's what it felt like - one of the interviewers jumped up and went over to the whiteboard. Now the rest of the interview had concentrated on advanced programming questions, so what happened next was quite shocking. The interviewer wrote on the whiteboard the C programming language symbols "<" and "<<" and asked me what the difference was between them. For those not familiar with C programming, this is a question that someone with thirty days' experience in C could answer, let alone thirty years'. To compound the insult, the interview then wrote the symbols "|" and "||" and asked me to explain them too. The interviewer seemed to be anxious to "catch me out", whereas I was thinking "you cannot be serious". It was as if the interviewers thought that I had been cheating somehow - how I cannot fathom - and this shock tactic would bring out the truth. Perhaps they thought I had a hidden radio feeding me answers or that another previous candidate had smuggled out the question papers and apprised me. After the interview I had no feedback from the agent, and she told me that the client had not got back to her about me or other candidates either. I would not have wanted to work in this - in my opinion - toxic atmosphere. I wondered whether the interview process was a game for the interviewers rather than a genuine recruitment exercise.