HSBC Software Engineer Interview Experience — Failed the First Round After a Deep Dive on My AI Project

1. They mostly dug deep into my AI project, down to how I wrote the prompt for each subagent, how it was configured, and what the delimiter was for the streaming-chat websocket.
2. They asked about specific K8S configuration parameters.
3. I gave a self-introduction in English.
4. For experienced hires, they said they want people from a QS top 100 school, and prefer people with experience at big overseas tech companies, ideally AWS.

Overall it felt really bad. The interviewer interrupted me constantly, and it felt like they didn't know how to build the project themselves and were now asking me how to do it. They called it needing to have hand-off ability, but it felt like they were just there to copy my project. When this happens, you may want to spot it and interrupt the interviewer's questions.

I've already interviewed back and forth many times, and every time it's a different team and I have to start over from the beginning. In the middle of it they also asked me to go to the local office to attend a talk (which, of course, had no real substance either).