Monzo Bank Senior Software interview questions

Probably one of the worst screening calls I’ve had in a while. I couldn’t tell you what the entire process was I only made it to the screening call. Normally these calls are pretty easy, tell me a bit about yourself, explain a project you worked on, and a general chat about the role.... This wasn’t one of those calls. Firstly this guy didn’t seem that interested to start with but the entire call was just him asking me to explain a project I worked on him digging into the most minute detail of it. He really wanted to dig into things that were way outside of my control. IE I said this project had to connect to an API, but he decided he really wanted to discuss how we authenticated to this api which is a really minute detail; the api is from a third party anyway’s. He ended up prodding me to explain the ins and out of how http vs https works and how ssl certification works; and a simple explanation wouldn’t suffice here. Moreover, later on he was heavily prodding me on how garbage collection works in different languages and a simple explanation of how GC works wouldn’t suffice, he wanted the real nuts a bolts of it. IE how does it work with the compiler etc; how is it done in C/C++ which was a bit annoying since I haven’t done C in like 6 years. Anyway’s I was unsurprisingly rejected. If these guys want a university grad that can recite a bunch of CS fundamentals they ought to hire junior devs and not senior ones. If they want someone that can actually write code, this interview definitely wasn’t designed to detect that. If your one of these book smart devs you’ll be all right, but if your tactical and good at writing code; but cant remember all that book stuff you learn in uni word for word; you’ll probably bomb. But on a positive, they sent me my rejection in under 24 hours :)