Ample Mechanical Engineer interviews, decoded.

I went through 3 rounds in total. The first two were 1-hour technical screens, one with the hiring manager and another with a member of the technical staff, both of which went pretty well. The last one was a 30-minute chat with the CTO, which honestly wasn't great. I prefer interviews that feel like a genuine conversation, but this one felt like an aggressive grilling, and on top of that, the CTO was late. Even though I answered everything correctly, the vibe was super off-putting. They then invited me for a half-day onsite interview, but I turned it down because of how the previous round went and didn't want to waste anyone's time.

It was a really bad interview process. In the first 1:1 interview, the interviewer asked about preventing gasket creep. I suggested overloading the bolt, and they laughed, saying it wouldn't work. But I looked it up, and overloading the bolt *can* compensate for gasket creep. Apparently, they were only looking for the answer 'compression limiters', and you're supposed to guess what they're thinking.

Really bad interview experience. They asked about gasket creep. My specialized background led me to say you can compensate for it by overloading the bolts. The interviewer laughed and said that wouldn't work. I later found a PHD thesis that said exactly what I said was a method to deal with gasket creep. The interviewer clearly wanted only one answer: 'compression limiters'. He called all other correct answers 'ridiculously wrong' because he's obviously only ever used compression limiters for gasket creep.