I’m sorry that happened to you. Do you think that the engineer that ambushed you felt threatened by your candidacy? I’ve been around a bunch of engineers who hate hiring to “raise the bar”…
It's possible, I have also seen that, especially in small companies where everyone is very protective of their turf. I also had a terrible interview experience years after that where I was being interviewed for a CTO position by the company COO and the CTO that was leaving.
The CTO was really harsh in the interview, he gave me a bunch of brain teaser questions, followed by some algorithms questions where he was expecting one correct answer and would interrupt me if I was going a different way. We barely had any of what I would expect would be proper questions for a CTO interview (eg stakeholder management, people management, technical architecture)
It was so bad that the COO sent me a personal note apologising after the interview, but said that they had to go with the CTOs judgement on who was better qualified to succeed him. That was a pretty surreal experience and I think it was because the CTO already had someone in mind to replace him.
The CTO was really harsh in the interview, he gave me a bunch of brain teaser questions, followed by some algorithms questions where he was expecting one correct answer and would interrupt me if I was going a different way. We barely had any of what I would expect would be proper questions for a CTO interview (eg stakeholder management, people management, technical architecture)
It was so bad that the COO sent me a personal note apologising after the interview, but said that they had to go with the CTOs judgement on who was better qualified to succeed him. That was a pretty surreal experience and I think it was because the CTO already had someone in mind to replace him.