> This resonates. I'm now in my early 60s. Oddly, in my 20s and 30s I could interview reasonably well. But as time went on, I think the interviewing styles became more confrontational.Whereas earlier on they were trying to find reasons to hire you, later on it was more that they were trying to find reasons not to hire you. Possibly this is somewhat attributable to ageism, but I think it was a change in the industry as well.

At one point in my past, I was planning to do a career change over to Investment Banking (I know, I know... don't laugh), so I interviewed at a bunch of banks. These guys are notorious about how annoying and uncomfortable they make their interviews. They'll deliberately grief you and try to throw you off your game to see how you react, soft-skill-wise, under stress. Like they'll ask you a question about calculating a discounted cash flow, and then while you're answering they'll make a phone call to someone, just to see how you deal with disrespect.

While tech interviewing hasn't gone to those extremes, I definitely agree we seem to be moving that direction: interviewers seem to be deliberately looking for ways to stress/haze the candidate, for whatever reason. Something I never experienced interviewing in tech < 2005 or so.