I keep hearing and reading horror stories like this one on HN and other website. I never did interviews at big companies, nor did I do any in the US, in 15 year

I keep hearing and reading horror stories like this one on HN and other website. I never did interviews at big companies, nor did I do any in the US, in 15 years of freelancing, I only had once a technical interview, with a C++ guru, I failed most of the questions but still got hired because "you still did good, kept calm and asked good questions". In my last gig, it was for a work on a Java application. I was upfront that I only did a bit of Java in school, but that I was more of a C++ guy. The Java guru hirer was like "Yeah, if you know C++, you'll get Java quickly" they were more interested in my experience with video and image processing. I basically avoid to do HR-based interviews. Short-circuit them when you can.