The important mistakes that the author here made were assuming the interviewer wanted him to work quickly, without looking anything up, without asking for clari

The important mistakes that the author here made were assuming the interviewer wanted him to work quickly, without looking anything up, without asking for clarification, and without collaboration. The author seems to still be making this mistake by assessing his performance by the code he wrote, rather than the (lack of) dialogue he had with the interviewer. Consider that the interviewer has now seen that this person will choose to, without clear understanding of either the goals of the task or the task itself, work alone as though he must solve the problem in isolation in order to prove himself. The most important thing that a candidate needs to be able to do on the job is discuss expectations; failing to do this in the interview is more egregious than any compiler error. Another important thing is to understand the problems they are working on; failing to even discuss the problem is more egregious than any compiler error. Another is collaboration and humility; you can demonstrate these skills in a coding interview as well. This interview demonstrated many more important indicators of a poor fit than typing ones. Just because you pose a coding problem doesn't mean you're unable to assess candidates on the things that matter.