Recently I had quite a strange experience during the technical interview for .Net tech lead position. I have 10+ years in the industry, worked in several big companies, passed dozens of interviews and hosted dozens of interviews as well, but I stumped upon such experience for the first time.

Basically when the call started the interviewer introduced himself in 2 words, then without any additional ceremonies asked me “what is the garbage collection in .Net?”.
For me that question seemed quite ridiculous and banal, as EVERY list of questions for the .Net developer interview contains this question in top 10 and there is no chance that a candidate for a tech lead position with 10+ years of experience doesn’t know the answer.

I was preparing for a discussion about microservices architecture, cloud computing and high load data processing (these things were stipulated in the vacancy’s requirements) and instead I received a stupid question that every junior is aware of. Moreover there is a joke that when the tech interviewer is out of questions on C# he asks about GC, so this question has been considered a moveton for a long time. But in my case it was the first question that the interviewer asked.

So I subconsciously treated that question as an insult, became angry, nervous and the interview went bad after the very beginning. Also the interviewer reminded me of the embittered uni professor who tries to prove you that you know nothing.
Now I feel perplexed, as I feel that if I didn’t get out of control after that question I would have passed that interview without any problem and that position was interesting for me.

Could you share your thoughts on the interviewer’s motivation for asking such a question and the possible way to cope with emotions in such situations?