Code for America Staff Software Engineer interview questions

The first interview was a standard talent acquisition "getting to know you" phone call. The second interview, and primary topic of this review, was a pairing exercise in which the interviewer was the driver, and I was the navigator. The exercise, however, was to implement a Set container in Java, even though the primary need of the position was a full-stack Ruby on Rails experience. I played along and completed the exercise, but I'll admit that perhaps my annoyance showed through. It was never communicated what they were trying to learn from this exercise, even though I explicitly asked when it was scheduled.