The pattern of "stay silent and look dubious to make the candidate feel dumb" is a really common interview hazing strategy in my experience.
I think the next time I see it, I'm just going to question whether this is how they behave in their job too, even if it means ending the interview right there.
The pattern of "stay silent and look dubious to make the candidate feel dumb" is a really common interview hazing strategy in my experience.
How is this distinguishable from the interviewer hearing something from the candidate where an understandable reaction is to stay silent and look dubious? I've had candidates try to tell me something like: a null pointer member of a struct in C++ takes up no data. The first part of what you described was my natural reaction, not a hazing strategy. (I then went on to ask if they were sure about that.)
I think the next time I see it, I'm just going to question whether this is how they behave in their job too, even if it means ending the interview right there.