posted 18 years ago
I'd never burn any bridges, but I have politely stopped things early, especially in phone interviews. A couple of times the position was not as advertised to me and it became very clear quickly, so I asked "Is this more of an admin role?". Answer was "Yes", so I let them know I wasn't interested, this has happened numerous times, recruiters don't seem to filter well most of the time.
The time I end one early that actually fit was the interviewer asking pointless questions like someone said. How many classes in your last project, how many lines of code, how many tables, etc. I couldn't see what he hoped to learn from that, if I designed something with 100 classes but it should have only taken 10 is that good? If I wrote thousands of lines of code when hundreds would have done is that good? You can't judge the answers to these questions without knowing about the project itself.
I'm sure he was unimpressed with me, but I was equally as unimpressed with him. Interviews are bidirectional, especially if you know your skills and experience are up to date.