Heh. I did that once (with financials, I do learn what I can before going in). It was astounding how uptight and offended the interviewer got. Pretty sure he was an outlier, but it was very satisfying. I ended it by telling him I wasn't interested, and the reaction was even more satisfying.

That's the only time I've been that intentionally rude. He really deserved it, though. And (consistent with my other comment in this thread) I'd name them, but (a) they went out of business a long time ago, and (b) I can't quite remember the name of the firm. Something "clever" ca. 2004, missing a vowel.

> then ask painfully, acutely relevant questions about the company's financials, their development process, their technical debt, and their competition.

Is it rude to do that in an interview? How am I supposed to decide if I want to work for a company without some insight into those things?

If those are rude questions then I don't want to work there - not in this economy. We need to be picky who we work for so that company culture is favorable for employees. If we start working for whoever just cuts a paycheck then we become just another cog in the machine.

You can ask any question in a politer way and in a ruder way. Compare.

  A: What does your competition look like in this space?
  B: What's your plan for overcoming Company Y's huge lead in market share?
  
  A: Tell me about your development process.
  B: So what percentage of your process overhead is cargo cult edicts from upper management?
  
  A: How much runway do you have?  How long before profitability?
  B: When the current owners look for their exit, how screwed will I be?
  
  A: How do you deal with technical debt?
  B: Show me the worst code in your repo.

Exactly. If you're interviewing for a startup and you don't know what funding round they're on or how much runway they have, you're setting yourself up to get screwed.

Or is a junior engineer "just following orders." This is quite common practice, actually.

The end result is the same, if there is another option available: run

If the company focus on trivia that much on interviews and let juniors run the show expect no good senior working in there. That's never going to end well.