To reliably prove your age (e.g. in a store or a concert venue), you have to get a provisional driving license. If you are not qualified (maybe still disqualified to drive, or eyesight problems), tough luck, I'm not aware of any other government-issued photo ID in the UK. Foreigners previously had BRPs, but they are not issued since 2025, everything is electronic now.
There is also the "PASS" scheme where private providers (like banks) can issue plastic cards with photos, but I've heard they are regularly rejected by various venues as proof of age and/or identity, there is no legal requirement to accept them, just a recommendation. And I can imagine non-UK entities care about these about as much as they do about ISIC. TSA was definitely unhappy when I tried using ISIC about ten years ago for a US domestic flight.
And for some passports in the last, say, six years, the probability is significantly increased. There is no official information as far as I know, just some anecdotical evidence from forums.
And before all of that you have to remember all your trips for the last 10 years to enter into DS-160 (you learn to keep a spreadsheet after the first time you do that, UK visas require that as well). And secure an appointment, which (since 2025) must happen in the country of your citizenship, or the country of your residence, which you should prove (sometimes it takes years to get residency documents in some EU countries). If you're unlucky, the waiting time for an appointment might be measured in years too. If you get a waiting time after all, sometimes there are just no appointments available whatsoever with no extra information.
Attending a company event is, of course, not a valid reason to get an expedited appointment. At least not that I've heard.
And I'm sure there are even more tricky things that I haven't heard of.
I got mine when I was 12, IIRC. Not a credit, of course, it was a debit card, but not all countries bother to differentiate between the two, it was just a “bank card”. And I believe it had a credit card BIN because all local banks did that to get more in processing fees.
Happens regularly. And if you don't have a visa for the new destination, well, too bad.
E.g. on December 20 a WizzAir flight 4768 was diverted to Thessaloniki (Greece) instead of its destination Skopje (North Macedonia): https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/WZZ4768/history/2025... . Those with Schengen visas (or appropriate passports) got a bus to Skopje. The rest allegedly waited for three hours and then got returned to Cyprus (EU, but not Schengen), but to a different airport (Paphos instead of Larnaca). So if someone had a car left on Larnaca's parking, too bad.
> They use scamming approaches more misleading than airline's and in cases straight up lie.
Would you mind sharing some examples? My only complaints with DB are cancellations and delays. Well, the ticketing might be a bit confusing the first time you realize "ticket" and "seat reservation" are two completely independent entities. Similarly, rules for which train you're allowed to take might be a bit confusing. But I wouldn't call it scamming.
Local trains in Moscow and Saint Petersburg ("elektrichka" with all local stops) may get delayed by a few minutes sometimes, true. But e.g. several trains being delayed by ten minutes because of an ice rain is newsworthy. At least that was the case on several directions I knew about.
> We focus on system design, architectural decisions, and reasoning through trade-offs.
Are we still talking about hiring juniors? I hope I misunderstood and it's not about "design messaging app" type of questions. Otherwise we're firmly back in the Leetcode land.
> cloning the github repo we used for our interview
Unless it's a very well-known big tech, I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable running any externally provided code during the interview. For all I know, it's RCE with potential to steal cookies and/or crypto.