I applied through a staffing agency. The process took one week.

The role was a metadata software engineer role. The role required infrastructure experience and on-call work, etc. But I got what they call an "advanced question" OA to be solved in one hour. Basically, in the OA, you choose your programming language and then they give you an API framework in that language, like ASP.NET for C#, Spring for Java, Django for Python. Then the question is a service with a backend of real files for that API framework and a UI React frontend that shows the service output. You are required to add new features to the API framework from question one to question four with progressive difficulty. If you have no API framework-specific experience for years, you are finished. But then they expect people to use the AI chat to ask questions like "what does this file mean?" All in one hour.

The question is a huge mismatch because they expect you to use the AI bot in Codility to ask prompt engineering questions like "how to add a new API to this service." The OA was a nightmare and I didn't answer any question, submitted, and got rejected a few days later. Why is an infrastructure-heavy role asking candidates to answer tough API-specific backend questions with the excuse that "you have an AI bot to ask questions"? It's meant to test your vibe coding skills instead of actual technical problem solving. This OA is insanely messed up, and in one hour for four questions?

Add simple to then complex Django changes to a service. But the role is infra and not backend development.