I was scheduled for a phone call with the hiring manager, which I expected to be technical. However, it was mostly a useless chat with no skill assessment and a vague job description.

Despite this, I still felt (and believe) I was a very good fit for the job, as far as I could tell.

Soon after the call on Friday, I received a ridiculous homework assignment via email attachment. It was supposed to be completed in about 1-2 hours and uploaded to Azure.

Now, apart from the fact that offline assignments are unfair (due to the lack of interactive conversation) and unethical (as my time has value), that weekend my baby, my wife, and I got sick with high fever. Additionally, the washing machine broke down, and a bunch of other problems arose.

I ended up reading the email late Sunday night, only to discover that the deadline was the following day, which is unacceptable.

I stupidly tried to complete it anyway, despite everything, and realized that it's impossible to finish in 2 hours, which was already more time than I could afford to spend. There's no way to design the model and API, write all the tests for 300/400 lines of code (TDD without finishing? Or get some design and no tests?), upload it, and verify it's working in such a short timeframe.

Furthermore, if you are new to Azure, you have to create an account (or attempt to retrieve a Microsoft one, which failed and took me ages). This involves spending at least 20 minutes with forms requiring credit/debit card details. Yes, you have to, because they do not offer a time-limited throwaway account for this purpose. You must use your "free" one-time subscription credit (I consumed a third, 60 Eur), which cannot be used for anything else. You also still have to keep your card on file and remember to unsubscribe before you start paying out of your own pocket.

Did they provide any guide or resource on how to create an account in the email? No, you have to search yourself, spending another 30 minutes at least looking for their documentation, which is outdated because the interface has changed meanwhile. This means more time to understand how to enable the repo to push code, how to debug, because chances are it won't work the first time.

You end up spending 2 hours on irrelevant tasks that have nothing to do with skill assessment, which could be easily and more accurately done by phone or face-to-face in 30/45 minutes with no risk of cheating.

What they probably wanted to verify is your willingness to trash your weekends. Well, no, I very much prefer to spend them looking for other employers next time, thank you.

On top of this, I didn't hear back until 3-4 weeks later, when I received an automatic message stating I had been rejected as they had closed the position. They don't even bother writing directly.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to work with and for such people anyway. There's a lack of professionalism in every single step and detail.

The test itself may sound cool and smart to them, but it's actually disrespectful and pointless since it doesn't test any real engineering or coding skill. Anybody with a little experience could do it successfully. And even if you have no clue how to do it, there are plenty of guides online, or you could have a friend do it for you.

Bottom line: the whole process is amateurish, the lack of respect for the candidate is annoying, and it's probably the worst interview experience of my life.

Write a small web service providing playing decks and the ability to do some operations on them (e.g., shuffle, cut, etc.) with a framework of your choice.