I applied through a recruiter. The process took four weeks.

I saw a review which had the same generic rejection, so I thought I'd post. I had the initial past projects interview, and that went well with quick feedback. Then I moved on to the coding exercise: the web crawler.

I feel questions were loaded towards an expected answer, which I queried in the call but was refuted. I still think this was the case, as I've been on the other side of that table enough times to recognise a scorecard in action. To be honest, this is the kind of exercise I dislike. It creates an advantage for those who have written this kind of thing before and doesn't appear to have much to do with the role.

The rejection process was much slower, and I got the exact same response as the other review: "Other candidates had a better understanding of the problem." That is okay; I've had worse responses in the past, but it lacks authenticity. Anyhow, I suspect I wasn't a good fit, and given another chance, I would probably opt for a pair session over a take-home assignment. That's hindsight in action. The process is quite lengthy, and the email communications feel like an AI bot (I don't know if they are), but it kind of works even if impersonal.

See review above for details.