I applied through a recruiter. The interview process took several weeks. A recruiter reached out to me and invited me for an interview. I had two calls with engineers, where we discussed my past projects and the take-home task in depth. I found the discussions engaging, and I appreciated the opportunity to share my honest approach and thought process. Both engineers seemed engaged and hinted at the next steps. The second call even ran significantly over time, from the scheduled 45 minutes to nearly 1.5 hours.

Initially, the recruiters were highly responsive, replying within one business day. However, after the last interview, I heard nothing for an entire week. I had to chase for an update, only to receive an automated rejection email on Monday morning. The reasoning? Other candidates had a better understanding of the problem—a vague statement at best. I requested further feedback to understand what went wrong, and to my frustration, I was told I didn't cover certain points, despite having explained them in detail during our conversation.

Overall, I'd call this a misunderstanding that cost me time and effort without providing any real learnings. I wasn't actively job searching, so the outcome doesn't bother me, but the vague, after-the-fact criticisms and the lack of clear, constructive feedback were disappointing. If a company determines that a candidate isn't a good fit, that's fine, but forcing negative feedback for the sake of it feels disingenuous. I would have preferred an honest rejection early on rather than spending double the scheduled time on interviews, only to receive such unclear reasoning. Hope this helps if you're still looking for answers.

Past projects involved a web crawler, concurrency, and distributed systems.