In a nutshell, Zillow is a joke. For those looking for more details, read on.

First, a bit of background information. I have close to 15 years of server-side Java development experience, with a focus on design, architecture, distributed systems, latency and throughput optimizations, scalability, and fault tolerance. Writing code is what I do for a living, and I have made a pretty good living doing it because I am good at what I do. I have worked for successful companies throughout my career. So, hopefully, that puts to rest any doubts regarding my suitability for their open dev jobs.

Now, on to what happened with the company. My first experience with them was late last year when they contacted me in connection with my application to one of their open positions. Long story short, the timing wasn't right, and I couldn't move forward with them. Recently, I decided to send my resume again through their general HR inbox and received their canned, annoying response generated by Jobvite. So then, I sent the resume directly to the email address of the recruiter I had dealt with last year. This time, I got a response. After a short conversation with the HR person, I was sent a link to their coding test on HackerRank. They give you 48 hours to complete the test once it begins, and it consisted of two problems. The first one was preposterously simple, and the second one was moderately difficult. However, if you know what to consult (hint: JDK source code), then it really just boils down to understanding the problem and customizing existing, well-known logic to the specific problem. So, I completed both problems well within the time allotted, tested against not just the provided sample input but also with my custom test cases, and made sure everything worked.

Today, I received a reply from their Jobvite box that says exactly this: "Thank you for your interest in Zillow and especially for the time you took to complete the coding test. As promised, I sent your solution & resume to the hiring manager. Unfortunately, we have decided not to move forward with your application to the next step. We wish you well in your pursuit of a new position and thank you again for your time." WTF??? Did anyone even bother to read the code, or run it? Or did they search for and not find specific keywords on my resume AFTER having me waste my time on their coding test? Clearly, someone at Zillow has their head where the sun don't shine...

Write a function that takes a string and produces a signed 64-bit integer (long) that the string represents. For example, long parseLong(String). You can assume the input is in base 10.