I'm too nervous to name the company, but here we go. [Edit: whatever, I didn't sign an NDA. This was Algolia] I've been meaning to get this off my chest. Out o

I'm too nervous to name the company, but here we go. [Edit: whatever, I didn't sign an NDA. This was Algolia] I've been meaning to get this off my chest. Out of all ~100 interviews I took over the last 8 months, there was a singular egregious example. It netted out upwards of 25hrs. You may ask, "lelandfe, why did you go through all of this?" It had been 8 months without a paycheck; I barely made rent this month (landed a dream job recently! phew). This was for a senior demo eng role: 1. 30m phone screen 2. 30m behavioral 3. 1hr technical. Asked to write a hashmap to filter JSON, binary search over an array, and a Markdown renderer 4. 8hr take home assignment. But, "if you do wish to spend more [time], please go ahead." I spend the minimum time needed, which winds up being more like 14hrs. I have to register for the platform, come up with a fictitious company, and then design and build a real demo site using the service – turning over the source code and live demo at the end. The scoring rubric is how creative the use of the platform is, and how much value the search service adds to my fake company. 5. 2hr written email correspondence test. I'm given 3 fake emails from "customers," each asking about specifics of the platform, e.g. "where can I find X and Y on the admin?" and "please define concepts Z and A for me." 6. 30m presentation of take home to 10 employees of the SaaS company, followed by 30m Q&A with the team. I'm only made aware of this after turning in my take home. Building and rehearsing the presentation takes around 3hrs. 7. 3hr on-site 8. Day after on-site: 15m wrap-up discussion w/HR 9. 15m wrap-up discussion w/engineering manager Through all of this, every decision maker expressed extreme satisfaction with my performance, and the engineering manager repeatedly told me how smart and well-spoken I was. A week later, I get, as an email: "our team has decided to pass on your candidacy." They adamantly refuse to give me more feedback (though admitting: position still open, no other candidates in final stages), and don't refer me to other roles.