It will take OP more than 3 hours to compose and post question, read all the top rated answers and comments, reach a decision, and finally write a thoughtful em

It will take OP more than 3 hours to compose and post question, read all the top rated answers and comments, reach a decision, and finally write a thoughtful email. Possibly OP wanted moral support in their self-deception as to the actual issue. It is clearly not OP's valuable time that is the issue. My advice: Your first step as a candidate when given an assignment (with specific time constraints that you feel are mis-estimated), is to guestimate what you think it will take. Remember, this is exactly what happens at work with task estimation. Are you going to 'politely quit' if your manager gives you a task that can't be done in a certain time window? "I reviewed the task and my estimate is that this will take a few more hours than specified. I would like clarification if the time limit is an informative hard limit." One benefit of asking for estimate confirmation (specially for people like me who tend to go for more general solutions) is that you may actually get useful feedback. If you get a firm 'yes' from a competent team then it means they are looking for absolute simplicity in solution, and your weekend project of pimping your take home task is not only a wasted effort, it may actually take you off the list. Whatever response you get back it will be informative, sometimes even shedding light on what sort of organization you are applying to join.