I went through an interview process that started with an HR screen, followed by a very large take-home assignment. The assignment required building a full application from scratch, including both backend (API) and frontend. Completing it realistically takes around 6-8 hours, which is equivalent to a full workday... After submitting the assignment, the next steps were a technical code review with engineers and a final interview. The conversations with the team were positive, and based on the feedback and exchanges, I expected to move forward. However, I later received a very generic rejection email stating that the role had been offered to a more senior engineer. While I understand hiring decisions, the process felt disproportionate given the time investment required at an early stage. I would recommend the company rethinking their hiring process to reduce the amount of unpaid work required, or at least better align expectations upfront, to avoid candidates investing significant time without clear signals.