A recruiter reached out to me to interview with the company. The recruiter screening was really friendly yet professional and a great experience overall.
The next stage was a take-home technical assessment. The assessment asked to clone the instagram stories feature, from scratch with infinite scrolling of stories, with a polished UI/UX and attention to detail, which was also reinforced verbally by the recruiter. They also wanted a short simulator screen capture showcasing the app as well as a video of me explaining the technical and architectural choices made. The problem however was that they wanted all of this in 4 hours, which is completely ridiculous since the videos alone would take about half an hour.
Needless to say I did not even bother to start the task.
The red flags:
The take-home had an insanely short deadline while asking for a complex polished feature.
The short timeframe indicates a completely toxic runaway pace engineering culture.
The requirements of the take-home might also indicate they are outsourcing actual work to their candidates.
Interviewing a senior engineer with such a UI heavy task is not appropriate as it leaves out more important aspects such as architecture, navigation and technical details. This can be an indicator of an engineering culture that prioritises fast and visible results instead of quality.
