It happens to be in a group of people, all recently laid off from a sought after company and most of us applied to DuckDuckGo for backend, front-end and data science roles. DDG did not hire any of us. Some of us were experts in the fields that their assignments were examining and delivered work of excellent quality, as we have done so hundreds of times before with design and RFC documents. What exactly they are looking for is a mystery but I am confident that it's not technical excellence and is probably some obscure internal magic word or soft skill that they really want to see. All in all, I don't think they are really hiring but if they do I am really curious to see who they are going to hire next. While the assignment is paid, overall is a waste of time and it will consume you as their decision does not make any sense and you won't be given any feedback.

A long interview process where no feedback is provided at the end. I was paid to take part, but I was left feeling "ghosted" by the lack of communication. The salary was great, and the work sounded very interesting, but I would not apply again.