The interview started strong with a professional recruiter meeting, offering clear insights into the company and hiring process. However, the technical home assignment—a simple REST solution with one operation—fell short. My submission was rejected for unstated criteria and notably premature optimization. They expected data caching for CPU-light operations (<1 ms), requiring complex multithreading. This added bloat with zero benefit, as caching didn’t improve performance for such lightweight tasks. The unclear expectations made the process frustrating and inefficient. I don’t recommend this poorly designed experience, which misjudged simplicity for over-engineering.