A recruiter reached out to me and, despite my initial hesitation, convinced me to proceed after giving an impressive overview of the company and its product - which I genuinely liked. Instead of a typical HR screening, I was interviewed for over 30 minutes by a Senior Manager and a Senior IT representative. I appreciated the depth of their questions, and the discussion felt promising. In the third round, I was asked to build a full e-commerce system (frontend + backend) - exactly the same stack I have been working with for the past 8+ years, handling millions of requests and enterprise-grade infrastructure. I completed the assignment with full dedication. Then... silence. After two weeks with no response, I followed up - only to receive a rejection. The reason? "You added manual indexing on one table." In Laravel, indexing is normally handled through migrations, especially in initial builds. To this day, I am not even sure what they meant by "manual indexing." It was painfully clear that the assignment was evaluated by someone who did not properly understand the stack they themselves requested. What makes this more disappointing: I was told I would be compensated for any expenses. I purchased domain and hosting specifically for this assignment. Nothing was reimbursed. No proper explanation. No courtesy reply. I genuinely believe the product idea has potential. But great ideas can be destroyed by careless processes and unprofessional hiring practices. Still - I wish them luck.