I wanted to share some thoughts on my recent interview experience in hopes it may be helpful for future candidates. Firstly, during my initial call with a representative from Simulmedia, I felt the conversation was heavily focused on the company's needs and less on what could be of interest to me. Additionally, the call extended 15 minutes past the scheduled time, which unfortunately left no room for my questions. Moreover, the interviewer mentioned a couple of times that there is a longer availability requirement (11am-8pm), which suggests an expectation of overtime. This seems inconsistent with the company's stated commitment to flexible availability. At the end of the call, I was asked to complete a technical assessment on Coderbyte, which I was happy to do. However, I found the content of the assessment surprising. As an Engineering Lead, I expected the challenges to be more focused on code design and architecture skills rather than basic syntax. The tasks seemed to be more suitable for a junior to mid-level position. For example, two of the exercises were nearly identical, involving transforming large data structures, which felt redundant. The assessment included: 1. Transforming a big data structure from one format to another based on a URL response. 2. Another similar task with a slightly different data structure. 3. Validating the format of a float number represented as a string. 4. An SQL assessment. While I saw the value in the first and fourth tasks, the second and third seemed less relevant and repetitive. Additionally, there were around eight close-ended questions about Git and another SQL query, which felt unnecessary given the SQL assessment already included. The most challenging aspect was the Coderbyte tool itself, which didn’t provide feedback on what was incorrect. There were many rules to follow, and even when it seemed like the solution met all the requirements, the tool would indicate it was wrong without explanation. This made it difficult to understand and learn from any mistakes. After investing around 3 hours of my time into the interview process, I received a very generic response about my application being rejected, without any specifics as to why. This lack of detailed feedback was disappointing and did not provide any insights into how I could improve or what the company was looking for. I hope this feedback is helpful for Simulmedia in revising the technical assessment to ensure it aligns better with the expectations for an Engineering Lead position. Respecting candidates' time and ensuring the assessment accurately reflects the role would be greatly appreciated.