An HR representative reached out to me on LinkedIn and scheduled a 2.5-hour coding assignment. I joined the call with the lead and completed the assignment within the allotted time, submitting my solution via GitHub. The provided codebase was built on an older .NET framework (I believe .NET 6), whereas my machine had .NET 9 installed. After an initial attempt to set it up, I decided to skip the setup process and focus on solving the problem statement. While working on the solution, I also addressed technical debt and performed code refactoring. However, I later received a rejection email, citing that I couldn’t run the legacy solution on my machine and that my code refactoring approach was not well received by the interviewer. I responded via email, requesting them to share the assignment in a .NET Standard library format to ensure compatibility across different environments. Additionally, I acknowledged their feedback and asked for clarification on whether code refactoring was explicitly discouraged, so I could adhere strictly to their implementation approach in the future. LOL