Someone reached out to me on LinkedIn, said my background looked like a good fit. When I got back to him, they scheduled a phone screen with an internal HR person. Once that went well, they sent me a take-home project. That's where the fun started. I started doing the take-home project (was given a week IIRC), but a few days in, the recruiter emailed me saying they would like to bring me in onsite and cancel the take-home. Great! So I stopped working on the project and awaited next steps. The next week, the recruiter reached out asking if I could come in the next day as they had an opening. A bit short notice, but with some effort I could squeeze it in. At this point, he also asked me if I could have some stuff done on the take home before the onsite. What? The take home they'd said I didn't need anymore? Yup! I frantically started working on the take-home again and tried to do as much as I could before the next morning. When I arrived to the onsite, I hadn't slept much from working on the assignment and just interview jitters, but that's neither here nor there. I was given a bit of a tour, introduced to some folks, and given about 2 more hours to work on the assignment. Once I got that in, I had lunch with the recruiter and a new hire. After lunch, I had an interview with 2 engineers that asked me follow-up questions about my assignment. One thing that annoyed me is that they questioned some choices I'd made, which I only made due to the time crunch. There were also some other interesting questions on how I'd change things in response to changing requirements, and how I'd scale the project up. Unfortunately I was rejected. I definitely think I could have answered some of the follow-up questions better, but was pretty exhausted at that point. I also do believe the disorganized process contributed to this somewhat. If I'd never been told to stop working on the project, I could have gotten a lot more done for the onsite, and been much better prepared (and well-rested). Everyone I spoke to seemed fairly nice for what it's worth. I also really liked the office location, and the lunch was good too. Ultimately I think it was a fair decision to reject me, but I do think they could have done some things better that put me on better footing. TL;DR: finish the take-home no matter what they say. Review your data modeling and think about how you'd scale.