I submitted a fully unit-tested, clean .NET solution that took the inputs provided and produced the outputs required. Through comments I noted why I'd made certain choices and other approaches that I could have followed. My final approach not only worked exactly as required, but it handled bad data, user errors, and other faults cleanly; in short, it was well-documented, production-quality code. kCura returned a negative letter grade to the recruiter and ended the hiring process without any other feedback. In my many years hiring, mentoring, and nurturing developers, and working in many different environments, I can't remember such an insulting and demeaning response in a hiring situation. I'm sure other developers can relate to this: I worked hard on the coding sample, and thought it would be the starting point for a fun conversation with the hiring manager on different approaches and solutions to common coding situations. That's what *I* look for when I'm hiring developers, and it's how I've always gotten really good people on my teams. And of course I internalized their response--I mean, what decent developer doesn't worry if his code is good enough? Is this just sour grapes? After thinking about it for a couple of weeks, no. It's not sour grapes. It's a company that isn't interested in anything more than robots in chairs.