A friend (who had interviewed with Dropbox previously, but no offer) introduced me to the recruiter via email. The recruiter responded about two weeks later and sent me a HackerRank coding question. I didn't think it would be very difficult, since I've completed HackerRank coding questions previously for other companies with ease. Oh, how very naive I was. The question was very difficult (for me at least). It was a pattern matching question which seemed like I was supposed to code up a lexical analyzer in an hour... Based on what I've read on Glassdoor, other candidates went straight to either HR screening interviews or technical interviews. I believe I was given an exceptionally hard coding challenge question so that the recruiter could say they gave me a chance but they weren't going to bother with me unless I was extremely smart. It was really just a courtesy coding challenge an they had already decided to reject me. Seeing as how I was recommended by a previously rejected candidate, I suppose I should seen their veiled rejection coming (in the form of a coding challenge). I'm really disappointed at the Dropbox recruiting practice. I've worked at Microsoft before and interviewed at Google, Facebook, Square, Twitter, Airbnb, Pinterest, etc., and I've never had this sort of treatment.