I applied for another role at Solace and was contacted by the recruiter for a PM opening instead. The first round was a take-home case study (4–6 hours of work) before any live conversation with the hiring manager or a teammate, which felt unusual. The exercise required identifying bugs in the product and building a feature proposal. I completed it and received a generic rejection email a few days later (from a no-reply, despite previously exchanging emails with the recruiter from his personal email). I followed up twice, but got no feedback. Overall, the process felt impersonal and time-consuming, and I would recommend Solace reconsider how early they ask for such a significant time investment from candidates.