Worst technical assessment I ever had

There is a job currently going in Edinburgh that I am a perfect fit for it, but I completely refuse to apply. The reason for it is that company gave me the worst technical assessment I ever had.

What happened in the past

Over a decade ago there was a contract going at that company. I was asked to build a a full stack app in JS which they would review. They claimed it would take no more than a couple of hours to write. So after three days development 🙄 I had the app ready, I sent the agent the code and waited. I was quite excited, I felt I had done some really good work.

Two days later I receive scathing email from the agent, claiming I had embarrassed him professionally, and that the client would probably sever ties with him because of my shoddy work, and he would never represent me again. The agent also forwarded me the email he had received from the company. The key points were: my choice of framework showed poor judgement, used timeouts in code, and good developers don't use timeouts. They also ended the email by stating they expected more from the agency.

Why I built it that way

I used a framework that my company was using at the time, I did not want to learn a new framework as it would have taken way longer to build the app. I would have done it for them if they had stipulated thats what they wanted. In their own job spec they stated "Use whatever framework you want, we are more interested in how you think than what you write with". That was clearly not true!

As for the timeout critique, I did use a timeout in my code. That timeout was used to delay the integration tests, and allow the backend restful services to fully load. They did not ask for integration tests, but I gave it to them anyway. I even put a comment in the code that pointed to a open bug on github, which stated why a timeout was needed to run integration tests.

My Response

I wrote back to the agent stating the points above, and provided links to the evidence. I told him that I did not believe that a human had reviewed my code, because the code was not only self explanatory but it provided meaningful comments. I made sure to state that the reviewer was grossly unprofessional and immature. He had full permission to forward my email back at the reviewer, or anyone senior.

Companies Response

The next day I received an email from a project manager, with the agent CC'd. It was an apology, and an offer of a face to face interview. The manager stated that they had used a junior member to staff vet candidates, they were shocked at the email he had sent. They also stated that they received a lot of submissions so they used a script to check for "bad code", and my timeout had triggered it.

Karma Man!

I responded to both the agent and the project manager stating I was happy that was cleared up. I advised them to not be to harsh on the reviewer, he's new and has to a bit to learn. I turned down the interview, and told both the agent and the company that I would not work with either of them in future.

The agent accused me of unprofessional behavior, I had worked with him before, he should have known something was up. Wont be your candidate anymore sir!

In regards to the company they not only allowed this to happen, the lack of respect they showed me by not reviewing my code is unforgivable. I gave up 3 days of my life to be rejected by a script that ran for 5 seconds. 🖕

So today they are looking for someone with my skill set and I wont apply. Karma is real! Should have watched My Name is Earl growing up! Great show btw!