The first stage was a recruiter call to discuss technical experience, salary expectations and motivation. The second stage was a technical call with the hiring manager, where the questions centred around monoliths and some technical challenges. The hiring manager was very friendly and it felt more like a conversation than an interview. The 3rd stage was a take-home exercise for implementing a few REST APIs within at most 3 hours. As other reviews have already indicated, 3 hours is very little time to implement the task. I was rejected straight after submission because my implementation was not at the level of detail they expected. Other reviews of engineers who passed this stage indicate that they spent more time on this. This is what made my experience negative - it's not really a fair assessment to compare a 3-hour submission with a 6-hour submission and then reject mine as lacking in detail. It would be better if they had a more specific acceptance criteria to work towards (e.g. you are expected to have X and Y in your REST APIs), otherwise you risk spending time on other areas that might be completely unnecessary.
