Warning: Excessive technical demands & misaligned assessment process. Please read this before deciding if it is wise to invest your time in this interview pattern. The Process: Step 1: 45-min Initial Video Call: With the Business Systems Lead and/or CTO. (Note: A CTO being present this early for a non-executive role is unusual in the UK market). Step 2: Hands-on Exercise: Advertised as "3-4 hours" to complete. In reality, this required at least 20 hours of effort to map requirements from raw business cases, design the solution, develop, and document. It was capped at 2 days (received Friday, due Sunday), meaning I spent my entire weekend catching the deadline. Warning: The business case was highly aligned with their actual UK operations. You run the risk of providing "free consulting" or candidate extraction based on the problems they are currently trying to solve. Step 3: 90-min Technical Session: Live coding/modifying your solution with the CTO. You must be ready to screen share and make changes on the fly. This felt like a red flag: If you require a 20-hour take-home assessment, why verify the same technical skills again in a high-pressure live setting? It felt like an excessive system designed to fail people by asking you to prove the same dimension twice in two high-effort ways. Step 4: 45-min Values Session: This felt performative. It is the most likely place to get rejected based on assumptions by people who don't know the area or the hiring manager's needs. It felt similar to the toxic culture at Amazon (e.g., their Leadership Principles). The Outcome & Misalignment: The hiring lead provided feedback that they loved my technical execution, specifically my scalable design, queue logic, and documentation. However, I was rejected for a "gap in Business Analysis and Stakeholder Management." Why this is unreasonable: Disconnected Assessment: The rejection cited gaps in stakeholder management, yet there were no stakeholder scenarios, requirement-gathering exercises, or behavioral questions designed to evaluate this. My day-to-day role involves significant business-facing work, and I’m formally trained in this space (including Business Analysis and PSM certifications). I’m comfortable being assessed on these skills, but in this process, there was zero opportunity to demonstrate them. The decision was made on inference rather than observation. Misleading Scope: The case was a delivery-level task (Requirement + Build + Document) requiring 20+ hours, not the advertised 3-4. As a Systems Lead or CTO, you would know that if you asked your team to deliver this scope in two days, it would be pushed back as it is easily a full Sprint's worth of effort. Conclusion: I am open to rejection; however, I have recently secured final interviews with several prestigious global companies and well-established UK businesses. None of them were this excessive, misaligned, or demanding. This process asks for massive upfront effort from the candidate but fails to test the very skills they use to make the final decision. While I appreciate the HR team was supportive and friendly, it doesn't change the toxic interview setup.