I had a recent fun experience where I did a code screen for a company. It involved writing a very basic key value store API in Ruby. However, the challenge was extremely unspecified. There were no specification for persistence (database? file? none?), the precise semantics of the requests (should PUT-ing the same object multiple times overwrite it? According to the HTTP definition of PUT, yes, but who knows for sure?), or even how the code was being run (rackup? Separate script?). Note that there wasn't a clear way to ask questions either. Even better, the code was to be tested via an automated script. Yeah...automated scripts and unclear specifications are not a good combo.

I wrote the code to the best of my ability, then submitted it. I got a rejection a few weeks later and when I asked the person who sent it for feedback (I will say, that the company at least had a real, very nice person contact me), they cited a policy of no response.

Granted, I messed up in that I refused to use Rails, since, c'mon, it's a key value store. Instead I decided to just write it in pure Ruby with Rack and the SQLite gem. But I suppose that could have been a mistake since A. Rails is a lot more robust when it comes to input space and B. the testing harness is probably designed for Rails. Second, it's quite likely my code was just not good. But I'd at least like some feedback then, or even a printout of test failures.

This is a company I hold in extremely high regard, so I sincerely hope that this is just a fluke.