You don't think the author built a concrete, working solution?
Concrete and working? Technically, yes. This would have been an excellent submission for a different assignment and role. But it doesn't seem to suit the specifications for this one.
If you are asked to implement X and instead you take extra time and come back with X+Y+Z, what have you done? Wasted time e.g. money. Companies really hate wasting money.
So if in your candidate project you demonstrate a propensity for bike-shedding any task, that's gonna be a big red flag.
In the real world, if the time he spent was deemed wasted time, that's management's fault.