Candidate completes 11 technical interviews and a week-long project. Company rejects him — then asks how to fix the code it kept

Corporate "interviews are getting out of hand." This is what Steve The Beaver (@beaversteever) felt after going through 11 technical interviews for a role, only to be rejected. What made it worse was that the company reportedly used some of his interview work in its codebase. Then, after rejecting him, they contacted him again to ask for help fixing that same code. His November 10, 2025 tweet sharing the story has since received more than seven million views and 71,000 likes, and is making people rethink the existing interview process.

Left in the lurch

From the very beginning, Steve was made to jump through hoops. After a rigorous procedure of 11 technical interview rounds and completion of a one-week take-home project, he received an email that said, “We were actually impressed with the quality of your submission, and your work has actually been accepted into our codebase. However, after careful deliberation, we have decided not to move forward with your candidacy at this time.”

The company specified that it was an “incredibly difficult decision,” given the candidate’s technical capabilities. The disappointment didn’t end just there. Later on, the company reached out to Steve again and audaciously asked him how to fix a particular piece of code they had written during the interview process. The experience made the candidate wonder whether they needed to go to court.

Lengthy recruitment processes

Matchr analyzed the recruitment funnel of one of their clients, named Slow Inc., and found that a lengthy recruitment process often leads to job candidates with a bad experience. Most candidates lose interest. 34% of the interested candidates withdraw from the process altogether, and 5% are ghosted by the recruiters. In addition to this rigid rigmarole of recruitment, companies often exploit job applicants by extracting free labor in the form of take-home assignments. 

According to a LinkedIn poll, cited by Forbes, 85% of the 150 surveyed candidates encountered requests for unpaid work during job interviews. 21% reported up to two hours of unpaid work, 44% between three and five hours, and 19% over six hours. Unfortunately, as Forbes stated, this type of exploitation has been normalized in the corporate world.

Name and shame the company 

Viewers were surprised to know that the candidate agreed to invest their time for 11 lengthy technical interviews without knowing any actual payoff. Most of them advised them to sue the company. @wrvb3 put the scenario this way: “They used the pretext of a job offer to have him solve a problem they couldn't figure out themselves.” @sonnydaycreates said, “I would sue this startup in bankruptcy so fast. It'd be open and shut.” @jtregunna commented, “Save as evidence, contact lawyer, send cease and desist, file suit for using copyrighted material without permission.” 

You can follow Steve The Beaver (@beaversteever) on X for science, technology, and engineering content. 

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