> Sadly, I didn't get a chance to provide feedback to the criticisms

That's a shame. It sounds like the criteria were fairly well defined, but it would be nice if your assignment was used as a starting point for good in person discussion. E.g. "we think the code in index.js was too coupled - what could we do to break that out?"

So were you hired or not?

Nope

Can you estimate how much time you put into the assignment? Did you get paid?

Probably a bit more than 12h, and I have to give it to the company, the project was compensated.

This was the only time I've experienced that.

I distrust any interview that includes something like this.

It's an arbitrary construct that is not indicative of what form the work will take. Only the first three months of working with someone will give any real indication of what'll be like to work with them for another three+ years.

> It's an arbitrary construct that is not indicative of what form the work will take.

Agreed.

I had a similar code challenge and after joining the company, in the first year of work I did little if any JS work which even approached the level of the challenge I was presented with. To this day, I'm still bitter the company gave me the old "bait and switch" tactic to get me to come work there.

Yeah we created a test for our interview but we give it onsite I think requiring people to do work even if its compensated is wrong, its not that hard to put together a small exam based on the source for your projects to analyze whether a candidate can handle the work.

I have had this issue as well with take home projects. Most companies are looking for someone who will follow KISS, so demonstrating ability to do complex things like your render queue is not at all appreciated. They want to see that you can match a spec and write well-factored code.

Adding complexity for performance will be a pure negative unless you can factor that out so the next person can use it on their component.

I would read this code and think I was dealing with a very talented programmer that needs seasoning. Such a programmer can be very dangerous to the wrong company, as the seasoning will have to be added on the company’s dime.