I was asked to complete a week-long “assignment” at AUI that was essentially a production-ready POC (multi-database integration, FastAPI, Docker, vector search & RAG). One interviewer even admitted it was a real backlog task. After delivering ~85% of the functionality end-to-end, I was rejected without any code review or technical feedback, and of course without compensation. Candidates should be aware that these assignments may not be purely for evaluation, but could be actual backlog work for the team.