I interviewed at Memfault (now part of Nordic Semiconductor) for a (mid-weight) Product Designer.  Among the usual criteria, their job specification required 3 years of experience, plus experience working with engineers (which I have from prior roles as a Senior/Staff designer).  The steps comprised an initial interview, a portfolio presentation, a 3-hour take-home task, and a presentation of the outcomes of the take-home task afterwards. The take-home task required me to create a project proposal for a fleet management platform in only 3 hours, based on a brief that highlighted numerous needs and constraints across business, users, and technical areas. The project proposal should include 2-3 key design suggestions, rationale, UI inspiration, and suggestions, and optionally, a simplified user flow diagram surrounding the use case.  Optionally, I could use AI tools as long as I sent over my prompts.  Let's face it! Three hours is too little for such a project.  Following my project proposal submission, I received an email stating that they were impressed with my work (which turned out to be a false positive).  As part of the process, I had to create a slide deck to present my work, processes, rationale, and outcomes to 3 new interviewers.  Despite being told how impressed they were with my work, that enthusiasm was not conveyed during the interview.  It also felt like the interviewers didn't want to interview me.  In fact, one interviewee used to hide half of his head in the camera (like playing some "peekaboo" game), and later came back asking far-fetched questions intended to corner me.  After my presentation, they asked follow-up questions, some of which were relevant to the case, while others were far-fetched and less relevant to my presentation.  In fact, there were times when I answered by saying 1) I haven't thought this far, considering this is a 3-hour task, and 2) where I clearly stated that I would think aloud and come up with answers (to show how I work, solve issues, and come up with solutions).    Later, I got rejected based on the following assumptions:  1)  Being theoretical - for referring to 2 theories in conjunction with my design rationale (since access to actual data was limited, especially being a 3-hour task). 2) Verbose - for taking me a long time to answer several questions, regardless of telling them that I will be thinking aloud to work on an answer (rather than not answering at all). 3)  Surface-level - for saying 'I haven't thought this far...' 4)  Lacking confidence, which is very arrogant of them. This happened when I highlighted limitations in one of my designs (which is something confident people actually do). 5)  Being nervous - being slightly nervous is natural (especially for neurodivergent people like myself), however, using this as an excuse to terminate a candidate is vile.  The best part, without mentioning names, terms like fake door testing and pre-mortem assessments were new to them, despite their so-called level of expertise.  To conclude, telling people they lack confidence after just 40 minutes demonstrates utter arrogance and contempt for the person's integrity.