Applied for Payments Software Engineer intern in early December, when the listing first went up. Was told that the position was filled, and asked to consider a role as SRE intern, even though nothing on my resume would suggest a fit. I was told by the recruiter that I should take a look at the take home assignment and if it didn't like it, they would look for another fit at a SWE position. I agreed, did the assignment, but asked to be considered for a SWE position anyway. Apparently my one day of cramming was enough to pass the round and go on to the final interview, where I was quizzed on SRE concepts like scaling, TCP/IP, replication, caching, etc. I did fairly well, but not superbly, as expected. I asked the interviewer about the number of positions open, and the current state of the pipeline, and was told there would only be one position, and there were already a number of very competitive candidates. After the interview, my communications went unanswered, which is not unexpected in today's recruitment environment. What pissed me off were these facts: 1) Why post the listing if it was already being filled by what I presume were internal referrals or returning interns? 2) Why route a SWE focused candidate into a SRE pipeline if there was no trouble finding competitive candidates and there was only one position available? 3) Why ghost a candidate when they were cooperative, understood the odds, but just wanted a reply because they had other pending offers and deadlines? All in all, I felt that I was used to stroke the egos of the recruiting and SRE team by raising the pool of candidates and hence making the hired candidates seem more "competitive".