Airtable Software Engineer take-home assignment that took roughly eight hours

My recruiter call was followed by a take-home assignment that was supposed to take about four hours. The work didn’t feel close to that scope. I was expected to build a fairly substantial front-end library from scratch to support a complicated chart, something in the neighborhood of d3-style functionality. I spent roughly eight hours on it and still didn’t finish. After submitting it, I never really heard back.

The overall experience resembled another pass I had through the process: a long, detailed build that felt more like real work than an evaluation of how I think in an interview. The assignment included a redlined mock, lots of media assets, multiple features, and heavy requirements. I also had to write detailed documentation explaining how I built it, how I’d plan the next story, and how I’d approach code quality and project planning. I spent the day completing a large part of it, submitted it, and received no meaningful feedback.

Communication after submission wasn’t helpful either. Eventually, I got vague reasoning, even though the work met the stated requirements. The process was exhausting and felt like my time was being extracted instead of evaluated. I left disappointed that there wasn’t more respect or clarity about what they were looking for.

Location: United States. Overall feedback: Negative. Offer status: No offer.