The Senior Angular Take‑Home That Made Me Rethink Tech Interviews

I spent an entire weekend building a “small” take‑home assignment. Friday to Monday. Stock data app. Real‑time updates. Angular, WebSockets, Supabase mock. On Monday, I submitted the repo. On Tuesday, I got the rejection. No call. No detailed feedback. Just “we’ve decided not to move forward.” That was the moment I realized something: most companies have no idea what they’re actually testing when they give senior devs take‑home assignments. The Assignment That Ate My Weekend The brief, simplified, looked like this: Build a small Angular app that displays stock data for up to 4 companies Load initial data via HTTP from a public API Implement real‑time price updates using: — a custom WebSocket server (backend) — and a mocked implementation in Angular Allow toggling updates per stock card (enable/disable) Reflect price changes visually (increase / decrease / disabled states) Create a responsive UI (desktop + mobile) On paper, it was reasonable. It touched all the right buzzwords: HTTP, We