I met a Yelp recruiter at an event hosted at Yelp HQ, which led to me talking with a different recruiter inside Yelp who's team was hiring. After some email rapport, the process started with a phone interview. This lasted about 30 minutes and allowed me to clarify some basic questions I had about the position, day-to-day tasks performed, other members of their department/group, required skills, and relationship to other activities such as development team and product team. This interview seemed to go well, and was more informational than critical. The next step in their process was to send me a "design exercise" for me to choose one of six tasks (three desktop, three mobile) and redesign the problem described. The test instructions included several contradictory statements, such as "applicants should plan to spend approximately 3-4 hours..." and also "we want to see your best work...." I spent a solid 8-hour day creating a presentation deck of the problem I chose, before I cut myself off and submitted it. The recruiter confirmed they received my design submission, and said she would pass it on to the design team to review and evaluate what I had done, how I approach problems, etc. I didn't hear anything for a week, so I inquired with an email back to the recruiter who I had been back-and-forth with, and talked with on the phone. The response I got back was a pro-forma "rejection" email from a no-reply email address. After all the time I had spent talking with the recruiter directly, and performing their "design exercise" I found this rather offensive! There was no explanation or feedback as to what their team thought of my work, or why I was not a fit with their team. Furthermore, the "design exercise" I was given was to evaluate my choice of six different aspects of the ACTUAL Yelp product. So, I basically spent 8 hours + of my time identifying opportunities for improvement and design solutions to their product, which they could add to their internal roadmap without any compensation or acknowledgement, along with the untold others who submitted free, quality work. The lesson I'm taking away from this is, no more "design exercises," especially if these involve discussion of current problems their design team is working on. If this is a hypothetical exercise un-related to their product I might consider it an honest attempt to assess my skills, but when I put real work into solving real problems, the least I expect is honest feedback from a real person, not a rude dismissal from behind a no-reply pro-forma email.