[chang1]

Had a similar experience and made it to the 2nd stage, and also got paid for both.

I even took the time to learn enough Perl to write the solution. They said it wasn't required but would be a nice touch. It was an interesting project to work on and it was fun coming up with a solution. I thought it fulfilled their requirements pretty well, but also just got a short "no thanks" email.

I was left wondering for a long time what they didn't like about it..

Someone suggested they may use these interview submissions as cheap labor to get ideas to solve internal problems. I thought that was ridiculous until I reread the disclosure I had to sign at the beginning:

> [DDG] will be the exclusive owner of all right, title, and interest in and to the work product resulting from the project, including all intellectual property and proprietary rights.

Could have just been boilerplate disclosure stuff, but seems a little weird.

[lloydatkinson]

It’s sad seeing so many comments saying they got paid while I didn’t! I was interviewing for their new privacy based browser, it was a C#/.NET desktop app role.