[al_borland]

I don’t see where the hiring manager was unprofessional. He responded to the questions/proposal without giving the author an unfair advantage, and he responded to the message after getting rejection. The author wasn’t ghosted or ignored, and has closure, which is more than a lot of people get.

Had the hiring manager given detailed feedback, it would have ended up in the blog post, and then they would need to revamp their process, as anyone reading would get additional information they weren’t intended to have.

I’ve also seen situations like this where the person never stops responding and seems to try and turn a rejection into a long term mentorship opportunity. The author seems like they might have those tendencies and keeping to standard boilerplate responses helps avoid that. It’s not overly personal, but I don’t think I’d call it unprofessional. The author simply misunderstood the assignment at a foundational level and is trying to shift the blame for that onto the hiring manager… when that was exactly what they were testing for.