Terrible experience with Adobe interview

I recently interviewed with a Adobe and had a terrible experience that I think other candidates should be aware of.

I was minding my own business when an Adobe recruiter reached out to me and asked me to interview for a job as a 'Forward Deployed AI Engineer'. I was a perfect fit for this role so I took the bait. As part of the interview process, I was asked to complete a take-home project that required 6 - 8 hours of work. Wanting to do an exceptional job, I spend around 20. I took the assignment seriously and invested a lot of time preparing something thoughtful and detailed.

When I arrived on the interview, I was told that I would not be presenting my work after all. Part of the assignment was to build a proof-of-concept web site which I did with cutting edge AI tools. This made sense given that the job description included statements like "...(you will) deliver AI-powered content services to global brands and agencies" and "(we develop) an AI-first experimentation approach". Instead, the interviewers asked a series of technical questions that were out of the assignment's scope (and were very aggressive and disrespectful) . It felt like a waste of significant time and effort, and it left me questioning how the company values candidates’ time.

Later, I was then told that my skills and experience did not 'align' with the role and they were considering other candidates. Curious since they reached out to me based on my LinkedIn profile and agreed that my background was an excellent fit.

I’m sharing this so other job seekers know to clarify expectations before committing to large unpaid projects. It’s completely fair to ask whether your work will actually be reviewed and whether it reflects the skills they plan to evaluate.

Hopefully Adobe will start being more transparent and respectful of the time people invest in these processes.