Realized I was over-engineering every take-home when the rubric just wanted working code and clear tests

Spent an entire take-home weekend adding a caching layer, retry logic, and a config system nobody asked for, convinced it would show seniority. Got rejected. Next one I kept deliberately simple, clean structure, obvious naming, solid test coverage, nothing fancy. Got an offer. The scope creep wasn't impressing anyone, it was just noise on top of what they were actually grading.