What I don't get is when they ghost you, but with positive feedback! I was talking to a guy not long ago, everything was a fit, I'd done exactly what they wanted in my previous job, had team management experience, and so on. The HM/founder says I sound great and we should talk again.

So he goes on holiday.

Then his HR lady goes on holiday.

They get back, apologize for the delay, and want to proceed.

Nothing happens. No response...

He's probably right about homework too. I can't tell if they are actually testing for you already having a solution on the shelf that you can slightly modify for them. Regardless, if someone did a homework assignment for me, I would make sure they got feedback. If it wasn't good enough I would think really hard about what I said about the conditions (don't spend too much time, it's ok if it isn't perfect) before dumping them. At best it is just a kind of fizzbuzz: if they can stand up a k8s thing in a few hours, they are likely not making this up or even copy pasting it.

End of the day software has some odd ideas about what evidence is. Just about every other profession is just a CV, some chat, a light grilling, then a response. If the person is making it up they'll get found out and dumped out soon enough. Software somehow manages to do both: several interviewers have told me they dumped out a guy after a brief stint, then tried the whole Leetcode/homework/tech chat thing.