I applied online for the Senior Data Analyst role in late August and was rejected almost immediately despite being well qualified. A few days later was invited to interview for the “Senior Data Scientist” role (with the exact same job description, i.e. not actually a data science role). Red flag #1. I had an introductory video call with a senior technical recruiter who was not only unfriendly but dismissive and unwelcoming. He replied to my questions in as few words as possible, seemingly putting down inquiries rather than addressing them, and even interrupted before I completed my thought on multiple occasions. People have different styles and personalities, but I don’t think he smiled once which made a really poor impression. Within two minutes it was clear he was going through the motions and asking a very standard list of interview questions with no follow-up or conversation about my responses. Nothing seemed to register; he was simply “taking notes.” Towards the end, I specifically asked if this role was becoming a predictive analytics position given the title change, and he dismissed it outright. This whole interaction was red flag #2. When I asked about the process, I was told that because the hiring manager for the role is on PTO, the next round would be the take-home challenge instead of an interview with him/her. The hiring manager’s name was not shared, which was red flag #3. Shortly after, I received the take-home challenge which was referred to as "homework." The details of the take-home said it should take 2-4 hours, but after reviewing, it could easily take 8+ hours to do a good job, because the dataset provided is more than 300MB and the questions are very open-ended. Requirements state to “include viz” with a link to a formatting/style guide so that the final submission can be formatted on-brand for Hopper. The types of questions are consistent with what other interviewees have listed — interesting business/product analytics questions with a request to provide recommendations on new strategies, propose charts and dashboards that would be valuable, and suggest new data sources as well as how to use them — in short, an amount of work far beyond what is required to demonstrate technical acumen. Once I saw the amount of work they’re asking for before even giving me the opportunity to speak with the hiring manager, I had serious doubts about whether this was a real role or if the whole process was just a data analysis mill to generate new insights for Hopper. Out of curiosity, I checked other reviews on Glassdoor and saw that many, many others have had the same experience and impressions. But the final nail in the coffin was an employee review from June 8th stating that Hopper had just laid off its whole Data Science team. Curiously, there was no mention of this in my introductory call, but it explains both why the recruiter was not able to answer any of my questions convincingly, as well as the motivation Hopper would have for generating data insights via external parties. As many other interviewees have stated, Hopper seems to be using the technical challenge portion of certain analytics/strategy interview loops to milk ideas from talented people looking to change roles. This is a despicable practice, but hey, now Hopper will give you $100 “Carrot Cash” for completing their “homework” challenge, so there’s that. Note that Hopper has seemingly only ever replied to Glassdoor interview experiences where interviewees have been scammed by individuals not affiliated with Hopper. They have never replied to the many credible allegations that Hopper uses the analytics interview process to mine insights and ideas from unaffiliated individuals, and I would challenge them to address those allegations here. I am so disappointed by this process that I not only withdrew my application, but have uninstalled the app and will never use or recommend Hopper again. Awful, awful experience.