There is a lot to suggest that this company is engaging in exploitative consultation as part of their interview process, mainly involving development of actual production code against their problem domain (extraction of gene sequences, etc, via Python) for free. I received a recruitment letter containing a code-task which was very thorough and with a very precise deliverable. It's also important to note, that this was only the first step in the interview process. Additionally, the problem I see with what they wanted is as follows: - It required a fairly convincing show of force, emphasizing "custom" code, essentially providing them with a tool-chain and library for free - It was indirect and came through a recruiter, the firm of which I will graciously leave out - The posted job description was incredibly awkward from a technical standpoint, if you get this posting and you know your stuff, you'll see what I'm talking about - It was occupational specific to the extreme, I know this because I've interviewed for jobs at UTSW where this task was actually the main part of the job description. Anyone that works or has worked in their industry will recognize the task immediately as the equivalent of something that is typically out-sourced or done ad-hoc by scientists, or easily contracted out - The posted salary (by the recruiter) was deceptively high, e.g. in 70k-90k realm, this was very disjoint with the task, and I had specifically mentioned in my resume that my objective was for an entry-level position, and I definitely could not justify such a salary in this case. And you know what they say about getting approached out of the blue, with things that sound too good to be true