Assuming, in good faith, that the poster is telling the truth, either the company lied and the homework project wasn’t that good, or they were more interested in whiteboard hazing and the project didn’t mean very much. What’s more like real software engineering: writing code on the spot, on a whiteboard, in front of people; or writing code at home, which you can then have a conversation about? A sane hiring process would put more weight on one than the other, and this company obviously wasn’t sane.

I won’t name but it wasn’t shameful. They ended up looking for someone with experience more balanced between web services and embedded devices, and my background was very focused on embedded. Had they gone purely by the homework, they might not have gotten the best candidate.