First I got into a call with HR, then they asked me to do a code exercise which is actually really cool and a small assignment for "max an hour" they said. Afterwards I was supposed to be invited for another longer and paid code exercise. I did my first task as fast as possible in my free time, because it is not paid and I didn't want to spend more time. After I sent it I got rejected because my "code was not as good as others". Maybe I could agree, but if I am doing this task for free in my free time I will focus on the code to actually work and not the code quality, so I would expect that I would be invited for the next (paid) stage where I could spend more time on improving code quality. Anyway I appreciate that the first task is small enough.