All this does is compound the stress. Instead of "agonizing" over whether it's good enough, now a candidate gets to agonize over 1) is it good enough, 2) why di

All this does is compound the stress. Instead of "agonizing" over whether it's good enough, now a candidate gets to agonize over 1) is it good enough, 2) why didn't I just push the updated code 1 minute earlier before the cut off time! and 3) sh^t I should have put more comments in to explain where I was going with that! >The problem I have with the traditional "don't spend more than about X time" approach is that it's not a level playing field. No, it's not. And that's actually fine. I don't care if a candidate took five minutes, or five hours, or five days! In fact, the response time can tell you something about a candidate. Don't take that away from me as a hiring manager. I've actually never asked or been asked how much time I spent on a challenge. It's not an issue to solve! >If the candidate screws up a timed challenge that's also totally okay. What follow up interview? They fu^ked up the challenge. You really think a hiring drone is going to proceed that candidate when they have 10 others who did ok? That goes completely against what this sort of canned test is all about; getting past a hurdle. If hiring managers were going to interview all candidates who took the test and have a nice chat about their code, the test is completely redundant. They'll just ask for a code sample to talk about. Saves everyone the time and the money! All in all, 40 minutes is way too short and artificial cut offs are a nasty way to try and "level the playing field". In fact, you're not leveling it at all! Just making sure candidates who may be taking a bit longer to get into the swing of things that day are discounted. Heck, if the candidate has simple network issues they're screwed!