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Exactly - a take-home test that will take more than ~2 (maybe 3) hours to complete is unreasonable. And it should be administered only after a preliminary phon

Exactly - a take-home test that will take more than ~2 (maybe 3) hours to complete is unreasonable. And it should be administered only after a preliminary phone screen. I'm willing to give up an evening for a job that appeals to me and that I have a decent chance at landing. I'm not willing to give up all my weekday free time for a week or stay up until 3am. And I won't do either if you're not willing to first invest 15 minutes to make sure there's sufficient mutual interest to be worth my investment of hours. If you don't respect my time before hiring, I assume you won't respect it after either.

mattbee 9y ago
The problem with any take-home test, ESPECIALLY one that you only expect to take 2 hours, is that you hand people an advantage who do have more time to spend on it. That was what stopped us doing it, and started looking at reasonable tests that you can't prepare for, and can't spend more than the allotted time on. So that means we weave the testing into a 1-2 hours interview, and everyone has the same chance. (we also document our process so you can see what you're getting into before you start) https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/full-process https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/full-process
- cimmanom 9y ago
  I don't love that approach. There are lots of people who can do the work well in a reasonable amount of time but don't test well under intense time pressure. We do require candidates to use version control and (though we don't tell them so) we review individual commits to understand the candidate's approach and how they use version control, and commit timestamps to see how long implementation took them. And the volume of candidates who pass both resume review and phone screen in our process is low enough that we're not usually comparing candidates to one another; it's "can you do the job or not". So relative advantages aren't such a big deal.
- some_account 9y ago
  Time pressure always make me perform a lot worse, on programming tests as well as iq tests. I did an iq test that was not timed and got 10 points higher, which is quite significant and also much more how real life problem solving works as a programmer. I'm never under any time pressure in my job.

mattbee 9y ago

The problem with any take-home test, ESPECIALLY one that you only expect to take 2 hours, is that you hand people an advantage who do have more time to spend on it. That was what stopped us doing it, and started looking at reasonable tests that you can't prepare for, and can't spend more than the allotted time on. So that means we weave the testing into a 1-2 hours interview, and everyone has the same chance. (we also document our process so you can see what you're getting into before you start) https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/full-process https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/full-process

cimmanom 9y ago
I don't love that approach. There are lots of people who can do the work well in a reasonable amount of time but don't test well under intense time pressure. We do require candidates to use version control and (though we don't tell them so) we review individual commits to understand the candidate's approach and how they use version control, and commit timestamps to see how long implementation took them. And the volume of candidates who pass both resume review and phone screen in our process is low enough that we're not usually comparing candidates to one another; it's "can you do the job or not". So relative advantages aren't such a big deal.
some_account 9y ago
Time pressure always make me perform a lot worse, on programming tests as well as iq tests. I did an iq test that was not timed and got 10 points higher, which is quite significant and also much more how real life problem solving works as a programmer. I'm never under any time pressure in my job.