8 ms·

Its interesting how many of these companies have 'take home' challenges or projects. Even though the companies may say, "This should only take an hour", 99% of

by jboy55 8y ago

Its interesting how many of these companies have 'take home' challenges or projects. Even though the companies may say, "This should only take an hour", 99% of the time, it occupies my entire night/weekend, if not in coding but in thought. There's always something more you could do. Its presented as an objective test, but its very subjective, just as much as the whiteboard test. With the whiteboard test, as a candidate, I know that when my hour is over, its done. Plus, I can get feedback during my whiteboard session to know if I'm on the right track, I can ask questions and get guidance on where to concentrate my efforts. With take home projects, I've woken up in the middle of the night and thought, "Wait, I know this is a full stack position, and they said that the UX just needs to be functional, but maybe my CSS knowledge is too old, and there's a better/newer way of doing the styles. I should really spend all night researching this, wait, BOM?! I should convert over to that, I don't want the front eng engineer reviewing this code and saying, OMG, this is so old, NOHIRE!" EDIT: Also, take home challenges are probably very discriminatory towards older candidates with families. So maybe just as subtle way of age discrimination?

yters 8y ago
Yes, I've interviewed at companies that have interview type puzzles and coding, and take home tests. I greatly prefer the former regarding time use. And, knowing the basic CS algorithms and data structures seems to be a good thing, since they make solving problems easier and lead to cleaner solutions. There's a reason they are considered the fundamentals in CS, even if they are baked into most languages nowadays.
- jboy55 8y ago
  When I do whiteboard questions, its never to see someone regurgitate a common question. Its just nice to see someone solve a problem and what their thought patterns are. CS is pretty much an art, would you hire a violinist without hearing them in person?
  - courtf 8y ago
    Would you ask a violinist to draw the chords they would play on a whiteboard, or would you hand them a violin?
    - spudlyo 8y ago
      > Would you ask a violinist to draw the chords they would play on a whiteboard, or would you hand them a violin? The violin is not generally considered chordal instrument. While you can technically pluck all the strings at once, or bow two strings at once, it's most often used for melodic and not harmonic parts. ;)
    - jboy55 8y ago
      You would of course, you can do the exact same questions on a whiteboard with a shared computer. In my experience of doing either, some people are better at one or the other, but the challenge is essentially the same.
    - grogenaut 8y ago
      No but I'd have an architect give me plans for a house written out. I'm not hiring artists I'm hiring engineer's. I'm not hiring your for your gorgeous code in x language, I'm hiring for problem solving skills and communication. And I do let people use computer or whiteboard, computer tends to more complicated logistically (wifi, preference of ide, power, logins, etc). A whiteboard only fails to work if I don't have new pens.
      - courtf 8y ago
        Software is far more art than you think, and rigid, formulaic thinking can be a detriment to good problem solving skills. Especially when solving something you can't just look up on the internet. If your engineers aren't writing clean, readable, maintainable code that solves problems as simply as possible (ie, gorgeous), I'm not sure your hiring practices are doing you any good.
        grogenaut 8y ago
- thomascgalvin 8y ago
  > There's a reason [basic CS algorithms and data structures] are considered the fundamentals in CS, even if they are baked into most languages nowadays. A linked list is such a fundamental piece of technology, and so obvious to anyone that's been working in a language for a while, that I feel it's perfectly acceptable to rule out a candidate who cannot write one. It doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to have all of the optimizations and utility methods that you find in the standard libraries, but the ability to understand and work with a node that has a value and a pointer to the next node is kind of bare-minimum competency, isn't it?
  - BurningFrog 8y ago
    The linked list is such a fundamental piece of technology that you never have to implement it. I mean, I understand the linked list quite well, but in my multi decade software career, I've probably actually implemented one less than once a decade. So I think it's a very unrealistic interview question, and will sigh quite hard (internally) when asked to implement one in an interview. You just can't please everyone...
    - thomascgalvin 8y ago
      I agree, if you implement a linked list in production code, you've almost certainly made a mistake. My point is that a linked list is such a simple concept that anyone with real programming experience should be able to write a basic implementation. It's a Shibboleth; I only care about your ability to perform the task because it tells me something else about you.
      - BurningFrog 8y ago
        OK, I have to kinda agree. It almost levels the playing field in the sense that since no one actually writes these things, we're probably all equally half clumsy with them :)
        SamReidHughes 8y ago
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
> Also, take home challenges are probably very discriminatory towards older candidates with families. So maybe just as subtle way of age discrimination? I see this sentiment fairly frequently, and TBH, it completely baffles me. I am in my mid 40s. Yes, I don't have nearly as much energy nor desire to spend all weekend doing take-home programming assignments as I did 20 years ago. But if one candidate is willing to do more work and preparation for an interview, that's not 'discrimination' - that's one person showing they are willing to put more effort into a job than another. True, your family obligations may mean you don't have as much time to spend on that preparation. If that's the case, that's a fine, very reasonable trade-off you've made to prioritize your family over your work. But then it strikes me as entirely UNreasonable to accuse businesses of discrimination because they choose employees who have decided not to make that same trade-off.
- ppod 8y ago
  I agree with what you say as-is, but the other side of it is that the company might not be making optimal hiring decisions by doing this discrimination. A 22 year-old can choose to spend a full weekend on an interview task and do a great job, but once hired that doesn't mean they will actually work more hours (though they might). If we assume that once hired both the 20yo and the 40yo will work 40 hour weeks (i'm in europe), then it wouldn't be optimal to compare their take-homes evenly if the 20yo had spent way more time on it. Anyway its complicated. Seems like on-site open-book 90 minute real-world problems would be a nice solution.
  - gav 8y ago
    > Seems like on-site open-book 90 minute real-world problems would be a nice solution. It is. And it's superior to a take-home test because you know the candidate wrote the code, you know how long it took them, and you can turn it into a pair-programming exercise.
- jboy55 8y ago
  The whole bent against white board questions is that they are unrealistic as to actual working conditions and thus are artificial. So if you are a successful engineer, using your work time efficiently, and yet, you have family obligations that prevent you from spending enough time as someone else on a take home challenge, is the take home challenge showing realistic 'working conditions'? Or is it a measure of freetime? >If that's the case, that's a fine, very reasonable trade-off you've made to prioritize your family over your work. I'd advise that if you are ever involved in a hiring situation you never write that down. "I'm sorry my project wasn't done so well, [my baby, pregnancy, illness, religious service] took most of my weekend". That is a prime example of age/gender/disability discrimination. You should never assume someone's out side of work life presumes an inability to do the job during work hours.
userbinator 8y ago
I don't want the front eng engineer reviewing this code and saying, OMG, this is so old, NOHIRE!" I know trend-chasing seems to be common in the web development industry, but I would be wary of anyone who likes to make such changes for the sake of showing off or otherwise.
bradleyjg 8y ago
Hacker rank allows a company to set up a time limited programming challenge. The company gets back a score based on how many of the tests were passed and the code itself. Maybe not a bad means of ensuring that “this should only take an hour of your time” really means that. The flip side is that fast and good aren’t one in the same, but I don’t think there’s any perfect answers here.
- jboy55 8y ago
  I've used similar online coding challenges, even proctored ones. I've had very mixed results, and the challengers are typically nearly identical to ones put on whiteboards. They are often used instead of phone screens.
- ninja10 8y ago
  A lot of these hacker- rank like coding tests often require some extensive preparation. I've used codility (I think that was the one ), and it actually mentioned that ideally it requires at least 2-3 weeks of preparation or more.
baxtr 8y ago
Well, we have made the experience that people that are not seriously considering to take the job are filtered out by a homework. It helps both to save a lot of time and energy interviewing people.
- avita1 8y ago
  I'm genuinely not trying to be snarky, but how can you say that with any certainty? The only way to know this for sure would be to ask half your applicant pool to do the test, and the other half to go through the exact same battery of interviews sans take home test and then see how many of the offers you extend are accepted. Obviously this requires that you're a big enough company to split your applicants into two pools and still have a big enough sample size. Whenever I talk to people involved in hiring about this, they balk at the idea (for okay reasons -- in theory doing that would mean less people filtered out by homework and more applicants rejected during in person interviews that take up engineer time.)
  - baxtr 8y ago
    I guess you are right, we haven’t done a proper A/B test for this. We had no homework before however, and the overall results were different. It is my strong feeling though that many cancel after seeing the homework that are not completely convinced, which is ok.
throwaway66666 8y ago
> Also, take home challenges are probably very discriminatory towards older candidates with families. So maybe just as subtle way of age discrimination? And whiteboard interviews are discriminatory towards people with anxiety who have trouble thinking clearly when they are in the spotlight with all eyes on them, no? Where does the microaggressions game start and end? My current company does, -Offer choice between live coding and take home assignment. Regardless of picking the assignment, we do have multiple questions like "given this piece of code find the bug", but they won't require writing actual code. -Home assignment for remote candidates. With a second round where we discuss and provide feedback (or the candidate explains their thought process) if needed. The candidate is also judged how feedback is received and argued about. If adequate documentation has been supplied we skip the second round too, or just do it in email back n forth. -And if you have an impressive active blog and an active github profile you probably evade both live coding and assignment (but still get asked the usual questions about architecture, algorithm use, whether you 'll be a good personality/culture-fit etc). Despite being "nice" our rejection ratio is quite high (at least in my team), and people who picked the assignment themselves/no-pressure applied then bitched about it on glassdoor. Even though they had the option to not have to do it at all. I don't get it.
- jboy55 8y ago
  >And whiteboard interviews are discriminatory towards people with anxiety who have trouble thinking clearly when they are in the spotlight with all eyes on them, no? Where does the microaggressions game start and end? So Gender/Age/Disabilty discrimination are now microagrssions? It seems from your description of your hiring practice, someone has thought of the implications of take home questions given the choice between live and take home. My point is, replacing white board questions with entirely take home questions is probably discriminatory.
  - bradleyjg 8y ago
    > So Gender/Age/Disabilty discrimination are now microagrssions? Do you have any cases to cite for the proposition that take home interview assignments to be per se “Gender/Age/Disability” discrimination? From any court anywhere?
mlboss 8y ago
And sometimes after you have spent so much time on take home exercise companies don’t even respond back.
- noisy_boy 8y ago
  Has happened to me. Was given an assignment that basically requires me to setup an entire ETL pipeline with full/incremental loading (with inputs varying from CSV/Json APIs etc), do data cleansing, create charts, data warehouse modelling + another coding assignment - all within a week's time. It was a very busy week and despite trying my best couldn't finish it. I sent what was completed - total silence with no feedback.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nkingsy 8y ago
Seems so simple to just say “let us know when you have 1 hour to do this take home and we will send it to you at that time. Sumbissions will be accepted for one hour after we send you the coding challenge” Problem solved
- jboy55 8y ago
  I'd say in the list of companies, probably 2% of the 'take home projects' describe that. A one hour question is most of the time the phone screen or the replacement of it with an automated online exam.
  - nkingsy 8y ago
    When they say "take 1-2 hours on this" I take them at their word and do just that. On more that one occasion it has cost me an onsite.
miaklesp 8y ago
How many nights and weekends should be uselessly wasted on LeetCode to get in shape before the whiteboard interview? At least learning of new things in CSS will give you new useful knowledge which you can potentially apply in future.
- nitely 8y ago
  How many nights and weekends should be uselessly wasted on homework for every interview? At least whiteboard requieres practicing for real once in a life time.
takehome1 8y ago
I’ve worked at three companies that usually had candidates complete take home assignments. The subjectivity is part of the point. They want you to only spend an hour or two so they can level you accurately and determine what the interview will look like, if there will be one at all. Most people submitting solutions are usually screened out because they’re empirically inexperienced or unsuited for the role. It’s a red flag if you took more time than suggested. If it’s a long assignment, you could simply say what you would work on next had you more time. If it’s a screening-type assignment you’ll be screened out, and if it’s not, you’ll be invited to onsite if what you said gels with the reviewer. Most take home submissions I’ve seen are rejected — because of copy-pasted stack overflow code patched together, incorrect solutions, or poor style or organization.
- scottlocklin 8y ago
  I ran into exactly one company that attempted to get me to do a take-home; they were gibbering idiots, statistical imbeciles, and their company proved it in the 5-6 years since then. They're still around: a clown car run by frauds and mountebanks, powered by gas, hype and free labor. The right way to do a take home exam if you must do this: give them something real and pay them consulting rates for it. If the result is good, you've hired a great worker. If the result is bad, you will know, they'll get a few bucks for their time, and no hard feelings. If you can't screen them to the point where you you can't screen for decent odds on a take home, you should consider a new career. Maybe picking potatoes.
11thEarlOfMar 8y ago
We do the take home tests because it allows the candidate to work in a more natural way, without the pressure of completing in an hour, under scrutiny and in such a highly consequential circumstance. Also, we allow as much time as they need to take to get it done. Some come back in a couple of days, some in a week. Then we have them present their code in a code review in front of the team. This gives a good indication of their ability to explain their thinking and approach clearly and is a good read on their communication skills. So far, no complaints, though it is true that many of them get a bit wrapped up in the exercise and spend far more than the 2 hours we are asking for.
deepGem 8y ago
I have taken multiple of these take home assignments. One from Microsoft as well. What was a 2 day affair turned out to be a week long affair. I was asked to implement one of the iOS outlook features which involved multiple nesting of scrollviews in gridviews and what not. Took me 4 days and when I submitted the repo, the response I got was 'sorry this doesn't cut it and we can't proceed'. I mean, can't the reviewers at least provide some comment in the repo ? OTOH, I took a Facebook remote test that was timed (I think 30 mins) and the reviewer exactly told me why I didn't clear the test within 24 hours of submission. I don't necessarily agree with everything Facebook does but I really appreciate this level of response. So, I'll happily do a whiteboard test no matter how unrealistic it is.
- hideo 8y ago
  This is the fundamental problem with take home tests. The amount of time the candidate spends is way too high compared to the amount of feedback they get.
seattle_spring 8y ago
Question for all of the people claiming ageism because companies won't make special cases for folks with kids: I have a dog. A young dog that requires a lot of work around the clock. Do you also think I deserve concessions?
fluxem 8y ago
Also take home tests introduce asymmetry. Even take home test takes one hour to do, it takes 5 minutes to check. So, company can go through more candidates, wasting their time. In traditional interview, for every hour candidate spends, the interviewer needs to spend the same amount of time. Therefore, it's forcing companies to choose candidates wisely.

by jboy55 8y ago

yters 8y ago

Yes, I've interviewed at companies that have interview type puzzles and coding, and take home tests. I greatly prefer the former regarding time use. And, knowing the basic CS algorithms and data structures seems to be a good thing, since they make solving problems easier and lead to cleaner solutions. There's a reason they are considered the fundamentals in CS, even if they are baked into most languages nowadays.

jboy55 8y ago
When I do whiteboard questions, its never to see someone regurgitate a common question. Its just nice to see someone solve a problem and what their thought patterns are. CS is pretty much an art, would you hire a violinist without hearing them in person?
- courtf 8y ago
  Would you ask a violinist to draw the chords they would play on a whiteboard, or would you hand them a violin?
  - spudlyo 8y ago
    > Would you ask a violinist to draw the chords they would play on a whiteboard, or would you hand them a violin? The violin is not generally considered chordal instrument. While you can technically pluck all the strings at once, or bow two strings at once, it's most often used for melodic and not harmonic parts. ;)
  - jboy55 8y ago
    You would of course, you can do the exact same questions on a whiteboard with a shared computer. In my experience of doing either, some people are better at one or the other, but the challenge is essentially the same.
  - grogenaut 8y ago
    No but I'd have an architect give me plans for a house written out. I'm not hiring artists I'm hiring engineer's. I'm not hiring your for your gorgeous code in x language, I'm hiring for problem solving skills and communication. And I do let people use computer or whiteboard, computer tends to more complicated logistically (wifi, preference of ide, power, logins, etc). A whiteboard only fails to work if I don't have new pens.
    - courtf 8y ago
      Software is far more art than you think, and rigid, formulaic thinking can be a detriment to good problem solving skills. Especially when solving something you can't just look up on the internet. If your engineers aren't writing clean, readable, maintainable code that solves problems as simply as possible (ie, gorgeous), I'm not sure your hiring practices are doing you any good.
      - grogenaut 8y ago
thomascgalvin 8y ago
> There's a reason [basic CS algorithms and data structures] are considered the fundamentals in CS, even if they are baked into most languages nowadays. A linked list is such a fundamental piece of technology, and so obvious to anyone that's been working in a language for a while, that I feel it's perfectly acceptable to rule out a candidate who cannot write one. It doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to have all of the optimizations and utility methods that you find in the standard libraries, but the ability to understand and work with a node that has a value and a pointer to the next node is kind of bare-minimum competency, isn't it?
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  The linked list is such a fundamental piece of technology that you never have to implement it. I mean, I understand the linked list quite well, but in my multi decade software career, I've probably actually implemented one less than once a decade. So I think it's a very unrealistic interview question, and will sigh quite hard (internally) when asked to implement one in an interview. You just can't please everyone...
  - thomascgalvin 8y ago
    I agree, if you implement a linked list in production code, you've almost certainly made a mistake. My point is that a linked list is such a simple concept that anyone with real programming experience should be able to write a basic implementation. It's a Shibboleth; I only care about your ability to perform the task because it tells me something else about you.
    - BurningFrog 8y ago
      OK, I have to kinda agree. It almost levels the playing field in the sense that since no one actually writes these things, we're probably all equally half clumsy with them :)
      - SamReidHughes 8y ago

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

> Also, take home challenges are probably very discriminatory towards older candidates with families. So maybe just as subtle way of age discrimination? I see this sentiment fairly frequently, and TBH, it completely baffles me. I am in my mid 40s. Yes, I don't have nearly as much energy nor desire to spend all weekend doing take-home programming assignments as I did 20 years ago. But if one candidate is willing to do more work and preparation for an interview, that's not 'discrimination' - that's one person showing they are willing to put more effort into a job than another. True, your family obligations may mean you don't have as much time to spend on that preparation. If that's the case, that's a fine, very reasonable trade-off you've made to prioritize your family over your work. But then it strikes me as entirely UNreasonable to accuse businesses of discrimination because they choose employees who have decided not to make that same trade-off.

ppod 8y ago
I agree with what you say as-is, but the other side of it is that the company might not be making optimal hiring decisions by doing this discrimination. A 22 year-old can choose to spend a full weekend on an interview task and do a great job, but once hired that doesn't mean they will actually work more hours (though they might). If we assume that once hired both the 20yo and the 40yo will work 40 hour weeks (i'm in europe), then it wouldn't be optimal to compare their take-homes evenly if the 20yo had spent way more time on it. Anyway its complicated. Seems like on-site open-book 90 minute real-world problems would be a nice solution.
- gav 8y ago
  > Seems like on-site open-book 90 minute real-world problems would be a nice solution. It is. And it's superior to a take-home test because you know the candidate wrote the code, you know how long it took them, and you can turn it into a pair-programming exercise.
jboy55 8y ago
The whole bent against white board questions is that they are unrealistic as to actual working conditions and thus are artificial. So if you are a successful engineer, using your work time efficiently, and yet, you have family obligations that prevent you from spending enough time as someone else on a take home challenge, is the take home challenge showing realistic 'working conditions'? Or is it a measure of freetime? >If that's the case, that's a fine, very reasonable trade-off you've made to prioritize your family over your work. I'd advise that if you are ever involved in a hiring situation you never write that down. "I'm sorry my project wasn't done so well, [my baby, pregnancy, illness, religious service] took most of my weekend". That is a prime example of age/gender/disability discrimination. You should never assume someone's out side of work life presumes an inability to do the job during work hours.

userbinator 8y ago

I don't want the front eng engineer reviewing this code and saying, OMG, this is so old, NOHIRE!" I know trend-chasing seems to be common in the web development industry, but I would be wary of anyone who likes to make such changes for the sake of showing off or otherwise.

bradleyjg 8y ago

Hacker rank allows a company to set up a time limited programming challenge. The company gets back a score based on how many of the tests were passed and the code itself. Maybe not a bad means of ensuring that “this should only take an hour of your time” really means that. The flip side is that fast and good aren’t one in the same, but I don’t think there’s any perfect answers here.

jboy55 8y ago
I've used similar online coding challenges, even proctored ones. I've had very mixed results, and the challengers are typically nearly identical to ones put on whiteboards. They are often used instead of phone screens.
ninja10 8y ago
A lot of these hacker- rank like coding tests often require some extensive preparation. I've used codility (I think that was the one ), and it actually mentioned that ideally it requires at least 2-3 weeks of preparation or more.

baxtr 8y ago

Well, we have made the experience that people that are not seriously considering to take the job are filtered out by a homework. It helps both to save a lot of time and energy interviewing people.

avita1 8y ago
I'm genuinely not trying to be snarky, but how can you say that with any certainty? The only way to know this for sure would be to ask half your applicant pool to do the test, and the other half to go through the exact same battery of interviews sans take home test and then see how many of the offers you extend are accepted. Obviously this requires that you're a big enough company to split your applicants into two pools and still have a big enough sample size. Whenever I talk to people involved in hiring about this, they balk at the idea (for okay reasons -- in theory doing that would mean less people filtered out by homework and more applicants rejected during in person interviews that take up engineer time.)
- baxtr 8y ago
  I guess you are right, we haven’t done a proper A/B test for this. We had no homework before however, and the overall results were different. It is my strong feeling though that many cancel after seeing the homework that are not completely convinced, which is ok.

throwaway66666 8y ago

> Also, take home challenges are probably very discriminatory towards older candidates with families. So maybe just as subtle way of age discrimination? And whiteboard interviews are discriminatory towards people with anxiety who have trouble thinking clearly when they are in the spotlight with all eyes on them, no? Where does the microaggressions game start and end? My current company does, -Offer choice between live coding and take home assignment. Regardless of picking the assignment, we do have multiple questions like "given this piece of code find the bug", but they won't require writing actual code. -Home assignment for remote candidates. With a second round where we discuss and provide feedback (or the candidate explains their thought process) if needed. The candidate is also judged how feedback is received and argued about. If adequate documentation has been supplied we skip the second round too, or just do it in email back n forth. -And if you have an impressive active blog and an active github profile you probably evade both live coding and assignment (but still get asked the usual questions about architecture, algorithm use, whether you 'll be a good personality/culture-fit etc). Despite being "nice" our rejection ratio is quite high (at least in my team), and people who picked the assignment themselves/no-pressure applied then bitched about it on glassdoor. Even though they had the option to not have to do it at all. I don't get it.

jboy55 8y ago
>And whiteboard interviews are discriminatory towards people with anxiety who have trouble thinking clearly when they are in the spotlight with all eyes on them, no? Where does the microaggressions game start and end? So Gender/Age/Disabilty discrimination are now microagrssions? It seems from your description of your hiring practice, someone has thought of the implications of take home questions given the choice between live and take home. My point is, replacing white board questions with entirely take home questions is probably discriminatory.
- bradleyjg 8y ago
  > So Gender/Age/Disabilty discrimination are now microagrssions? Do you have any cases to cite for the proposition that take home interview assignments to be per se “Gender/Age/Disability” discrimination? From any court anywhere?

mlboss 8y ago

And sometimes after you have spent so much time on take home exercise companies don’t even respond back.

noisy_boy 8y ago
Has happened to me. Was given an assignment that basically requires me to setup an entire ETL pipeline with full/incremental loading (with inputs varying from CSV/Json APIs etc), do data cleansing, create charts, data warehouse modelling + another coding assignment - all within a week's time. It was a very busy week and despite trying my best couldn't finish it. I sent what was completed - total silence with no feedback.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

nkingsy 8y ago

Seems so simple to just say “let us know when you have 1 hour to do this take home and we will send it to you at that time. Sumbissions will be accepted for one hour after we send you the coding challenge” Problem solved

jboy55 8y ago
I'd say in the list of companies, probably 2% of the 'take home projects' describe that. A one hour question is most of the time the phone screen or the replacement of it with an automated online exam.
- nkingsy 8y ago
  When they say "take 1-2 hours on this" I take them at their word and do just that. On more that one occasion it has cost me an onsite.

miaklesp 8y ago

How many nights and weekends should be uselessly wasted on LeetCode to get in shape before the whiteboard interview? At least learning of new things in CSS will give you new useful knowledge which you can potentially apply in future.

nitely 8y ago
How many nights and weekends should be uselessly wasted on homework for every interview? At least whiteboard requieres practicing for real once in a life time.

takehome1 8y ago

I’ve worked at three companies that usually had candidates complete take home assignments. The subjectivity is part of the point. They want you to only spend an hour or two so they can level you accurately and determine what the interview will look like, if there will be one at all. Most people submitting solutions are usually screened out because they’re empirically inexperienced or unsuited for the role. It’s a red flag if you took more time than suggested. If it’s a long assignment, you could simply say what you would work on next had you more time. If it’s a screening-type assignment you’ll be screened out, and if it’s not, you’ll be invited to onsite if what you said gels with the reviewer. Most take home submissions I’ve seen are rejected — because of copy-pasted stack overflow code patched together, incorrect solutions, or poor style or organization.

scottlocklin 8y ago
I ran into exactly one company that attempted to get me to do a take-home; they were gibbering idiots, statistical imbeciles, and their company proved it in the 5-6 years since then. They're still around: a clown car run by frauds and mountebanks, powered by gas, hype and free labor. The right way to do a take home exam if you must do this: give them something real and pay them consulting rates for it. If the result is good, you've hired a great worker. If the result is bad, you will know, they'll get a few bucks for their time, and no hard feelings. If you can't screen them to the point where you you can't screen for decent odds on a take home, you should consider a new career. Maybe picking potatoes.

11thEarlOfMar 8y ago

We do the take home tests because it allows the candidate to work in a more natural way, without the pressure of completing in an hour, under scrutiny and in such a highly consequential circumstance. Also, we allow as much time as they need to take to get it done. Some come back in a couple of days, some in a week. Then we have them present their code in a code review in front of the team. This gives a good indication of their ability to explain their thinking and approach clearly and is a good read on their communication skills. So far, no complaints, though it is true that many of them get a bit wrapped up in the exercise and spend far more than the 2 hours we are asking for.

deepGem 8y ago

I have taken multiple of these take home assignments. One from Microsoft as well. What was a 2 day affair turned out to be a week long affair. I was asked to implement one of the iOS outlook features which involved multiple nesting of scrollviews in gridviews and what not. Took me 4 days and when I submitted the repo, the response I got was 'sorry this doesn't cut it and we can't proceed'. I mean, can't the reviewers at least provide some comment in the repo ? OTOH, I took a Facebook remote test that was timed (I think 30 mins) and the reviewer exactly told me why I didn't clear the test within 24 hours of submission. I don't necessarily agree with everything Facebook does but I really appreciate this level of response. So, I'll happily do a whiteboard test no matter how unrealistic it is.

hideo 8y ago
This is the fundamental problem with take home tests. The amount of time the candidate spends is way too high compared to the amount of feedback they get.

seattle_spring 8y ago

Question for all of the people claiming ageism because companies won't make special cases for folks with kids: I have a dog. A young dog that requires a lot of work around the clock. Do you also think I deserve concessions?

fluxem 8y ago

Also take home tests introduce asymmetry. Even take home test takes one hour to do, it takes 5 minutes to check. So, company can go through more candidates, wasting their time. In traditional interview, for every hour candidate spends, the interviewer needs to spend the same amount of time. Therefore, it's forcing companies to choose candidates wisely.