4 ms·

Lol, take home technical assignment. Why would I ever? I'd much rather have a comfortable conversation with someone who has worked with me in the past. I'm neve

Lol, take home technical assignment. Why would I ever? I'd much rather have a comfortable conversation with someone who has worked with me in the past. I'm never, ever doing a 4 hour assignment for you.

Redsquare 4y ago
Agree, I will laugh at you asking me to do anything at home before we have a contract
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  Like... interview?
corrral 4y ago
I think "senior" has at least two types. There's the FAANG-alum seniors who are used to and will put up with full-day or even multi-day interviews full of leetcode shit or "gotcha" edge-case quizzes about language features you trained yourself to avoid a decade ago or take-home assignments ("4 hours" sure except the other candidate put in 12 hours and lied about it, so...) for that sweet, sweet crazy-high comp. Unless you're offering these sorts a CTO position, they're not applying to your non-FAANG-tier-comp-and-security-and-presige company. Period. Then there's senior in most of the rest of the industry. We don't do long, annoying interviews. If your process drags on we've already accepted one of our other offers. We don't make FAANG money (mostly) but we also don't put up with horseshit. You want me, or not? If not, 100 other companies do, so bye and have a nice day.
- jacobyoder 4y ago
  > ("4 hours" sure except the other candidate put in 12 hours and lied about it, so...) Recently went through this. Got an email at 2pm saying "please run through this exercise". Looked at the doc, then decided to hit it. I submitted everything back before 6pm. It was around 2.5 hours, and I took a short break in the middle. I screen-captured my whole session (not sent in) but to have a little souvenir of the exercise. There's really not much way I could have 'cheated' on the time because there was only 4 hrs tops between sending the email and submitted my results. Their estimate was 'we expect this to take 2-3 hours', and they weren't all that wrong. I could see someone less experienced taking more than 2 hours just on one of the bad queries - unless you've seen the pattern(s) before it's hard to recognize and refactor quickly.
- jen20 4y ago
  > FAANG-alum seniors who are used to and will put up with full-day or even multi-day interviews full of leetcode shit or "gotcha" edge-case quizzes As a current FAANG employee, I didn’t put up with that bullshit from anyone including FAANG companies.
duped 4y ago
People say this and I have yet to find a company that doesn't do some kind of technical assessment. But I have seen multiple coworkers with 10-20 years of experience as software engineers with glowing recommendations get fired because they couldn't write software. So I'm a little happier to have some bar for myself and coworkers to clear. > I'm never, ever doing a 4 hour assignment for you. Boo hoo, you need to spend four hours of your life to take home multiples of the median American family's income. It blows my mind how conceited some people in this industry can be, and I'm glad I don't work with them. This is one reason why the take home is a great filter.
- AndyNemmity 4y ago
  You're not responding in good faith with your "boo hoo" comment. No one is crying here. The point here is there are many, many companies that don't require a 4 hour take home technical assessment, and thus people can decide to do them or not. The post is about this topic, so the responses are about the topic. You think that 4 hour take home technical assessments are a reasonable filter. Awesome, you are a person who can apply for the position op is focused on.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Exactly the point they're missing - if everyone does it, it's part of the shit sandwich you have to eat. But if you're the only one doing it, there are entire classes of applicants that will pass you by. Hiding that you're going to spring it on people should give you numbers, by the people who ghost you the moment it appears, if you wanted to test for it.
- cableshaft 4y ago
  If I'm interviewing at multiple companies and they all do that, that's 4 hours per company I want to check out. And let's be honest, most of these I've been asked to do weren't reasonable to do, and do well, and double check, in four hours, despite the claim. Eight hours is more reasonable to do them properly, usually. If I interview at three places, that's three days of unpaid work (or 6+ evenings after I've already worked a full day at my normal job), and if I'm already making "multiples of the median American family's income" elsewhere, then it becomes less attractive to put up with that, especially if other companies aren't asking for it. Like I just can't find the energy to put up with Amazon's 2.5 hour span of unbroken time take-home test, no matter how desperate they make themselves sound or how often they contact me (which is almost every week at this point). When I last considered it, I was already having trouble juggling just finding holes in the day to manage about 30 interviews I ended up doing, across about 8 companies. I had no energy to study for, and then do, that exam on top of it (I did do three 45-60 minute exams, across three evenings, for three other companies, though).
jitix 4y ago
But isn't the alternative to take home assignment leetcoding on whiteboards? Last time I was interviewing in the US market was in 2017 and it was literally just these two options. And the assignments tended to be long - like a week long. (tbh there were a few companies that pre-offered and just wanted one general discussion round with the team but they felt shady and desperate, and one was a literal consultancy) Could someone articulate what's the norm now for non-FAANG pure-tech companies? I might go back to the open market next year after grad school since I don't have much of a network in Canada. (I have decent 10y+ experience at startups and a unicorn, in both big data analytics and full stack applications and I'm good at system design, take home assignments and even live coding but really suck at physical white boarding complex algorithms with someone literally watching over me)
- AndyNemmity 4y ago
  I think where the disconnect is occurring is that leetcoding on whiteboards, and home assignments are not the norm for many of us who are Senior. I have 20y+ experience in startups, unicorn, large companies, big data analytics, full stack applications, and system design. I am not asked to interview with whiteboard coding when someone wants to hire me from a referral. They are glorified meet and greets. This is what having a network of people who have worked with you before, and have seen your productivity does. You don't interview the same way other people do, people want you for you, because they know that it doesn't matter what the technology is, you're going to provide a crazy level of value, and they want that level of value in their situation.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  I've been duped into take-homes a few times. The one time I wasn't ghosted after submitting, they asked me to come in for an on-site... to do leetcode.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I’m not exactly a “dev ops” person like the original person is looking for. I am the classical definition of dev ops. A software developer who knows cloud and consults with companies on how to develop “cloud natively”. Before my current job, my last three jobs (2014, 2016, and 2018) were as a bog standard “enterprise” Senior software engineer/team lead/de facto “architect” who was hired to help the company mature. I got my job by talking to the manager, director, CTO based on my network and discussing my past successes and how I would go about helping then with their real world problems. I am 99% sure if and when I leave my current job in the cloud consulting department at BigTech and probably go back to smaller companies I won’t be asked to do a “take home test”. My network is stronger now than it was before I came.

Redsquare 4y ago

Agree, I will laugh at you asking me to do anything at home before we have a contract

madeofpalk 4y ago
Like... interview?

corrral 4y ago

I think "senior" has at least two types. There's the FAANG-alum seniors who are used to and will put up with full-day or even multi-day interviews full of leetcode shit or "gotcha" edge-case quizzes about language features you trained yourself to avoid a decade ago or take-home assignments ("4 hours" sure except the other candidate put in 12 hours and lied about it, so...) for that sweet, sweet crazy-high comp. Unless you're offering these sorts a CTO position, they're not applying to your non-FAANG-tier-comp-and-security-and-presige company. Period. Then there's senior in most of the rest of the industry. We don't do long, annoying interviews. If your process drags on we've already accepted one of our other offers. We don't make FAANG money (mostly) but we also don't put up with horseshit. You want me, or not? If not, 100 other companies do, so bye and have a nice day.

jacobyoder 4y ago
> ("4 hours" sure except the other candidate put in 12 hours and lied about it, so...) Recently went through this. Got an email at 2pm saying "please run through this exercise". Looked at the doc, then decided to hit it. I submitted everything back before 6pm. It was around 2.5 hours, and I took a short break in the middle. I screen-captured my whole session (not sent in) but to have a little souvenir of the exercise. There's really not much way I could have 'cheated' on the time because there was only 4 hrs tops between sending the email and submitted my results. Their estimate was 'we expect this to take 2-3 hours', and they weren't all that wrong. I could see someone less experienced taking more than 2 hours just on one of the bad queries - unless you've seen the pattern(s) before it's hard to recognize and refactor quickly.
jen20 4y ago
> FAANG-alum seniors who are used to and will put up with full-day or even multi-day interviews full of leetcode shit or "gotcha" edge-case quizzes As a current FAANG employee, I didn’t put up with that bullshit from anyone including FAANG companies.

duped 4y ago

People say this and I have yet to find a company that doesn't do some kind of technical assessment. But I have seen multiple coworkers with 10-20 years of experience as software engineers with glowing recommendations get fired because they couldn't write software. So I'm a little happier to have some bar for myself and coworkers to clear. > I'm never, ever doing a 4 hour assignment for you. Boo hoo, you need to spend four hours of your life to take home multiples of the median American family's income. It blows my mind how conceited some people in this industry can be, and I'm glad I don't work with them. This is one reason why the take home is a great filter.

AndyNemmity 4y ago
You're not responding in good faith with your "boo hoo" comment. No one is crying here. The point here is there are many, many companies that don't require a 4 hour take home technical assessment, and thus people can decide to do them or not. The post is about this topic, so the responses are about the topic. You think that 4 hour take home technical assessments are a reasonable filter. Awesome, you are a person who can apply for the position op is focused on.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Exactly the point they're missing - if everyone does it, it's part of the shit sandwich you have to eat. But if you're the only one doing it, there are entire classes of applicants that will pass you by. Hiding that you're going to spring it on people should give you numbers, by the people who ghost you the moment it appears, if you wanted to test for it.
cableshaft 4y ago
If I'm interviewing at multiple companies and they all do that, that's 4 hours per company I want to check out. And let's be honest, most of these I've been asked to do weren't reasonable to do, and do well, and double check, in four hours, despite the claim. Eight hours is more reasonable to do them properly, usually. If I interview at three places, that's three days of unpaid work (or 6+ evenings after I've already worked a full day at my normal job), and if I'm already making "multiples of the median American family's income" elsewhere, then it becomes less attractive to put up with that, especially if other companies aren't asking for it. Like I just can't find the energy to put up with Amazon's 2.5 hour span of unbroken time take-home test, no matter how desperate they make themselves sound or how often they contact me (which is almost every week at this point). When I last considered it, I was already having trouble juggling just finding holes in the day to manage about 30 interviews I ended up doing, across about 8 companies. I had no energy to study for, and then do, that exam on top of it (I did do three 45-60 minute exams, across three evenings, for three other companies, though).

jitix 4y ago

But isn't the alternative to take home assignment leetcoding on whiteboards? Last time I was interviewing in the US market was in 2017 and it was literally just these two options. And the assignments tended to be long - like a week long. (tbh there were a few companies that pre-offered and just wanted one general discussion round with the team but they felt shady and desperate, and one was a literal consultancy) Could someone articulate what's the norm now for non-FAANG pure-tech companies? I might go back to the open market next year after grad school since I don't have much of a network in Canada. (I have decent 10y+ experience at startups and a unicorn, in both big data analytics and full stack applications and I'm good at system design, take home assignments and even live coding but really suck at physical white boarding complex algorithms with someone literally watching over me)

AndyNemmity 4y ago
I think where the disconnect is occurring is that leetcoding on whiteboards, and home assignments are not the norm for many of us who are Senior. I have 20y+ experience in startups, unicorn, large companies, big data analytics, full stack applications, and system design. I am not asked to interview with whiteboard coding when someone wants to hire me from a referral. They are glorified meet and greets. This is what having a network of people who have worked with you before, and have seen your productivity does. You don't interview the same way other people do, people want you for you, because they know that it doesn't matter what the technology is, you're going to provide a crazy level of value, and they want that level of value in their situation.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nsxwolf 4y ago
I've been duped into take-homes a few times. The one time I wasn't ghosted after submitting, they asked me to come in for an on-site... to do leetcode.
scarface74 4y ago
I’m not exactly a “dev ops” person like the original person is looking for. I am the classical definition of dev ops. A software developer who knows cloud and consults with companies on how to develop “cloud natively”. Before my current job, my last three jobs (2014, 2016, and 2018) were as a bog standard “enterprise” Senior software engineer/team lead/de facto “architect” who was hired to help the company mature. I got my job by talking to the manager, director, CTO based on my network and discussing my past successes and how I would go about helping then with their real world problems. I am 99% sure if and when I leave my current job in the cloud consulting department at BigTech and probably go back to smaller companies I won’t be asked to do a “take home test”. My network is stronger now than it was before I came.