13 ms·

The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. I

• lewispollard 4y ago
  I don't know what exactly OP is assigning to applicants, but in my experience a "four hour" coding assignment can be completed in an hour or two - and they don't have to be consecutive hours, it just means four hours is your limit and you have a few days or a week to complete it in.
  • higeorge13 4y ago
    I had a 4-hour assignment requiring a full weekend (10 medium to difficult queries on an unknown 20 table database and document with business analysis for the query results + additional code to extract from api and save to db with your own schema + additional queries on top of this). I also had an 1-hour where i couldn't build the provided code and had to go through maven repos and older versions of the major test component to make it work after a couple hours and then lost any motivation to write the simple exercise. I also had an honest one once, where the instructions were clear, you will need a full weekend to do it. I liked the job and i completed it, only to be rejected because they didn't like my scala syntax. Sorry, but i won't take home test again and have to gamble whether it's an actual 1h test or a full weekend one, or some random guy will spend 1 minute only to reject me.
  • conradfr 4y ago
    In my experience a (not timeboxed) 4 hours coding assignment will actually take at least a day. Is not necessary malicious from those companies, they just underestimate the time their test take.
    • geekbird 4y ago
      IMO, most engineers massively under-estimate the time it takes to do "simple" tasks if you don't already have the infrastructure/environment set up for it.
      • higeorge13 4y ago
        And some times they assume specific or latest versions of some platform because they are currently working on it. I remember some flink take home required some latest api, while i have worked with flink in earlier versions. It took me 4h just to go through the updated documentation, while it was supposed to be an 1h one.
    • pydry 4y ago
      This is why I prefer in person coding exercises. You can do 1-1.5 hours of a "4 hour timeboxed coding assignment" and the interviewer will usually be happy that theyve seen enough and that you're not too slow coz they watched you do it. Thats 3-8 hours of your life back.
  • geekbird 4y ago
    I had one take-home "4 hour" assignment that required me to install two different, poorly documented, third party packages on my computer before I could even begin to write the code. The Java-loaded piece of junk that I needed didn't work with my existing setup, and I wasn't going to rebuild my entire system just for some arbitrary assignment. It might have been "4 hours" if I already had an environment with all the extra cruft that they used, but if I had to fart with VMs or rebuild my machine? No, just no. It's reasonable to expect someone have various languages on their personal boxen, and maybe git, but not repositories, specialized third party tools, etc. I don't run Puppet at home, for example.
    • wizofaus 4y ago
      I actually asked a company that had already offered me a position recently if they had a technical test. The one they sent me was clearly stated and it was easy to configure everything needed. If it had been otherwise I very likely wouldn't have accepted the offer.
  • anon291 4y ago
    Yeah it doesn't matter. The truth is that when you give an assignment like this, you want me to invest up to four hours in it, while you don't want to invest a single minute of company engineer time watching me solve it. Basically, you're expecting more of me than you are willing to give yourself. That's a huge red flag. That being said, even if it takes an hour, I still have to allocate 4 hours for it.
  • mattkrause 4y ago
    This must depend a lot on the place. I did a data science take-home that asked you to scrape some documents from the web, group them by topic, extract some information the clusters, and visualize it. This could be a few hours of work, or an entire research career. IMO, a good take-home needs to be aggressively scoped. Ideally, I think you'd explicitly ask for --and expect--a "bare minimum" solution and a list of potential improvements. That list would be great fodder for in-person interviews too.
• bonzini 4y ago
  > perhaps pay people to complete the assignments. Assuming this is legal at all according to current employment contracts, it's a huge pain for the new employer's payroll and more stuff to keep track for the employee's income tax.
  • AussieWog93 4y ago
    >Assuming this is legal at all according to current employment contracts, it's a huge pain for the new employer's payroll and more stuff to keep track for the employee's income tax. Is it actually? I run a small business, and have trialled people a few times. I normally just transfer them the $x and report it as a business expense, same as you'd do with a contractor. Maybe it's not technically 100% compliant, but I'd be incredibly surprised if the tax office kicked up a stink about something so petty. (Then again, maybe it's just a "she'll be right mate" attitude that permeates even government departments here in Australia)
    • the_watcher 4y ago
      In the US, you might end up having to send a whole bunch of 1099s, which I am sure would be a pain.
      • maplechori 4y ago
        under $600 you don't need a 1099
    • ghaff 4y ago
      In the US, you probably need to issue a tax form; this can be handled through a third party but then is a bit of a pain for the candidate. (I've had it work this way as a consultant on the side.) Depending on the potential employee's contracts and business rules, doing a side project for someone may or may not be 100% kosher.
    • toomanybeersies 4y ago
      Disclaimer: I'm not a tax consultant, check with your accountant If they don't have an ABN, they'll need to give you "Statement by a Supplier" [1], otherwise you're required to withhold tax at the top marginal rate. [1] https://www.ato.gov.au/forms/statement-by-a-supplier-not-quoting-an-abn/ https://www.ato.gov.au/forms/statement-by-a-supplier-not-quo...
• aoms 4y ago
  I couldn't agree with you more. This is my life.
• Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
  > The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. Completely agree here - like a fool I recently went through an entire day's worth interviews for a role (hello Stripe recruiters!!) that required both me and my wife taking PTO, with her looking after the kids while I talked to one junior dev after another about data modelling and "culture fit".
  • ghaff 4y ago
    As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of interviews. If they give you the assignment and it's immediately obvious that it's actually a 20+ hour assignment, you can always just walk. When I worked for a technology analyst company, we would ask for writing samples--which most potential hires would already have. But, if someone didn't, they'd have to create one. It was very reasonably a non-negotiable requirement given that's what they'd be doing day to day.
    • dataflow 4y ago
      > As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of interviews. Don't forget to multiply that by however many companies they're interviewing at.
      • anon291 4y ago
        IME, the 4 hour assignment comes at the 'coding interview' stage, and most companies have a full day of interviews right after. Compared to companies with a one hour coding screen... by the time I even would get to the 4 hour assignment I likely already have three or four ful day interviews lined up
        • arinlen 4y ago
          > IME, the 4 hour assignment comes at the 'coding interview' stage, and most companies have a full day of interviews right after. This is not true at all. I know for a fact that some FANGs do hour-long phone screens followed by hour-long coding assignments followed by a 4-hour multi-interview round. I know for a fact that a couple of major Fintech companies do hour-long phone screens followed by a hour-long live coding sessions. Personally, the max I endured was a 7-round hiring process comprised of a mix of one-hour interviews that culminated in a 4-hour interview round, and that was only because midway through I was bumped from a developer position track to a research engineer position.
• user00012-ab 4y ago
  Seems like a good way to weed out people that are constantly taking time off to deal with kid issues.
  • bcrosby95 4y ago
    This is just the wrong way to think about things if you actually want to hire senior devs. But it's not surprising, most companies are only used to dealing with being in a position of power.
  • speedgoose 4y ago
    In which part of the world do you work? Where I work, family is a lot more important than work. We help each other and taking time off for our family is normal and expected.
  • ghostpepper 4y ago
    Please tell me where you work so I can tell everyone I know who has or wants to have kids to avoid it
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • heavyset_go 4y ago
    Oh man, I hope you say things like this out loud so your coworkers and employer can hear you.
  • lelanthran 4y ago
    > Seems like a good way to weed out people that are constantly taking time off to deal with kid issues. That's just a different way of saying "a good way to weed out seniors", which is what the original concern was - not enough seniors. Looks like it works, though.
  • bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    hopefully you forgot the /s at the end of your comment? at any rate evidently 89.615% of people become parents https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-people-become-parents https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-people-become-paren... so, probably not a good thing to weed out.
• RhodesianHunter 4y ago
  Anecdotally, as someone with three kids I'd much rather do a take-home 4 hour assignment than the usual round of interviews since I can work the former into my schedule however I like.
  • ubercore 4y ago
    I recently did a 6 hour take-home, but was given an expectation of around 2 weeks to accomplish it, with flexibility for more if I needed it. I thought it was pretty fair compared to a never-ending round of tech interviews.
    • yieldcrv 4y ago
      My experience with that is: 0) time doing the project is tracked, sometimes via the expectation that you commit to the git repository from start to finish. dinging you for "points" for going over the time allotment and that the other candidates are: 1) doing way extra things that took way more than 6 hours 2) are not doing those extra things from scratch because they've been playing this game for a while and that 3) the company still has inaccurate ideas of what a candidate should be expected to present in the 6 hours 4) is judging you on completely random things that they did not mention. "you didn't use this design pattern" "we don't like MVVP anymore, we're back on MVP. here's this other acronym." waste of time
      • tharkun__ 4y ago
        Totally agree that this will be something lots of places might do/expect. I will definitely work against that and judge them by it. E.g. say they want me to commit to a Github project they provide or I am supposed to set up and commit to. I will use whatever time I am allotted and at the end, when I'm done and expected to hand it in, I will make one git commit that shows I committed everything exactly 1 second after I was supposed to start, then push that to the provided repo. Yes, start, not finish. Meaning "time travel". Maybe even commit as "Linus Torvalds" or something like that. If they ask about this it's a great conversation starter either way. My experience is that if the talk does come to this either they have no idea how this could even happen and I can explain or judge them based on their reactions or we both have a laugh about their companies policies around this. They see I know my git and I know they're like most companies: actually pretty OK teams and hiring managers with generally crappy HR practices.
• wizofaus 4y ago
  "The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids" Is 4 hours the amount of time the candidate is being given to complete it, or roughly how long the employer expects it will take? In the past I've generally come up with tests I know can be done in an hour or so (2 tops), but allowed 24 hours, exactly because not everyone is going to be in a position they can dedicate those 2 hours to it right there and then. Sure, those that did take the full 24 hours to complete I tended to apply higher expectations towards when judging, but at the end of the day it didn't make much difference - the tests were only to weed out those that had clearly made a poor career decision (and there were surprisingly many of those, to the point we switched to testing before interviewing).
  • marktangotango 4y ago
    Take home test as the first step in an interview process is the ultimate evil in this. I've spent hours then got ghosted. I will never do it again. This is a "run like hell" signal imo.
    • wizofaus 4y ago
      I've heard that before, and if we felt there was a significant risk we were putting off good devs from applying, I'd reverse that decision. But I like to think we made our tests a fun & interesting enough challenge that applicants were happy to spend the time doing them.
      • marktangotango 4y ago
        Lol read the responses here, you're kidding yourself.
        • wizofaus 4y ago
          I've read some. Doesn't align with my personal experience is all I can say. I can't remember a case where a candidate refused to do such a test, or that we never heard back from after letting them know that was our policy.
• mr90210 4y ago
  I smiled reading your comment. You seem like a good partner and father. Keep up the good work.
• dominotw 4y ago
  FAANG type interviews are all day affairs with 5+hr of interview and breaks in between. Senior or not. I don't see anyone getting hired in 1 hr.
  • comprev 4y ago
    I had a 1hr chat with the hiring manager (and two others on the call) representing my current client for a 12 month contract. The project was both new to them and myself so a combination of experience (as per my CV) and gut feeling on both sides lead to a signing.
  • anon291 4y ago
    In person interviews typically also involve being given lunch.
• melbourne_mat 4y ago
  Funny how similar our days are! There is however the weekend for stuff like this. I assume an interested employer would be willing to allow that.
  • anon291 4y ago
    Sure, I could potentially do this on the weekend, but would still require work. For religious reasons, I do not work on Sunday and I make no exceptions. Sunday is for socializing with family and friends and doing nothing.
• PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > Exactly where in that schedule am I supposed to fit a FOUR HOUR coding assignment. That's ridiculous. Unless you're providing child care, this is simply too much. What do you do for normal on-site interviews or phone interviews that have similar time demands? I’m also a parent of small children with a packed schedule, but I’d much rather take a 4-hour take home and handle it on the weekend or when I’m flexible. Giving up half or whole days of PTO to interview in real-time is actually worse for my overall schedule, not better, because I need that PTO more than ever as a parent of young kids. The flexibility of take-homes is great as a parent.
  • joshmanders 4y ago
    It’s easy really. Walk. As a senior it’s insulting to expect to do a four hour take home test. When you hire a Michelin star chef do you make them make you a four course meal to prove they can cook? Do you make a surgeon do four hour surgery? It’s absolutely asinine that we accept this behavior in our industry. You’d be laughed at by every possible candidate in other industries.
    • unnamed38388 4y ago
      I immediately decline if a company asks for unpaid work as part of the interview process. If it’s paid I don’t have an issue with it. I assume if a company starts the relationship with asking for unpaid work that expectation will continue throughout your employment. There are simply too many companies hiring that don’t require this that it’s easy to just pass.
      • PragmaticPulp 4y ago
        > I immediately decline if a company asks for unpaid work as part of the interview process. Take-home challenges aren't unpaid work. They're just a take-home replacement for the on-site interview. If anyone tries to get you to do unpaid work (as in, actual work that the company needs to be done rather than an arbitrary challenge given to candidates for review) then you should absolutely walk.
    • 4y ago
• bigiain 4y ago
  > Alternatively, perhaps pay people to complete the assignments. That doesn't solve the majority of the "senior position" problem. Like you point out, your schedule does not have a "spare" 4 hour block in it, and paying you $1000 to find one is not going to make you jump at the opportunity if the alternative is a different role that is not asking for a 4 hour block of your family time. Anybody recruiting for "senior roles" needs to understand the 30-40 year olds, who are the only people who have the professional experience you're seeking, cannot be recruited like fresh college grads who can blast through pointless coding tests between 11pm and 3am, and do that 3 or 4 times a week and at least some off whom will genuinely enjoy doing so. My first production code shipped for MacOS 7.5 and Windows 3.1. I am still shipping production code (although only rarely since these days I'm mostly managing a team rather than coding daily). I am _not_ going to do your take home 4hr assignment no matter who you are or what you're offering. Asking me to do it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of who I am, and I am not going to take a job with someone who knows that little about me. (And I have way better things to do with my free time than your pointless test)
  • cwilkes 4y ago
    But going onsite or remote interviewing for 4 hours is more reasonable? Looking at the original post they have a 4 hour at home coding assignment that’s followed up by a group presentation. I’m guessing that one is an hour or so. Figure another hour or two to prepare for that. It doesn’t seem like it is much off from a typical 5-6 hour on site interview. Plus I think you can get more of a signal about how they can explain a problem that they spent some time thinking about vs trying them trying to get excited about a leet code problem.
    • thraxil 4y ago
      The advantage of interviews at least is that it's two-way. That's time out of their day as well as mine. When I'm interviewing at a company, I'm also interviewing them to see if I want to work for them. Doing a take-home assignment is completely one sided. It takes up my time but basically none of theirs and it gives them information about me, but not the other way around.
    • 4y ago
• marktangotango 4y ago
  > 11:00 PM sleep until 6:30 the next day Dude, if your wife is getting up multiple times a night, you really ought to consider stepping in and helping out. True males can't do the feeding, but if there is anyway you can help out with this, I guarantee your wife will be grateful. If your kids sleep then ignore this, but sleep deprivation is hell (to most people). My wife and I both worked and we slept in 4 hour shifts, then when they slept more, we went to night on then night off. Saved our marriage.
  • anon291 4y ago
    My wife doesn't work. I sleep with our older daughter. My wife and baby co-sleep. Babies sleep much better when they're nursing, but it does mean my wife gets more interrupted sleep, which is made up for by the amount of sleep she gets each night, which is much more than me. This arrangement works for our marriage. We made a conscious decision early on to not both work.
    • great_duke 4y ago
      We did the same. I had to sleep otherwise my job would have been unmanageable. It's one thing to move furniture, or be a manager, and it's completely different to have to actually write complex code and deal with hard engineering problems while sleep deprived. P.S. My wife is now back on track with her career while being very happy about having spent all those early years with our kids.
• NDizzle 4y ago
  One more data point here. As a father of three it took me a month to get around to doing a 2-3 hr take home coding exercise. I clocked in at about 2h15m, but yes, really, it took me a month to find 2.25 free hours with the energy required to even begin something like a take home coding thing.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• 4ndrewl 4y ago
  All of the above, also I've hired seniors - you'd be much better off replacing the 4+1 hour assignment with a 1 hour AMA or discussion about a project or ticket with the team they'd be working with and getting their feedback. Would they be able to work together? Also, just post the salary!!! Seniors naturally will have made a wider range of life choices and will have a larger range of minimum salary they need to fund their lifestyle. Not posting it appears as if you're hiding something, which isn't a great starting point.
• tiborsaas 4y ago
  Can't you just quit and enjoy some time not working? Then suddenly have 8 hours a day which fits the 4 hours of coding assignment.
  • anon291 4y ago
    Quitting a job before you have another one is stupid. Sorry, but if I had started my job search even a few weeks later, I would not have gotten my current thing. The economy has been in a free fall lately and I caught the last hiring wave before both my previous company and my new one announced hiring freezes. So if I had quit and delayed a bit, I could have ended up unemployed, instead of with a raise. Quitting puts you in the position of disadvantage, so never do that.
    • tiborsaas 4y ago
      So why have huge salaries and savings if you don't get to enjoy it? That's stupid as well. Being unemployed as a SWE is not an issue at all.
• absove 4y ago
  Why is it people with kids can handle a 2-3 hours long interview on-site + travel that probably required taking time off work but can't handle a 4 hours assignment that they can do whenever?
  • pcthrowaway 4y ago
    I don't have kids, but I feel like solo coding comes out of a different pool of mental energy (more introverted, flow state) that I only have so much of. If I do a take-home for a potential employer, it's likely taking it out of the energy I have for my current one Interviews where you're discussing your history or even coding challenges are different. I don't know what it is about having another person there to bounce things off of and explain the process, but it doesn't feel as exhausting.
• nickd2001 4y ago
  "The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids". - or maybe they're saying "Yes" to someone who works from home and will do it while being paid by their current employer? ;). Which could mean (a) their current employer has mistreated them and "deserves" this to a certain extent, or (b) they'll do the same kind of thing and other naughty things on work time, if they get the job?
• edem 4y ago
  I have a similar schedule with 2 kids so I totally agree with this.
• ironick09 4y ago
  I don’t know, I’m single, in my 30s and there is just no way in hell I’m taking a 4 hour take home assessment. I guess my only exception to this would be if was a job & company I had always dreamed of working at ever since I was a child (extremely unlikely). If I did take a 4 hour assessment and got the job, I would require an additional sum to my signing bonus for the time taken on the initial assessment (something like 1-5k depending on the role/industry/negotiating power I have). A four hour assessment is just absurd. When I’m job searching (I’ve been fortunate to only have to do this a few times in my lifetime, and am in a position to be very selective in the opportunities I pursue), I’d more or less be open to a quick 1hr take home assessment, but nothing more. In my experience companies typically take one of two paths when engagement with a potential candidate: a 1ish hour take-home assessment or a 1ish hour interview with a recruiter where they typically ask a number of basic job-relevant basic questions - IMO both methods just serve as a way to weed out the people who liter their resumes with buzzwords one line and actually are not qualified for the position at all.
• great_duke 4y ago
  I was feeling like s..t for not returning to assignment to one of these companies. I had a week and still didn't find time. I'm just not going to accept them in the future, it makes me look bad for no good reason.