3 ms·

I don't blame you. Take home assignments are ridiculous, anyway. My personal time is valuable to me and it's unrealistic to expect me to do homework just for th

I don't blame you. Take home assignments are ridiculous, anyway. My personal time is valuable to me and it's unrealistic to expect me to do homework just for the privilege of an interview. In my last job hunt, I flat out declined further interview if I was requested to do a take home assignment.

dirtbag__dad 4y ago
Would you prefer a take home or a live coding challenge? I have the total opposite experience. I have rarely done well on a live code problem, I clam up. Tbh it’s humiliating, not representative of my actual skill set, and a waste of everyone’s time. The amount of time I’d need to study to be good at live coding is less than doing a couple take homes for companies I’m actually interested in.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  The advantage of live coding challenges is that they require the employer to put skin in the game by allocating 1 hour of their own engineers' time. This encourages them to filter candidates beforehand and discarding bad-fits early rather than wasting every applicant's time even if they have no chance to begin with.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  The idea of a take home originally appealed to me, but my actual track record with them is very poor. They are usually too open ended - sometimes they'll say to write some service, that it shouldn't take more than an evening, and then you're left questioning how much they're expecting. Do they want a quick proof of concept? Do they want unit tests? Acceptance tests? Then there's the follow up - often a rejection with no comments on the code whatsoever. Or you get completely ghosted. Or, and this is the real kicker - they finally ask you to come in, where they have you do leetcode on a whiteboard anyway. If the process was "Here's what we're expecting, turn it in by X date, we'll have you do a review with the team, and assuming all goes well, we'll talk about an offer at that point" I would be a lot more open to them. But that's never the process.
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    I strongly agree that rejection w/o any comment on the project you just spent 4-10 hours on, is very frustrating. Of course, it's just a subset of the whole interview process, not just programming, you never know what the actual reason you got rejected was.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    > often a rejection with no comments on the code whatsoever Honestly, after getting a rejection with motivation 2 times now, I’m leaning towards rejections without motivation being better. I just do not care to see how utterly arbitrary a lot of the reasons are. The basically come down to ‘you did some things I personally didn’t like’.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    You are more likely to be ghosted at this point in the interview process. I'm leaning towards skipping them. The online ones are not bad unless I have to entertain the interview while trying to work.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Ugh yeah, one place I worked at handed out these tasks and specifically didn't mention to write unit tests despite it being a hard requirement because "We don't want people who don't do this without being prompted".
- dgunay 4y ago
  I personally prefer take home problems (I also have a bad track record on "speedrun this Leetcode problem" interviews). However I think it'd be great if applicants could choose one or the other, without any bias in either direction.
- Falkon1313 4y ago
  Personally, I'd prefer an actual small contract gig. Most companies have something tangential that they'd like to have but may not be worth dedicating their full-timers to, or isn't directly in line with their main focus. Some small tool, bit of automation that would help, or minor project. It gives us an actual chance to work together professionally on a real thing. I get actual pay. The company gets something actually useful (not just a puzzle solution). The team can keep their focus on the bigger stuff. It's kind of a win-win. It does need to be something rather small and non-critical, yet relevant enough, which might be a little more difficult than just picking a generic puzzle. And requires a little extra setup for the contracting and pay. So I can see why many don't bother.
bitL 4y ago
It could be worse; imagine you go through multiple algorithmic rounds and a take-home task to get into TopTal, then when finally there you still need to bid for jobs against 1000s other developers with a TopTal matcher picking the cheapest ones (imagine $30/h for ML gigs), and even if you are picked by the matcher, you still need to pass client interviews.
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  Time for a new career at that point. Might as well join plumbing school.

dirtbag__dad 4y ago

Would you prefer a take home or a live coding challenge? I have the total opposite experience. I have rarely done well on a live code problem, I clam up. Tbh it’s humiliating, not representative of my actual skill set, and a waste of everyone’s time. The amount of time I’d need to study to be good at live coding is less than doing a couple take homes for companies I’m actually interested in.

Nextgrid 4y ago
The advantage of live coding challenges is that they require the employer to put skin in the game by allocating 1 hour of their own engineers' time. This encourages them to filter candidates beforehand and discarding bad-fits early rather than wasting every applicant's time even if they have no chance to begin with.
nsxwolf 4y ago
The idea of a take home originally appealed to me, but my actual track record with them is very poor. They are usually too open ended - sometimes they'll say to write some service, that it shouldn't take more than an evening, and then you're left questioning how much they're expecting. Do they want a quick proof of concept? Do they want unit tests? Acceptance tests? Then there's the follow up - often a rejection with no comments on the code whatsoever. Or you get completely ghosted. Or, and this is the real kicker - they finally ask you to come in, where they have you do leetcode on a whiteboard anyway. If the process was "Here's what we're expecting, turn it in by X date, we'll have you do a review with the team, and assuming all goes well, we'll talk about an offer at that point" I would be a lot more open to them. But that's never the process.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  I strongly agree that rejection w/o any comment on the project you just spent 4-10 hours on, is very frustrating. Of course, it's just a subset of the whole interview process, not just programming, you never know what the actual reason you got rejected was.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  > often a rejection with no comments on the code whatsoever Honestly, after getting a rejection with motivation 2 times now, I’m leaning towards rejections without motivation being better. I just do not care to see how utterly arbitrary a lot of the reasons are. The basically come down to ‘you did some things I personally didn’t like’.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  You are more likely to be ghosted at this point in the interview process. I'm leaning towards skipping them. The online ones are not bad unless I have to entertain the interview while trying to work.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Ugh yeah, one place I worked at handed out these tasks and specifically didn't mention to write unit tests despite it being a hard requirement because "We don't want people who don't do this without being prompted".
dgunay 4y ago
I personally prefer take home problems (I also have a bad track record on "speedrun this Leetcode problem" interviews). However I think it'd be great if applicants could choose one or the other, without any bias in either direction.
Falkon1313 4y ago
Personally, I'd prefer an actual small contract gig. Most companies have something tangential that they'd like to have but may not be worth dedicating their full-timers to, or isn't directly in line with their main focus. Some small tool, bit of automation that would help, or minor project. It gives us an actual chance to work together professionally on a real thing. I get actual pay. The company gets something actually useful (not just a puzzle solution). The team can keep their focus on the bigger stuff. It's kind of a win-win. It does need to be something rather small and non-critical, yet relevant enough, which might be a little more difficult than just picking a generic puzzle. And requires a little extra setup for the contracting and pay. So I can see why many don't bother.

bitL 4y ago

It could be worse; imagine you go through multiple algorithmic rounds and a take-home task to get into TopTal, then when finally there you still need to bid for jobs against 1000s other developers with a TopTal matcher picking the cheapest ones (imagine $30/h for ML gigs), and even if you are picked by the matcher, you still need to pass client interviews.

Ancalagon 4y ago
Time for a new career at that point. Might as well join plumbing school.