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The next time any recruiter asks me to do a "homework" assignment, I will ask them to write me a 15-page essay explaining how that homework assignment will actu

The next time any recruiter asks me to do a "homework" assignment, I will ask them to write me a 15-page essay explaining how that homework assignment will actually be used, to what extent it will be reviewed, and what criteria it will be judged on. If the comeback remark is something like, "if you really want this job," I will reply, "if you really want to hire me." My current job, I told them that I was too busy to do such a thing (and I was), and got hired anyway. Nobody w/ actual responsibilities in their life should be coerced into doing something for free, for someone they do not know. Will an attorney give you free legal advice until you decide they are fit to represent you, or will you get free surgery until someone proves they won't completely butcher you? Can you drive a car for free (for 5 - 8 hours) until you decide that's the car you want to buy? Why is it any different in the software industry? Because we just clack on our keyboards all day and do nothing?

disruptiveink 4y ago
Because take-home exercises are both the best way to evaluate a candidate (I have never gotten a nasty "surprise" while hiring in companies that did take-home exercises: I mean it, absolute 0% "bad hire" rate, the only bad hire I got was a candidate that was allowed to skip the take home exercise) and they allow you to find absolute jewels amongst the candidate pool who are great, reliable engineers but regularly bomb regular interviews. While there are people who are naturally great at interviewing in person or who don't mind grinding leetcode for free for months on end, there is a whole "base of the iceberg" population who a) can't spend months grinding leetcode on end but they can definitely spare a couple of afternoons for one job they are interviewing for – these are normal people with normal jobs and a normal family who don't interview every month just for kicks, they do this a couple of times every 2-3 years, and, b) just cannot code while under stress. You may scoff at b) if you've never experienced it, and while I found it really hard to understand for a while as I also have no issues with getting into deep focus while people are looking and/or trying to talk to me and there's a time limit, it is absolutely real. Unfortunately, there is an extremely vocal minority (you) who go absolutely ballistic when asked to do a take-home exercise, who absolutely ruin it for everyone else and make hiring managers shit their pants whenever take-home exercises are suggested. I honestly don't understand why there's such an outrage, take-home exercises are the minority already, because there's a strange huge backlash. Sure, if you're a great communicator (usually native English speaker) and grind leetcode for fun so you can shove 5 interviews in one week, you hate take-home exercises. And that's fine, really, just please apply to the leetcode grinding contests and stop poisoning the well for the rest of us who would like to cater to the large amount of extremely competent engineers that don't fit that persona. > Nobody w/ actual responsibilities in their life should be coerced into doing something for free, for someone they do not know. I take it you haven't interviewed for a SE in a while? The status quo requires you to perform months of unpaid labor, not days, just in the form of memorizing the solutions to every single Leetcode Hard problem. How is that better?
- raincole 4y ago
  > I take it you haven't interviewed for a SE in a while? The status quo requires you to perform months of unpaid labor, not days, just in the form of memorizing the solutions to every single Leetcode Hard problem. How is that better? I guess because it kinds "scales". Once you are familiar with Leetcode you can use this skill to take interviews with different companies. Take-home exercises dont' "scale". That being said, I believe people are against take-home exercises exactly for the reason you support it: it's usable code. They worry the companies will exploit candidates by using their code for free. Leetcode is "useless" so it's safe.
  - zimzam 4y ago
    I've never had a take home assignment that was "usable code" - they've all been toy problems.
  - disruptiveink 4y ago
    For clarity, these take-home exercises that I'm referring to are completely toy problems. They're usually one or two REST APIs on top of a toy data structure (sometimes in-memory, without a DB at all), just to see how the candidate models, writes and tests code. An API that does some pricing math based on some in-memory state or the likes of it. If we're talking about "make me a website" kind of exercises that one could throw into production after some tweaks, then that is free labor and I would absolutely refuse those. Also, the fact that "leetcode scales" is part of the problem I was talking about. I really dislike the fact that if you train for months to develop a complete set of skills parallel and irrelevant to your actual role you can now efficiently interview for a number of companies that pay top dollar. So not only people with actual skills and experience are on equal (or worse!) footing than someone straight out of college, it also incentivises those who mastered leetcode to interview everywhere, since "it's all the same", while normal people who are good at their job get their torn to shreds after one or two interviews. So not only it's judging the wrong thing at the interview, but it's also causing a starvation situation for the candidates that are not playing that game. Why are we creating incentives to people becoming "professional interviewers"? This would be like Google encouraging SEO spam instead of fighting against it!
boplicity 4y ago
> Will an attorney give you free legal advice until you decide they are fit to represent you I agree with your point overall, but I do have to say that it is very common for lawyers to give free consultations with potential clients, often offering very useful advice. This is something I've benefited from more than once, actually.
- emb-fit 4y ago
  Yes and developers often give free advice in interviews. However attorneys are not writing contracts for free to get jobs.
  - zelphirkalt 4y ago
    And in fact, if as an employer all you require is a copy-pasta employee contract, you probably still want to go through a lawyer to have a professional opinion and work. But they on the other hand often just copy-pasta, and write an expensive bill.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
>Will an attorney give you free legal advice until you decide they are fit to represent you, or will you get free surgery until someone proves they won't completely butcher you? These are bad analogies because both have extremely extensive tests that are not only unpaid but the tested pays a small fortune for. If development had the same no one would be asking you. >I will reply, "if you really want to hire me." It’s not about hiring you it’s about trying to prevent hiring the wrong person which is extremely expensive in time and money and takes weeks to figure out.
- jzombie 4y ago
  I understand what you're saying, however, I think that a lot of the criteria used in these homework assignments can instead be worked out via some conversation to judge the depth of knowledge and culture fit. I've passed tech interview challenges only to fail the culture fit because I thought it would "be so easy" after the tech challenges. And I've passed culture fits only to fail the homework assignments. In one circumstance, not realizing that a separate recruiter was sending me to a company I had previously interviewed with, I've also seen previous work that I did in a homework assignment, given to me in a different homework assignment with a "what improvements and features would you add to this solution?," when the original homework assignment was the same task. That was a major blow, and gave me feelings they were using some of that work internally. I get that it's extremely expensive in time and money to hire the wrong person. On the other end, it can also be extremely expensive in time and money to not be extremely selective of whom you want to work for.
  - meghan_rain 4y ago
    lmao do I understand correctly that you were given code that by chance you yourself happened to have written and were asked "how can this piece of crap be improved?"
    - jzombie 4y ago
      It had work in it that I put in before, but it wasn't entirely all mine, nor did it have all the original work I put in the first time.
vba616 4y ago
>Can you drive a car for free (for 5 - 8 hours) until you decide that's the car you want to buy? This is a perfect analogy. I went to a Chevy dealer once, asked if I could test drive a car and they wouldn't even let me take it off the lot. I was allowed to trundle around the rows of cars at walking speed with a salesman in the passenger seat. I went to a Honda dealer, and they let me take a test drive with a chaperone, but only around a short designated loop of streets "for insurance reasons". I went to a Mazda dealer, and the salesman said he was busy and tossed me the keys and said have fun. An acquaintance went to a Subaru dealer, and took the car they were considering home overnight. You a Chevy.
- version_five 4y ago
  Going further off topic, it amazes me how cagey some dealers can be about test drives. Same as you, I've had some just toss me the keys, without even wanting to see my drivers license, and that makes an infinitely better impression than wanting to come with me or wanting to talk about my needs first. I don't understand why it's not standard. I think it's more up to the individual dealer than a policy of a given brand
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    It's sometimes useful if the salesperson can tell you things about features of the car while you're driving, but usually I know more about the car than they do.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    I'm sure that some brands/locations have essentially zero risk of theft while for others it's a bigger concern. It's similar to how some places you can just pay in full with a personal check and they are fine with it (even not doing a credit check), while others won't accept that.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  Insane. You've got to at least test drive on a highway. Some years ago, a Nissan dealer offered to let me take a high-end crossover home for the night without any prompting. Ended up buying it. Would buy again from that dealer if I were still in that area.
sokoloff 4y ago
> Will an attorney give you free legal advice until you decide they are fit to represent you All but one new legal engagement I’ve entered into started with a free consultation. (The only one that didn’t was a straightforward real estate transaction where I knew the lawyer for years beforehand.)
chrisdbanks 4y ago
I don't pay $200,000 a year for a car. If I were going to then I'd like to test drive it for 5-8 hours. An ideal test drive should help both sides understand what the future relationship will be like. That saves time and disappointment on both sides. You'd like to date someone before you marry them wouldn't you. I would always be happy to pay for a test drive though. If you're not willing to offer a test drive then you'll also probably miss out on some great relationships in your life.
- jzombie 4y ago
  Fair point, though nobody is obligated to pay a year's salary to a candidate that didn't work out.
  - ikiris 4y ago
    Have you ever run a business or paid employees from your budget?
  - sirsinsalot 4y ago
    Clearly you've never employed someone in the UK/EU. The proceedings to jettison a bad hire can take 12 months alone, meanwhile they're still a bad hire being paid.
    - krageon 4y ago
      It is entirely normal to have a test period of 1-3 months here (inside the EU, which is not homogenous and doesn't look like the UK at all) where you can be fired immediately.
      - sirsinsalot 4y ago
        It isn't a magic bullet. I've had people perform well then tail off and while it may be a failure of my management that I couldn't help them perform better again, it isn't the norm and replacing those people isn't easy. Rightly so, it should be hard to fire people and should require first showing evidence of trying to work together and help in good faith.
dasil003 4y ago
That's certainly your prerogative, and we all have to draw the line somewhere in terms of interviewer demands. Personally a reasonable homework assignment (like 2-3 hours tops) is less annoying than multiple 6+ hour interview panels stretched out over a period of months, which is also very common. At the end of the day though, the company decides the hoops you have to jump through if you want the job, and you can either take it or leave it. FAANGs can get away with onerous processes because of the technical brand and outsized comp, but startups and lesser known companies who try this are shooting themselves in the foot.
- sjs7007 4y ago
  In my experience you still have a 3-4 interview loop on too of your take home project.
VonGallifrey 4y ago
> Because we just clack on our keyboards all day and do nothing? No, it is because some people have worked at very impressive jobs and probably just clack on keyboards all day and actually did nothing while there, so when you hire them you learn that they actually can't do the job you hired them for. You just can not rely on the CV alone. In the hiring process there has to be some kind of skill test. If it is not a "homework" then it has to be a whiteboard/live coding/system design type of interview and there are a ton of problems with this type of skill test as well. We usually give people the choice which route the candidate would like to do. Take a 1 hour interview or a "homework" assignment which took me about 1 hour to solve. Which is probably best because some people really prefer the homework because they get nervous in interviews. > Will an attorney give you free legal advice until you decide they are fit to represent you, or will you get free surgery until someone proves they won't completely butcher you? I do not know how attorneys or surgeons are hired, but my guess is that the education side of these jobs lines up much closer what is actually needed to do the job (which isn't really the case with Computer Science) and that when they claim to have done X or Y then it was actually them in court or at the operation table and not someone else from their team. Clients select their attorney based on reputation of the attorney or the law firm they work for. For Surgeons it is probably similar. If you have the choice you want to go to the hospital with the best reputation. If the company you apply to already knew your name and reputation beforehand then the skill test is probably also not necessary, but that is not usual in my experience. It also probably helps that both of those jobs require a Professional License to practice these jobs. Maybe if the software industry introduced a Bar Exam then these "homework" assignments would not be needed anymore. > Can you drive a car for free (for 5 - 8 hours) until you decide that's the car you want to buy? Usually you can. At least in my experience. Not fo 5-8 hours of course, but long enough to know. If you know of a better way to hire people: I would be happy to listen.
- roflyear 4y ago
  The better way is to treat people's time as important as you treat your own and your resources at your company. There is a large company based in NYC that interviews thousands of developers a year, but only hires a few hundred. Each of those devs do a take home project that takes about 16 hours to complete. The project requires nothing to ask, so this company asks everyone. 30,000 hours is a lot of time - it's about 3.5 years of someone's life - and at least this time is spent each year by this company (and they pay nothing for it), not counting the rest of the interview process, because it is cheap for them to do this. And we wonder by productivity is down :) Respect people's time. If it is hard, figure it out. That is your job if you want to hire people and feel good about it.
al2o3cr 4y ago
Will an attorney give you free legal advice until you decide they are fit to represent you, or will you get free surgery until someone proves they won't completely butcher you? There's a big difference between both of these industries and the software business - if you show up claiming to be a lawyer or a doctor and are bullshitting, you're in a LOT of trouble. If you do that in software, you're probably just back on the job market...
ikrenji 4y ago
i got a really good job off of a homework assignment so this is a hard disagree for me. of course mileage might wary
r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
"Can you drive a car for free (for 5 - 8 hours) until you decide that's the car you want to buy?" Yes. It's called a test drive. I think the longest I've seen is a free 48 hour test drive with an online e dealership, but free all day test drives are the norm in the UK. Similarly most lawyers will give you a free consultation. I think you have a highly distorted view of reality, how other professions operate, and of your own worth.
6510 4y ago
> I will ask them to write me a 15-page essay I have my own list of questions. If they answer all of them I have a pretty good idea if I'm the guy for the job. The most wonderful part is figuring out if it is an employer is looking for initiative or obedience. If you are running a sheep farm it can be very exciting to see initiative.
mountainriver 4y ago
Agree, lately I’ve been telling people I’m too busy interviewing, they try to force it then call me back in a week and let me skip
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Maybe I'm weird but I kind of like the take-home assignments. I find them pretty fun and not at all stressful like a whiteboard interview. And I've never not gotten an offer this way because I think there's a lot less variance (whiteboard style interviews you might get asked some random BS that you don't figure out). IME you also often get paid (albeit a relatively small amount) for doing them. And FWIW once they want to hire you many employers will actually spend hours trying to sell you on joining. Usually not in the form of an essay, but doing several hours of sell calls or lunch meetings with different people at the company is not that strange (especially if you are higher level).
- neon_electro 4y ago
  You’re not weird, just lucky. I too have gotten my longest job of my career from a successful take home exercise, but I have never been paid for my work and am rapidly reconsidering just how willing I will be to do take home exercises for free in the future.
dudul 4y ago
While I do agree with your general point your analogies are bad because yes, you can test drive a car, yes attorneys often have a first free session with potential clients. That being said the come back makes perfect sense to me. When I was still on the IC track and interviewing, when I was submitted to some "dumb" questions I would ask the same kind to the interviewer. So you just asked me to write this stupid algorithm? How about you whiteboard something for me now? It was almost always met with dead silence to which I would say "well you're trying to figure out if I'm good, I want to do the same and make sure your team has good engineers". Of course it never went anywhere since, while they had 55 minutes to grill me I was only given the last 5 for my questions.

disruptiveink 4y ago

Because take-home exercises are both the best way to evaluate a candidate (I have never gotten a nasty "surprise" while hiring in companies that did take-home exercises: I mean it, absolute 0% "bad hire" rate, the only bad hire I got was a candidate that was allowed to skip the take home exercise) and they allow you to find absolute jewels amongst the candidate pool who are great, reliable engineers but regularly bomb regular interviews. While there are people who are naturally great at interviewing in person or who don't mind grinding leetcode for free for months on end, there is a whole "base of the iceberg" population who a) can't spend months grinding leetcode on end but they can definitely spare a couple of afternoons for one job they are interviewing for – these are normal people with normal jobs and a normal family who don't interview every month just for kicks, they do this a couple of times every 2-3 years, and, b) just cannot code while under stress. You may scoff at b) if you've never experienced it, and while I found it really hard to understand for a while as I also have no issues with getting into deep focus while people are looking and/or trying to talk to me and there's a time limit, it is absolutely real. Unfortunately, there is an extremely vocal minority (you) who go absolutely ballistic when asked to do a take-home exercise, who absolutely ruin it for everyone else and make hiring managers shit their pants whenever take-home exercises are suggested. I honestly don't understand why there's such an outrage, take-home exercises are the minority already, because there's a strange huge backlash. Sure, if you're a great communicator (usually native English speaker) and grind leetcode for fun so you can shove 5 interviews in one week, you hate take-home exercises. And that's fine, really, just please apply to the leetcode grinding contests and stop poisoning the well for the rest of us who would like to cater to the large amount of extremely competent engineers that don't fit that persona. > Nobody w/ actual responsibilities in their life should be coerced into doing something for free, for someone they do not know. I take it you haven't interviewed for a SE in a while? The status quo requires you to perform months of unpaid labor, not days, just in the form of memorizing the solutions to every single Leetcode Hard problem. How is that better?

raincole 4y ago
> I take it you haven't interviewed for a SE in a while? The status quo requires you to perform months of unpaid labor, not days, just in the form of memorizing the solutions to every single Leetcode Hard problem. How is that better? I guess because it kinds "scales". Once you are familiar with Leetcode you can use this skill to take interviews with different companies. Take-home exercises dont' "scale". That being said, I believe people are against take-home exercises exactly for the reason you support it: it's usable code. They worry the companies will exploit candidates by using their code for free. Leetcode is "useless" so it's safe.
- zimzam 4y ago
  I've never had a take home assignment that was "usable code" - they've all been toy problems.
- disruptiveink 4y ago
  For clarity, these take-home exercises that I'm referring to are completely toy problems. They're usually one or two REST APIs on top of a toy data structure (sometimes in-memory, without a DB at all), just to see how the candidate models, writes and tests code. An API that does some pricing math based on some in-memory state or the likes of it. If we're talking about "make me a website" kind of exercises that one could throw into production after some tweaks, then that is free labor and I would absolutely refuse those. Also, the fact that "leetcode scales" is part of the problem I was talking about. I really dislike the fact that if you train for months to develop a complete set of skills parallel and irrelevant to your actual role you can now efficiently interview for a number of companies that pay top dollar. So not only people with actual skills and experience are on equal (or worse!) footing than someone straight out of college, it also incentivises those who mastered leetcode to interview everywhere, since "it's all the same", while normal people who are good at their job get their torn to shreds after one or two interviews. So not only it's judging the wrong thing at the interview, but it's also causing a starvation situation for the candidates that are not playing that game. Why are we creating incentives to people becoming "professional interviewers"? This would be like Google encouraging SEO spam instead of fighting against it!

boplicity 4y ago

> Will an attorney give you free legal advice until you decide they are fit to represent you I agree with your point overall, but I do have to say that it is very common for lawyers to give free consultations with potential clients, often offering very useful advice. This is something I've benefited from more than once, actually.

emb-fit 4y ago
Yes and developers often give free advice in interviews. However attorneys are not writing contracts for free to get jobs.
- zelphirkalt 4y ago
  And in fact, if as an employer all you require is a copy-pasta employee contract, you probably still want to go through a lawyer to have a professional opinion and work. But they on the other hand often just copy-pasta, and write an expensive bill.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

>Will an attorney give you free legal advice until you decide they are fit to represent you, or will you get free surgery until someone proves they won't completely butcher you? These are bad analogies because both have extremely extensive tests that are not only unpaid but the tested pays a small fortune for. If development had the same no one would be asking you. >I will reply, "if you really want to hire me." It’s not about hiring you it’s about trying to prevent hiring the wrong person which is extremely expensive in time and money and takes weeks to figure out.

jzombie 4y ago
I understand what you're saying, however, I think that a lot of the criteria used in these homework assignments can instead be worked out via some conversation to judge the depth of knowledge and culture fit. I've passed tech interview challenges only to fail the culture fit because I thought it would "be so easy" after the tech challenges. And I've passed culture fits only to fail the homework assignments. In one circumstance, not realizing that a separate recruiter was sending me to a company I had previously interviewed with, I've also seen previous work that I did in a homework assignment, given to me in a different homework assignment with a "what improvements and features would you add to this solution?," when the original homework assignment was the same task. That was a major blow, and gave me feelings they were using some of that work internally. I get that it's extremely expensive in time and money to hire the wrong person. On the other end, it can also be extremely expensive in time and money to not be extremely selective of whom you want to work for.
- meghan_rain 4y ago
  lmao do I understand correctly that you were given code that by chance you yourself happened to have written and were asked "how can this piece of crap be improved?"
  - jzombie 4y ago
    It had work in it that I put in before, but it wasn't entirely all mine, nor did it have all the original work I put in the first time.

vba616 4y ago

>Can you drive a car for free (for 5 - 8 hours) until you decide that's the car you want to buy? This is a perfect analogy. I went to a Chevy dealer once, asked if I could test drive a car and they wouldn't even let me take it off the lot. I was allowed to trundle around the rows of cars at walking speed with a salesman in the passenger seat. I went to a Honda dealer, and they let me take a test drive with a chaperone, but only around a short designated loop of streets "for insurance reasons". I went to a Mazda dealer, and the salesman said he was busy and tossed me the keys and said have fun. An acquaintance went to a Subaru dealer, and took the car they were considering home overnight. You a Chevy.

version_five 4y ago
Going further off topic, it amazes me how cagey some dealers can be about test drives. Same as you, I've had some just toss me the keys, without even wanting to see my drivers license, and that makes an infinitely better impression than wanting to come with me or wanting to talk about my needs first. I don't understand why it's not standard. I think it's more up to the individual dealer than a policy of a given brand
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  It's sometimes useful if the salesperson can tell you things about features of the car while you're driving, but usually I know more about the car than they do.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  I'm sure that some brands/locations have essentially zero risk of theft while for others it's a bigger concern. It's similar to how some places you can just pay in full with a personal check and they are fine with it (even not doing a credit check), while others won't accept that.
KerrAvon 4y ago
Insane. You've got to at least test drive on a highway. Some years ago, a Nissan dealer offered to let me take a high-end crossover home for the night without any prompting. Ended up buying it. Would buy again from that dealer if I were still in that area.

sokoloff 4y ago

> Will an attorney give you free legal advice until you decide they are fit to represent you All but one new legal engagement I’ve entered into started with a free consultation. (The only one that didn’t was a straightforward real estate transaction where I knew the lawyer for years beforehand.)

chrisdbanks 4y ago

I don't pay $200,000 a year for a car. If I were going to then I'd like to test drive it for 5-8 hours. An ideal test drive should help both sides understand what the future relationship will be like. That saves time and disappointment on both sides. You'd like to date someone before you marry them wouldn't you. I would always be happy to pay for a test drive though. If you're not willing to offer a test drive then you'll also probably miss out on some great relationships in your life.

jzombie 4y ago
Fair point, though nobody is obligated to pay a year's salary to a candidate that didn't work out.
- ikiris 4y ago
  Have you ever run a business or paid employees from your budget?
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  Clearly you've never employed someone in the UK/EU. The proceedings to jettison a bad hire can take 12 months alone, meanwhile they're still a bad hire being paid.
  - krageon 4y ago
    It is entirely normal to have a test period of 1-3 months here (inside the EU, which is not homogenous and doesn't look like the UK at all) where you can be fired immediately.
    - sirsinsalot 4y ago
      It isn't a magic bullet. I've had people perform well then tail off and while it may be a failure of my management that I couldn't help them perform better again, it isn't the norm and replacing those people isn't easy. Rightly so, it should be hard to fire people and should require first showing evidence of trying to work together and help in good faith.

dasil003 4y ago

That's certainly your prerogative, and we all have to draw the line somewhere in terms of interviewer demands. Personally a reasonable homework assignment (like 2-3 hours tops) is less annoying than multiple 6+ hour interview panels stretched out over a period of months, which is also very common. At the end of the day though, the company decides the hoops you have to jump through if you want the job, and you can either take it or leave it. FAANGs can get away with onerous processes because of the technical brand and outsized comp, but startups and lesser known companies who try this are shooting themselves in the foot.

sjs7007 4y ago
In my experience you still have a 3-4 interview loop on too of your take home project.

VonGallifrey 4y ago

> Because we just clack on our keyboards all day and do nothing? No, it is because some people have worked at very impressive jobs and probably just clack on keyboards all day and actually did nothing while there, so when you hire them you learn that they actually can't do the job you hired them for. You just can not rely on the CV alone. In the hiring process there has to be some kind of skill test. If it is not a "homework" then it has to be a whiteboard/live coding/system design type of interview and there are a ton of problems with this type of skill test as well. We usually give people the choice which route the candidate would like to do. Take a 1 hour interview or a "homework" assignment which took me about 1 hour to solve. Which is probably best because some people really prefer the homework because they get nervous in interviews. > Will an attorney give you free legal advice until you decide they are fit to represent you, or will you get free surgery until someone proves they won't completely butcher you? I do not know how attorneys or surgeons are hired, but my guess is that the education side of these jobs lines up much closer what is actually needed to do the job (which isn't really the case with Computer Science) and that when they claim to have done X or Y then it was actually them in court or at the operation table and not someone else from their team. Clients select their attorney based on reputation of the attorney or the law firm they work for. For Surgeons it is probably similar. If you have the choice you want to go to the hospital with the best reputation. If the company you apply to already knew your name and reputation beforehand then the skill test is probably also not necessary, but that is not usual in my experience. It also probably helps that both of those jobs require a Professional License to practice these jobs. Maybe if the software industry introduced a Bar Exam then these "homework" assignments would not be needed anymore. > Can you drive a car for free (for 5 - 8 hours) until you decide that's the car you want to buy? Usually you can. At least in my experience. Not fo 5-8 hours of course, but long enough to know. If you know of a better way to hire people: I would be happy to listen.

roflyear 4y ago
The better way is to treat people's time as important as you treat your own and your resources at your company. There is a large company based in NYC that interviews thousands of developers a year, but only hires a few hundred. Each of those devs do a take home project that takes about 16 hours to complete. The project requires nothing to ask, so this company asks everyone. 30,000 hours is a lot of time - it's about 3.5 years of someone's life - and at least this time is spent each year by this company (and they pay nothing for it), not counting the rest of the interview process, because it is cheap for them to do this. And we wonder by productivity is down :) Respect people's time. If it is hard, figure it out. That is your job if you want to hire people and feel good about it.

al2o3cr 4y ago

Will an attorney give you free legal advice until you decide they are fit to represent you, or will you get free surgery until someone proves they won't completely butcher you? There's a big difference between both of these industries and the software business - if you show up claiming to be a lawyer or a doctor and are bullshitting, you're in a LOT of trouble. If you do that in software, you're probably just back on the job market...

ikrenji 4y ago

i got a really good job off of a homework assignment so this is a hard disagree for me. of course mileage might wary

r_hoods_ghost 4y ago

"Can you drive a car for free (for 5 - 8 hours) until you decide that's the car you want to buy?" Yes. It's called a test drive. I think the longest I've seen is a free 48 hour test drive with an online e dealership, but free all day test drives are the norm in the UK. Similarly most lawyers will give you a free consultation. I think you have a highly distorted view of reality, how other professions operate, and of your own worth.

6510 4y ago

> I will ask them to write me a 15-page essay I have my own list of questions. If they answer all of them I have a pretty good idea if I'm the guy for the job. The most wonderful part is figuring out if it is an employer is looking for initiative or obedience. If you are running a sheep farm it can be very exciting to see initiative.

mountainriver 4y ago

Agree, lately I’ve been telling people I’m too busy interviewing, they try to force it then call me back in a week and let me skip

zeroonetwothree 4y ago

Maybe I'm weird but I kind of like the take-home assignments. I find them pretty fun and not at all stressful like a whiteboard interview. And I've never not gotten an offer this way because I think there's a lot less variance (whiteboard style interviews you might get asked some random BS that you don't figure out). IME you also often get paid (albeit a relatively small amount) for doing them. And FWIW once they want to hire you many employers will actually spend hours trying to sell you on joining. Usually not in the form of an essay, but doing several hours of sell calls or lunch meetings with different people at the company is not that strange (especially if you are higher level).

neon_electro 4y ago
You’re not weird, just lucky. I too have gotten my longest job of my career from a successful take home exercise, but I have never been paid for my work and am rapidly reconsidering just how willing I will be to do take home exercises for free in the future.

dudul 4y ago

While I do agree with your general point your analogies are bad because yes, you can test drive a car, yes attorneys often have a first free session with potential clients. That being said the come back makes perfect sense to me. When I was still on the IC track and interviewing, when I was submitted to some "dumb" questions I would ask the same kind to the interviewer. So you just asked me to write this stupid algorithm? How about you whiteboard something for me now? It was almost always met with dead silence to which I would say "well you're trying to figure out if I'm good, I want to do the same and make sure your team has good engineers". Of course it never went anywhere since, while they had 55 minutes to grill me I was only given the last 5 for my questions.