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Takehomes have been ruined as a concept by companies that spam them out before applying a first pass. I’ve passed interviews at demanding companies like hedge

Takehomes have been ruined as a concept by companies that spam them out before applying a first pass. I’ve passed interviews at demanding companies like hedge funds, Google, Facebook, Snap. Not once have I “passed” a take home interview even when I know I got the solution correct. Sorry, but I refuse to do them now. Companies need to be able to show a token investment in time with an actual engineer interviewing me for me to be convinced they are actually considering me as a candidate and didn’t just send me a takehome link without any due diligence because it costs them nothing to do so.

Hermitian909 3y ago
I get the impression avoiding take homes is becoming standard advice. I hang out in a few communities of engineers (alumni groups etc.) and it's gotten to the point that many people see requiring a take home as a red flag. Not just because of how companies abuse it, but because if basically everyone the company has hired put up with a take home there's a strong chance you don't hire good engineers.
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  That's the reason I advise against them. Unless you are the top company in your bracket, your completion rate will also not be so great for a take-home (people have limited time: they'll sort by how good your company is). Sure they'll do Google's take-home but local business that does local comp/prevailing wages? It's at the bottom of the pile. By the time they get to it, the best candidates will already have an offer from a better company. That's why I prefer to bring people on-site as soon as possible, and do a little whiteboard (the point being that the candidate must... know how to code!). It's an artificial challenge that's really a pretext to have a technical discussion. Only time I advise to use take-homes is when you are dealing with a massive number of applicants from institutions that have a poor signal to noise ratio. Bootcamps come to mind. But then you end up with candidates that have the homework done by someone else and it ends up not being a good filter either.
  - berkle4455 3y ago
    Whiteboards are skewered just as much on HN. Basically every engineer on here is a 10x and every company should be grateful to even be considered. Apparently we should just review github OSS contributions and how many unit tests they write.
    - alistairSH 3y ago
      Is it whiteboarding in general, or being asked to write realistic code on the whiteboard? Sketch out rough program structure or system design or whatever Vs Write valid Python to solve some leetcode question
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - gedy 3y ago
      > Apparently we should just review github OSS contributions and how many unit tests they write. No, but speaking from experience - also don't reach out to senior, employed devs for a role, then waste their time with whiteboard leetcode quizzes to "make sure they aren't fakers or coasting, we have sooo many applicants". In those cases, a conversation is really more valuable, we aren't interns.
      - opportune 3y ago
        I gladly participate in whiteboard interviews to ensure I will not have senior+ colleagues who are unable to solve them. The fact that intern candidates can solve them is all the more reason to filter out experienced candidates who can't
        happymellon 3y ago
        Completely disagree. I've observed other people run whiteboarding session with candidates and "solving them" usually means, "in the way I want" and if you've only just met then thats only going to happen through hints. The "context" (hints) they give different candidates can vary massively, perhaps by the end you've realised that your question is ambiguous, or you like the personality of this other candidate. I've worked with folks who will definitely give attractive women more guidance throughout so they arrive at the "correct" solution and not see what they are doing.
- treeman79 3y ago
  Had one company in local city. They managed to interview almost every Engineer in the market that had skill set. Rejected all of them. Few months later I got a call asking to interview again as they realized their standards were too high. Not a chance.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > their standards were too high They could simply be wrong. I've seen people demand the wrong solution. I've seen tests with bad instructions. Most people are not good at producing test
    - treeman79 3y ago
      You had 45 minutes to write a connect 4 game from scratch.
- boredtofears 3y ago
  Amazing to me the general attitude here towards take-homes. I don't know, perhaps it's because I've progressed every interview I've had the opportunity to do a take-home on (and I struggle with most leet-code style whiteboarding interviews) but I've always seen take-homes as an audition for your software development style -- what you deliver in a take-home assessment is what they will use to judge how you'll deliver on the job, plain and simple. I've only done take homes for companies that I've already passed initial interviews for and generally like the people I've talked to and have favorable impressions of the culture/workplace thus far. I wouldn't do a take-home before that, but I'd do a take-home any day before a leet code grinding thing.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    The trouble is I've never seen it be a replacement for whiteboarding. You do the stupid takehome and then you still have to do the regular interview anyway.
  - genezeta 3y ago
    > I've only done take homes for companies that I've already passed initial interviews for and generally like the people I've talked to and have favorable impressions of the culture/workplace thus far So your experience has been quite specific. A lot of companies think that it's fine to send you a take-home assignment as the first step. Some more do it after just a 10 minute phone call. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that your amazement can easily be explained by the fact that you've done it in particular circumstances which is probably not the experience of most people.
  - prakhar897 3y ago
    Why don't they judge me based on my 4 year long degree which is only done to rubber stamp that I can do the job. Do you also expect a Med graduate to see some patients in the hospital for free before giving them a job?
    - vekerdyb 3y ago
      Would you be happy to work with any and all your peers who have the same degree?
- b20000 3y ago
  requiring leetcode despite 20 years of experience, code samples you can show, and a CS degree you can show, is a red flag to me.
Buttons840 3y ago
I agree. I'll give you like a 4-to-1 ratio on a takehome assessment, give me a 30 minute phone call with my potential manager or fellow programmer and let me ask some questions and get a feel for the company and culture, then I'll spend a couple hours on your assessment. If not, well, same rate applies, I'll spend 4x0 hours on your assessment. A nice way to say this is, "I'd be happy to complete this takehome assessment, but it will take a significant amount of time and first I would like a short phone call to ask some questions and get a feel for the company, nothing too long, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page before I spend my time on this. When can we schedule a call?"
- shakes_mcjunkie 3y ago
  I agree with what you're saying here: > I would like a short phone call to ask some questions and get a feel for the company I've had some places do behavioral first and others do coding first. I think I'm more onboard with behavioral first because communication a lot of times is more important than raw technical skill. Everyone can save time if you can suss out early on that the person is a bad communicator or bad fit. And generally you can spend time in this interview asking questions about the company.
  - brandall10 3y ago
    That’s not behavioral, it’s an initial screen for fit. It. Makes the relationship at least a bit more balanced from a time investment perspective. It seems most places do this though.
shahbaby 3y ago
Not just takehomes but also applies to things like automated coding challenges as an initial step before I've talked with someone. Twice I've aced these challenge with time to spare and was then rejected or ghosted. It's the same idea; don't invest time into a company's interview loop unless you know they're investing something too.
rnk 3y ago
Yeah, we should just refuse to give away well as accept take homes when interviewing. There was the company where I and some other experience people decided to give someone a take home. And we regretted it because I think it took more than we thought. The one person that did well on it turned us down anyway.
quickthrower2 3y ago
Maybe a trick here, at least with online marked ones, is screen record a take home end to end with the result. Then say - use that result or GTFO. A bit like how they let you drive a car after passing a test once.
CoastalCoder 3y ago
> Takehomes have been ruined as a concept by companies that spam them out before applying a first pass. I had this experience a few weeks ago with Wolverine Trading. It seemed clear that they didn't respect my time. Perhaps I dodged a bullet.
boredtofears 3y ago
As someone whose taken and authored many: the whole point is often to have different levels of completion. There may technically be a "complete" point - often that isn't that hard to achieve. Usually there are several other possibly-non-obvious improvements the tester is looking for. Whether these improvements are obvious to you or not is a sign of experience.
- opportune 3y ago
  If I'm not given that guidance directly nor given a chance to clarify it as I do the solution (as with normal interviews), I don't really want to participate in the guessing game about what they want, if missing that guess results in all the work being wasted. As others have mentioned, I find the "limit yourself to 2-4 hours" BS. I can stand up a new http server in 2 hours to implement some API, sure. Adding unit tests, integration tests, a readme, build instructions/scripts, containerizing it, adding detailed comments, linting... generally not possible to do in 4 hours unless you have everything set up before then (I can't use my normal dev tools to do takehomes because they're through my employer). IRL you would generally scope this as a week-long task even for experienced employees. Maybe if I were unemployed and desperate for a job I'd suffer it, but most places I'm interested in working at ask whiteboard/design problems anyway.
  - boredtofears 3y ago
    If it feels like a guessing game it's probably not obvious to you what the improvement is. They usually stick out like a sore thumb for the candidates that they're seeking if they're written well.
    - deredede 3y ago
      "If they're written well" is key here. Anyways, just show me the code and we'll discuss it together, don't waste my time making improvement to toy code that will never get used.
- Tade0 3y ago
  > Whether these improvements are obvious to you or not is a sign of experience. In my experience as an interviewer fishing for specific answers is what makes you miss the best engineers. I used to do this during my peak Dunning-Kruger phase and gave relatively poor marks to an guy who later proved to surpass both me and the rest of the team in every aspect that mattered - even though originally he barely made it through the interview process. Chiefly, he didn't do things the way we expected because he prioritized.
rkho 3y ago
> Not once have I “passed” a take home interview I have had the exact same experience. They have always been a complete waste of time for me and I have since adopted a policy that any takehome challenges = automatic close the loop for me. It's not worth explaining why either. If this is your process and you find it appropriate to offer it as a first option, then it's just not a good fit.
ary 3y ago
We applied some advice that I saw on a HN thread years ago (but sadly do not have the link handy) and it has worked well: we pay our candidates for their time. The take home concept really is insulting when a candidate’s time isn’t valued. Since we incur a cost so we’re serious about knowing for sure that we want to interview the candidate. I wish people were less surprised when we tell them they deserve to be paid for their work, but companies have been advantaged in the hiring process for so long (excepting COVID) that disregard for people’s time is embedded in corporate culture. However, to the point people have made about not getting comprehensive feedback: it’s just not worth it. Corporate counsel will basically refuse to let you tell a candidate why they were rejected for fear of any inadvertent lawsuit exposure. This is also deeply embedded in corporate culture and it’s hard to imagine it changing.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  I’m sure there is a dollar figure. But I can’t imagine your company would be willing to pay me enough to do a take home test to pique my interest in going through the trouble. How much are you paying? I could throw a rock and a hit a consulting opportunity for $200/hour.
  - listenallyall 3y ago
    > I could throw a rock and a hit a consulting opportunity for $200/hour. then why are you interviewing?
    - MrDresden 3y ago
      There are more benefits to a stable job than money.
      - listenallyall 3y ago
        Yet most people, if potential income was comparable, would prefer to be their own boss vs having a job
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
Oh, don't worry. An actual engineer doesn't need to look at your work. From now on, companies will simply give your answer to ChatGPT and ask it what it thinks. Not joking. You hated interviews before? Get ready to rock.
wonderingyogi 3y ago
I will only do take home if I feel like the company is serious. If they are sending me a take home without meeting with the hiring manager, it goes straight to the bin.

Hermitian909 3y ago

I get the impression avoiding take homes is becoming standard advice. I hang out in a few communities of engineers (alumni groups etc.) and it's gotten to the point that many people see requiring a take home as a red flag. Not just because of how companies abuse it, but because if basically everyone the company has hired put up with a take home there's a strong chance you don't hire good engineers.

908B64B197 3y ago
That's the reason I advise against them. Unless you are the top company in your bracket, your completion rate will also not be so great for a take-home (people have limited time: they'll sort by how good your company is). Sure they'll do Google's take-home but local business that does local comp/prevailing wages? It's at the bottom of the pile. By the time they get to it, the best candidates will already have an offer from a better company. That's why I prefer to bring people on-site as soon as possible, and do a little whiteboard (the point being that the candidate must... know how to code!). It's an artificial challenge that's really a pretext to have a technical discussion. Only time I advise to use take-homes is when you are dealing with a massive number of applicants from institutions that have a poor signal to noise ratio. Bootcamps come to mind. But then you end up with candidates that have the homework done by someone else and it ends up not being a good filter either.
- berkle4455 3y ago
  Whiteboards are skewered just as much on HN. Basically every engineer on here is a 10x and every company should be grateful to even be considered. Apparently we should just review github OSS contributions and how many unit tests they write.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    Is it whiteboarding in general, or being asked to write realistic code on the whiteboard? Sketch out rough program structure or system design or whatever Vs Write valid Python to solve some leetcode question
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - gedy 3y ago
    > Apparently we should just review github OSS contributions and how many unit tests they write. No, but speaking from experience - also don't reach out to senior, employed devs for a role, then waste their time with whiteboard leetcode quizzes to "make sure they aren't fakers or coasting, we have sooo many applicants". In those cases, a conversation is really more valuable, we aren't interns.
    - opportune 3y ago
      I gladly participate in whiteboard interviews to ensure I will not have senior+ colleagues who are unable to solve them. The fact that intern candidates can solve them is all the more reason to filter out experienced candidates who can't
      - happymellon 3y ago
        Completely disagree. I've observed other people run whiteboarding session with candidates and "solving them" usually means, "in the way I want" and if you've only just met then thats only going to happen through hints. The "context" (hints) they give different candidates can vary massively, perhaps by the end you've realised that your question is ambiguous, or you like the personality of this other candidate. I've worked with folks who will definitely give attractive women more guidance throughout so they arrive at the "correct" solution and not see what they are doing.
treeman79 3y ago
Had one company in local city. They managed to interview almost every Engineer in the market that had skill set. Rejected all of them. Few months later I got a call asking to interview again as they realized their standards were too high. Not a chance.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > their standards were too high They could simply be wrong. I've seen people demand the wrong solution. I've seen tests with bad instructions. Most people are not good at producing test
  - treeman79 3y ago
    You had 45 minutes to write a connect 4 game from scratch.
boredtofears 3y ago
Amazing to me the general attitude here towards take-homes. I don't know, perhaps it's because I've progressed every interview I've had the opportunity to do a take-home on (and I struggle with most leet-code style whiteboarding interviews) but I've always seen take-homes as an audition for your software development style -- what you deliver in a take-home assessment is what they will use to judge how you'll deliver on the job, plain and simple. I've only done take homes for companies that I've already passed initial interviews for and generally like the people I've talked to and have favorable impressions of the culture/workplace thus far. I wouldn't do a take-home before that, but I'd do a take-home any day before a leet code grinding thing.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  The trouble is I've never seen it be a replacement for whiteboarding. You do the stupid takehome and then you still have to do the regular interview anyway.
- genezeta 3y ago
  > I've only done take homes for companies that I've already passed initial interviews for and generally like the people I've talked to and have favorable impressions of the culture/workplace thus far So your experience has been quite specific. A lot of companies think that it's fine to send you a take-home assignment as the first step. Some more do it after just a 10 minute phone call. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that your amazement can easily be explained by the fact that you've done it in particular circumstances which is probably not the experience of most people.
- prakhar897 3y ago
  Why don't they judge me based on my 4 year long degree which is only done to rubber stamp that I can do the job. Do you also expect a Med graduate to see some patients in the hospital for free before giving them a job?
  - vekerdyb 3y ago
    Would you be happy to work with any and all your peers who have the same degree?
b20000 3y ago
requiring leetcode despite 20 years of experience, code samples you can show, and a CS degree you can show, is a red flag to me.

Buttons840 3y ago

I agree. I'll give you like a 4-to-1 ratio on a takehome assessment, give me a 30 minute phone call with my potential manager or fellow programmer and let me ask some questions and get a feel for the company and culture, then I'll spend a couple hours on your assessment. If not, well, same rate applies, I'll spend 4x0 hours on your assessment. A nice way to say this is, "I'd be happy to complete this takehome assessment, but it will take a significant amount of time and first I would like a short phone call to ask some questions and get a feel for the company, nothing too long, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page before I spend my time on this. When can we schedule a call?"

shakes_mcjunkie 3y ago
I agree with what you're saying here: > I would like a short phone call to ask some questions and get a feel for the company I've had some places do behavioral first and others do coding first. I think I'm more onboard with behavioral first because communication a lot of times is more important than raw technical skill. Everyone can save time if you can suss out early on that the person is a bad communicator or bad fit. And generally you can spend time in this interview asking questions about the company.
- brandall10 3y ago
  That’s not behavioral, it’s an initial screen for fit. It. Makes the relationship at least a bit more balanced from a time investment perspective. It seems most places do this though.

shahbaby 3y ago

Not just takehomes but also applies to things like automated coding challenges as an initial step before I've talked with someone. Twice I've aced these challenge with time to spare and was then rejected or ghosted. It's the same idea; don't invest time into a company's interview loop unless you know they're investing something too.

rnk 3y ago

Yeah, we should just refuse to give away well as accept take homes when interviewing. There was the company where I and some other experience people decided to give someone a take home. And we regretted it because I think it took more than we thought. The one person that did well on it turned us down anyway.

quickthrower2 3y ago

Maybe a trick here, at least with online marked ones, is screen record a take home end to end with the result. Then say - use that result or GTFO. A bit like how they let you drive a car after passing a test once.

CoastalCoder 3y ago

> Takehomes have been ruined as a concept by companies that spam them out before applying a first pass. I had this experience a few weeks ago with Wolverine Trading. It seemed clear that they didn't respect my time. Perhaps I dodged a bullet.

boredtofears 3y ago

As someone whose taken and authored many: the whole point is often to have different levels of completion. There may technically be a "complete" point - often that isn't that hard to achieve. Usually there are several other possibly-non-obvious improvements the tester is looking for. Whether these improvements are obvious to you or not is a sign of experience.

opportune 3y ago
If I'm not given that guidance directly nor given a chance to clarify it as I do the solution (as with normal interviews), I don't really want to participate in the guessing game about what they want, if missing that guess results in all the work being wasted. As others have mentioned, I find the "limit yourself to 2-4 hours" BS. I can stand up a new http server in 2 hours to implement some API, sure. Adding unit tests, integration tests, a readme, build instructions/scripts, containerizing it, adding detailed comments, linting... generally not possible to do in 4 hours unless you have everything set up before then (I can't use my normal dev tools to do takehomes because they're through my employer). IRL you would generally scope this as a week-long task even for experienced employees. Maybe if I were unemployed and desperate for a job I'd suffer it, but most places I'm interested in working at ask whiteboard/design problems anyway.
- boredtofears 3y ago
  If it feels like a guessing game it's probably not obvious to you what the improvement is. They usually stick out like a sore thumb for the candidates that they're seeking if they're written well.
  - deredede 3y ago
    "If they're written well" is key here. Anyways, just show me the code and we'll discuss it together, don't waste my time making improvement to toy code that will never get used.
Tade0 3y ago
> Whether these improvements are obvious to you or not is a sign of experience. In my experience as an interviewer fishing for specific answers is what makes you miss the best engineers. I used to do this during my peak Dunning-Kruger phase and gave relatively poor marks to an guy who later proved to surpass both me and the rest of the team in every aspect that mattered - even though originally he barely made it through the interview process. Chiefly, he didn't do things the way we expected because he prioritized.

rkho 3y ago

> Not once have I “passed” a take home interview I have had the exact same experience. They have always been a complete waste of time for me and I have since adopted a policy that any takehome challenges = automatic close the loop for me. It's not worth explaining why either. If this is your process and you find it appropriate to offer it as a first option, then it's just not a good fit.

ary 3y ago

We applied some advice that I saw on a HN thread years ago (but sadly do not have the link handy) and it has worked well: we pay our candidates for their time. The take home concept really is insulting when a candidate’s time isn’t valued. Since we incur a cost so we’re serious about knowing for sure that we want to interview the candidate. I wish people were less surprised when we tell them they deserve to be paid for their work, but companies have been advantaged in the hiring process for so long (excepting COVID) that disregard for people’s time is embedded in corporate culture. However, to the point people have made about not getting comprehensive feedback: it’s just not worth it. Corporate counsel will basically refuse to let you tell a candidate why they were rejected for fear of any inadvertent lawsuit exposure. This is also deeply embedded in corporate culture and it’s hard to imagine it changing.

scarface_74 3y ago
I’m sure there is a dollar figure. But I can’t imagine your company would be willing to pay me enough to do a take home test to pique my interest in going through the trouble. How much are you paying? I could throw a rock and a hit a consulting opportunity for $200/hour.
- listenallyall 3y ago
  > I could throw a rock and a hit a consulting opportunity for $200/hour. then why are you interviewing?
  - MrDresden 3y ago
    There are more benefits to a stable job than money.
    - listenallyall 3y ago
      Yet most people, if potential income was comparable, would prefer to be their own boss vs having a job

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago

Oh, don't worry. An actual engineer doesn't need to look at your work. From now on, companies will simply give your answer to ChatGPT and ask it what it thinks. Not joking. You hated interviews before? Get ready to rock.

wonderingyogi 3y ago

I will only do take home if I feel like the company is serious. If they are sending me a take home without meeting with the hiring manager, it goes straight to the bin.