6 ms·

It's been surprising to me to read through the comments posted here and seeing how most people seem to really despise take-home assignments during the interview

by gered 3y ago

It's been surprising to me to read through the comments posted here and seeing how most people seem to really despise take-home assignments during the interview process. Speaking as someone who absolutely hates live-coding something during an interview (unless, maybe, by chance it's a practical exercise ... something like "build up this simple CRUD web service" ... not "solve this leetcode problem" ... but this is pretty uncommon in my experience, unfortunately), I rather like take-home assignments. As long as they don't take any more than 1-3 hours. I've been in situations where I've declined a take-home assignment that was given to me where I estimated it was going to take 10-20+ hours. No idea why any company would think that is reasonable. For myself, what I hate is when the take-home assignment comes first. Like, before you talk with anyone at all, or maybe immediately after you did the 15 minute HR/recruiter screen. If I get a take-home assignment at that point, I decline. There's no denying the fact that a take-home assignment is a large investment by the candidate on this random chance to get the job. I'm not willing to make that investment unless I've gotten a chance to talk to at least _some_ of the people I'd be working with at a company to better gauge what the situation is and whether I think it's a good fit for me. Even a 15-minute HR/recruiter screen is not going to do that. So yeah, if they just throw the take-home assignment at me right off the bat ... yeah, no thanks. This all being said, yes, it is frustrating though to have to go through a bunch of these and get rejected with no feedback, or just ghosted, yeah.

irrational 3y ago
I’d rather do neither. That’s the main reason I have never done in person or take home coding tests in the 20+ years I’ve been conducting interviews. So far we haven’t hired a dud.
- gered 3y ago
  I mean I agree with you on this, but the idea that you can gauge a person's skillset through conversation (gasp!) and talking about your craft and details about past projects, etc seems to be totally lost on people today.
  - quesera 3y ago
    > gauge a person's skillset through conversation (gasp!) I can't claim GP's 100% hit rate, but I think I can get to about 90% this way. My most recent error is galling though, and absolutely would have been caught with a lightweight coding test. Some people are really good talkers.
    - darkerside 3y ago
      Seems fairly easily solved by letting that person go. Easily for the company at least.
  - johnfn 3y ago
    I mean, it goes both ways. I feel that I am a fairly proficient engineer (built something with 10M+ downloads) but for a long period of my life I would do fine in every part of the interview except the part where you just chit chat a bit. I'd try to tell interviewers about myself and the smiles would just fall off their faces. It took me a long time to understand that these sorts of conversations had their own "rules" to them, which I had to follow if I wanted to do well. These rules, of course, have virtually nothing to do with programming aptitude or ability, and seem to me, somewhat cynically, to be another way by which interviewers can allow their own biases to enter into the interview process. For instance, one time I got rejected because I seemed "too excited" about my personal side projects; it was deemed that I wouldn't be as excited about the work that I'd do at the company. Of course this is nonsense; I'm now happily employed and pretty excited about my work. I have plenty other examples of me saying reasonable things in interviews and being rejected for that reason. There's really no silver bullet here. Getting rejected is always going to piss people off.
    - gered 3y ago
      See, I take a bit of a different view in the example you've given. Like, if I got rejected because I seemed "too excited about my personal side projects" I'd come away from that thinking "if that's really their take away, I'm kinda glad I don't work with them!" You're right that the conversational interviews (just like any social gathering, really) have their own rules. But I think the most important thing you can do during those interviews is to just be yourself. After all, you want them to get to know you, just as you want to get to know them, right? How else can you each be sure that you're a good fit for each other? If they reject you for something you said that is true but that they just didn't like (e.g. a difference of opinion on something), or they nitpicked some little thing you said even though the rest of the conversation went smoothly ... well, in my opinion, you're better off.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  I bet while you “weren’t doing in person coding tests” as a developer you also weren’t making the type of compensation that the people who were “grinding leetCode and working for a FAANG” (tm) r/cscareerquestions. I use to brag like you, about “not doing take home test” for 25 years. Then I landed at BigTech and saw that returning interns were making about what I made two years earlier at 45. I’m not complaining, my goal had been to get into $BigTech in 2020 and relocate when my youngest (step)son graduated I did so without a coding interview and without relocating by pivoting to “cloud consulting/application modernization” (cloud + enterprise application architecture/development). But I tell my younger relatives to practice coding interviews and go for the most compensation possible.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    If you base your success on money, sure. Maybe tests are a good filter. Personally, I'm seeking something more furfilling and the difference between 200k and 300k doesn't matter if I don't find the work furfilling. 300k to 400k would be negligible for any material possessions I'd want. But to each their own.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Yes, I have this insatiable addiction for food and shelter. The best way I know how to support my addiction is to trade labor for money.
      - the_only_law 3y ago
        Which as we all know is impossible to do without FAANG money.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        Sure it is, I had my 3200 square foot home built in 2016 in the northern burbs of Atlanta when I was making $135K. But why given the choice (theoretically) would I give up making $ALotMore just by practicing for coding interviews? Like I said, I personally didn’t have to thanks to years of industry experience, knowing “cloud”, and having soft skills. But why would anyone without the path dependencies I had (ie children in school that I didn’t want to relocate) hold their nose up at doing what it takes to make $160K+ straight out of college and a quarter million+ a year by the time they are 25?
paxys 3y ago
Take home tests are bad. Fizzbuzz questions are bad. Multiple onsite interview rounds are bad. Behavioral questions are bad. Leetcode style questions are bad. Collaborative coding tests are bad. If you ask the majority of job seekers here, the only correct way to hire is to hand out 300K/yr offers after a casual 30 minute chat.
- tracerbulletx 3y ago
  The actual best way is to only have a small set of senior engineers who also are very good at talking about programming, and are good with people and interviewing specifically and have a history of trust and good judgment do all of the interviews where they have a lengthy conversation about past experience, technical topics, and maybe code a little together if they think they need to and just give them total authority to make the call. It might not be that scalable but it would work the best.
  - blowski 3y ago
    How do you know which candidates are worth your senior engineers spending all that time with?
    - tracerbulletx 3y ago
      I'm not sure. I think that's a problem to figure out. What I want to advocate for is mostly that talent scouting should be taken seriously not farmed out by scheduling random employees who aren't good at it and then collating the partial opinions of 10 people who don't really have enough time with the person to have a total view.
      - blowski 3y ago
        I agree in theory. But engineers with good tech skills and good people are already likely to be the most valuable and time-constrained resources in the business. So taking 2 of them out to have a 2 hour interview with, say, 100 candidates is 400 hours. Even assuming they’d be willing to do that, that’s about 2 months worth of development from your best engineers. This is why companies have processes like screening with a non-tech person and tech tests. It filters that 100 down to, say, 5 which is more feasible to put in front of those top engineers. It hurts not to be selected for that 5, to be told you’re not good enough. Companies should do a better job at that. If they can’t give feedback because of the lawyers, they should warn you of that in advance, to set your expectations. They should be responsive and transparent through the whole process. What they can’t do - seemingly to the chagrin of many engineers here - is offer you a highly-paid job merely because you think you deserve it. I can see people on this post that likely have appalling people skills based on their comment, arguing that, since they didn’t get an offer, the company’s process was wrong. Perhaps those commenters need to look in a mirror to find the problem. Recruiters might miss some top talent, but that’s the price they pay. All other solutions also have costs.
OldManRyan 3y ago
To give a different opinion, any company that doesn't do a take-home gets lower priority during my job search. My favorite interview was HR screen -> 30 minute chat with another programmer -> take-home -> final interview that included a take-home review. I didn't end up getting the job but it was easily the best and least anxiety inducing interview I've ever been through.
- gered 3y ago
  I don't think that's a "different opinion" at all! :-) I look at it the same way basically.
- iJohnDoe 3y ago
  Your timeline is best case scenario though. Your example timeline could happen and then they bring you onsite and ask you to do an in-person challenge as well. Now you’ve done all of that and still get ghosted.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Well, in that case, I assume you wouldn’t be interested at working for any on the top paying companies in the industry. None of them require “take home tests”.
  - OldManRyan 3y ago
    You're right in that assumption but not because you putting words in my mouth. I said companies that don't do take-homes get lower priority during scheduling.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Why would I even schedule to work at a company that requires me to take more time than less?
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>As long as they don't take any more than 1-3 hours. Well, that's the issue. It may be because I'm a bad programmer, but I can't think of a take home that took me less than 3 hours. The take home I did for my first job took some 20 hours over 4 days, and I exaggerated and said it took 12 (which didn't garner a response so I'm guessing that wasn't an unusual answer). I could do that while I'm a student, I can't do that again as a working professional without wasting an entire weekend after a week of full time work. I still hate leetcode more, but at least there you have an explicit timer. >For myself, what I hate is when the take-home assignment comes first. Like, before you talk with anyone at all, or maybe immediately after you did the 15 minute HR/recruiter screen. I've never had a test come later. 15 minute interview call to make sure the high level details are correct (pay, location, physical office vs. Remote, etc), and then I am sent an interview test. Granted, my last 2 jobs did not employ take home tests, so I know I'm not forced to do them. But given my experiences I understand why others would be opposed to them. It sounds like you would be opposed to my experiences as well.
- gered 3y ago
  > I've never had a test come later. 15 minute interview call to make sure the high level details are correct (pay, location, physical office vs. Remote, etc), and then I am sent an interview test. Depends on the company. My personal experience has luckily been (so far) that more companies I've interviewed with who do take-homes at all have given them later on in the process. I suspect with the current job market situation given all the recent layoffs that things will probably start to shift for those companies that do take-homes, where they'll probably start giving them to candidates at the beginning of the interview process, as they'll probably see it as an easy filter for themselves. Ugh.

by gered 3y ago

irrational 3y ago

I’d rather do neither. That’s the main reason I have never done in person or take home coding tests in the 20+ years I’ve been conducting interviews. So far we haven’t hired a dud.

gered 3y ago
I mean I agree with you on this, but the idea that you can gauge a person's skillset through conversation (gasp!) and talking about your craft and details about past projects, etc seems to be totally lost on people today.
- quesera 3y ago
  > gauge a person's skillset through conversation (gasp!) I can't claim GP's 100% hit rate, but I think I can get to about 90% this way. My most recent error is galling though, and absolutely would have been caught with a lightweight coding test. Some people are really good talkers.
  - darkerside 3y ago
    Seems fairly easily solved by letting that person go. Easily for the company at least.
- johnfn 3y ago
  I mean, it goes both ways. I feel that I am a fairly proficient engineer (built something with 10M+ downloads) but for a long period of my life I would do fine in every part of the interview except the part where you just chit chat a bit. I'd try to tell interviewers about myself and the smiles would just fall off their faces. It took me a long time to understand that these sorts of conversations had their own "rules" to them, which I had to follow if I wanted to do well. These rules, of course, have virtually nothing to do with programming aptitude or ability, and seem to me, somewhat cynically, to be another way by which interviewers can allow their own biases to enter into the interview process. For instance, one time I got rejected because I seemed "too excited" about my personal side projects; it was deemed that I wouldn't be as excited about the work that I'd do at the company. Of course this is nonsense; I'm now happily employed and pretty excited about my work. I have plenty other examples of me saying reasonable things in interviews and being rejected for that reason. There's really no silver bullet here. Getting rejected is always going to piss people off.
  - gered 3y ago
    See, I take a bit of a different view in the example you've given. Like, if I got rejected because I seemed "too excited about my personal side projects" I'd come away from that thinking "if that's really their take away, I'm kinda glad I don't work with them!" You're right that the conversational interviews (just like any social gathering, really) have their own rules. But I think the most important thing you can do during those interviews is to just be yourself. After all, you want them to get to know you, just as you want to get to know them, right? How else can you each be sure that you're a good fit for each other? If they reject you for something you said that is true but that they just didn't like (e.g. a difference of opinion on something), or they nitpicked some little thing you said even though the rest of the conversation went smoothly ... well, in my opinion, you're better off.
scarface_74 3y ago
I bet while you “weren’t doing in person coding tests” as a developer you also weren’t making the type of compensation that the people who were “grinding leetCode and working for a FAANG” (tm) r/cscareerquestions. I use to brag like you, about “not doing take home test” for 25 years. Then I landed at BigTech and saw that returning interns were making about what I made two years earlier at 45. I’m not complaining, my goal had been to get into $BigTech in 2020 and relocate when my youngest (step)son graduated I did so without a coding interview and without relocating by pivoting to “cloud consulting/application modernization” (cloud + enterprise application architecture/development). But I tell my younger relatives to practice coding interviews and go for the most compensation possible.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  If you base your success on money, sure. Maybe tests are a good filter. Personally, I'm seeking something more furfilling and the difference between 200k and 300k doesn't matter if I don't find the work furfilling. 300k to 400k would be negligible for any material possessions I'd want. But to each their own.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Yes, I have this insatiable addiction for food and shelter. The best way I know how to support my addiction is to trade labor for money.
    - the_only_law 3y ago
      Which as we all know is impossible to do without FAANG money.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        Sure it is, I had my 3200 square foot home built in 2016 in the northern burbs of Atlanta when I was making $135K. But why given the choice (theoretically) would I give up making $ALotMore just by practicing for coding interviews? Like I said, I personally didn’t have to thanks to years of industry experience, knowing “cloud”, and having soft skills. But why would anyone without the path dependencies I had (ie children in school that I didn’t want to relocate) hold their nose up at doing what it takes to make $160K+ straight out of college and a quarter million+ a year by the time they are 25?

paxys 3y ago

Take home tests are bad. Fizzbuzz questions are bad. Multiple onsite interview rounds are bad. Behavioral questions are bad. Leetcode style questions are bad. Collaborative coding tests are bad. If you ask the majority of job seekers here, the only correct way to hire is to hand out 300K/yr offers after a casual 30 minute chat.

tracerbulletx 3y ago
The actual best way is to only have a small set of senior engineers who also are very good at talking about programming, and are good with people and interviewing specifically and have a history of trust and good judgment do all of the interviews where they have a lengthy conversation about past experience, technical topics, and maybe code a little together if they think they need to and just give them total authority to make the call. It might not be that scalable but it would work the best.
- blowski 3y ago
  How do you know which candidates are worth your senior engineers spending all that time with?
  - tracerbulletx 3y ago
    I'm not sure. I think that's a problem to figure out. What I want to advocate for is mostly that talent scouting should be taken seriously not farmed out by scheduling random employees who aren't good at it and then collating the partial opinions of 10 people who don't really have enough time with the person to have a total view.
    - blowski 3y ago
      I agree in theory. But engineers with good tech skills and good people are already likely to be the most valuable and time-constrained resources in the business. So taking 2 of them out to have a 2 hour interview with, say, 100 candidates is 400 hours. Even assuming they’d be willing to do that, that’s about 2 months worth of development from your best engineers. This is why companies have processes like screening with a non-tech person and tech tests. It filters that 100 down to, say, 5 which is more feasible to put in front of those top engineers. It hurts not to be selected for that 5, to be told you’re not good enough. Companies should do a better job at that. If they can’t give feedback because of the lawyers, they should warn you of that in advance, to set your expectations. They should be responsive and transparent through the whole process. What they can’t do - seemingly to the chagrin of many engineers here - is offer you a highly-paid job merely because you think you deserve it. I can see people on this post that likely have appalling people skills based on their comment, arguing that, since they didn’t get an offer, the company’s process was wrong. Perhaps those commenters need to look in a mirror to find the problem. Recruiters might miss some top talent, but that’s the price they pay. All other solutions also have costs.

OldManRyan 3y ago

To give a different opinion, any company that doesn't do a take-home gets lower priority during my job search. My favorite interview was HR screen -> 30 minute chat with another programmer -> take-home -> final interview that included a take-home review. I didn't end up getting the job but it was easily the best and least anxiety inducing interview I've ever been through.

gered 3y ago
I don't think that's a "different opinion" at all! :-) I look at it the same way basically.
iJohnDoe 3y ago
Your timeline is best case scenario though. Your example timeline could happen and then they bring you onsite and ask you to do an in-person challenge as well. Now you’ve done all of that and still get ghosted.
scarface_74 3y ago
Well, in that case, I assume you wouldn’t be interested at working for any on the top paying companies in the industry. None of them require “take home tests”.
- OldManRyan 3y ago
  You're right in that assumption but not because you putting words in my mouth. I said companies that don't do take-homes get lower priority during scheduling.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Why would I even schedule to work at a company that requires me to take more time than less?

johnnyanmac 3y ago

>As long as they don't take any more than 1-3 hours. Well, that's the issue. It may be because I'm a bad programmer, but I can't think of a take home that took me less than 3 hours. The take home I did for my first job took some 20 hours over 4 days, and I exaggerated and said it took 12 (which didn't garner a response so I'm guessing that wasn't an unusual answer). I could do that while I'm a student, I can't do that again as a working professional without wasting an entire weekend after a week of full time work. I still hate leetcode more, but at least there you have an explicit timer. >For myself, what I hate is when the take-home assignment comes first. Like, before you talk with anyone at all, or maybe immediately after you did the 15 minute HR/recruiter screen. I've never had a test come later. 15 minute interview call to make sure the high level details are correct (pay, location, physical office vs. Remote, etc), and then I am sent an interview test. Granted, my last 2 jobs did not employ take home tests, so I know I'm not forced to do them. But given my experiences I understand why others would be opposed to them. It sounds like you would be opposed to my experiences as well.

gered 3y ago
> I've never had a test come later. 15 minute interview call to make sure the high level details are correct (pay, location, physical office vs. Remote, etc), and then I am sent an interview test. Depends on the company. My personal experience has luckily been (so far) that more companies I've interviewed with who do take-homes at all have given them later on in the process. I suspect with the current job market situation given all the recent layoffs that things will probably start to shift for those companies that do take-homes, where they'll probably start giving them to candidates at the beginning of the interview process, as they'll probably see it as an easy filter for themselves. Ugh.