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Quality beats quantity. If you smash the hell out of a take-home project you won't need to do any more interviews. Companies that rely on take-homes usually are

Quality beats quantity. If you smash the hell out of a take-home project you won't need to do any more interviews. Companies that rely on take-homes usually are the same ones that don't make you go through Leetcode/trivia gauntlets. My biggest advice is if they say to use 4 hours but you need 8 to do an amazingly thorough job then use 8. It's basically cheating but I've always found that it doesn't end up causing any actual problems in terms of being able to deliver at a velocity they needed in actual product work post-hire.

gopher_space 2y ago
My biggest advice is to assume the reviewer is a bored junior running down a checklist that tests only what was in the spec. They have like five minutes budgeted for getting your project running and a pile of applications to go. > Quality beats quantity. If you smash the hell out of a take-home project you won't need to do any more interviews. This means a decent amount of that time spent on documentation, imho.
camdenreslink 2y ago
I do as you do, but there is a very real risk that nobody will ever look at it. Or it gets assigned to a dev (who has a lot of other real work to do) to look at and the give it a cursory once over and a thumbs up or down.
- jofla_net 2y ago
  I had one where after weeks of work, tweaking, it received zero time on their eyeballs. And I know because they never went to the link i sent. So ghosting a project is a very huge reality...
nsxwolf 2y ago
Every takehome I've ever "passed" has just been an invitation to 3 rounds of Leetcode and a systems design interview, followed by a rejection. And being on the other side of the interview, I know many times the takehomes don't even get looked at.
ipaddr 2y ago
The fallacy of believing putting in 10 hours on that 2 hour test will push your candidacy over the top. We've all been there.
collyw 2y ago
If they give that "challenge" to 4 other people there is only a 25% chance that you will get the job.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
>If you smash the hell out of a take-home project you won't need to do any more interviews. Companies that rely on take-homes usually are the same ones that don't make you go through Leetcode/trivia gauntlets. First job me believed that. Current job me has done 2 take homes that only lead to ghosts. then 1 more that lead to failing a leetcode style interview. Never again. and I have plenty of personal projects outside of work, I don't need more pet projects like the one comment up stream.

gopher_space 2y ago

My biggest advice is to assume the reviewer is a bored junior running down a checklist that tests only what was in the spec. They have like five minutes budgeted for getting your project running and a pile of applications to go. > Quality beats quantity. If you smash the hell out of a take-home project you won't need to do any more interviews. This means a decent amount of that time spent on documentation, imho.

camdenreslink 2y ago

I do as you do, but there is a very real risk that nobody will ever look at it. Or it gets assigned to a dev (who has a lot of other real work to do) to look at and the give it a cursory once over and a thumbs up or down.

jofla_net 2y ago
I had one where after weeks of work, tweaking, it received zero time on their eyeballs. And I know because they never went to the link i sent. So ghosting a project is a very huge reality...

nsxwolf 2y ago

Every takehome I've ever "passed" has just been an invitation to 3 rounds of Leetcode and a systems design interview, followed by a rejection. And being on the other side of the interview, I know many times the takehomes don't even get looked at.

ipaddr 2y ago

The fallacy of believing putting in 10 hours on that 2 hour test will push your candidacy over the top. We've all been there.

collyw 2y ago

If they give that "challenge" to 4 other people there is only a 25% chance that you will get the job.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

>If you smash the hell out of a take-home project you won't need to do any more interviews. Companies that rely on take-homes usually are the same ones that don't make you go through Leetcode/trivia gauntlets. First job me believed that. Current job me has done 2 take homes that only lead to ghosts. then 1 more that lead to failing a leetcode style interview. Never again. and I have plenty of personal projects outside of work, I don't need more pet projects like the one comment up stream.