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As much as I dislike leetcode style interviews, if I fail one of those, I learn what I can and move on. Failing a take-home is an entirely different thing. It'

As much as I dislike leetcode style interviews, if I fail one of those, I learn what I can and move on. Failing a take-home is an entirely different thing. It's a huge loss in time and mental energy. I've only done 3 of those in my career and only because the projects sounded interesting. 1 of those 3 resulted in a job offer which I can now confidently say in hindsight was the worst job in my career (...so far!). I'm now leaning towards just filtering out companies that do take-homes because it signals to me that they don't care about their candidate's time and how a company treats its candidates is usually a good indicator of how they treat their employees.

bryanrasmussen 1y ago
I don't get it, every job I have interviewed for since 2013 has had a take home. A couple of them waived it in my case but otherwise they all had take homes. Where are these jobs where people don't get given take homes?
- apwell23 1y ago
  meta, google, amazon don't have take home Basically all big companies doing industrial scale hiring ( and firing) that don't have time or patience for take homes.
  - filesfiles 1y ago
    > Basically all big companies doing industrial scala hiring ( and firing) Is Scala the right choice for hiring and firing, though? If they need to fire quickly, why not straight machine code?
    - apwell23 1y ago
      to pretend that they care about safety
    - strken 1y ago
      I believe this is a typo for SCADA, which would control the industrial machinery used to fire employees in order to ensure distance and accuracy.
  - layoric 1y ago
    In Australia, AWS dev position in 2021 had a take home. Microsoft contract position before that didn’t but they were desperate to fill seats on a poorly executed gov contract.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    GitHub (pre-microsoft at least) and Crowdstrike both did. Amazon didn't have a take home so much as a "prove you can write code with this simple problem" though that was also pre-AI days as well.
- qudat 1y ago
  When you are rapidly hiring, giving a candidate 2 weeks to complete a take home is a huge drag on the process. Instead, sandwiching 3 interviews (resume walk, leetcode, system design) into a 3 hour time period lets candidates move through the process faster.
  - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
    hmm most of the take homes I ever got had a 1 week to complete but I guess I see it, I don't think I've ever been trying to get on a company that is hiring more than a small time at any time.
- ghaff 1y ago
  I can't speak to developer roles specifically. But the last job I had (for a long time), I just dropped an email to someone who was a client. I think a fair number of the developers at the company came through internships or referrals and AFAIK takehomes weren't a thing.
  - Henchman21 1y ago
    What year?
    - ghaff 1y ago
      2010. It didn't hurt that the person in question ran the products group. (And I went to the same school as the ultimate hiring manager.) People obviously have different experiences at different companies but networks matter a lot in many cases whether a lot of folks like it or not. Things still took a few months to coordinate meetings and interviews but it was still the only job I (sort of) applied for.
apwell23 1y ago
Agree. leetcode is the greatest thing that happened to tech interviews. Get good at it and you can do hundreds of interviews with no prep. Take homes are a proxy for hiring most desperate ppl who can spend most time on it.
- bombela 1y ago
  With all those leetcode acers, why is software slow as molasses? You would think they pattern match for the most efficient algo with all this training. In my experience the more impressive somebody is at leet code, the worse their production code. Full of bugs, no error handling. Assuming the inputs never stray from the happy path. Not saying it's always the case of course. But I did interview almost 400 people over my career. On the other hand, most people cannot code to save their life. So I have no answers. Only more questions.
  - boredatoms 1y ago
    Leetcode is all local cpu. Production code is all waiting for network responses.
  - bootsmann 1y ago
    > In my experience the more impressive somebody is at leet code, the worse their production code. Used to think this too, until I met some truly impressively bad engineers where I'm pretty sure they would not have passed a leetcode screen either. People acing leetcode is at the minimum a good signal for people having the patience to sit down and learn non-trivial things over a somewhat longer time period by themselves.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >Get good at it >with no prep. You contradicted yourself in the same sentence. You can't get good at leetcoding interviews with no prep
  - CITIZENDOT 1y ago
    After getting good at it, there is no "additional" prep time, unlike take homes, where you would need to spend hours for every individual assignment. Is that so hard to understand?
ImageXav 1y ago
I've had the complete opposite experience, and feel the complete opposite way. What is there to learn from failing a leetcode? It feels like luck of the draw - I didn't study that specific problem type and so failed. Also, there is an up front cost of several months to cover and study a wide array of leetcode problems. With a take home I can demonstrate how I would perform at work. I can sit on it, think things over in my head, come up with an attack plan and execute it. I can demonstrate how I think about problems and my own value more clearly. Using a take home as a test is indicative to me that a company cares a bit more about its hiring pipeline and is being careful not to put candidates under arbitrary pressures.
- shahbaby 1y ago
  Would you rather do 10 take-homes or 10 leetcode questions? Either way, when you fail, chances are that you will not get any meaningful feedback other than "we have decided to move forward with other candidates". If you had done a take-home, how could you know where you went wrong? If you had done a leetcode question, you can look up the question after the interview and usually learn from your mistakes. With leetcode you usually don't need the interviewer's feedback to improve. You don't even need the interview. And after a certain point you won't need that much time to prepare.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y ago
I love take home and don't like leetcode, so I was thinking: choose a company based on how they interview, might help with culture fit?
sensanaty 1y ago
I feel the complete and total opposite. With leetcode-esque ones it's just a luck of the draw that you can conjure up the memory for whatever it is they're asking you to do. The decent ones are the ones that at least are somewhat realistic, but the truly terrible ones are those where you have to remember how to do an algo of some sort but you have no access to outside tools of any kind. I've never come out of a leetcode and felt like I learned anything or could've done something better, not to mention the artificially crafted high stress environment. I feel like they also literally never reflect anything even approaching the actual work, either, and basically test your memory more than anything else. There's a reason there's a billion books out there about how to "crack" the leetcode style interviews. On the other hand, with takehomes I get to approach a project as if it were my own little hobby thing. I get to approach it in ways that are comfortable for me to work, with my music on, in my own editor, on my own setup, with no time pressure (or at least very light time pressure, just like during the actual job). I always use it as an opportunity to try out something new as well, so I'm also learning in the process even if I don't get the job. And in my experience even when rejected, I've always gotten detailed feedback for areas of improvement, which has never happened in leetcode interviews for me.
rpcorb 1y ago
What if it's an appropriately scoped take-home assignment? 1-2 hours max. I would say that's fair and gives people with interview anxiety more of a chance.
horns4lyfe 1y ago
The problem is that the more we go in that direction, the more hiring in this industry rewards gamifying and grinding, and that bleeds into the profession as a whole. And at that point it’s just not worth working there

bryanrasmussen 1y ago

I don't get it, every job I have interviewed for since 2013 has had a take home. A couple of them waived it in my case but otherwise they all had take homes. Where are these jobs where people don't get given take homes?

apwell23 1y ago
meta, google, amazon don't have take home Basically all big companies doing industrial scale hiring ( and firing) that don't have time or patience for take homes.
- filesfiles 1y ago
  > Basically all big companies doing industrial scala hiring ( and firing) Is Scala the right choice for hiring and firing, though? If they need to fire quickly, why not straight machine code?
  - apwell23 1y ago
    to pretend that they care about safety
  - strken 1y ago
    I believe this is a typo for SCADA, which would control the industrial machinery used to fire employees in order to ensure distance and accuracy.
- layoric 1y ago
  In Australia, AWS dev position in 2021 had a take home. Microsoft contract position before that didn’t but they were desperate to fill seats on a poorly executed gov contract.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  GitHub (pre-microsoft at least) and Crowdstrike both did. Amazon didn't have a take home so much as a "prove you can write code with this simple problem" though that was also pre-AI days as well.
qudat 1y ago
When you are rapidly hiring, giving a candidate 2 weeks to complete a take home is a huge drag on the process. Instead, sandwiching 3 interviews (resume walk, leetcode, system design) into a 3 hour time period lets candidates move through the process faster.
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  hmm most of the take homes I ever got had a 1 week to complete but I guess I see it, I don't think I've ever been trying to get on a company that is hiring more than a small time at any time.
ghaff 1y ago
I can't speak to developer roles specifically. But the last job I had (for a long time), I just dropped an email to someone who was a client. I think a fair number of the developers at the company came through internships or referrals and AFAIK takehomes weren't a thing.
- Henchman21 1y ago
  What year?
  - ghaff 1y ago
    2010. It didn't hurt that the person in question ran the products group. (And I went to the same school as the ultimate hiring manager.) People obviously have different experiences at different companies but networks matter a lot in many cases whether a lot of folks like it or not. Things still took a few months to coordinate meetings and interviews but it was still the only job I (sort of) applied for.

apwell23 1y ago

Agree. leetcode is the greatest thing that happened to tech interviews. Get good at it and you can do hundreds of interviews with no prep. Take homes are a proxy for hiring most desperate ppl who can spend most time on it.

bombela 1y ago
With all those leetcode acers, why is software slow as molasses? You would think they pattern match for the most efficient algo with all this training. In my experience the more impressive somebody is at leet code, the worse their production code. Full of bugs, no error handling. Assuming the inputs never stray from the happy path. Not saying it's always the case of course. But I did interview almost 400 people over my career. On the other hand, most people cannot code to save their life. So I have no answers. Only more questions.
- boredatoms 1y ago
  Leetcode is all local cpu. Production code is all waiting for network responses.
- bootsmann 1y ago
  > In my experience the more impressive somebody is at leet code, the worse their production code. Used to think this too, until I met some truly impressively bad engineers where I'm pretty sure they would not have passed a leetcode screen either. People acing leetcode is at the minimum a good signal for people having the patience to sit down and learn non-trivial things over a somewhat longer time period by themselves.
FirmwareBurner 1y ago
>Get good at it >with no prep. You contradicted yourself in the same sentence. You can't get good at leetcoding interviews with no prep
- CITIZENDOT 1y ago
  After getting good at it, there is no "additional" prep time, unlike take homes, where you would need to spend hours for every individual assignment. Is that so hard to understand?

ImageXav 1y ago

I've had the complete opposite experience, and feel the complete opposite way. What is there to learn from failing a leetcode? It feels like luck of the draw - I didn't study that specific problem type and so failed. Also, there is an up front cost of several months to cover and study a wide array of leetcode problems. With a take home I can demonstrate how I would perform at work. I can sit on it, think things over in my head, come up with an attack plan and execute it. I can demonstrate how I think about problems and my own value more clearly. Using a take home as a test is indicative to me that a company cares a bit more about its hiring pipeline and is being careful not to put candidates under arbitrary pressures.

shahbaby 1y ago
Would you rather do 10 take-homes or 10 leetcode questions? Either way, when you fail, chances are that you will not get any meaningful feedback other than "we have decided to move forward with other candidates". If you had done a take-home, how could you know where you went wrong? If you had done a leetcode question, you can look up the question after the interview and usually learn from your mistakes. With leetcode you usually don't need the interviewer's feedback to improve. You don't even need the interview. And after a certain point you won't need that much time to prepare.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y ago

I love take home and don't like leetcode, so I was thinking: choose a company based on how they interview, might help with culture fit?

sensanaty 1y ago

I feel the complete and total opposite. With leetcode-esque ones it's just a luck of the draw that you can conjure up the memory for whatever it is they're asking you to do. The decent ones are the ones that at least are somewhat realistic, but the truly terrible ones are those where you have to remember how to do an algo of some sort but you have no access to outside tools of any kind. I've never come out of a leetcode and felt like I learned anything or could've done something better, not to mention the artificially crafted high stress environment. I feel like they also literally never reflect anything even approaching the actual work, either, and basically test your memory more than anything else. There's a reason there's a billion books out there about how to "crack" the leetcode style interviews. On the other hand, with takehomes I get to approach a project as if it were my own little hobby thing. I get to approach it in ways that are comfortable for me to work, with my music on, in my own editor, on my own setup, with no time pressure (or at least very light time pressure, just like during the actual job). I always use it as an opportunity to try out something new as well, so I'm also learning in the process even if I don't get the job. And in my experience even when rejected, I've always gotten detailed feedback for areas of improvement, which has never happened in leetcode interviews for me.

rpcorb 1y ago

What if it's an appropriately scoped take-home assignment? 1-2 hours max. I would say that's fair and gives people with interview anxiety more of a chance.

horns4lyfe 1y ago

The problem is that the more we go in that direction, the more hiring in this industry rewards gamifying and grinding, and that bleeds into the profession as a whole. And at that point it’s just not worth working there