Generally my personal rule is: don't do it. Here are my rules for accepting coding assignments: * See the grading criteria along with, or before, the coding a

Generally my personal rule is: don't do it. Here are my rules for accepting coding assignments: * See the grading criteria along with, or before, the coding assignment instructions. Otherwise, its subjective bullshit that can fail for any reason. Worse, there is a small yet common probability of this being unpaid labor for their actual work product. * Make it known to them that you will store your answer in public without their instructions or work materials. If that is a deal breaker then there is a trust/honesty problem. This is your time without compensation. * As for time and duration of total effort this should vary due to the complexity of the assignment and your level of interest. Since there are no obligations here the minimum time is 0. You can always walk away. If you find the assignment fun or interesting take as much time as you want and later use the answer in your personal software if you can. My experience doing these, as a former JavaScript developer, leads me to believe this isn't a measure of the applicant's abilities but rather a measure of the evaluating developers, the employees, comfort in your coding style. That being said don't do the assignment in the most precise or performant way unless the instructions say otherwise. Do it in the most common and popular way according to an extremely junior developer even if much slower and much larger, and also don't be shy about including too many popular dependencies.