Yes - this. I've been doing the same for the past couple months, and I've encountered several types. Some companies just have me recite my resume - I feel the

Yes - this. I've been doing the same for the past couple months, and I've encountered several types. Some companies just have me recite my resume - I feel these haven't done any legwork at all, and I usually don't bother. Others seem to have looked over things, and have me describe in detail the problems I solved, the various alternatives I considered, and so on. This is a good thing! Only two companies sent me coding assignments, which I completed rather well, I think - I imagine these companies got the best feedback of what I was capable of. Aside: coding problems are a fine line to walk. One assignment I got had a trivial implementation of the spec, so I actually extended it to make not trivial (basically, they removed everything but the special cases). I extended the problem and wrote the general code. Other companies have problems that require quite a lot of coding, or at least a lot of time to think and design "correctly". They are interesting problems, but when hiring interns, companies should remember that interns are also usually full-time students (and this one hold a part-time job as well). I just simply didn't have the time to devote to implementing your complex problem, especially when I'm only half-interested in your company. In the end, perhaps my experience was slightly unusual, because I think my resume displays a lot of experience doing the things I am looking to do more of. Also, looking for an internship is much different than looking for a full-time job. Hiring is difficult, yes: companies have a hard time finding good engineers, and good engineers have a hard time finding somewhere interesting to work (Social networks are cool and all, but if you're building one that simply targets a specific set of people, with no extra differentiation, I'm simply not interested.) This is why I'm so interested in entrepreneurship - you get to work at a great company, and you only have the best engineers working for you! (Hopefully.)