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From the employees' perspective: Take home tests are the worst. Company says take home test will take 3 hours to complete. They never do. Schedule 2x or 3x the

From the employees' perspective: Take home tests are the worst. Company says take home test will take 3 hours to complete. They never do. Schedule 2x or 3x the estimate. Especially if you want to impress the reviewer. You send it over, then the company says no or yes, only to move to new stage. In the worst case you ruined your weekend and received a no. But the company just took 10 minutes to arbitrarily reject your application. From the company's perspective: I've seen applicants receive friends'/roommates'/spouse's help on take home tests. Not a good indicator at all even with a glowing submission.

Udo 11y ago
> I've seen applicants receive friends'/roommates'/spouse's help on take home tests. Not a good indicator at all even with a glowing submission. That's why they use the homework as the basis for the interview. In my opinion, of all things they could test you on during the interview, your own work is potentially one of the more pleasant subjects.
tomsun 11y ago
Also a lot of the take home interviews are time limited. So you would only have a certain amount of time to implement a solution.
joesmo 11y ago
No, in the worst case, you submit it and the company doesn't even take a look at it. That's not only the worst case, it seems to be the most common as well.
munchbunny 11y ago
This is very much true. We do take-home interview questions where they bring the output to the interview and we talk through their solution in person. We'll ask how long they took as a way to normalize expectations and also adjust the interview question to take more/less time in future instances. This does two things. In the long run, the time required converges towards where we want it to be (ASSUMING honest answers), and by bringing you in to talk through things, we can easily tell if these thoughts were your own by challenging you on specific parts of the prompt. This is less than ideal since it costs the interviewee time, and time isn't cheap, but we've found that advance prep removes an even bigger wildcard in interviews: how you respond to interview stress.
- mkozlows 11y ago
  Tip: If you want honest answers about how long it took, ask them after they've been hired and working there for a few weeks. Otherwise they will absolutely lie. "That? Oh, it was no big, probably 20-30 minutes."
  - volaski 11y ago
    I'm not sure if asking after getting hired would make a difference. They may lie even more, you don't want to be seen as a newbie to your coworkers
  - skatenerd 11y ago
    Or look at the git log, if it's available...
burger_moon 11y ago
After doing a handful of these and rejecting several handful of these tests I'd like to add a little to you comment. I agree that the time it takes is always muchuch longer than what they state. Companies that offer these tests before doing an initial phone screen get that email deleted. Why would I as an applicant who is applying to 10+ jobs spend time doing this test when I have never even had a chance to interact with a human. The tests are sometimes not even close to the actual job. As in the job description is for a front end developer and JavaScript knowledge needed and they ask you to write the test using a completely different language. one company (who adversities jobs on here all the time) asked to do some php command line scripting for a JavaScript front end position. How is that in anyway a useful judgement of someone's skills. So wasting people's time is a big deliminator. An example of a company I experienced that did the take home 'right' did an initial phone screen a couple days after applying. Then did another tech screen which was just basic stuff. After that they asked me to do a take home exercise and while completing it they continued to move forward with the application process including setting up travel arrangements. The take home test was directly related to the job and was given open ended for some creativity if one chose. The onsite final interview was discussing the code, so it would do little good to cheat on it because you need to be able to talk through it. I didn't even get the job with them but it was actually not a painful experience for once to do a take home test. Just my two cents, but I believe there is a good way and a terrible way to do it.
- pbrb 11y ago
  I agree. I've done really good ones and really bad ones. A good test started in the office with the hiring manager. Really them just watching me write a simple CRUD app in asp.net when it was all the rage. This was for an entry level gig and was actually a really good test. At the end they had an additional feature for you to add from home. It took a couple hrs and ended up being a great test to find decent entry level ppl. The bad one was about 2 yrs ago. I walked into a conference room for the final round, was sat down at a mac, and asked to write some code in their proprietary DSL without any documentation or anything. It was maddening. I almost walked out, but the salary was stupid high. Didn't get the job. Thinking back on it, maybe it was just a test and they did want me to say it was ridiculous.
Ensorceled 11y ago
Or, if they don't actually expect you to spend more than 3 hours on the task, they will compare you to people who have spent 9 hours on it. Had that recently: they said "spend no more than two hours on it" so I finished in about an hour and 45 that evening and flipped it over. Then they started asking why my 20 or so unit tests only covered the basics when other candidates had full unit tests in the two hour time frame. I told them the other candidates were simply lying :-)
- Jare 11y ago
  If a company emphasizes quantity over quality during the interview process, run away.
  - Bahamut 11y ago
    Very true - it is part of the bane of take home assignments. Even for someone who can code extremely fast, a lot of the exams aren't realistic with time, and then they are compared with those done by people who put in multiples of the asked hours. I rather put in those extra hours contracting (worst scenario), doing open source work (lots to be done that advances the productivity of tens of thousands of developers, if not more), into my hobbies, or into my friends.
odonnellryan 11y ago
I've gotten some pretty wacky projects. Basically, implement a fairly-complex web app. Something that I'd assume (even after doing similar tasks) would probably take me up to 40 hours of work, just because the scope is so crazy. They want user login, multiple features, etc... basically an MVP for a small product. It's hard. If you submit part of the project, which you usually have to do unless you're unemployed, they never go for it. If you call out of work a day or two to do the project... and you don't get the job anyway...
- sammydavis 11y ago
  I recently interviewed for 4 jobs, one of them was one of these type of "you must implement this in 1 hour". It was painful. I didn't finish in time. Apparently the idea was you much choose language X, it will e pretty easy with language X. I chose Y, and they said why did you choose Y, that was stupid. Result - I chose one of my other 3 offers, took the one that made me a staff programmer. And I live in Seattle, ha ha bay area.
snewman 11y ago
Speaking as an employer: we address this by keeping our coding exercise short, and specifying a time limit. The limit ("60-90 minutes") is not rigidly enforced, but candidates know we're able to see how long they spent, and in practice almost everyone spends more than 60 and less than 90 minutes. It's tricky. An in-person test would put the candidate in an unfamiliar environment, and makes many people nervous. A take-home test without a time limit opens itself up to the "I'd better spend lots of extra time so I can look impressive" problem. A take-home test with a hard time limit can also make people nervous. This is the best compromise we've been able to come up with (suggestions for improvement welcomed!). As suggested on this thread, we also don't ask candidates to tackle the exercise until they've had a chance to talk to us on the phone.
darklajid 11y ago
That topic ("People do stuff at home for an interview") is a topic that comes up again and again. My last reply [1] is about a month old and feels still valid. Don't state that 'take home tests are the worst'. That is - failing to find better words - crap. If that is the ONLY option, I understand that this might be not for you. But - that's not the case here as far as I can tell. You, as a person interested to interview, can opt in. That is awesome. Now - you might not be the type of guy that would _want_ to opt in, but please refrain from these absolute statements. No, that's not the worst. In fact, it's probably the _best_ option for a number of people (I myself would - if I'd want to interview with this service - opt for the home project). I fail to understand how this 'bash the home work' attitude comes up again and again. Yes, don't work for free. But if you're doing a 3h whiteboard marathon or work from your own chair? And you pick which one you prefer? I don't get the hate here.. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770737
- nsfyn55 11y ago
  Oh as a number of people have indicated its bad for the company because the candidate can work with someone else and produce a glowing submission. I have helped a number of people do these some that have gotten the job. its bad for the interviewee. They may spend 10-15 hours on this and get rejected for no reason at all. Do you think the person reviewing the submission is putting multiple hours into it. Doubtful. If the intent is truly(and I mean truly) help individuals that struggle with traditional interviewing techniques then kudos. Demonstrate this by allowing candidates to interview in a way that is comfortable for them(including not taking your take home test) If its the company saying "my time is more valuable than yours. Do this assignment then we'll talk" then no thanks.
  - darklajid 11y ago
    If you were able to explain your 'cheated' solution to someone and they could reliably cheat the interviewer, I'd say you .. taught them. GJ! The interviewee (the vowel count makes me dizzy) can choose what he/she prefers. So that argument is weird. Maybe (if that's your point) it might be beneficial to go for the face to face interview, for direct feedback? But .. some people just _cannot_ do that. You're not talking "Ah, they didn't respond. If you'd just had visited them on-site..." here. It's "opt for the home project or don't apply". Which is empowering the candidate.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
I would rather spend 8 hours at home giving the interviewer a realistic impression of my abilities than 1 hour mumbling over a whiteboard and getting trashcanned because the interviewer mistakenly thinks that whiteboard skills prove anything at all. As for receiving outside help, if you're judging applicants solely on their homework results, you are Doing It Wrong. The best interview I've ever had gave me a take-home programming assignment by email, then when I came in the lead programmer asked me to explain the program line-by-line and justify various decisions I made. I got the job.
monksy 11y ago
I've had a few take home projects that weren't so bad. But the last one I did... A junior just basically shat all over the project and claimed a lot of things. [The submission was to write a few sample sort functions for a library... the recruiter asked for an app, the paper asked for a library.. I did both... what did I get shat upon for? The user interface/cli that wasn't required.. another thing.. Why did I have 66 commits?]
- nsfyn55 11y ago
  yuck! why did you have 66 commits?
  - philbarr 11y ago
    What's wrong with having 66 commits?
    - nilkn 11y ago
      This is a completely generic response which is not at all tailored to the above poster's specific situation (since I'm not familiar with the details), but the general idea would be something like this: If you asked someone to do FizzBuzz at home and they sent you a git repo with 60+ commits, you wouldn't be a little puzzled about that? That would seem to suggest they really struggled with it.
      - pd1 11y ago
        That's not really a fair comparison though. It would be more like a typical "whiteboard coding" problem needing a couple commits.
        nilkn 11y ago
        I'm not really sure what you mean. We don't know what the task was that he had to solve. I was providing an example of a situation in which 66 commits could be seen as a bad thing. For a typical whiteboard coding problem, I also wouldn't want to see 60+ commits.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jlarocco 11y ago
The company I work for has a "coding assignment," and it works really well for us. I'm not sure we give a time estimate; I think we just ask for it back in a week or so. The devs reviewing the code don't even know how long it took for the applicant to return, and it isn't a criteria we use to judge them. In any case, I can't imagine it would take anybody more than a few hours. IMO, it's a less insulting, slightly more realistic version of FizzBuzz. As far as getting help goes, I'm not sure it matters too much. There's still an on site interview, and we ask a few questions about the assignment, along with some other coding questions, and regular interview stuff. I guess if their friend/roommate/spouse is going to help them code all the time, then it's like we hired two people for the price of one ;-)
49531 11y ago
My co-worker once found that someone had posted the take home problem on one of those freelance job sites. Needless to say we didn't move forward with the candidate.
- eru 11y ago
  If they can get the take home problem solved for a reasonable cost and in short time on the freelance job site, hire them as a manager.
  - mdpopescu 11y ago
    I'd even say: if they can get the problem solved for less than their salary and in reasonable time, hire them anyway - you're hiring them to solve programming problems, not to type them.
blazespin 11y ago
I agree, the solution is terrible, but the problem is real. Whiteboarding is an awful way to measure someone's skills.
ytdht 11y ago
as long as they don't assign you actual work that is useful to them....
- eru 11y ago
  Why not? That would even be preferable. Less waste in the world. Just ask for compensation.
bradleyjg 11y ago
If you only supposed to take three hours why not set it up like a take home test? Set up a site where you can download it and then you have three hours to upload the answer?
cgearhart 11y ago
>Schedule 2x or 3x the estimate. This might even be an underestimate. In my experience, there is a lot of research time that goes into the problem before you really dig in and start coding. I had one take-home project that required a few days just to get my system configured to begin testing code (collecting the dataset [10's of GB], installing libraries, and configuring the system). >I've seen applicants receive friends'/roommates'/spouse's help on take home tests. I enjoy overtly mathematical problems, so I've talked through a number of take-home interview questions with friends during the research phase, and even provided implementations for comparison and review after they've returned them. (Most recently on a take-home challenge to generate digits of pi.) >But the company just took 10 minutes to arbitrarily reject your application. This is actually my second biggest gripe as an applicant. I spend a couple of hours building and submitting the most compelling application I can for a job. The worst so far was an automated email response that my application had been forwarded for review, and before I finished reading the automated response I got a rejection email from the hiring manager. The emails are literally two minutes apart in my inbox. It is incredibly frustrating to put so much time into applications when they are clearly being summarily rejected. (For anyone curious, my biggest job search gripe is not receiving any kind of firm decision...ever. I can appreciate that there "is not a good fit at this time", but I'm not going to be sitting here in six months pining for that job I applied for with your company. If I want to show interest, I'll apply again in a year or so. It's actually mildly frustrating when I get a callback three months later.)
autotune 11y ago
Honestly I kind of enjoy take home tests as long as they align with what I'm learning and looking to learn. I've had to do a couple take home interviews as well at this point as part of the initial phone screen, although they revolve more around config management tools/Ruby DSL and buildout work so far. So far the tests I've taken have been relevant to what I'm hoping to move into ("DevOps"/automation) so they've been a pleasure to complete. Not only that, but also a base to build on for playing with additional tools in the chain. The biggest problem with these though is definitely the time crunch. The first one I hadn't realized how long it would take so rushed through it at the end and made mistakes. Second one gave myself a full week rather than 4 days and that's proceeding to an in-person interview, so you need to be taking as much time as they'll allow in order for it to go smoothly. Also, another project means more documentation added to the repo so that's pretty nice too. If the project didn't align to my interests, which thankfully happen to be stupidly in-demand right now if you have "senior" experience with them, and the position, I'd nope out of the project right away.
eru 11y ago
> Take home tests are the worst. Company says take home test will take 3 hours to complete. They never do. Schedule 2x or 3x the estimate. Especially if you want to impress the reviewer. So only do timed tests?
eitally 11y ago
My wife is not a technologist. In fact, she's a biologist & nurse who's worked in pharmacoviligance for a series of pharmas & CROs past ~15 years. She was laid off this spring after her company was purchased and went through the whole interview thing. One company had a writing assignment as part of their process. It was after both the phone screening and the in person interviews, and they only gave it to candidates they really liked/wanted, AND it was literally a mini version of the kind of data analysis and reports[1] she'd be doing in the job. But ... it was something that took about 40 hours to complete, and ruined about a week and a half of family time. Thankfully she got the job, but if she hadn't it wouldn't have been pretty. [1] http://onbiostatistics.blogspot.com/2013/07/periodic-safety-report-dsur-psur-pbrer.html http://onbiostatistics.blogspot.com/2013/07/periodic-safety-...
- joshschreuder 11y ago
  As an outsider, that sets off red flags for me. Sounds suspiciously like unpaid work rather than a take home assignment.
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
I've had an opposite experience, but with just one company: CloudMine. They gave me a personal and technical interview, then a project to add a feature to their existing codebase. They paid me $300 for my work. I was way over time estimates and I didn't get the job, but I will always respect them for that.
spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
Another problem is that its not a zero sum game candidates are applying to multiple potential employers. Forcing you to spend most of a day on an application means that good candidates will just not wast time applying for these sorts of jobs. An in the uk to get befits you have to provide evidence of applying for x no of jobs per week so wasting 2 days on a single application is out
francoisblavoet 11y ago
We do take-home tests at deezer. We try hard to provide good feedback on each submission (certainly not just a 10 minutes look, even for a truly awful entry). I think that we should try harder to provide an exercise with a maximum time spent. We also try hard to overlook things that can be attributed to a lack of time but the openness of the exercises we use mean that somebody willing to could spend dozens of hours on it if he/she wanted a truly perfect solution (with unit tests everywhere, handling all API levels & devices in the wild, ...) I personally thinks that our exercises are more objective than whiteboard tests & better reflect real life work. Actually, we take our inspiration from real problems we had to solve.

Udo 11y ago

> I've seen applicants receive friends'/roommates'/spouse's help on take home tests. Not a good indicator at all even with a glowing submission. That's why they use the homework as the basis for the interview. In my opinion, of all things they could test you on during the interview, your own work is potentially one of the more pleasant subjects.

tomsun 11y ago

Also a lot of the take home interviews are time limited. So you would only have a certain amount of time to implement a solution.

joesmo 11y ago

No, in the worst case, you submit it and the company doesn't even take a look at it. That's not only the worst case, it seems to be the most common as well.

munchbunny 11y ago

This is very much true. We do take-home interview questions where they bring the output to the interview and we talk through their solution in person. We'll ask how long they took as a way to normalize expectations and also adjust the interview question to take more/less time in future instances. This does two things. In the long run, the time required converges towards where we want it to be (ASSUMING honest answers), and by bringing you in to talk through things, we can easily tell if these thoughts were your own by challenging you on specific parts of the prompt. This is less than ideal since it costs the interviewee time, and time isn't cheap, but we've found that advance prep removes an even bigger wildcard in interviews: how you respond to interview stress.

mkozlows 11y ago
Tip: If you want honest answers about how long it took, ask them after they've been hired and working there for a few weeks. Otherwise they will absolutely lie. "That? Oh, it was no big, probably 20-30 minutes."
- volaski 11y ago
  I'm not sure if asking after getting hired would make a difference. They may lie even more, you don't want to be seen as a newbie to your coworkers
- skatenerd 11y ago
  Or look at the git log, if it's available...

burger_moon 11y ago

After doing a handful of these and rejecting several handful of these tests I'd like to add a little to you comment. I agree that the time it takes is always muchuch longer than what they state. Companies that offer these tests before doing an initial phone screen get that email deleted. Why would I as an applicant who is applying to 10+ jobs spend time doing this test when I have never even had a chance to interact with a human. The tests are sometimes not even close to the actual job. As in the job description is for a front end developer and JavaScript knowledge needed and they ask you to write the test using a completely different language. one company (who adversities jobs on here all the time) asked to do some php command line scripting for a JavaScript front end position. How is that in anyway a useful judgement of someone's skills. So wasting people's time is a big deliminator. An example of a company I experienced that did the take home 'right' did an initial phone screen a couple days after applying. Then did another tech screen which was just basic stuff. After that they asked me to do a take home exercise and while completing it they continued to move forward with the application process including setting up travel arrangements. The take home test was directly related to the job and was given open ended for some creativity if one chose. The onsite final interview was discussing the code, so it would do little good to cheat on it because you need to be able to talk through it. I didn't even get the job with them but it was actually not a painful experience for once to do a take home test. Just my two cents, but I believe there is a good way and a terrible way to do it.

pbrb 11y ago
I agree. I've done really good ones and really bad ones. A good test started in the office with the hiring manager. Really them just watching me write a simple CRUD app in asp.net when it was all the rage. This was for an entry level gig and was actually a really good test. At the end they had an additional feature for you to add from home. It took a couple hrs and ended up being a great test to find decent entry level ppl. The bad one was about 2 yrs ago. I walked into a conference room for the final round, was sat down at a mac, and asked to write some code in their proprietary DSL without any documentation or anything. It was maddening. I almost walked out, but the salary was stupid high. Didn't get the job. Thinking back on it, maybe it was just a test and they did want me to say it was ridiculous.

Ensorceled 11y ago

Or, if they don't actually expect you to spend more than 3 hours on the task, they will compare you to people who have spent 9 hours on it. Had that recently: they said "spend no more than two hours on it" so I finished in about an hour and 45 that evening and flipped it over. Then they started asking why my 20 or so unit tests only covered the basics when other candidates had full unit tests in the two hour time frame. I told them the other candidates were simply lying :-)

Jare 11y ago
If a company emphasizes quantity over quality during the interview process, run away.
- Bahamut 11y ago
  Very true - it is part of the bane of take home assignments. Even for someone who can code extremely fast, a lot of the exams aren't realistic with time, and then they are compared with those done by people who put in multiples of the asked hours. I rather put in those extra hours contracting (worst scenario), doing open source work (lots to be done that advances the productivity of tens of thousands of developers, if not more), into my hobbies, or into my friends.

odonnellryan 11y ago

I've gotten some pretty wacky projects. Basically, implement a fairly-complex web app. Something that I'd assume (even after doing similar tasks) would probably take me up to 40 hours of work, just because the scope is so crazy. They want user login, multiple features, etc... basically an MVP for a small product. It's hard. If you submit part of the project, which you usually have to do unless you're unemployed, they never go for it. If you call out of work a day or two to do the project... and you don't get the job anyway...

sammydavis 11y ago
I recently interviewed for 4 jobs, one of them was one of these type of "you must implement this in 1 hour". It was painful. I didn't finish in time. Apparently the idea was you much choose language X, it will e pretty easy with language X. I chose Y, and they said why did you choose Y, that was stupid. Result - I chose one of my other 3 offers, took the one that made me a staff programmer. And I live in Seattle, ha ha bay area.

snewman 11y ago

Speaking as an employer: we address this by keeping our coding exercise short, and specifying a time limit. The limit ("60-90 minutes") is not rigidly enforced, but candidates know we're able to see how long they spent, and in practice almost everyone spends more than 60 and less than 90 minutes. It's tricky. An in-person test would put the candidate in an unfamiliar environment, and makes many people nervous. A take-home test without a time limit opens itself up to the "I'd better spend lots of extra time so I can look impressive" problem. A take-home test with a hard time limit can also make people nervous. This is the best compromise we've been able to come up with (suggestions for improvement welcomed!). As suggested on this thread, we also don't ask candidates to tackle the exercise until they've had a chance to talk to us on the phone.

darklajid 11y ago

That topic ("People do stuff at home for an interview") is a topic that comes up again and again. My last reply [1] is about a month old and feels still valid. Don't state that 'take home tests are the worst'. That is - failing to find better words - crap. If that is the ONLY option, I understand that this might be not for you. But - that's not the case here as far as I can tell. You, as a person interested to interview, can opt in. That is awesome. Now - you might not be the type of guy that would _want_ to opt in, but please refrain from these absolute statements. No, that's not the worst. In fact, it's probably the _best_ option for a number of people (I myself would - if I'd want to interview with this service - opt for the home project). I fail to understand how this 'bash the home work' attitude comes up again and again. Yes, don't work for free. But if you're doing a 3h whiteboard marathon or work from your own chair? And you pick which one you prefer? I don't get the hate here.. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770737

nsfyn55 11y ago
Oh as a number of people have indicated its bad for the company because the candidate can work with someone else and produce a glowing submission. I have helped a number of people do these some that have gotten the job. its bad for the interviewee. They may spend 10-15 hours on this and get rejected for no reason at all. Do you think the person reviewing the submission is putting multiple hours into it. Doubtful. If the intent is truly(and I mean truly) help individuals that struggle with traditional interviewing techniques then kudos. Demonstrate this by allowing candidates to interview in a way that is comfortable for them(including not taking your take home test) If its the company saying "my time is more valuable than yours. Do this assignment then we'll talk" then no thanks.
- darklajid 11y ago
  If you were able to explain your 'cheated' solution to someone and they could reliably cheat the interviewer, I'd say you .. taught them. GJ! The interviewee (the vowel count makes me dizzy) can choose what he/she prefers. So that argument is weird. Maybe (if that's your point) it might be beneficial to go for the face to face interview, for direct feedback? But .. some people just _cannot_ do that. You're not talking "Ah, they didn't respond. If you'd just had visited them on-site..." here. It's "opt for the home project or don't apply". Which is empowering the candidate.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

I would rather spend 8 hours at home giving the interviewer a realistic impression of my abilities than 1 hour mumbling over a whiteboard and getting trashcanned because the interviewer mistakenly thinks that whiteboard skills prove anything at all. As for receiving outside help, if you're judging applicants solely on their homework results, you are Doing It Wrong. The best interview I've ever had gave me a take-home programming assignment by email, then when I came in the lead programmer asked me to explain the program line-by-line and justify various decisions I made. I got the job.

monksy 11y ago

I've had a few take home projects that weren't so bad. But the last one I did... A junior just basically shat all over the project and claimed a lot of things. [The submission was to write a few sample sort functions for a library... the recruiter asked for an app, the paper asked for a library.. I did both... what did I get shat upon for? The user interface/cli that wasn't required.. another thing.. Why did I have 66 commits?]

nsfyn55 11y ago
yuck! why did you have 66 commits?
- philbarr 11y ago
  What's wrong with having 66 commits?
  - nilkn 11y ago
    This is a completely generic response which is not at all tailored to the above poster's specific situation (since I'm not familiar with the details), but the general idea would be something like this: If you asked someone to do FizzBuzz at home and they sent you a git repo with 60+ commits, you wouldn't be a little puzzled about that? That would seem to suggest they really struggled with it.
    - pd1 11y ago
      That's not really a fair comparison though. It would be more like a typical "whiteboard coding" problem needing a couple commits.
      - nilkn 11y ago
        I'm not really sure what you mean. We don't know what the task was that he had to solve. I was providing an example of a situation in which 66 commits could be seen as a bad thing. For a typical whiteboard coding problem, I also wouldn't want to see 60+ commits.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

jlarocco 11y ago

The company I work for has a "coding assignment," and it works really well for us. I'm not sure we give a time estimate; I think we just ask for it back in a week or so. The devs reviewing the code don't even know how long it took for the applicant to return, and it isn't a criteria we use to judge them. In any case, I can't imagine it would take anybody more than a few hours. IMO, it's a less insulting, slightly more realistic version of FizzBuzz. As far as getting help goes, I'm not sure it matters too much. There's still an on site interview, and we ask a few questions about the assignment, along with some other coding questions, and regular interview stuff. I guess if their friend/roommate/spouse is going to help them code all the time, then it's like we hired two people for the price of one ;-)

49531 11y ago

My co-worker once found that someone had posted the take home problem on one of those freelance job sites. Needless to say we didn't move forward with the candidate.

eru 11y ago
If they can get the take home problem solved for a reasonable cost and in short time on the freelance job site, hire them as a manager.
- mdpopescu 11y ago
  I'd even say: if they can get the problem solved for less than their salary and in reasonable time, hire them anyway - you're hiring them to solve programming problems, not to type them.

blazespin 11y ago

I agree, the solution is terrible, but the problem is real. Whiteboarding is an awful way to measure someone's skills.

ytdht 11y ago

as long as they don't assign you actual work that is useful to them....

eru 11y ago
Why not? That would even be preferable. Less waste in the world. Just ask for compensation.

bradleyjg 11y ago

If you only supposed to take three hours why not set it up like a take home test? Set up a site where you can download it and then you have three hours to upload the answer?

cgearhart 11y ago

>Schedule 2x or 3x the estimate. This might even be an underestimate. In my experience, there is a lot of research time that goes into the problem before you really dig in and start coding. I had one take-home project that required a few days just to get my system configured to begin testing code (collecting the dataset [10's of GB], installing libraries, and configuring the system). >I've seen applicants receive friends'/roommates'/spouse's help on take home tests. I enjoy overtly mathematical problems, so I've talked through a number of take-home interview questions with friends during the research phase, and even provided implementations for comparison and review after they've returned them. (Most recently on a take-home challenge to generate digits of pi.) >But the company just took 10 minutes to arbitrarily reject your application. This is actually my second biggest gripe as an applicant. I spend a couple of hours building and submitting the most compelling application I can for a job. The worst so far was an automated email response that my application had been forwarded for review, and before I finished reading the automated response I got a rejection email from the hiring manager. The emails are literally two minutes apart in my inbox. It is incredibly frustrating to put so much time into applications when they are clearly being summarily rejected. (For anyone curious, my biggest job search gripe is not receiving any kind of firm decision...ever. I can appreciate that there "is not a good fit at this time", but I'm not going to be sitting here in six months pining for that job I applied for with your company. If I want to show interest, I'll apply again in a year or so. It's actually mildly frustrating when I get a callback three months later.)

autotune 11y ago

Honestly I kind of enjoy take home tests as long as they align with what I'm learning and looking to learn. I've had to do a couple take home interviews as well at this point as part of the initial phone screen, although they revolve more around config management tools/Ruby DSL and buildout work so far. So far the tests I've taken have been relevant to what I'm hoping to move into ("DevOps"/automation) so they've been a pleasure to complete. Not only that, but also a base to build on for playing with additional tools in the chain. The biggest problem with these though is definitely the time crunch. The first one I hadn't realized how long it would take so rushed through it at the end and made mistakes. Second one gave myself a full week rather than 4 days and that's proceeding to an in-person interview, so you need to be taking as much time as they'll allow in order for it to go smoothly. Also, another project means more documentation added to the repo so that's pretty nice too. If the project didn't align to my interests, which thankfully happen to be stupidly in-demand right now if you have "senior" experience with them, and the position, I'd nope out of the project right away.

eru 11y ago

> Take home tests are the worst. Company says take home test will take 3 hours to complete. They never do. Schedule 2x or 3x the estimate. Especially if you want to impress the reviewer. So only do timed tests?

eitally 11y ago

My wife is not a technologist. In fact, she's a biologist & nurse who's worked in pharmacoviligance for a series of pharmas & CROs past ~15 years. She was laid off this spring after her company was purchased and went through the whole interview thing. One company had a writing assignment as part of their process. It was after both the phone screening and the in person interviews, and they only gave it to candidates they really liked/wanted, AND it was literally a mini version of the kind of data analysis and reports[1] she'd be doing in the job. But ... it was something that took about 40 hours to complete, and ruined about a week and a half of family time. Thankfully she got the job, but if she hadn't it wouldn't have been pretty. [1] http://onbiostatistics.blogspot.com/2013/07/periodic-safety-report-dsur-psur-pbrer.html http://onbiostatistics.blogspot.com/2013/07/periodic-safety-...

joshschreuder 11y ago
As an outsider, that sets off red flags for me. Sounds suspiciously like unpaid work rather than a take home assignment.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

I've had an opposite experience, but with just one company: CloudMine. They gave me a personal and technical interview, then a project to add a feature to their existing codebase. They paid me $300 for my work. I was way over time estimates and I didn't get the job, but I will always respect them for that.

spacecowboy_lon 11y ago

Another problem is that its not a zero sum game candidates are applying to multiple potential employers. Forcing you to spend most of a day on an application means that good candidates will just not wast time applying for these sorts of jobs. An in the uk to get befits you have to provide evidence of applying for x no of jobs per week so wasting 2 days on a single application is out

francoisblavoet 11y ago

We do take-home tests at deezer. We try hard to provide good feedback on each submission (certainly not just a 10 minutes look, even for a truly awful entry). I think that we should try harder to provide an exercise with a maximum time spent. We also try hard to overlook things that can be attributed to a lack of time but the openness of the exercises we use mean that somebody willing to could spend dozens of hours on it if he/she wanted a truly perfect solution (with unit tests everywhere, handling all API levels & devices in the wild, ...) I personally thinks that our exercises are more objective than whiteboard tests & better reflect real life work. Actually, we take our inspiration from real problems we had to solve.