[sgift]

Ignoring the time investment for a moment: That is not a bad approach in my experience. Iterating allows you to learn from the versions before and guide your improvements. As long as the first version is at least good enough to do the job AND good enough to be improved upon (often the harder part) it is absolutely fine.

[tarpherder]

The only problem with her/his approach is that she/he said it took 16 hours where they would've liked to only spend 4 and be done (as 4 hours was what was expected). 4 hours may be unrealistic for what was delivered in the end but it would make me feel at least slightly awkward putting 16 hours into a 4 hour assignment as it indicates my performance is not where it should be (I'm off x4 which would be a lot to me) or my priorities are not at all aligned with the company's regarding this assignment.

Don't get me wrong everyone takes whatever time she/he needs and comparing results and time spent is hard unless you only look at "does it work" which in many cases does not do the work justice (and may not even be the most important metric in the long run). For that reason take-home assignments may be better than the almost comical interview often described on HN but they have their flaws that make them far from ideal as well!

I think it is hard to judge the true performance of a potential employee in a company team without actually having the candidate be part of the team (and even then it'll take a good amount time before someone settles in). Some folk may not be the best programmers but are good catalysts in a team, smoothing relations between other colleagues and increasing team output overall. Or they might have a habit of happily taking up tasks that are wildly unpopular and thereby, even if they are not the most performant, solving problems colleagues or perhaps a faster candidate wouldn't have solved. I could go on about this but I think it's clear what I mean.

There is a lot more to a role as programmer than just programming and that is often completely neglected in these discussions.

[mattlutze]

> [...] without actually having the candidate be part of the team (and even then it'll take a good amount time before someone settles in)

Some companies are trying to answer this issue by signing a potential employee on for a 2 week "trial," where they hopefully get paid. The trouble there is figuring out how long a trial really needs to be to get a good idea of how that person works and fits in with the team -- too little and it's still a crap shoot, too much and you've already essentially hired them.

In the meantime, test trial runs only work for developers currently out of a job; how do I skip my current gig for 2 weeks to go sit at a potential new employer's office? I certainly have no safety in quitting to go do it since I may get dropped after that two weeks, and there's only so much vacation you can take before you run out of personal time.