[bcaine]

I agree that this is "better" than the alternative, but it can be absolutely exhausting for candidates actively searching for a job. I feel like it's recently become much, much more common (from my small-ish sample of me and some friends).

My issue with this approach is fourfold:

1. Most companies have no idea how to structure a problem that is both informative to them and also not abusive to the candidates time.

2. Companies generally do this right after the recruiter phone screen, which most likely doesn't give the candidate enough information to decide if the next steps are worth their time.

3. Most companies still do a whole suite of normal tech screens after you work on a take home problem.

4. If you're actively looking, getting a bunch of these over a short period of time is likely. I know during my full time search, more than 50% of companies had a take home test right after the recruiter screen. Most of these were 4-8 hours of work each, due within the week.

A lot of startups structure it more like hazing or a barrier to entry than an evaluation criteria. I have some fun (read: horrifying) anecdotes from my recent search that illustrate the problems above, but I don't think any of my points are surprising.

A nice alternative would have been to simply have one or two projects completed that are straightforward to evaluate and walk companies through them, letting them ask me questions.

[tptacek]

Here's a really simple test for whether a work-sample scheme is effective, or just a bullshit trend-chasing afterthought:

Does the work sample test offset all or most of the unstructured tech evaluation the company would otherwise do?

If it does, that means they have a work-sample test rubric they believe in, and they're hiring confidently. If it doesn't, they don't believe in what they're doing, and the programming challenges they're assigning can thus reasonably be seen as more hoop-jumping.

In the latter case, it's up to you to decide whether a prospective job is worth extra hoop-jumping. Some teams are worth it!

[bcaine]

I think that's fair. I've had both the former and the latter, but unfortunately most of my experiences fall into latter case, where it's simply been hoop jumping. Most of my friends (all about to graduate, so a good number of examples) are experiencing the same.

For example one company gave a problem with five parts, with the final part being solve longest path on a bipartite weighted graph (which is quite a hard and time consuming problem). After that, the next step was a phone technical screen, then an on-site with 4-5 more interviews, most being white-boarding. It was basically hazing instead of an evaluation criteria.

An alternative is my last job, which had a take home test that took about 6 hours, but that was the whole technical part of the process. Being on the other side reviewing them, the problem absolutely gave enough information.

I totally get there's a right way to do it, but like most interviewing trends, companies seem to just be adding this as a step instead of revamping their process.

[tptacek]

Does the job they're interviewing involve finding the longest paths on weighted bipartite graphs? Or is this just non-recursive Towers of Hanoi pretending to be a realistic work sample?

[bcaine]

No, the position most definitely had absolutely nothing to do with longest path or combinatorial optimization.

Anyway, my larger point is that what I've been seeing interviewing is that these tests are becoming much more common at US startups without companies removing/reducing the rest of their technical evaluation process, nor really structuring the problems to be a good signal.

In an ideal world where companies do take home tests right, I think its a great solution. But what I've been seeing more often than not doesn't support that, making it hard to support.

I'm really curious what you've been seeing at Starfighter. Are partnering companies still going on to do a full technical interview? Or does Starfighter largely replace their normal technical evaluation?

Ignoring the fun of the challenges themselves (which probably isn't entirely fair), the latter makes it very compelling for a candidate. The former does not.

[tptacek]

Most of our partners have a somewhat abbreviated interview for our candidates, but everyone (as far as I know) still techs our candidates out.

I'm actually fine with that! We make no pretense of having designed a screening process that is appropriate for every job. What I'm less fine with is the fact that the norm, even for abbreviated tech-outs, is 7-8 hours of on-site whiteboard interview.