[genezeta]

Unfortunately, homework assignments are being abused to the point of being absurd.

Around here, the trend is requiring a 16-20 hour assignment just after a brief 15 min phone call, almost before starting the process at all.

Not only it is a ridiculous amount of effort to ask someone who may already be doing 8 hours a day programming but it's also a problem for the company. Either they have to spend significant effort evaluating each candidate's submission or -more likely, sadly- they only give it a perfunctory look and discard many on first glance. And considering that often the person doing the evaluation has his own tasks to do and is doing it on some spare time, they will tend to not make much of that effort.

The result is the company still needs to do significant effort and the candidate gets frustrated because they have had to spend a significant amount of time and, after having to wait for a couple of weeks -at the very least-, they get generic and useless feedback saying simply that they did not meet the expectations or whatever.

I would not mind at all doing a two-three hour on-site assignment. If you're there, they will at least have to make a similar effort as you are. I find this much more fair both as a candidate and as an employer.

[rabidrat]

> I would not mind at all doing a two-three hour on-site assignment. If you're there, they will at least have to make a similar effort as you are. I find this much more fair both as a candidate and as an employer.

I've had this exact thought. I got interview homework last year, was told to spend "no more than 4 hours" on it, etc, was mildly interesting. The next interview we'd have a discussion about the code and I'd present my rationale for various design decisions etc. But then I got the email that the interviewer had reviewed the code with an engineer and they decided not to move forward because there was a mistake and they "thought there would be more testing"! I felt that it was quite imbalanced to have spent 4 hours on this task, only to have it rejected without discussion after a short review.

So in the future I'm going to suggest that I'll be happy to do whatever homework assignment as part of a pairing exercise. That way I can see what it's like to work with them too.

[Rooster61]

If a recruiter/hiring manager sends one of these nonsense assignments to me, I refuse them outright and thank them for their time. It only took me one frustrated night trying to bang one of these out after a long day of work to learn my lesson. This method of testing a potential hire is lazy, ineffective, and frankly rude IMO.

[scarmig]

The strategy here is to set aside one hour to code, write the code, send what you have after an hour and say what remaining work needs to be done, along with reasonable estimates of remaining time (noting that you're too busy to spend actually doing it).

Your success rate will be no less than someone who spends 15 hours doing whatever bullshit assignment there is.

[Rooster61]

I did exactly what you just suggested. I never heard back from that particular recruiter. Bummed me out at the time, but now I just laugh at it.