[n_ary]

Take home has two sides to it.

Group A: People who excel at face to face interviews(extroverted) will complain that it is waste of time and disrespectful, because it demands significant time commitment compared to a 1 hour in-person interview.

Group B: People with interview anxiety(introverted) will excel at this type of test because they have the freedom to set aside their own time, do things at their own pace and environment.

However, people from Group-A has a point, because certain take-home assingment are notoriously complex and will take multiple days of effort if you want to meet all requirements, which are not an option for people with family & existing job.

[AnimalMuppet]

I don't know that I'm extroverted. I'm still in group A, though, because I don't have interview anxiety.

My problem with take home stuff is that it's asymmetrical. That is, if we're doing a phone interview, it takes my time, and it takes your time. Ditto an in-person interview. You're serious enough to commit some of your time to it, so I'm willing to also do so. I know you're looking at other candidates, but if you call me in for an in-person interview, I figure I've got at least a 30% chance of landing the job. That's enough for me to be willing to invest the time.

But with a take-home assignment, it costs me much more time than it costs you. So you could be giving it out to tons of people. How many? I have no way of knowing. So you're asking me for 6 hours (which may turn into 12), but what are my odds on getting the job? Are they still 30%? Or are they now 1%, because you just gave this assignment to 100 people?

I'm not going to plow 12 hours of my time into a 1% chance at a job. Just no. And the problem is, if you tell me "oh, we're only looking at a couple of people", I have no reason to believe you. But if you're actually interviewing me, I believe you, because it's too expensive for you to interview 100 people to hire only one.

[mjfisher]

I think the scenario you describe sucks for all kinds of reasons, but it doesn't have to be like that. If the coding challenge is for an early stage screen, you should be looking at about 30mins worth of work. If it's more in-depth than that, it's not like the hiring company will have time to properly review them all at a screening stage anyway.

I'd support more complicated take home skill assessment tests later on in the recruitment pipeline, as long as they add real value for both the candidate and the company, and they're only given to well qualified and screened candidates. I'd also be concerned at a twelve hour test - that sounds like something very poorly scoped.

[djhworld]

> significant time commitment compared to a 1 hour in-person interview.

I don't think I've ever been in a software engineer interview where the face to face portion is less than 3 hours (at minimum!)

[lubesGordi]

I think they're talking about the initial 'phone screen' portion of the interview.