[tptacek]

Spending a week doing off-and-on phone screens and then a day on-site doing an interview loop is a bigger hoop to jump through than banging out some code on your couch. But, I mean, people have all sorts of reasons not to apply to a job. Some people don't want to touch Java code. Some people don't want to work for a company in Santa Clara. You don't want to work anywhere that asks you to complete a code challenge. That's totally fine.

[runT1ME]

If I am doing a phone screen + an all day onsite, sure it sucks but at the very least I know I'm a serious enough candidate that the company is willing to burn one engineer day to evaluate me. With a coding challenge, I have no way of knowing! Maybe they sent the challenge to ten other candidates, maybe twenty, etc? I don't even know if the code will be reviewed. Make me jump through as many in person hoops as you want, I refuse to do take home coding challenges. shrug

[nscalf]

I think ultimately the problem I haven’t isn’t that I have been assigned a problem to see my code skill. I think that’s pretty fair. The problem is that it’s not a great indicator if your beyond a staff level, it offloads all of the cost of finding and filtering an employee to the applicant, and like you said, it has no indication of their commitment to the code challenge while demanding an open ended commitment from the applicant.

[wildrhythms]

I actually turned down a job, whose hiring manager was very excited (or desperate) to have me, after the recruiter sent me a link to a coding challenge. I felt devalued, that they didn't value my time, and I felt turned off realizing that this coding challenge was the only hurdle for engineers on that team. Note that I wasn't a fresh grad or anything, I had years of experience at this point from, what I assume was at the time, one of their big competitors.

Since the company can't make time for a potential "experienced candidate" (their words) during the hiring process, I wonder what else they can't make time for? Red flag for me.

[busterarm]

You're in the rare camp that realized this. Thanks for doing me and everyone else in this industry a solid.

Companies won't change until this is enough of a negative signal for them.

[tptacek]

The recruiter sent you a coding challenge? How far into the process could you have been?

[tptacek]

That's totally fair, one of a million criteria you can legitimately use to determine whether you want to talk to a potential employer.

[bryanrasmussen]

Every place I've seen over the last couple years (other than where I am right now, and the consulting I do) has on and off phone screens and then several hours interview loop as well as at least 6 hours code that they swore was only 3 hours.

So I am currently only accepting interviews that give a 20% raise - and I am already quite high priced for my region.

[tptacek]

I don't disagree that there is a cohort of developers who will command their highest compensation packages at companies that either don't hire rigorously, or hire very rigorously and painfully but have their choice among top developers. I'm happy for them! I just don't see why a shop that isn't Google or Facebook would hire that way, or target those developers in particular.