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by lnsru 2185 days ago
It is not expected to be 3 hours project. Target easily 3 days for it. Requirement to get more points for this assignment from that page: “Detailed documentation with setup, screenshots, configuration instructions, etc.” This alone might take couple hours.
2 comments

You expect candidates to spend 20-30 hours on a task, and you don't even guarantee an interview?

Talk about exploitative. Hell, that's incredibly biased. Can you imagine a young parent being able to do that?

Yeah, no kidding. If you’re not going to pay an hourly rate for a homework assignment, you are not getting particularly good applicants. No quality engineer will spend more than a couple hours at a chance to maybe have someone look at their code, to maybe offer them a job.
As I have said in a comment below, it sorta became a way to signal being hip-n-cool, while actually being totally otherwise.

Most cheapo shops which won't pay FAANG salaries but still want near-FAANG-quality-engineers end up using this as a bait.

Other ways are "your work has great purpose!" "You will advance humanity!" "You will bring great experiences to users" ... yeah yeah yeah, just an alias for "we are a glorified bodyshop. BigCos hire us for some piecemeal job. We get it done and get paid relatively well." But this isn't too appealing, is it!

We did allow concessions for people who were not able to find time to do the exercise. We merged it with the pair programming exercise and asked them to build it with us in office.
Young parent here. Not a chance in hell I'd be taking part in that exercise. The only possible way would be to take a weeks holiday and that's just not going happen.

At least they are open about it. It is probably a fair indication of the companies values if they are oblivious to how unreasonable a 3 day take home assignment is.

Basecamp pays $1500 or so for take-home assignments. Do you offer similar compensation?
These shops mostly just want to appear hip-n-cool. They aren't really, hence, no pay.

It would most probably have a twisted answer as "you can post that solution of yours in your git repo and showcase it as a part of your portfolio"

Many shops out here are so adept at this stuff, it's no more funny!

I don't quite understand what you mean.