[ornornor]

It never is one or two hours though. It might be if you designed the thing and know exactly how to get there and handle all the corner cases. Oh and also we always underestimate.

I have yet to see a 1–2h take home test actually be doable in that amount of time. It’s more like 8–10h to get going, have something meaningful, and code that isn’t inscrutable.

[joeax]

It can be if they give you something to start with.

One company gave out sample code and asked me to optimize it so it ran under 5 seconds. The exercise was in parallelizing or caching/reusing what you could per the requirements.

it was great because:

- problem statement clearly defined

- skeleton code provided

- about 2 hours to complete

- solved an actual, real-world problem

[hiq]

The timebox has to be enforced on the company side, meaning that you have e.g. 2h to submit your answer once you've opened their link (which you should be free to open at any time, so that you're sure you have the time allotted).

[ornornor]

I don’t know about you but I suck the most when coding in a <textarea> HTML element instead of my editor and with a gun to my head.

[hiq]

I think the <textarea> problem can be solved if the interviewer gives enough information so that the interviewee can have their IDE working correctly by the time they get started.

The pressure problem can be solved by giving more time than what would be expected in a work setting. If you expect a task to be completed in 1h, just give 2h. Of course that implies that you don't give a task which would take an expected 6h to complete.

Of course these are things to consider from the company side, if they think they want to hire people who can program under high pressure, they should probably keep that as part of the interview, for both the company's and interviewee's sake.

[pseudalopex]

Giving twice as long doesn't solve stage fright.

Interview pressures and job pressures are completely different.