Sorry, but neither of those things show me that you know how to code. I don't know how long it took you to write your projects so you may be very slow and a terrible coder. Technical questions you may have prepped from a book. I need to see active coding, either live, in person, over zoom, or time boxed in a take home. We'll even compensate you for your time. But I need to see you actually working and review your work. Sorry.
Quite frankly, relying upon such things is a sure-fire way to make sure some bad developers get through the cracks.
No need to be sorry, I wouldn't apply to your company, and you would be lucky to even get a reply from me if contacting me on the typical social networks for developers.
What red flags did you see? That we pay top of market? That we work to have a low stress environment? That we put life before work instead of work before life? That we prioritize having the best benefits on the market, including platinum health care with $0 employee contribution and full mental health coverage for therapy and medication not covered through insurance? That we don't overload our top performers by giving them more work when they overperform but instead let them take the extra time off? Which of those is a red flag? Everyone at our company is very happy. Apparently some people don't like coding exercises. That's fine. We require people to demonstrate they can code. Everyone at the company has to go through that. We'll miss out on some candidates because of that, but I'd much rather miss a few candidates than have some false positives. I'm sorry that ruffles some feathers. We honestly strive to have the best work environment possible for engineers based upon my many years of being abused, overworked, and having to go through absolutely horrible, long, miserable interview processes. We do 1-2 interviews and ask you to code a little. I don't think that's unreasonable, especially considering all of the benefits on the other side.
All of these are policies I've worked hard to implement to create the absolute best environment in the world for my engineers to thrive. I've had to fight for them since they aren't cheap. It hurts me when someone says taking an hour out of their week to do a coding interview isn't worth it when I've taken dozens to hundreds out of mine to make their job as easy and enjoyable when they get accepted into our culture. It's insulting to me to say that asking for an hour of your time is not worth everything above and much more that I've strived for to make our company a fantastic place to work at.
So, like I said, what red flags did you see exactly?
Those are a lot of words that could be empty. It's easy for me to see the red flags:
1. Mentioning firing in the very first post when talking about hiring.
2. Take home interview tests, showing you don't value your potential employee's time.
3. And this is an interesting one: accusing someone of having a poor work ethic when you don't know them and they didn't show any sign of it. This is a big red flag because it points to you equating disagreements with performance, which makes #1 even more of a red flag.
Tell us who you are and what your company is. You truly sound like a terrible employer based on your shocking responses. You came here to ask for feedback and then when you got it you didn't like it. You are clearly the issue of why you can't hire developers. I'd wish you good luck but I won't.
We're a terrible employer? Let me tell you what kind of employer we are.
We pay top 1% of market. We work to have a low stress environment. We put life before work instead of work before life. We prioritize having the best benefits on the market, including platinum health care with $0 employee contribution and full mental health coverage for therapy and medication not covered through insurance. We don't overload our top performers by giving them more work when they overperform but instead let them take the extra time off. We give everyone when they join a private office and an unlimited budget to buy tech and decorate it to their heart's desire. We don't have required hours in the office or even require that people come to the office at all. Most people do though since they enjoy their nicely decorated private offices with multiple high end monitors and tricked out desktops.
Which part of that makes us a terrible employer? That we ask people for an hour of their time to do a coding exercise? Is that how your judge if an employer is good or bad?
Quite frankly, relying upon such things is a sure-fire way to make sure some bad developers get through the cracks.