Yeah I agree that a test that's super long is awful for candidates. We did our best to be objective in grading, so we didn't want to dock more stars based on our subjective opinion on what's considered reasonable.
FWIW my team believes that test designers should strive to scope tests to no more than 1-2 hours (ideally 1).
The reason why there aren't any 1-star tests isn't because they don't exist, but because we didn't think anyone would want to see them. Cataloguing these was a ton of work (we sifted through hundreds of tests). Including the 1-star ones seemed like it would only shame companies who used them.
That's an absurd amount of work to do for free. Plus, it is useless: You won't learn anything new, it is going to impact no one, and it is going to sit stale at the inbox of 2 senior developers for 2 weeks until it is seen, as a chore.
Holy shit, y'all weren't kidding. That Algolia task would be many thousands of dollars of work at agencies I've worked at, and I'd expect $1-2k even bidding as a freelancer (yes, just for a mockup of this size and complexity, not prod-ready). That's so far beyond reasonable, it can no longer even see its border.
Also, WTF is this about?:
> Important: Do not fork this repository to create your assignment. Doing so will wake a bot that prints out your code, immediately sends it to the shredder, and archives your application in our applicant tracking system. And anyway we’d rather give everyone an equal shot to show us what they can do.
They want you to host it on GH Pages later on in the instructions, so what's the point of this restriction?
I had to come up with a fake business, explain how Algolia would provide value to them, and make the implementation and design.
Their wording on time:
> Note: We know how time constrained we all are, so the target is to spend no more than 6-8 hours on the assignment. If you do wish to spend more, please go ahead!
And their criteria:
> Evaluation criteria of the demo:
- Quality of relevance settings (eg. searchable attributes, custom ranking, index configuration settings)
- Richness of UI functionality. What kind of controls are provided to the end user to best capture their intent and ultimately retrieve the best possible content to put in front of the user to drive engagement and find what they are looking for? What features are leveraged in this endeavor (eg. query rules, geo, personalization, AI features etc.)?
- Quality of design. How does the layout, styling etc. contribute to the overall feel of the experience?
- Ability to drive a narrative with the demo, connecting how the user experience will drive ROI for a business
FWIW my team believes that test designers should strive to scope tests to no more than 1-2 hours (ideally 1).
The reason why there aren't any 1-star tests isn't because they don't exist, but because we didn't think anyone would want to see them. Cataloguing these was a ton of work (we sifted through hundreds of tests). Including the 1-star ones seemed like it would only shame companies who used them.