[ro_bit]

One note that might be good to highlight in the article is that the take-home is expected to be 2 hours long. From my experience, they are much longer so I was initially surprised to see take-home's being given before an initial call until I looked at the assignment itself.

[kassner]

I still consider this a red flag. The company wants me to put time into the hiring process, but they can’t be bothered to do the same.

If there is at least a recruiter screening first, I’ll apply and ask about “Bring Your Own Code Examples”, mostly when their daily work would use tools that I have some code published.

[joshdavham]

> I still consider this a red flag. The company wants me to put time into the hiring process, but they can’t be bothered to do the same.

Exactly this.

It costs a company nothing to give you a take-home, but it will cost you (the candidate) potentially many hours. On my last job search, I got burned a number of times where I'd work for hours on a take-home only to get ghosted. I don't think they even looked at my solution.

Now I have a personal policy where I will refuse to do a take-home unless the interviewer sits there with me while I do it. This demonstrates to me that the interviewer is actually serious and respectful of my time.

[ryandrake]

Another thing problematic about take-home projects: They don't scale for the candidate. Sure, 2 hours is nothing if you want a job, but typically the candidate is going to be applying for dozens, if not hundreds of jobs. Even 20 take-homes just like this is now 40 hours of work--just to get through a hiring gate!

It is not "respectful of the candidate's time" if everyone is doing it.

[phrotoma]

It CAN cost nothing to give a take home, but this is not a requirement. At my previous employer any candidate that made it as far as the take home project was paid for the time they worked on it.

[joshdavham]

That’s a good distinction. A paid take home is very different than an unpaid one.

[resonious]

> but they can’t be bothered to do the same

They will need to review your submission, which absolutely does take time.

[joshdavham]

> They will need to review your submission, which absolutely does take tim

But that's the kicker: they won't review your submission!

[LtWorf]

I'm sure the AI will do that.

[stavros]

Who do you think will write the submission code?

[matusp]

I can see both perspectives. If you are a skilled hiree, this seems like a waste of time. But if you are hiring online, you will inevitably get a lot of terrible candidates and you need to filter them out. If you are a small team, you can't spend weeks interviewing randos with little to none coding experience for a SE role. The problem is that online hiring is full of noise, but both sides suffer from the expenses this creates.

[preciousoo]

Click the link of the take home and tell me if you expect it to take you more than 20 minutes. I don’t understand the resections here