[bhntr3]

Unfortunately, most companies aren't comfortable replacing an onsite with a work sample (or take home.) So, it's just additive.

It's not "the worst" in relation to other interview options. It's the worst because it's usually in addition to other interview options. I just stopped doing take homes on my last round of interviewing. Just not worth it. It was always just added work. It never replaced a stage of the process.

If you think about it, it makes sense though. Very few companies would hire people directly based on the strength of their github account or their topcoder rank. So, if they won't do that, then what extra information does a take home really provide?

Companies seem to recognize that they want to hire people who do good work and that good work isn't done in an interview setting. But very few companies are willing to just analyze the candidate's work. They want to subjectively judge the person.

[darklajid]

Agreed (and see the linked comment please): If it's not a replacement for whiteboard bullshit, then GTFO. That's insane and maybe 'the worst'.

But it's important to remember that a take home exercise cannot fully replace an interview. It can replace the coding part, the whiteboard "and now we ask useless trivia questions" part. But there's no way for this work to replace the "would you fit the team" interview.

Others already discuss this in different subthreads here, but basically I'd expect the company to clearly show how their process works and - ideally - filter by ~social~ criterias first ("You might fit the team, if you can code"). Doing work for free with potentially no feedback or a 'fail' in a later discussion is crap, of course.

[btilly]

There is a reason that nobody filters by social first.

One of the biggest challenges in hiring is that it takes a ton of time to go through many bad candidates before you see any good ones. And time is the one thing you don't have. You're hiring because you don't have enough resources to do the work you already have.

Therefore the name of the game is efficiently rejecting candidates while using up the least amount of your existing people's time. Which means that the most expensive filters should be done last. And the most expensive one is social because judging it takes time from EVERYONE.

[collyw]

And that seems fair. Why is it only the employee that is expected to take up time? At the end of the day there is likely to be more than one applicant, so your spending 3 hours of your time for 50% chance at best.

[btilly]

Just in case you look at your old thread.

The fundamental reason why this is OK is that the company is hoping to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the candidate's time. The person who pays the piper, gets to choose how it happens.

But that said, it is still fair. The effort required to hire a new person into a competent company is significantly greater than the effort it takes a competent person to get a new job. As a candidate it doesn't look like this because you see that you personally gave the company more attention than vice versa. However you don't see all of the other people who the company also paid attention to and ultimately rejected.

If you're a competent developer it probably still doesn't look like this because the company usually develops procedures that concentrate the required effort in the hiring manager and/or HR. Therefore you have little idea how much effort is actually spent looking for candidates.

But spend time as a hiring manager and it will be obvious.

[nulltype]

If it replaces the "coding on a whiteboard" part then it was definitely worth it to me.

[collyw]

I would prefer to waste 20 minutes on a whiteboard exercise than 3 hours on a take home exercise.