[eitally]

My wife is not a technologist. In fact, she's a biologist & nurse who's worked in pharmacoviligance for a series of pharmas & CROs past ~15 years. She was laid off this spring after her company was purchased and went through the whole interview thing. One company had a writing assignment as part of their process. It was after both the phone screening and the in person interviews, and they only gave it to candidates they really liked/wanted, AND it was literally a mini version of the kind of data analysis and reports[1] she'd be doing in the job.

But ... it was something that took about 40 hours to complete, and ruined about a week and a half of family time. Thankfully she got the job, but if she hadn't it wouldn't have been pretty.

[1] http://onbiostatistics.blogspot.com/2013/07/periodic-safety-...

[joshschreuder]

As an outsider, that sets off red flags for me. Sounds suspiciously like unpaid work rather than a take home assignment.