> ...but we can’t get candidates to do a 2hr take-home assignment at their own pace to knock half a day off the interview process...
Any decent submission for this type of exam takes more than two hours, and while the hiring company can view it as reducing the amount of time spent interviewing, it's just as stressful if not more so for the candidate. Throw in the time it takes to review and/or have a followup session to discuss with the candidate, and it's not a useful way to reduce interview time.
>Incidentally, I'd suggest that half a day is way too long. Especially if that half a day isn't actually enforced. When I'm hiring I usually set challenges of about 40 minutes, an hour and a half max. I'm not looking for a product that's ready to ship to production. I'm after a sense of whether the candidate can actually interpret a problem then string some code together, and something meaningful we can discuss in the next interview.
While I agree with what you said about leveling the playing field, I find 40 minutes sound awfully short. In university I noticed I was doing much better on 3h exams than on 1.5 hour exams, often only taking 1.5h for the 3h exam, even though it had more material. I couldn't relax enough in the short exam to do my best, even though the time was long enough for a twice as long exam.
> Send out the assignment at a predetermined, convenient time and require it be returned an hour or two later.
This honestly sounds like a great idea to me, except maybe with a slightly longer time allowance to remove some of the pressure. Definitely hoping more interviewers will start to adopt this method for take-home interviews.
But this method also hinges on the interviewer's ability to design projects that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time and still give good insight into a candidate's skills. I think it's safe to say this will be a difficult task for most interviewers.
> Now interviewees are regularly given projects described as requiring just two to three hours that instead take days of work.
Not to disparage the subjects, but it sounds like these applicants failed the interview. If a qualified candidate is meant to complete the project in 2-3 hours and it's taking over a day, then that candidate isn't passing this test of productivity.
However, companies absolutely should be time-limiting their problems. Precisely because people could use more time than others and generate false positives.
> The project-based track will require a larger time commitment
This is the only part I take issue with. I tried a take home interview once that took the better part of a weekend and decided I'd never do it again. There just isn't enough time. Basically, if it takes that long, there needs to be a very high chance that I'm getting hired at the end, or it's not worth it.
This is what really irks me about take home exercises. The candidate spends 2-4 hours (or 12 and say they did it in 2) and the interviewer has no real commitment to reading and understanding it. 10 minutes to review the code? I would expect a video call where we go over the code together.
All interviewing I do, I do while talking to them and give them ample time to explain it back to me.
The candidate is investing their time. You should have enough respect to invest your time too.
> there's very little left to discourage interviewers from issuing ridiculously time-consuming projects
There's also no disincentive for interviewees to spend an unreasonable amount of time on the project. So the test is biased against employed people and/or people with kids.
This can be easily countered though. Send out the assignment at a predetermined, convenient time and require it be returned an hour or two later.
That seems to be jumping the gun. You don't normally get an onsite immediately, you usually have to go through much shorter screens, the first of which may only be an hour max. So you don't necessarily waste a lot of time on any one company unless you go deep into the process, and you're probably going to be screened out early by lot of them. The take home assignments are generally supposed to be replacements for technical screens, but they invariably take a much longer amount of time.
There's also an investment differential. Every hour that a candidate has to spend in an interview is also an hour the employer has to spend in the interview. Whereas an employer can send you off with a take home project for an indefinite number of hours while they sit back and do nothing. Are they going to spend the same amount of time reviewing the project as the candidate did writing it? Extremely doubtful.
>As long as they don't take any more than 1-3 hours.
Well, that's the issue. It may be because I'm a bad programmer, but I can't think of a take home that took me less than 3 hours. The take home I did for my first job took some 20 hours over 4 days, and I exaggerated and said it took 12 (which didn't garner a response so I'm guessing that wasn't an unusual answer). I could do that while I'm a student, I can't do that again as a working professional without wasting an entire weekend after a week of full time work.
I still hate leetcode more, but at least there you have an explicit timer.
>For myself, what I hate is when the take-home assignment comes first. Like, before you talk with anyone at all, or maybe immediately after you did the 15 minute HR/recruiter screen.
I've never had a test come later. 15 minute interview call to make sure the high level details are correct (pay, location, physical office vs. Remote, etc), and then I am sent an interview test.
Granted, my last 2 jobs did not employ take home tests, so I know I'm not forced to do them. But given my experiences I understand why others would be opposed to them. It sounds like you would be opposed to my experiences as well.
>explicitly, this is 4-6 hours. in practice, it's 20 to 30 if you want to deliver at high caliber
This is a problem with a lot of take home assignments of many types (not just programming). If someone has landed an interview at a company they really want to work for, it's almost not rational for them to just bang out something that's "good enough for government work" some evening rather than taking the time and care to really do it properly.
But this doesn't scale if they're interviewing at a number of companies and/or otherwise just don't have much free time.
> I don't see any problem with this, as an interviewer.
The issue for the interviewer is missing out on good potential hires because your selection process is biased against people with little free time.
I have a family and I'm doing part-time study in the evenings. If I'm looking for a new job, then I can probably find time for 1 exercise a fortnight. If one company tells me they have a "4 hour assignment" and the other a "1 hour", then I'm far more likely to do the 1 hour exercise and pass on the long one.
And if I do the 1 hour test, I'd expect to be assessed accordingly. If you're comparing one person's output after 1 hour with another who actually spent 5 hours on it, then you will be more inclined to hire the person that spent longer on the project, even though that's not really going to corelate with on the job performance.
Part of my argument is that not everyone has the choice to spend an additional 3 hours per interview, meaning a process including tasks like these discards these applicants.
> not to mention you're asking them to code a (potentially) complex take home project, that could take over an hour, for free.
An hour, I'm fine with. It's less than what I'd schedule for an interview, and far less than I'd schedule for an in person interview (which might include a flight out). On the other side of it, though, I'd be concerned about cheating. It wouldn't be too hard to hire someone to take the test for me, I'd imagine.
> On your last point, the best alternative I've seen is take-home projects where it would take less than a week to complete.
Ironically, take-home interviews are another contentious topic on HN and other internet message boards. The common complaint is that people don't want to invest much of their personal time into interviewing for companies.
> As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of interviews.
_The_ alternative is not a day of interviews. There are in fact, an innumerable number of alternatives. One alternative is to simply drop the assignment entirely from the interview process (without replacement) and judging by what's left.
This might be the worst technical assessment format I've ever heard of. I really don't get the reason for adding time pressure to this. You're combining the worst elements of take-home assignments and whiteboard interviews.
Why not send people the assignment and ask them to return it within a couple of days? What are you gaining by limiting it to hours and turning it into a remote exam?
> I can say "you shouldn't spend more than two hours on this" until I'm blue in the face, but candidates think they need to polish far beyond what is reasonable
> I'd prefer to design a better in person interview than take the easy route that is disrespectful of candidates' time.
Why don't you just let candidates decide for themselves how much time they want to spend on the task? You can set the expectations, saying that you expect that the task of a given complexity will to take between 1 and 2 hours; but candidates should be free to spend as little or as much time on a task as they like. Some candidates will value their time and spend no more than is advised; others will be sufficiently obsessed by the task to spend more time. Why should the latter group feel guilty about exceeding the recommended time limit?
its bad for the company because the candidate can work with someone else and produce a glowing submission. I have helped a number of people do these some that have gotten the job.
its bad for the interviewee. They may spend 10-15 hours on this and get rejected for no reason at all. Do you think the person reviewing the submission is putting multiple hours into it. Doubtful.
If the intent is truly(and I mean truly) help individuals that struggle with traditional interviewing techniques then kudos. Demonstrate this by allowing candidates to interview in a way that is comfortable for them(including not taking your take home test) If its the company saying "my time is more valuable than yours. Do this assignment then we'll talk" then no thanks.
Exactly - a take-home test that will take more than ~2 (maybe 3) hours to complete is unreasonable. And it should be administered only after a preliminary phone screen.
I'm willing to give up an evening for a job that appeals to me and that I have a decent chance at landing. I'm not willing to give up all my weekday free time for a week or stay up until 3am. And I won't do either if you're not willing to first invest 15 minutes to make sure there's sufficient mutual interest to be worth my investment of hours.
If you don't respect my time before hiring, I assume you won't respect it after either.
Any decent submission for this type of exam takes more than two hours, and while the hiring company can view it as reducing the amount of time spent interviewing, it's just as stressful if not more so for the candidate. Throw in the time it takes to review and/or have a followup session to discuss with the candidate, and it's not a useful way to reduce interview time.
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