Completely agree here - like a fool I recently went through an entire day's worth interviews for a role (hello Stripe recruiters!!) that required both me and my wife taking PTO, with her looking after the kids while I talked to one junior dev after another about data modelling and "culture fit".
When I worked for a technology analyst company, we would ask for writing samples--which most potential hires would already have. But, if someone didn't, they'd have to create one. It was very reasonably a non-negotiable requirement given that's what they'd be doing day to day.
On a relative scale that might be true. In absolute terms you've already lost a high proportion of good senior people who might otherwise have been interested either way. Most good developers I know would just walk on seeing a 4-hour assignment that was actually a 4-hour assignment. Some would accept a full day of interviews if the employer had a reputation for being a good place to work and offered exceptional compensation but plenty wouldn't and I doubt any would for an employer that wasn't very top tier. Risk/reward and all that.
Don't forget to multiply that by however many companies they're interviewing at.
This is not true at all. I know for a fact that some FANGs do hour-long phone screens followed by hour-long coding assignments followed by a 4-hour multi-interview round. I know for a fact that a couple of major Fintech companies do hour-long phone screens followed by a hour-long live coding sessions.
Personally, the max I endured was a 7-round hiring process comprised of a mix of one-hour interviews that culminated in a 4-hour interview round, and that was only because midway through I was bumped from a developer position track to a research engineer position.
As a counter counterpoint, that only makes sense if the candidate is applying to a single place.
If the candidate has lined up 4 interviews, they're not going to get 16 hours in the week to complete them. The fifth place that has no 4 hour interviews will get the candidate.
If you have kids, your partner may have to take time off too, it's just not workable.
I say no to these, and to tests these days.
Loyalty becomes the main criterion.
I have mixed feelings about this, but I can see why employers might want this.
If a company demands you run an arbitrarily long and unpleasant obstacle course without any goal or criteria just because they asked you, what they are looking for is subservience.
I was trying to be charitable. :)
I did a take home project for Netflix that didn't have a time box IIRC - but something like "no more than a few hours". The task was to code a few movie poster carousels w/o using a web framework. Basically to create your own mini-higher level framework paradigm from vanilla JS or a low-level framework like JQuery.
I spent 7 hours on it and was fairly proud of it. I got dinged for not creating a virtual DOM and instead using the actual DOM as a source of truth. I even put in my notes (which I don't think were read) that in the real world you'd probably use a virtual DOM for this, but that would be a whole project in itself. Apparently I was supposed to spend the whole weekend creating React from scratch.
It also let me weed out the weirdly numerous companies who threw 8 hour assignments over the wall but apparently lacked the time to spend 10 minutes looking at my open source projects.
I took the first one that met my compensation/technology/commute requirements. Back then, one Enterprise CRUD job looked like any other.
They still do.
> When I worked for a technology analyst company, we would ask for writing samples--which most potential hires would already have. But, if someone didn't, they'd have to create one. It was very reasonably a non-negotiable requirement given that's what they'd be doing day to day.
The equivalent in tech is asking for a portfolio, which I have an ample amount of on github. I'm more than happy to hand this over to potential employers for them to gauge my work. But, the idea that I could complete a 4hour assignment within a week is ridiculous. My portfolio comes through constant, marginal improvements that make up a working system in sum. I've collectively spent more than 4 hours on most projects on GitHub, but they're done at my leisure, in my miniscule amounts of spare time, just spread over many years. But again, the idea of spending a solid four hours on any of them is just laughable. I have no time to do that.
Also, when you get to full day interviews, it's typically a sign the company wants you. Having been in both the hiring manager position and the candidate position, I've only once seen a full day interview end in a "No" and it was for particular circumstance.
I don't have a very large open source portfolio, but I it's probably bigger than 95% of the people I work with, I don't think my open source work is particularly representative of my abilities.
Companies want to have a somewhat standardized hiring process so that they can evaluate candidates fairly, and most professional developers people don't do much open source work.
Someone having an impressive open source portfolio, might be a good signal that they are a great hire, but I don't think it's a good general strategy for hiring.
> It's much more a two-way benefit, versus an assignment where only one party (the company) gets any information from the other (me).
> The equivalent in tech is asking for a portfolio, which I have an ample amount of on github. I'm more than happy to hand this over to potential employers for them to gauge my work. But, the idea that I could complete a 4hour assignment within a week is ridiculous.
These two statements made me think of something. Usually, (and from comments I've seen many times on HN) I'll hand in my resumé and it has my Github etc, and the hiring team don't really look at it. Perhaps if I'm given a coding test or assignment, I should pick one of my projects and ask them to complete an open issue, so that I can gauge their coding ability and how they use Git, respond in issues etc?
Fair's fair, and it would tell me a lot more than I get to know right now.
I have a github/gitlab full of code. You want to check it? Go for it. Happy to provide a portfolio on demand.
Make me write an api client..? No, get lost.
Of course, portfolios are a perfectly reasonable expectation in a lot of professions including the trades.
If I ever pivoted back to pure software development and wanted to get a comparably compensated position at a large tech company would a jump through the DS&A grind - yes. But to work for a startup that offered meh compensation and meaningless “equity” - no.
A take home assignment only shows me that they like unpaid work.
An assignment is no replacement for a face to face interview.
_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.
No, it's really bad. It's half-day of useless, unpaid work which takes time other things you need/have to do.
Never in my career I had to endure a day of interviews. Even FANGS don't do days of interviews, even the ones notorious for their awful working conditions. At most, there is the final 4-hour interview/test round, and even that is too much.
I'd say that these hoop-jumping obstacle courses are major red flags. If a company is really interested in getting you to join their team, why do they show so little consideration for you with all these arbitrary, capricious demands?
Hard pass.
whats the alternative though. why do you consider that foolish?