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Comment by ilc | Hacker News Reader

Two branches:

1. It is near trivial for an experienced programmer in that language to do the task: You don't belong applying for this job. Example: Python. If you can't setup a python virtual env in about 30s... don't apply for a python job.

2. It is near impossible without their IDE settings. Java projects can be like this, at times. Though usually not to the tune of 3 hours, but I could see it getting there with a complex J2EE + database setup.

Know which case you are in, judge accordingly.

Personally: I never do take homes, unless I have a good feel for the company. If the take home is given by HR. Welcome to my circular file. This is a hard and fast rule at this point. If the hiring manager wants me to do it... That's different. But I want to talk to them and decide if this is worth my time first.

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I set up my Python env once 5 years ago. Haven't touched it since.

It would probably take me an hour to set it up again.

Still I produce quality Python code (almost) every day. To me, the skills are entirely orthogonal.

Your experience is probably in the minority of Python developers. There have been plenty of updates to popular packages + the core interpreter during that time, updates to package/env managers (e.g. poetry). It's one thing if you're using python to solve projecteuler problems, but it's another if you're writing any full-stack code that has a variety of dependencies. It's great when you can set up a dev environment and then "forget" about it for some time, but 5 years is an exceedingly long time to not touch an env setup, and it implies that you are not really working with external dependencies, or too many other coworkers.

We're using Poetry, and I frequently update dependencies.

But I was commenting on this:

> If you can't setup a python virtual env in about 30s... don't apply for a python job.

Ironically, the hiring managers wants you to take the test so they can decide if you're worth their time first. It's quite a pickle.

> It's quite a pickle.

The old game of chicken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(game)

As usual, the party with the best alternatives wins.

If a company get get 500 candidates to each spend an hour on a task, for 500 unpaid person-hours of work, to save themselves single-digit paid hours weeding through applications to narrow them down, seems like it's very bad in an absolute what's-best-for-society sense, but quite a deal for the company.

It's sad because it costs nothing to ask someone to do a take home and it costs a lot in aggregate for people to do them.

It costs you the best people not taking the job.

Well, yes lol

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