<story><title>Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days</title><url>http://blog.triplebyte.com/three-hundred-programming-interviews-in-thirty-days</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>protonfish</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s great to see some objective research being done on this, and I am very interested in following the results.&lt;p&gt;They mention evaluating the effectiveness of giving a candidate a project to do &amp;quot;in their own time.&amp;quot; I recently had a interview that included this and I can share the result: I accepted an offer from a different company that didn&amp;#x27;t require it. I doubt my life is that different than anyone else&amp;#x27;s, with a full-time job and a full-time life outside of work. Spending that much time to qualify for a single job is too much to ask of anyone. If it were to pass a generic proficiency certification applicable to many positions, I would consider it, but this does not scale if a candidate is applying for multiple positions.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>geebee</author><text>I did this once.  After a take home quiz that took about an hour, I had a 6-7 hour &amp;quot;homework&amp;quot; problem.  I did it, and sent it in.  It took the company a month to get back to me, though I did stay in contact with the recruiter.  The final answer, delivered by the recruiter, was &amp;quot;we&amp;#x27;ve decided not to more forward at this time.&amp;quot;  No other feedback.  I have no idea if anyone even looked at it - I never did speak to a dev at the company.&lt;p&gt;This experience left me embarrassed, honestly.  I don&amp;#x27;t think it reflects well on me that I put up with it even once.&lt;p&gt;At this point, I will participate in tech interviews, but I won&amp;#x27;t do any more take-home assignments.  I suppose this could change under different circumstances.&lt;p&gt;Gayle Laakmann McDowell, who wrote &amp;quot;Cracking the Coding Interview&amp;quot;, wrote an insightful post her blog about this.  It&amp;#x27;s titled &amp;quot;Companies who give candidates homework assignments: knock it off!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gayle.com&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;companies-who-give-candidates-homework-assignments-knock-it-off&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.gayle.com&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;companies-who-give-cand...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;She mentions something I see as a problem as well - these tests allow the company to burn a lot of a candidate&amp;#x27;s time, but not the other way around.  I may have burned 6+ hours interviewing unsuccessfully at google, but they parted with 6+ hours of developer time as well (though I did spend a lot of additional hours reviewing algorithms and doing sample problems).  This creates a natural set of checks and balances that don&amp;#x27;t exist with homework assignments.&lt;p&gt;She does have some good suggestions about how to use a take home if a company is determined to do it.  To me, a particularly insightful one was to have a high  (she says 90%+) passage rate.&lt;p&gt;I agree.  If you&amp;#x27;re going to ask a candidate to spend a day on a homework assignment, you should be very close to an offer.  If you&amp;#x27;re using it as an early filter, you are wasting a tremendous amount of developer time.</text></comment>
<story><title>Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days</title><url>http://blog.triplebyte.com/three-hundred-programming-interviews-in-thirty-days</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>protonfish</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s great to see some objective research being done on this, and I am very interested in following the results.&lt;p&gt;They mention evaluating the effectiveness of giving a candidate a project to do &amp;quot;in their own time.&amp;quot; I recently had a interview that included this and I can share the result: I accepted an offer from a different company that didn&amp;#x27;t require it. I doubt my life is that different than anyone else&amp;#x27;s, with a full-time job and a full-time life outside of work. Spending that much time to qualify for a single job is too much to ask of anyone. If it were to pass a generic proficiency certification applicable to many positions, I would consider it, but this does not scale if a candidate is applying for multiple positions.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eitally</author><text>My wife is in this position now, and it&amp;#x27;s not for a programming job.  She works in pharmaceuticals, in pharmacovigilance &amp;amp; risk management.  She does a lot of data analysis &amp;amp; writing (the latest report she wrote for Health Canada &amp;amp; the FDA was 461 pages).&lt;p&gt;A company she&amp;#x27;s interviewing with asked her to do a sample writing task as part of her application&amp;#x2F;interview.  She hasn&amp;#x27;t decided whether it&amp;#x27;s worth it or not.  For someone who has 15 years experience in the field, excellent recommendations and credentials, spending (her estimate) 12-15 hours doing pro bono work just to apply somewhere is ridiculous.</text></comment>