[osi]

agreed. if it is a "2 hour" project, have that be part of the on-site interview (with the expectation that people might not complete it)

[crankylinuxuser]

I applied to one position here on a HN job thread a bit back. Looked right up my alley. Doing IoT, 3d modeling, circuit design, and glue code. So, I did the initial phone screen. Then they gave me the 'zinger': we want you to make a webapp for us. We expect this will take 8-12 hours (?!).

I responded back, that's billable time there. That would require me to take PTO at my current job, and do your work unpaid. And that, I will not do.

I kindly told them where they could put their job. (They still advertise jobs on the monthly, but they seem legit aside that onerous 1.5 days of work. And no, I won't mention whom. Hopefully they'll rethink their policies, but alas..)

[ryandrake]

On behalf of many, many people: Thank you! An 8-12 hour unpaid work assignment is an entirely unreasonable request.

[brango]

The thing is, as gilleain says, the majority of promising-sounding candidates aren't worth progressing with. This is a combination of:

* Failing outright to do anything even close to the requested task

* Not even basic error handling

* No tests

* Using generated code where it's not appropriate, or not bothering to implement e.g. catch blocks they've generated

The instructions explicitly tell candidates what we're looking for, so it's not worth chatting to someone without doing this filter.

[expertentipp]

Take home assignment is basically an inquisition-style "accuse yourself" situation. Implemented the requirements? Sorry, there are no tests and we took them as granted. Skipped non-trivial part of the task? Sorry, the implementation is incomplete. Used XHR? Sorry, Fetch API is the thing. Used Fetch API? Sorry, async/await are the thing. You sent URL to a repository? Sorry, we wanted an attachment. You sent the code as an attachment? Sorry, our spam filter threw it away. ENOUGH.

I'm applying simultaneously to tens of companies, if you insist I can send you a link to my repositories with all take home assignments I've done so far.

[rhizome]

Just a month ago I had a company task me with implementing an xSV parser with four cases, the fourth being "arbitrary delimiter." I implemented all cases except this last one (only because of time) and included the tests and benchmarks offered as "extra credit."

Ghosted.

[logfromblammo]

The best jobs I have ever had spent less than 2 hours total in on-site interviews. The worst companies that I never heard from again burned a whole day running me through the gauntlet.