After college I was hired at a web consulting company and after a year I quit to become an independent web consultant. Now two years later I want to go back to working for a company. I have been applying online to many different companies and I have gotten quite a few hits. I've done 3 take homes so far.
To be honest, I didn't really what to do for take homes up until now since I had never had one. So when the companies asked for my time to do an assignment I finished the assignment and billed them for my time. Here is how that went:
Company 1: Spent around 10 hours on the take home (1 day). I sent them an invoice and billed them for my time at my hourly rate of $165/hr. They responded the next day with an offer for an onsite and they also paid me. After the onsite I did not get an offer. Company 2: Really difficult and long take home on this one. I spent 35 hours on the take home over 3 days and again, sent them an invoice. They paid me a week later and responded with an onsite, which I went to and did well on. I received an offer and ended up signing it. I start in 3 weeks. Company 3: Fairly easy take home. I spent 6 hours on this one and billed them for my time. The company responded later the same day and told me that they are not willing to pay me for my time and that they have decided to not proceed with the process. They also told me that nobody had ever been as absurd as to request payment for a take home. Since I have only taken 3 take homes I am somewhat confused here. Are you supposed to bill companies for your time? Or does it depend from company to company? The two that paid me are actually both very large companies (over 50k employees) so I assumed it was standard, until the third company sent me their response.
Assuming an hourly rate of $250/hr, that's a lot of hours. Split evenly between the two companies, that's 16 hours for a single take home.
My expectation on a take home is more on the order of 4 hours, but maybe I'm off on that? And maybe this guy was a deep expert who charged $1000/hr?