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inglor_cz

In my opinion, yes, it is crazy.

I would give everyone a home test - program X or Y in one of languages (L1, L2, L3). And I would watch:

a) the overall quality of the code and documentation,

b) whether the person asked about intentionally vague part of my request,

c) how much of the code was taken literally from StackOverflow or other source and whether the person acknowledged it,

d) whether I received the solution from them in the last hours before deadline or a bit sooner.

This, taken together, would tell me much more about that person than a highly technical and esoteric interview.

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I think homework like this is only appropriate if you compensate the applicant. It's really no different from requiring hours of studying prior to an interview, and the addition of deliverables makes it feel extra icky to me.

Every time I've seen what an applicant submitted for such an assignment, it's been garbage; I don't think it's a good way to assess candidates.

Edit: a previous employer told candidates to not spend more than 8 hours on these assignments. For a position that pays 100k/yr with 3 weeks of vacation, that's a bit over $50/hr. Needless to say, they weren't giving these candidates $400.

I actually applied this "sieve" with an assignment that could be finished in 30 minutes if you were really competent and 2-3 hours if not. If it went wrong, at least I saved the person the commute time to the interview.

This issue with take home interviews is that the time commitment on the side of the candidate is super high. If every company gives you some variant of this take home, you spend at 2-10 hours on each take home, and you're interviewing at 10-20 companies, it very quickly becomes a full time job.

There are occasions when it's absolutely necessary to see concrete examples of writing, programming, design, etc. A portfolio in other words. Now, this can often be satisfied with work that already exists. Though for programming you're now getting into "what do you mean you don't have open source projects on GitHub?" territory.

Can you explain item d more? What does that tell you?

Being organized

Eh. Not quite the same thing but, if I have a writing assignment, I'll probably let it sit for a bit before I send it off. I likely won't send it at literally the last minute but I'm not going to just send it off ASAP either.

People who send their assignments in as late as possible tend to fall into two very different subsets:

* either the procrastination champion who leaves things untouched until the deadline looms, or

* someone who completes the work early, but before committing it, leaves it alone for a while and reviews it later.

Everything else being equal, I would prefer the second type, because last minute rushed work tends to introduce unwanted bugs into the code.

Ofc, the world is full of exceptions.

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