Opinion: We should reject take-home interview assignment if no feedback is given | Hacker News Reader

Opinion: We should reject take-home interview assignment if no feedback is given

4 pointskitari11 comments

Just a thought. I have been through FANG-style interviews and also some that screen with a take-home assignment. Generally I found the screening rounds of FANG to be less time intensive than take-home.

If you are going to reject me after the take-home. Given my time investment wouldn't it be reasonable to ask for feedback? At the very least I can work on it and improve my skills.

We should reject companies with take-home assignments if they do not provide take-home assignments. What do you guys think?

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My favorite take-home assignment was from Signal.

They wanted me to code an http server that implements a REST api using "select" in Java in four hours.

I got half of it (the http server) done in eight hours and "failed" but I had a fun time doing it because I always wanted to learn how to write that kind of server and now I know more about how http works.

If I wasn't certain that I'd learn something from the experience I wouldn't have done it, but I was.

Like Java NIO select? Lot to ask for 4 hours if you aren’t familiar with the API of NIO

Yep.

Just reject take-home assignments.

Agree. Having been through a lot of both take-homes and whiteboards I can say that whiteboard may be bad but at least it respects your time.

Well, the company will initially promise to give you feedback, but they won't do it in writing. They will tell you to call and then their schedule is so busy that they will reschedule multiple times. In the end, you just end up being disappointed.

Why won't they do it in writing? Every rejection I've had of a take home assignment has given detailed feedback in writing. Requiring a call for everything seems more like culture rather than something necessary.

Good for you. My experience has been the opposite. Companies ghost you.

How can you reject the take-home interview if no feedback is given, when feedback follows doing the take-home?

Basically, you'd have to be informed that the company has a habit of not giving feedback on take-homes.

But then, if they always or almost always give these take homes, and you plan to refuse it, then you might as well not apply there.

If you only plan to refuse it if you will be rejected, then you need a crystal ball to predict the future.

Or else you're saying that this particular interviewing practice is a complete deal-breaker, which seems irrational. Sometimes good companies to work for do some odd things in interviewing. There is a fair bit of subjectivity in what is weird in interviewing, too.

I usually ask for feedback in take-home assignments, but I rarely have received any. Now, I ask them the take-home to be interesting. If I have to develop something trivial (like a blog, or shop), I refuse to do it.

I normally insist on the feedback. If I took several hours to do something, the polite thing would be to tell me what exactly they didn't like about it.

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