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Comment by vikingerik | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised at the downvotes and disagreement for this. I'd be fine with a four-hour take-home. I got one of my jobs by doing that.

One four hour offline/asych event, in practical coding rather than a whiteboard brain-teaser, to gauge the fit of a multi-year job relationship, is perfectly reasonable. I think the sense of entitlement might be getting a bit too high if people here say they would blow that off.

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It is an unequal time investment. I have had multiple take homes where I got ghosted afterwords. Maybe 100 people did it, candidate number 3 did a good enough job and they never even took a look at mine. At least with a phone call or an in person interview I am assured they have some skin in the game.

I don't ghost-- no matter when I decline, no matter the stage I write and send the candidate feedback. I've been ghosted, it sucks.

Why is an unequal time investment a problem? Plenty of things in any employer-employee relationship are going to be unequal.

The rest of the comment addresses why it is a problem.

I think the sense of entitlement is on the hiring manager's side if they want multiple applicants to burn through 6-8 hours of free time to take an assessment of their skills. Then those same hiring managers are the ones complaining about how they can't find employees.

No entitlement here. I copiously thank the candidate for doing it and make sure to offer feedback if it results in a decline. I would offer reimbursement if our company offered that (and I'll definitely bring that up).

But, I have to assess candidates somehow-- I don't do whiteboarding, riddles, brain teasers, etc. I wish a discussion would just yield the results I need, but as many other top level comments here state, that's just not the case.

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