Comment by oarabbus_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oarabbus_ | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

>given me a take-home coding assignment of at least 30hrs of work

It's absolutely astounding to me that people must entertain these at a sufficient rate that companies still try to pull this free labor nonsense. One company I interviewed with provided a take-home assignment and said to bill them for the hours; I found that to be a fair offer, although due to other circumstances limiting my available time, I declined to continue the interview at that point.

If the take-home assignment is expected to take a few hours, maybe it's worth considering. Any longer, and they can look elsewhere for free labor. That time is much better spent sending out more applications, networking, leetcoding for FANG interviews, working on personal projects, or simply taking a walk outside.

I agree with you in principle, but I don't think characterizing most of these types of assignments as "free labor" is quite accurate. What I suspect is going on is that companies simply aren't taking the time to calibrate the effort required to complete their take home projects. I've had many "two hour" projects end up being more like 6-8 hours to properly complete (I tended to just stop at 3-4 hours and opt out of the rest of the process on this type of thing).

Calling it "free labor" implies to me that the company is going to get some kind of actual value out of it in the end, other than as a candidate assessment. Most of these types of things I've seen simply haven't been the type of project that would be useful in that sense.

OTOH, the big mistake I see a lot of companies doing is doing a 2+ hour take home assignment, then not making the tech portion of the actual interview process just a discussion of the take home project. If I'm going to commit that amount of my own personal time to your interview process, I want to know that it's going to get me out of at least as much "whiteboard hazing" in the end. In my experience, this frequently has not been the case.

I'd by happy with even $20 an hour, shit even $10 for doing their stupid take home assignment would make me less angry. At least they are buying me a couple of beers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com