Ask HN: How long do take home coding projects take you?

1 pointtriyambakam1 comment

I have had a number of take home projects for interview loops lately. On average they say that it should take about 4-6 hours, but I have found myself actually spending a about two days on it. The first day is spent understanding the problem space, which is often unique to the company's domain, and creating an MVP. The second day is spent refining and polishing.

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That sounds about right: while in theory the company would want to review what candidates can achieve in 4-6h of focused programming work, it rarely includes the effort needed for "managing" the task or thinking through problems and solutions (or trying out multiple approaches before deciding on one).

Time estimate is mostly to restrict how deep and wide candidates would go: if candidates of similar expertise take 1 or 7 days on the same task, we shouldn't be surprised if the latter is more polished and featureful, but it might signify an inability to cut scope and focus on the most important stuff first.

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