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Please stop the coding challenges

(blackentropy.bearblog.dev)
261 points CrazyEmi | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.212s | source
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minimaxir ◴[] No.42149436[source]
> A “4-hour” assignment can quickly turn into 8, 10, or even more, just to ensure it’s in great shape.

The fun part of take-home assignments is that there's a moral hazard incentive to spend extra amounts of time on an assignment even if they say "only spend X amount of hours on it," even lying amount the amount of time spent if the interviewing company asks.

More than once I have completed a take-home assignment with emphasis on sticking in the timeframe they recommend but still solving the problem adequately, and then I get chewed out in the followup interview "why didn't you implement X?"

Relatedly, a massively open-ended take-home assignment is a bad take-home assignment since it favors those who have more free time to be thorough. (shoutout to the take-home data science assignments which ask for the final deliverable to be a PowerPoint presentation)

replies(1): >>42164002 #
1. zelphirkalt ◴[] No.42164002[source]
This exactly. And then some person who never met you or talked to you, sitting in the company complains about too many comments. Or about you not using their favorite code formatter. Or optional type checking. Dude! If you want a full blown project setup guide, pay for that!