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Ask HN: What are some of the best take-home coding tasks you've gotten?

9 points n2d4 | 2 comments | 19 Nov 24 11:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.852s | source

As an applicant, I've personally had a mixed experience with take-homes. We're designing the technical interviews right now, and I thought I'd ask for some stories on exciting take-home tasks. We're looking for something that resembles the actual job, so we'll allow any tool (including AI and debuggers).

Also curious to hear about any bad ones you've done.

1. brudgers ◴[19 Nov 24 22:05 UTC] No.42188604[source]▶
[A random opinion from the internet and based on not knowing the actual details of your context.]

If it isn't worth four or eight or N hours of your staff's time to observe the candidate working on the problem, then it is probably not worth four or eight or N hours of the candidate's time.

Because what are you trying to measure?

How well the candidate lies about how long the project took?

How willing the candidate is to work many hours?

How much free time the candidate has to dedicate to their job search?

How well they GGS (Google and GPT and StackOverflow)?

How resourceful they are at hiring a freelancer?

Etc.

Sure those types of behaviors often resemble people's actual jobs, so maybe a take home coding task measures what your company is really looking for.

But realistically, inexperience and desperation are the most likely reasons someone will be excited about your take home challenge. The best skilled and most experienced candidates -- the kind people who know them want to work with -- probably won't be excited. Good luck.

replies(1): >>42192476 #
2. bravetraveler ◴[20 Nov 24 10:19 UTC] No.42192476[source]▶
You articulated this far better than I did, +1.

> But realistically, inexperience and desperation are the most likely reasons someone will be excited about your take home challenge

Also, why they'll become more common - used by wolves in sheep's clothing. Selecting for those who are more junior or simply malleable.

Hence my fairly strong stance; we're interviewing 'together' (same time, remote/local/whatever)