Ask HN: Is it now common to ask for “full” applications as part of interviewing?

Take home projects strike me as an overcorrection for the perceived problems with whiteboard interviews. Drawing from a recent sample of interviews, companies that ask for them still seem to be in the minority.

I hope this remains the case, as 1) they are an enormous time suck for the applicant, and 2) demonstrate abilities that a qualified applicant could become proficient at quickly. Qualification for a position requiring these abilities can be assessed in a way that is not so one-sided against the applicant.

Related: https://alwaystrending.io/articles/tech-interview-torture-ch...

I've heard the same thing, that it's an alternative to "biased" whiteboard interviews. Which is a commendable goal, but it just ends up biasing the process against people who don't have the free time. I passed on that one.

I actually don't mind the 45 minute automated screens that are outsourced to a code screening vendor -- my experience is that when the in-person interviewers see the results of that they are able to jump into more meaty questions instead of FizzBuzz. It's a net improvement for everyone's time.

Ask an endless series of questions about algorithms and/or expect extensive whiteboard coding -> developers complain about these not reflecting the real world.

Ask a developer to write some actual code to prove that they can do the job they're being hired to do -> developers complain about having to demonstrate that they can do the job they're about to be hired to do.

There's a legitimate question here about how extensive of a project is necessary to demonstrate that you can, in fact, write code effectively. But this is basically what we've been clamoring for for years, companies abandoning pressure cooker interview room gotcha-questions on whiteboards.

The work sample test is one of the most effective ways of evaluating a candidate's fitness. What do you expect an prospective employer to do to determine if you can do the job, if not write some code?

We live in a time of dissonance between the two attitudes of "university is for learning how to learn first principles; if you want practical industry-relevant knowledge then go to a community college, you vocational student" and "businesses need to be fast and agile so we're not going to provide training; schools should be pumping out employees ready to be interviewed."

I designed two of those challenges. We're successfully using it for international hires for quite some time now. We hand those out after you made it through two telephone interviews, which should assure mutual interest in actually making hiring happen. We base our hiring decision on the outcome of the challenge. If you do good, we relocate you and your family, care for everything you need. Our success rate is around 30%. So I wouldn't say we ask you to work for free. We designed the challenge to be without example on github by giving extreme amounts of individual freedom in the task. Also, you're allowed to share the solution - but without mentioning the company name, so that other candidates cannot just google and find your stuff.

Not everyone has a "significant" github profile. Actually the minority of people has such a thing. So many reasons for not having one. Current employer's policy, having a family, having non-IT hobbies, etc pp. Also just having such a profile doesn't necessary proof that you can solve the company's problems, because just looking at solutions of arbitrary problems doesn't give you any information about the constraints of the problem, how you solved them and it also doesn't put your solution to this problem next to solution of the guy sitting one desk away that solved the same problem in the same amount of time under the same conditions.

(removed a stupid passive aggressive statement here, sorry folks)