Companies shouldn't give candidates homework assignments

The title is a little click-baitey, because it suggests full on assault on homework. The actual post is more measured in its criticisms, but basically the idea is: don't use homework as a cop-out for not having a good interview process, and thereby likely wasting everyones time.

Personally I like homework, because it allows me to show my strengths (actually writing code that is solid) without being "under the gun" in terms of interview pressures. I love being able to discuss the code I wrote and talk about areas it can be expanded and improved, and why certain decisions were made. In my mind, that process is closer to the job I'm often interviewing for than questions like "explain why Bellman-Ford uses v-1 relaxations"

This is terrible advice for companies and interviewees. We've successfully used "homework" project when a candidate had potential, but didn't do well in-person for various reasons (nervousness, time pressure). In many cases we've hired them when they can produce something and talk over it afterwards.

Without this, they wouldn't have received an offer.

While I get they said "which are not sufficiently interested in them." but it's still an interview process to see if we should/should not hire.

I've only interviewed with one company that did a homework assignment "right" - it was time constrained, it was after an initial phonescreen, I was still more on the junior side, and the onsite interview included a follow up on the homework assignment to extend it in some way.

But generally, I agree. There are enough other ways to screen people for basic competency (20 min tech conversation, looking at StackOverflow profiles, etc.) that it seems unnecessary for anyone except junior developers.

>Candidates spend many hours completing homework assignments for companies which are not sufficiently interested in them. This is abusing candidates. Knock it off.

Given a choice of spending 2-3 hours on a take home assignment vs. 1 hour of writing code on a whiteboard in front of 3 or more developers, I'd choose the former any day. It's not even close.

The author is taking one end of the spectrum and painting it as an endemic problem. It's not that.

edit: my strong preference for homework vs whiteboarding is because that's how I've solved problems and accomplished tasks for years. Whiteboarding to "see how I think" is not at all how I would think if I were work for them.

I am a founder of a company that helps companies with screening candidates[0]. I understand the negative response towards this. But I feel there is a balance here: We advice our customers to send smaller problems (~30mins) meant to pre-screen the candidates (without wasting too much of their time). This followed by a phone interview is currently the best funnel we know so far (and we have been working on this problem for years now).

[0] https://remoteinterview.io