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We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

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Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#31

Post by filoleg »

stephenhogsten wrote: post #27
inanutshellus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the difference is that the interviewee gets to choose when to start the clock.

That's what I had in mind. You would need a tool to enforce it. At that point "take-home" may not be the best name anymore, but "remote interview" just sounds like it's an interview over video. Maybe "async interview"?

It is already a thing. I had a 2hr take-home before that was utilizing hackerrank.

But it wasn't a leetcode-style one (which are common), it was a skeleton of a React app, and I had to implement certain methods to tie it all up together.

The timer would start ticking from the moment I click "begin", and it will warn you that the timer will start after you attempt clicking (so that you don't trigger the timer by accident).

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#32

Post by bogomipz »

The entry for this company Haraj states:

>"Just fyi, this submission make up to 50% from your overall hiring score. While your CV only make up to 5%. So do your best to create great submission!"

>"UPDATE (2022-02-05):

Due to many great candidates have applied to this vacancy, we decided to close this challenge on Friday (2022-02-11). So we will wait for the last submission until Thursday (2022-02-10) at 23:59 WIB." [1]

This is like a cattle call audition with a hard deadline. Who would do this? Also there is absolutely no indication of how much time one should spend this. I'm guessing this is intentional. If you want to give me a deadline there better be pay involved. I hope people are smart enough to call BS on these companies. Hopefully a company making demands one's time without compensation is a huge red flag for people.

[1] https://github.com/riandyrn/owldetect

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#33

Post by NeverFade »

zaphar wrote: post #21
twawaaay wrote: post #5

As an interviewer, I believe take home tasks are unfair and also poor return on investment. Take home tasks incentivise candidates to burn as much time as possible on the task. Consequently, they are a test of who is willing to put a week of work even when the instructions say it should not take more than 3 hours to complete. I prefer pair programming with the candidate on the premise that if I ask you to spend 2 hou…

Counter-Point. If the assignment is properly sized: no more than an hour. Then the candidate doing it at home using their system and their tools gives you a more accurate picture of their actual capabilities than a whiteboard or doing it on your hardware in an unfamiliar setting with a stranger giving every appearance of critiquing your work. This is an interview after all. The power balance whether intended or not i…

> Then the candidate doing it at home using their system and their tools gives you a more accurate picture of their actual capabilities than a whiteboard or doing it on your hardware in an unfamiliar setting with a stranger giving every appearance of critiquing your work.

Or, they don't even do the task, but pay someone else to do it for them, so eventually all these take-home tests just go to the same set of expert test-takers who already solved all these tasks. Very efficient, and also worse than useless as a screening tool: the dishonest candidates most willing to cheat will score the highest.

> If a candidate chooses to burn a whole week working on it that can be safely left up to them I think. But a take home test is not unfair because they decided to burn that much time on it.

Of course it is. Worse: it creates adverse selection, from the interviewer perspective.

Top candidates who are looking for their next job while working a demanding full time job will not be able to dedicate more a minimum of time to each of the many take-home tests they are asked to do.

Meanwhile, desperate poor candidates will dedicate x10+ the time (or simply cheat) to pass.

So as an interviewer, you'll end up passing the random desperate candidate who somehow got through your earlier screening, and any good candidate with multiple other options and commitments will submit work that looks far inferior.

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#34

Post by andreyk »

zaphar wrote: post #21
twawaaay wrote: post #5

As an interviewer, I believe take home tasks are unfair and also poor return on investment. Take home tasks incentivise candidates to burn as much time as possible on the task. Consequently, they are a test of who is willing to put a week of work even when the instructions say it should not take more than 3 hours to complete. I prefer pair programming with the candidate on the premise that if I ask you to spend 2 hou…

Counter-Point. If the assignment is properly sized: no more than an hour. Then the candidate doing it at home using their system and their tools gives you a more accurate picture of their actual capabilities than a whiteboard or doing it on your hardware in an unfamiliar setting with a stranger giving every appearance of critiquing your work. This is an interview after all. The power balance whether intended or not i…

I like this concept - have a one time download link, and a timer to submit solution within an hour or two. Seems like a good balance of fair and realistic (assuming you can't Google for solutions and all).

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#35

Post by lost953 »

ryandrake wrote: post #11
noisenotsignal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this certainly sounds like reasonable criteria for rating a take home, does this truly account for general candidate reluctance to do take homes due to the time commitment? Even 2-4 hours is more time than conventional Leetcode-style initial assessments, and many may rather use that time to interview with 2-4 companies instead of just one. I recently interviewed with Ramp and enjoyed their model of practical pr…

If you are interviewing for 10-20 jobs in a particular week, a 2-4 hour take home test is a full time job 40 hours worth of work. I would accept a 2-4 hour time commitment but only much later in the interview process, when much of the interviewing was done and the list was whittled down to 2-3 serious companies.

Seriously, if a company wants me to spend more than an hour of my time on something for them, they better be including a check as well.

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#36

Post by 1123581321 »

twawaaay wrote: post #5

As an interviewer, I believe take home tasks are unfair and also poor return on investment. Take home tasks incentivise candidates to burn as much time as possible on the task. Consequently, they are a test of who is willing to put a week of work even when the instructions say it should not take more than 3 hours to complete. I prefer pair programming with the candidate on the premise that if I ask you to spend 2 hou…

A two hour pairing session is hard on people who need to fit their interviewing time into odd hours. It’s also stressful, because it’s so much more consequential than a session of real work with two peers. Not to say you shouldn’t do it—just keep in mind it also has trade-offs. And I soundly agree with the positives you list, especially that it forces the interviewer to commit time like the interviewee.

I did a one hour take-home for my current job. I could see someone taking 2-3 hours on it if they were really rusty, and I think that is a good thing because rusty developers can be very good once back up to speed in a language or domain. Live programming wouldn’t give them a chance.

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#37

Post by CPLNTN »

noisenotsignal wrote: post #6
alexyang21 wrote: post #2

Studies [1] show that a work sample test is the best predictor of candidate performance on the job, which is why many software engineering teams use take-home tests as one step in their hiring process. But designing an effective test is difficult and time-consuming. For example, candidates are reluctant to complete tests that are too long or not engaging enough. But make them too short and teams won’t get the signal…

While this certainly sounds like reasonable criteria for rating a take home, does this truly account for general candidate reluctance to do take homes due to the time commitment? Even 2-4 hours is more time than conventional Leetcode-style initial assessments, and many may rather use that time to interview with 2-4 companies instead of just one. I recently interviewed with Ramp and enjoyed their model of practical pr…

The test might be longer, but I don’t have to spend time studying and practicing something I’ll never use on the job. I use the same knowledge I build up while working

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#38

Post by lenzm »

kevmo314 wrote: post #17
stephenhogsten wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are great points. How do you feel about take-homes that have an enforced cap at 60-120 minutes to try to remove the competition on time investment? Do you learn more than it's possible to learn asynchronously? Most take-homes only have candidates write code, but it's possible to understand a candidate more deeply by asking questions about, for example, how they approached the decisions they made.

How would such a cap be enforced? If it's due 120 minutes from the time it's given, it's no longer a take home interview, it's a remote interview.

I have used https://takehome.io/. The timer starts when they check out the repo containing the project and instructions.

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#39

Post by bogomipz »

endisneigh wrote: post #12

I actually don’t mind take home tests, but I want the company to also burn resources as to disincentivize ghosting. Problem with take homes is that you can spend hours and then they can spend seconds or minutes reviewing. At least with traditional interviews the time spent is equal for both parties.

Agreed. That's been exactly my experience on the few I did before I refused to them. The onus is all on you and your only interface is basically a flakey recruiter. There's no guarantee that any will every look at your submission.

Re: We compiled a library of realistic engineering take-home tests and ranked them

#40

Post by rsstack »

It's my turn today to complain about website building instead of content:

When macOS developers write in CSS "overflow: scroll;" they get the same behavior as they do with "overflow: auto;", but they don't realize that viewers on Linux and Windows now see ugly default operating scrollbar at all times, especially ugly when the dropdowns aren't supposed to have horizontal scrolling.

Test web software on two browser and two operating systems :)

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