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0 pointsdudul7y ago0 comments

It is both true and false. Yes, the candidate may spend 1 hour (I don't give difficult homework exercises) while it takes me 15 to 20 minutes to review the submission, but I have to do it for maybe 5 candidates.

I totally understand the main criticism for homework, it takes time, the company may never call you back after you poured 2 hours into their stupid exercise. But it is an attempt at fixing all other alternatives: * the onsite whiteboarding is BS * using open source contribution is totally unfair to candidates who don't participate * the "contract for 1 month and then maybe we'll hire you" is also total BS in my book. Who would leave a FT job with benefits for a contract that may end?

I'm not sure I can think of any alternative that has 0 drawbacks.

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RomanPushkin7y ago

> the candidate may spend 1 hour

> after you poured 2 hours

and at the end it turns out to be 5-10 hours. Companies say "you should be able to finish it in 1-2 hours", but it's almost never true.

I think alternative is to have 1 hour coding session on a good problem. Most problems are complicated, but there could be something else. I was once asked by Uber to implement timer in JavaScript that will update DOM, also create APIs to stop/start/pause. This kind of a challenge doesn't involve any algorithm, but it shows your ability to code.

It should be enough to bring you onsite.

But I open source should work. If you contributed to Linux Kernel and it was accepted - onsite no questions asked. If you have github repo of 1000+ stars - onsite no questions asked. If you have already passed Google tech screen and was invited onsite - invite onsite no questions asked.

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