alt Hacker NewsAs much as I dislike leetcode style interviews, if I fail one of those, I learn what I can and move on.
Failing a take-home is an entirely different thing. It's a huge loss in time and mental energy.
I've only done 3 of those in my career and only because the projects sounded interesting. 1 of those 3 resulted in a job offer which I can now confidently say in hindsight was the worst job in my career (...so far!).
I'm now leaning towards just filtering out companies that do take-homes because it signals to me that they don't care about their candidate's time and how a company treats its candidates is usually a good indicator of how they treat their employees.
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I feel the complete and total opposite. With leetcode-esque ones it's just a luck of the draw that you can conjure up the memory for whatever it is they're asking you to do. The decent ones are the ones that at least are somewhat realistic, but the truly terrible ones are those where you have to remember how to do an algo of some sort but you have no access to outside tools of any kind. I've never come out of a leetcode and felt like I learned anything or could've done something better, not to mention the artificially crafted high stress environment. I feel like they also literally never reflect anything even approaching the actual work, either, and basically test your memory more than anything else. There's a reason there's a billion books out there about how to "crack" the leetcode style interviews.
On the other hand, with takehomes I get to approach a project as if it were my own little hobby thing. I get to approach it in ways that are comfortable for me to work, with my music on, in my own editor, on my own setup, with no time pressure (or at least very light time pressure, just like during the actual job). I always use it as an opportunity to try out something new as well, so I'm also learning in the process even if I don't get the job. And in my experience even when rejected, I've always gotten detailed feedback for areas of improvement, which has never happened in leetcode interviews for me.
Agree. leetcode is the greatest thing that happened to tech interviews.
Get good at it and you can do hundreds of interviews with no prep.
Take homes are a proxy for hiring most desperate ppl who can spend most time on it.
I don't get it, every job I have interviewed for since 2013 has had a take home. A couple of them waived it in my case but otherwise they all had take homes. Where are these jobs where people don't get given take homes?
The problem is that the more we go in that direction, the more hiring in this industry rewards gamifying and grinding, and that bleeds into the profession as a whole. And at that point it’s just not worth working there
What if it's an appropriately scoped take-home assignment? 1-2 hours max. I would say that's fair and gives people with interview anxiety more of a chance.
I love take home and don't like leetcode, so I was thinking: choose a company based on how they interview, might help with culture fit?
I've had the complete opposite experience, and feel the complete opposite way. What is there to learn from failing a leetcode? It feels like luck of the draw - I didn't study that specific problem type and so failed. Also, there is an up front cost of several months to cover and study a wide array of leetcode problems.
With a take home I can demonstrate how I would perform at work. I can sit on it, think things over in my head, come up with an attack plan and execute it. I can demonstrate how I think about problems and my own value more clearly. Using a take home as a test is indicative to me that a company cares a bit more about its hiring pipeline and is being careful not to put candidates under arbitrary pressures.