R0r0m4n0·Jan 19, 2018
I think these take home assignments can cause undue resentment toward a company mostly because how the interviewers handle the process.
I interviewed with Algolia as a solutions engineer. Initial phone screening, followed by a pair programming session, followed by a take home assignment. I spent a good 4 hours on the take home assignment and as those hours passed I began to get more frustrated in the amount of time I was investing in an opportunity I still wasn’t sure about. They were still mostly faceless people and the team still a mystery. They poked holes over Skype in some of the ways I implemented their requirements. Never got an offer and I’ll never forget that time I wasted. Looks like their questions are still up...
First this:
https://github.com/algolia/solutions-hiring-assignment/blob/...
Then this:
https://github.com/algolia
Read the rest
/solutions-hiring-assignment/blob/...
Part of the time sink was learning their product which I had no experience with. The second was deciding which of their js libraries to use (I picked the wrong one first so that wasted a good hour). One hour learning/setting up Algolia, loading data, etc. One hour writing meticulous html/css. 30 min writing js for the wrong Algolia library. 30 min writing js for the correct library. One hour answering the final written questions.
I interviewed with another company (Clara Lending) that actually had a very similar process but we reviewed the take home assignment during the onsite interview. I think I respect that company a lot (even though I didn’t get an offer from them either) because they gave me the reciprocal time in person.