I did this once. After a take home quiz that took about an hour, I had a 6-7 hour "homework" problem. I did it, and sent it in. It took the company a month to get back to me, though I did stay in contact with the recruiter. The final answer, delivered by the recruiter, was "we've decided not to more forward at this time." No other feedback. I have no idea if anyone even looked at it - I never did speak to a dev at the company.
This experience left me embarrassed, honestly. I don't think it reflects well on me that I put up with it even once.
At this point, I will participate in tech interviews, but I won't do any more take-home assignments. I suppose this could change under different circumstances.
Gayle Laakmann McDowell, who wrote "Cracking the Coding Interview", wrote an insightful post her blog about this. It's titled "Companies who give candidates homework assignments: knock it off!"
http://www.gayle.com/blog/2013/09/18/companies-who-give-cand...
She mentions something I see as a problem as well - these tests allow the company to burn a lot of a candidate's time, but not the other way around. I may have burned 6+ hours interviewing unsuccessfully at google, but they parted with 6+ hours of developer time as well (though I did spend a lot of additional hours reviewing algorithms and doing sample problems). This creates a natural set of checks and balances that don't exist with homework assignments.
She does have some good suggestions about how to use a take home if a company is determined to do it. To me, a particularly insightful one was to have a high (she says 90%+) passage rate.
I agree. If you're going to ask a candidate to spend a day on a homework assignment, you should be very close to an offer. If you're using it as an early filter, you are wasting a tremendous amount of developer time.
This experience left me embarrassed, honestly. I don't think it reflects well on me that I put up with it even once.
At this point, I will participate in tech interviews, but I won't do any more take-home assignments. I suppose this could change under different circumstances.
Gayle Laakmann McDowell, who wrote "Cracking the Coding Interview", wrote an insightful post her blog about this. It's titled "Companies who give candidates homework assignments: knock it off!"
http://www.gayle.com/blog/2013/09/18/companies-who-give-cand...
She mentions something I see as a problem as well - these tests allow the company to burn a lot of a candidate's time, but not the other way around. I may have burned 6+ hours interviewing unsuccessfully at google, but they parted with 6+ hours of developer time as well (though I did spend a lot of additional hours reviewing algorithms and doing sample problems). This creates a natural set of checks and balances that don't exist with homework assignments.
She does have some good suggestions about how to use a take home if a company is determined to do it. To me, a particularly insightful one was to have a high (she says 90%+) passage rate.
I agree. If you're going to ask a candidate to spend a day on a homework assignment, you should be very close to an offer. If you're using it as an early filter, you are wasting a tremendous amount of developer time.