Coding assignments for a new role

[Dagger]

My current client has a very hefty take home assignment. Thankfully I don't have to do them ?

[SussexSeagull]

don't ever let clients test you. They engage you during the interview and it's their time to test you however they see fit. Giving you a take-home test is lazy on their part, they tend to reject 50 of them before they hire someone. In reality after 50 rejections they stop testing anyway so this is where you come in and fill the role.
Don't fall for "it's not professional not to do test". It isn't professional to ask for them.

Don't get me wrong I used to be very good at solving those puzzles BUT never got a job as an outcome of one because:
A) Client didn't bother to look at the test
B) Client overshoot asking for them and by the time I finished they hired someone
C) Client rejected it giving false or bs reasons
D) I didn't spend a WEEK doing the test and got rejected because "You didn't complete the task"
E) I spent a WEEK doing 2h assignment and didn't get reply
F) Test was filled with traps and ambiguities that I stopped doing it mid through
G) Client had 50 other candidates and I just didn't win the 1:50 lottery
H) I got the job but chose other offer

it's always one of the above, never "you got the job buddy"

The only exception I make is SOMETIMES when client pays AMAZING rate

This. Only happened a couple of times but I have never got a contract following a test. Same with multiple interviews.

Without fail the best contracts I have had have been on the back of quick chats.

[hairymouse]

It was E for me, spent a weekend doing some task that was supposed to take an hour. Nobody could have done it better, never heard back from them. Learned my lesson.

[TheDude]

I spent an hour on a test last week only to discover the guy reviewing the code is not an expert in this particular programming language.

The code I produced is idiomatic yet would be hard to understand by anyone lacking an understanding of functional programming concepts.

I have not heard back and suspect the gatekeepers for the role don't want another piranha in the tank that would make them look incompetent.

[jmo21]

I've done a few.

One was part of the on-site interview, VM with a small codebase, fix a bug where the website crashes, implement a small feature, add dependency injection - I thought this worked really well, and I got the gig.

Here is one Greggs (yes, the luke warm sausage roll folk) use for interviews, which I enjoyed doing (I didn't get the gig in the end)
https://github.com/GreggsLloyd/Greggs.Products

[TheDude]

I've done a few.

Here is one Greggs (yes, the luke warm sausage roll folk) use for interviews, which I enjoyed doing (I didn't get the gig in the end)
https://github.com/GreggsLloyd/Greggs.Products

Why - did you add a calories field to the Product class?

[TheDude]

My current client has a very hefty take home assignment. Thankfully I don't have to do them ?

The worst assignment I saw was an app to crawl multiple remote stores of completely unstructured documents and process into structured data.

Note we are talking TB of data here and the solution had to be deployed on AWS (note they offered £200 towards costs)

[eek]

The worst assignment I saw was an app to crawl multiple remote stores of completely unstructured documents and process into structured data.

Note we are talking TB of data here and the solution had to be deployed on AWS (note they offered £200 towards costs)

Isn't that the entire business model / project within that one coding assignment.

[Gibbon]

Never had to take a test. Been close a few times, but I'd already been recommended to the client and they all declined that part of the interview. Usually though now days I get my own by contacting hiring managers.

[jmo21]

Why - did you add a calories field to the Product class?