How common is this for mid senior level hiring?
Posted by mridulgain@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 172 comments
How common is this for product based companies to have extensive assessments as part of hiring process in mid senior roles (5-10 Yoe)? Is it even doable in 1-2 days? How do you even approach it in such sort time?
https://simplismart.notion.site/Backend-Engineering-Assignment-af3b93a1f3df454f87042bbd7cb1a537
Another company in their "machine coding" round wanted me to create a Mutual Fund Broker Web Application. Asked to submit git repo hosting the application code, clear documentation for setting up and running the applications, initial database migration scripts for creating tables necessary to run application, e2e tests covering the endpoints and also extra points for providing a postman collection covering the success & failure responses. š
Makes me wonder if people are really doing it!!
Redditface_Killah@reddit
That is completely insane.
Spider_pig448@reddit
ehh is it? Seems like a couple of REST endpoints and a couple SQL tables? And a fairly simple algorithm to implement? ChatGPT could probably deliver most of this pretty quickly
alexxzan@reddit
My guyā¦what are you on about? Did you read the requirements?
Spider_pig448@reddit
Yeah. Go through a "getting started" guide in whatever auth library you want for basic auth. A "clusters" SQL table and a "Deployments" SQL table with CRUD. A queue for new deployments and a 5-10 line for-loop for scheduling them. Unit tests and a UML diagram. This should be 2-4 hours for a Senior Backend engineer
PMThisLesboUrBoobies@reddit
i agree with you tbh, this is totally doable in an afternoon. iām often one to back out of hiring when i get assigned homework on the principle of it, but if i actively wanted the job then this is a super reasonable scope for an interview project at that level
Spider_pig448@reddit
I'm quite concerned about some of the developers in this thread. Particularly the one that said this would take them 50 days.
PMThisLesboUrBoobies@reddit
i think thereās probably differing expectations, maybe due to experience gap between commenters
Spider_pig448@reddit
Sure but the posting said it was for a senior engineer. If a junior engineer was tasked to do this, then I think that would be too much
Due-Storage-9039@reddit
I would never do this for free, but if they needed a messy version this is definitely doable in an afternoon for pay. If they want something Iād trust in production for concurrency and it was a serious product I would need a few weeks. I think you two above are probably AI coders and donāt understand the planning and development that would actually need to go into this to make it acceptable to turn into a customer, but youāre not wrong about it being technically feasible in an afternoon.
PMThisLesboUrBoobies@reddit
iāve never been on either end of a hiring situation where the expectation from a problem like this is for the submission to be production ready and flawless, itās a demonstration of understanding. youāre right, this isnāt an afternoon project for pay, but itās absolutely an afternoon project for an interview panel
TheRealGucciGang@reddit
2-4 hours lmao
RandyHoward@reddit
Yep, I would tell them that I'm withdrawing my application, or simply ghost them, after receiving an assessment like this.
new2bay@reddit
Yeah, as soon I saw that link, I'd be like "yeah, ok, guys, I'm just gonna save you 2 days here and peace out."
zninjamonkey@reddit
Says withdraw to let them know
j-random@reddit
Yeah, you don't even owe them that much
okaquauseless@reddit
I would ghost them. If someone asked me for $1million, I would ghost them with the same level of intensity. 2 hours is already a lot to dedicate to a company's hiring process vs the standard 5 hrs maybe 1 or 2 weeks we have now, and then this is a fucking metric ton
DigmonsDrill@reddit
Put
in the git repo and walk away.
meisteronimo@reddit
What does it do?
sol_in_vic_tus@reddit
It's a fork bomb. It eats up processing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb
addandsubtract@reddit
It sudo makes them a sandwich.
photoshoptho@reddit
besides the 2 day turnaround, the position is for a senior backend engineer. https://simplismart.notion.site/Senior-Backend-Engineer-JD-13e59c26dcb14d0988213b64d959f703
and looking into the company, they seem to be the real deal in terms of what they offer to their clients. so it seems like they do want someone that is very talented in the field, and not just fishing for free code like others have suspected.
ItsAllInYourHead@reddit
That is ridiculous for this set of features no matter how you slice it. And then they have the audacity to put this on the job description:
Very far from the "real deal", if you ask me.
Tablessvim@reddit
it's a witch type company run by tradees
Tablessvim@reddit
wrong, look at the footer
Redditface_Killah@reddit
Yikes. Do you work for them?
GammaGargoyle@reddit
I personally like these types of interview assignments, but this one is 100% fishing for code they can steal and the company should be named and shamed.
photoshoptho@reddit
the company's name is in the url sir
Redditface_Killah@reddit
Yeah, agreed. This is a solid day of work - or two. They are trying to get an MVP for their next product.
hell_razer18@reddit
I mean I get it, say this is PoC but my PoC doesnt have a test. Probably has a bug and the purpose is to demo. Every single take home test should clarify what is the purpose of the creation. Every product has purpose not just "here do it and take it". No one wanta to do it, not even your cto wanted to do it.
ExperiencedDevs-ModTeam@reddit
Rule 6: No āI hate X types of interviews" Posts
This has been re-hashed over and over again. There is no interesting/new content coming out.
It might be OK to talk about the merits of an interview process, or compare what has been successful at your company, but if it ends up just turning into complaints your post might still be removed.
Organic_Basket6121@reddit
Ask if they'll pay you for it
biosc1@reddit
>> Another company in their "machine coding" round wanted me to create a Mutual Fund Broker Web Application
These folks are just getting you to do work for free.
Walk away when someone asks that.
quentech@reddit
Oh really? Who's going to use a "Mutual Fund Broker Web Application" in production that was slapped together in a couple/few days by an interviewee?
Absolutely no one.
There are some rare tales where the test problem might conceivably be used in a company's actual work.
For the vast majority of these tests - including this one - suggesting the company is trying to get free work from it is absolute hogwash nonsense.
Outrageous_Quail_453@reddit
This!!
The amount of energy I've spent on dev reddits arguing that no, they're not hArVesTinG fReE lAbOuR!!
I could literally feed these reqs into Claude and get a mostly working version of something. In this example they're actually being more clear about what they're looking for than other coding tests I've seen (e.g specifying unit tests when you can guarantee they're universally wanted, even if just a boilerplate thought).
If you're unwilling to do the test (or can't be pragmatic about a suitable approach to take for an interview) then just pull out!
Yakb0@reddit
Imagine a company who sells a very powerful trading engine.
They don't even write any APIs for this product, they just give their clients a bunch of .jar files and send them on their way. This "Mutual Fund Broker Web Application" is going to be a proof of concept/learning tool in the companies foray into front end development.
pheonixblade9@reddit
probably higher quality than what a team of contractors at a WITCH company would produce in a month, lol
hilberteffect@reddit
It doesn't have to be production-ready out of the box to be useful.
Have you ever worked at an extremely early-stage (i.e. seed or even pre-seed) startup where you can count engineering resources on one hand and your runway is measured in months? Having a candidate set up the boilerplate, architecture, basic functionality, and testing framework for a product/service can easily save dev-weeks of development time.
Skilled candidates who take pride in their work aren't just going to slap something together. If I were to build an app like the one OP described, it would be usable after some straightforward refactoring/hardening.
Have you ever been part of a hiring/interview panel? You would be surprised lol. And if this was true, then why would it be part of the interview process? What signal is the team getting from an assessment "anyone" can do?
SituationSoap@reddit
If a rando dev off the street can do the useful setup work for you in a couple hours then it is, by definition, not saving you developer-weeks of work. Unless your developers are unbelievably bad.
AVTOCRAT@reddit
Well, a few points:
All that together and you have possibly dozens of engineers working at full speed for 20+ hours on this. I think it's fair to say that could save a week, perhaps even two (!) of actual engineer time, which for a small startup (big companies would have a harder time getting away with this) could honestly be worth it.
I do think that most of the time people decry take-home coding as "working for free" they're wrong, but I don't think the premise is inherently unreasonable.
aMonkeyRidingABadger@reddit
Each one is doing the exact same task independently. The fact that you might get a bunch of people to work on it is irrelevant. It's still just one dev doing maybe 20 hours of work.
In the time you spend drafting the exercise and reviewing the work, you could just do it yourself.
forbiddenknowledg3@reddit
Exactly. Start ups steal heaps of shit from Github.
Another example. Instead of interview/sending these assessments, they search GH for people that already did them for another company and straight up send offers. Saves a lot on hiring.
rapidjingle@reddit
I think by anyone they meant any corp or sufficiently talented dev could put together the beginnings of a system in a few days, so there wouldnāt be a moat.
EkoChamberKryptonite@reddit
šš¾
pheonixblade9@reddit
lol, I plugged it into Claude for fun.
pheonixblade9@reddit
I'll help you implement this MLOps platform hypervisor service. Let's break this down into manageable pieces and create a solution using FastAPI for the backend and PostgreSQL for the database.
Let me explain the key components and design decisions:
Deployment model with priority and dependency support
Authentication:
Token verification middleware
Scheduling Algorithm:
Maximizes successful deployments by processing highest priority first
API Design:
Proper separation of concerns (routes, services, models)
Key Features:
To set up and run the service:
Set up PostgreSQL database and update connection string in config.py
Run the service:
Would you like me to: 1. Add more implementation details for specific endpoints? 2. Create unit tests for any component? 3. Add the UML diagram for the database structure? 4. Implement additional features like Docker containerization?
ValentineBlacker@reddit
bash pip install
? That makes my shell try and run pip like it's a bash script.pheonixblade9@reddit
I mean, I didn't even read what it output. This question is insane.
ValentineBlacker@reddit
It just really stuck out, I don't know Python really but I knew that bit was wrong.
My primary language has a boilerplate generator that would do like 50% of this prompt but even then I don't think I could do it in 2 days, with all those little details. I don't mind take-homes on principle but when they start timing you I'm out.
BroBroMate@reddit
Not too bad, Claude should use
StrEnum
though.paynoattn@reddit
Hot take - do the assignment, then when you donāt get the job (these assignments never lead to offers) - sue them for violating the Fair Labor and Standards Act.
karl-tanner@reddit
They are trying to get you to do free labor
Competitive_Handle83@reddit
I wouldnāt even consider doing it! Are they going to pay you for those 2 days?Ā
Sheldor5@reddit
can you do it in 2 days? I mean yeah 48hrs if you want ...
Competitive_Handle83@reddit
I don't think I would be able to do it at all... xD
new2bay@reddit
At this point, I wouldn't know where to begin on the "hypervisor service." The full stack site, I could do that given enough time, but the time commitment would just be way too much for me to justify, unless the pay was really, really good, or something.
edgmnt_net@reddit
Given the setting and the timeframe it's also a rather unrealistic test. Most reasonable jobs don't really need someone to cobble up an entire thing from ground up in a short time, they need people capable of extending and maintaining an existing system. Sure, this proves some ability, but it's biased in the wrong direction.
Clean_Plantain_7403@reddit
WTFā¦ if someone does that for 2 days he deserves an award. Even for 2x8hours I donāt see it possible. including tests and all that is ridiculousā¦
Potato-Engineer@reddit
The only way I'd even get close is to make the entire "work" part of the platform just a UI demo. No Docker images, no actual functionality, just plugging toy values into a DB. (Yes, of course your image's RAM is measured in YB!)
Lerke@reddit
To be fair, that's fairly close to what the requirements actually want the candidate to create. A UI is not asked for.
Just create an extra column (Deployed True/False) in your database, and have a process that schedules (i.e. sets this flag) resources when possible.
DigmonsDrill@reddit
wE wAnT pEoPlE wHo ArE pAsSiOnAtE
ub3rh4x0rz@reddit
I asked my landlord if I could pay rent in passion, and he informed me that's illegal, so now I exclusively work for money.
zombie_girraffe@reddit
I am extremely passionate about getting paid for my work.
Sheldor5@reddit
2 days = 48 hours I think its doable
/s
zombie_girraffe@reddit
You're really limiting yourself by using earth days as the unit of measurement, witch to Venusian days and you'll have a lot more time.
yoharnu@reddit
11,664 hours (2 days on Venus) for those who don't want to look it up.
Clean_Plantain_7403@reddit
Oh yeah I forgot that formula šš
IMovedYourCheese@reddit
I'm going to beĀ that guyĀ and say that the assignment in #1 is actually doable in a couple of days if you take a bunch of short-cuts.
So what you need to do is:
Again, pretty tough to do just in two days, but not outside the realm of possibility.
I'd 100% prefer an interview like this over grinding Leetcode hard for 2 months.
Lerke@reddit
Agreed, not taking into account the bonus points, this reads like a CRUD app with some asynchronous process acting on the data model. I wouldn't even call not creating a UI or I/O with a compute platform a shortcut, as it's explicitly not part of the requirements.
Assuming this is an assignment for a more senior engineering role, I would absolutely expect a candidate for such a position to be able to deliver something that works in the provided time frame.
dablya@reddit
For bullet one id even bet you can use some crap from flask or Django to manage users. The rest is reading up on/implementing bin packing with priority. Itās really not that bad oaf an askā¦ Still, expecting somebody to out on hours of work without pay isā¦ sus.
hkf57@reddit
yeah I'm outta here.
BroBroMate@reddit
Wtf is that lol. "Please build K8s in Python in 2 days".
Haha, actually, just send them Python code that runs minikube via
subprocess
.crusoe@reddit
Nah they want free work.
"Sure. Here is my consulting rate. $150/hr."
Spider_pig448@reddit
"free work"? Most of this is just following "getting-started" guides for a couple of libraries
AustinScript@reddit
I don't agree with the free work part but it is still a tall task to complete in two days. I think they started with an OK idea and then added to many features. There is no way what you created would be "useable" work
If they dropped
Maybe it would be a little more reasonable?
Spider_pig448@reddit
Take-home exams aren't supposed to be "useable" work. They're hackathon level work
Organization management most likely comes free with whatever auth library they use.
"Track" to me here means "Have a GET endpoint for". Nothing more. That's a join between the Clusters table and the Deployments table
The request to use Redis or Rabbitmq is probably the most annoying part of the test, but it's easy enough to just through a Deployment in redis and have a loop looking at it.
There's really no complexity here. Fetch the current cluster + Deployments, then iterate through each top-priority Deployment in queue and match it if a cluster has capacity. Then repeat for lower deployments. 5-10 lines, one or two for loops.
It's honestly a decent test that does a basic evaluation of skills any backend dev should have. I think it will still deter all but the most desperate candidates, but I think most take-home tests do that.
AustinScript@reddit
Yes, that was my point. The other commenter said it was āfree workā
Spider_pig448@reddit
Regardless, it should be doable in 2-4 hours. Reasonable for a senior engineer position
Xanchush@reddit
Should bump it to $500-700/hr for consultation. You're an architect now.
GammaGargoyle@reddit
More like Iāll build it and license it to you per developer seat.
FoxyWheels@reddit
$300 /hr. At least match what companies bill you out at (not that we ever see that amount on our paycheque).
PanicV2@reddit
Coming from an "Easiest ML training and Deployment" startup, based in India...
I'm sure they are hiring for THOUSANDS of these senior roles! Certainly not just gathering data.
Indian companies are well known for paying top dollar for engineering talent!
limpleaf@reddit
They are trying to see if someone bootstraps their MVP for free. There is a chance there is no real job on the other side. They could just be looking for people who will eork for free.
DarkMimicry@reddit
Can only speculate on their true intentions, but this seems aggressive. They may want to see how far you can get in order to find where to place you on the pay scale.
horserino@reddit
My first reaction was as most others: "that is utter bullshit".
Then I read this part:
If you just stub/model out the actual deployment, provision and running of stuff, and just emulate fake resources then it doesn't seem all that far fetched any more. I dunno if it is intentional but the problem's description is kinda misleading?
Like maybe they just want some basic rest api backend that manages a queue to do some fake stuff without actually implementing the real work (deployment, provisioning, monitor, etc).
Still, I'd refuse to do it. Screw these kinds of assignments.
Fluid_Frosting_8950@reddit
What the hell? I would estimate that at 50 days minimum.
So is trying to get an app developed for free
wvenable@reddit
50 days is way overkill. I mean 50 days would make sense for a literal production-ready version of this but not as an assignment. From the assignment: "Focus on the management and scheduling logic, not the actual provisioning and deployment of resources."
But still, 2 days is way too short.
SituationSoap@reddit
I think you're probably over-thinking this somewhat. 2 days (as in, do this in a weekend) is probably going to be something of a crunch, but I don't see anything here suggesting that you need to do stuff like re-implement authentication methods yourself.
But they're not asking for the kind of engineering requirement that would take a single developer 7 weeks for this. That's a wild over-estimation.
EkoChamberKryptonite@reddit
Over-estimation? Perhaps. Wild? No. You're assuming this can be implemented smoothly with no hiccups.
SituationSoap@reddit
If you qualify for this subreddit and you go closely read those requirements and you don't think you could deliver something that meets the requirements in a week of full-time work you're at a point where you need to have a serious think about whether this is the right career for you.
Allocating 7 weeks for what is actually in those requirements is such a wild over-estimation that I would assume the person in question is working 3 other jobs at the same time.
Spider_pig448@reddit
50 days for a couple of REST APIs and SQL tables? Where do you work?
adgjl12@reddit
Lol 2 days? I doubt a full time engineer on their team would finish this in 2 days at an acceptable quality
pacman2081@reddit
Is this company Indian based company ?
krolyat@reddit
I would not do this. I wouldnāt even think about using this as part of an interview process.
You can find somewhere better
RaziWu@reddit
Theyāre even asking for Documentation and Diagram in Deliverables! Iāve personally never seen this req on a OA
Strange_Space_7458@reddit
No. Heck that nonsense. Move on.
Trick-Interaction396@reddit
I would do itā¦then send them a bill
Cahnis@reddit
Americans are incredibly biased on what they consider common, be warned. The true answer is it really depends where the company is located.
vervaincc@reddit
Your post history makes it seem like you're very new to this field, if you even work in it at all.
In other words, your opinion is irrelevant.
zombie_girraffe@reddit
s/american/professional/g
No one with experience and self respect is doing that much free work that unless they're in a desperate situation.
RandyHoward@reddit
Bullshit. This amount of work is insane for anybody to complete in 2 days, doesn't matter one bit where the company or the developer is from.
Cahnis@reddit
I am not commenting on this specific assignment, o havent even read it
RandyHoward@reddit
Oh so you just decided to talk shit about Americans for no reason at all? Get bent.
_nobody_else_@reddit
Doable by half of task 3. Then in goes bonkers.
vervaincc@reddit
Beyond the scope of the work, I'd pass on this just for the tight deadline.
KarlJay001@reddit
I was asked to create a "connect four" game in 2 hours. I made the game work in Objective-C, but without a UI. I didn't draw anything, it was just the game logic. It worked. I didn't know the rules for connect four, had to read up on it.
The interview process didn't go past that. It was for iOS back in the early days of iOS.
I reasoned that I didn't spend much time making graphical type interfaces, and only made one game in my life. Everything was databases and fetching data from the web and displaying it.
It wasn't a game company and I wasn't looking to be a game dev, so I just focused on knowing ObjC well enough to do the logic. It was a two hour test, so I thought just getting the logic right was good enough.
I guess if you do the same things over and over again, that would be a reasonable test, but IRL, most of the work is debugging a code base.
Foreign_Clue9403@reddit
Side note: as a side project this seems pretty cool actually if it werenāt for the idiotic deadline.
But then it wants a UML diagram. Nah, fuck off. You can generate a proper UML from most DB tooling. Youāll get loose boxes and arrows as long as my idea makes sense.
Tablessvim@reddit
it's Indian sweatshop paying ten k usd per year
Foreign_Clue9403@reddit
Cognizant is gonna make a killing off them in a few years lol
turningsteel@reddit
I only do coding assignments when they have created a skeleton of something and then plant you to fix a small bug or add a minimal feature. Iām not building a whole app, thatās ridiculous.
If it takes more than 1-2 hours, itās not worth it unless they pay you for your trouble.
surferguy999@reddit
IMO way too much scope for 2 days, a week would be more realistic.
The implementation is trivial:
* You have 3 global variables: RAM, CPU, GPU
* Use basic locking to handle concurrency
* Whenever a request comes in, subtract from those variables
* Executing can be as simple as spinning off a process `ssh remote-server "docker run.."`
* Execution could also be simulated
* Prioritize requests with higher priority
tgiyb1@reddit
The assignment doesn't even expect any actual provisioning or deployment as stated in the implementation guidelines section. Tbh, this really doesn't seem that unreasonable for a 2 day assignment if all they're looking for is user authentication, a database, and a barebones queuing system.
Sacred-Player@reddit
What is the comp for this position? I bet it's under 100k.
So I'm a senior engineer, and I can probably do this assignment well in about one week of full time work.
But I don't have a week to devote to just one coding assignment, when other companies are willing to talk to me directly.
Tablessvim@reddit
it's an Indian sweatshop offering 10K usd per year
Tablessvim@reddit
just paste this cursur
thrown_copper@reddit
That's a whole lot of requirements, and is literally to construct the whole backend.
I'll admit that I'm mid code screen that is taking significantly more than their estimated four hours (leading to its share of insecurities...), though the problem space is meaty and the simplification is {a, b} = f(p[0:6]).
That's definitely a fishy assignment.
I keep saying, the interview process nominally sets the tone for the rest of the company. If the interview is a stupid-fast lift of a whole service ... I wouldn't want to work somewhere that expected that the engineers could do that kind of effort, on demand, in 48 hours. Sounds like the kind of place where they give salary and take nights and weekends.
Run.
Dubsteprhino@reddit
It's always double, everytine I break my no take home rule I regret it
thrown_copper@reddit
I'll break my no-take-home rule if I'm genuinely excited about the opportunity, which I am in this case... or if it has a reasonable time limit. Much past two hours on a timer for a contrived or pair-programmed task, and it's a no-go.
If it weren't a senior role making tools that I wanted to do for KSP, except for competitive wages to control a very real satellite constellation, I'd've walked.
thingscouldbeworse@reddit
I'll still rather take the home hours instead of sweating through some leetcode bullshit while someone judges you.
Dubsteprhino@reddit
I'd rather have them decide they think I'm stupid in a half hour than in the next call post 8 hour project
SituationSoap@reddit
Here's the secret, Cap: any time there isn't a hard time limit on something, the estimated time they put on these job applications is literally absolute bullshit and completely made up. It bears absolutely no correlation to reality.
Eh, I think this is probably trying to parse for too much signal. A lot of companies are just absolute shit at designing hiring processes but would otherwise be totally normal to work for.
thrown_copper@reddit
> [T]he estimated time they put on these job applications is literally absolute bullshit and completely made up. It bears absolutely no correlation to reality.
It would've helped if I'd remembered an `fmod(radian_val, 2*pi)`. That would've shaved an hour off the effort. I can see the effort being four hours given a priori knowledge of domain-specific solver libraries ... which excludes basically everyone who hasn't been in that specific sub-industry for some time.
> trying to parse for too much signal
Maybe, but it correlates with my experiences. Two shops had minimal tech screen and had very arbitrary levels of day-to-day software development practices. One shop had mid-grade screen (whiteboard, class design to do a thing), and the actual work was a mix of legacy code and real math. The shops with low bars generally didn't have many people who I'd call technically inspiring. Those with higher bars, had some mentor-grade colleagues.
IMovedYourCheese@reddit
I'm going to be that guy and say that the assignment in #1 is actually doable in a couple of days if you take a bunch of short-cuts.
So what you need to do is:
Again, pretty tough to do just in two days, but not outside the realm of possibility.
DeterminedQuokka@reddit
Umā¦ I stopped reading after it said you have to implement authentication. I wouldnāt do that itās too hard, and you should be outsourcing it anyway so knowing how to do it is unhelpful at best.
IMovedYourCheese@reddit
Send them a link to the Kubernetes repo. Because that's what they are asking for.
maybe_madison@reddit
From a position of having a job and not needing a new one, my rule is that any company I interview at needs to put in about equal effort as I put in, since the interview goes both ways.
So:
chicknfly@reddit
I didnāt even make it to the first numbered item. Theyāre making you do their work and likely not paying you for it.
ExpensiveOrder349@reddit
Tell them to fuck off.
wencrash@reddit
Name and shame
Foreign_Clue9403@reddit
Iāve done full stack projects as part of assessments. By the third time I started to realize I wasnāt learning anything from this other than what kind of deadlines they wanted. I donāt do them anymore. My work product will be smaller in 2 days because I will write tests, a set of gh checks and a README on each commit. Businesses donāt value that type of professionalism if they want something in the market yesterday. And thatās fine.
-ry-an@reddit
Lol some smells š
Matyria0@reddit
Utterly bonkers. Reads like itās a response from an LLM. Also deadline 2 days from when you get the spec? If you have a job itās even more impossible.
Xanchush@reddit
Give them a quote for hiring your services for this interview. Also make sure you take a deposit and write out a contract before continuing with your "interview".
zippysausage@reddit
I'd submit it as psuedo code and bring my explanations with me to interview.
If it transpires they literally wanted all that in two days, they've rather helpfully selected me out of their distopian nightmare employment.
charlesbaby88@reddit
Iāve got 15 yoe, and even so I think the most obvious way to pass this test is either to start with plagiarism (copy/paste and/or LLM) or boilerplate tools that generate your scaffolding using traditional heuristic methods. From there you customize the unique business logic using your personal style. If that sounds bad to you, you always have the option of saying āthat sounds like too short of a delivery timeā and see what they say. Maybe they want that? Idk. Either way, I would bail if I had the option. My gut says these are places that would play a lot of mind games with their deva
halos1518@reddit
If you're applying for new roles while also working your current job, how the hell are you meant to find the time for this?
Comprehensive-Pin667@reddit
I'd be really uncomfortable planning this for one sprint only. Two days? Impossible
Kindly_Climate4567@reddit
I was reading the requirements and I was already balking at the amount of people I would have to talk to to clarify then.
ffledgling@reddit
> Another company in their "machine coding" round wanted me to create a Mutual Fund Broker Web Application. Asked to submit git repo hosting the application code, clear documentation for setting up and running the applications, initial database migration scripts for creating tables necessary to run application, e2e tests covering the endpoints and also extra points for providing a postman collection covering the success & failure responses. š
This is someone looking for a free MVP, ignore this.
idgaflolol@reddit
Totally insane.
crusoe@reddit
They're based in India. So not surprising.
bartread@reddit
Um, no, that's insane, and you can for sure find a job at a company that won't ask you to do this.
I have used (much more modest) assessments in the past when hiring for roles where we were getting hundreds of applicants per month but, reality check, unless you're a FAANG or OpenAI or some equally rockstar company (maybe Notion are? I'm not sure), people probably likely aren't queuing up to work for you. As a result I came to the conclusion that the correct hiring approach was to make the selection process as non-onerous as possible for candidates whilst still being rigorous enough to tell me what I needed about the suitability of individuals for the roles on offer. Hence, no assessment, and the initial tech screen is done by a human being (often me, depending on where I've been working).
Assessments are something you use if you're absolutely swamped with applicants and can afford to be ultra-choosy. Maybe Notion can afford to be that choosy, but I think with this they're being a bit uppity for a company whose product is a slightly fancified note-taking/todo app.
it_happened_lol@reddit
I think this would be pretty reasonable for someone with 10 yoe, especially since you don't need to provision any actual infrastructure. 2 days is really pushing it and inconsiderate for those who have full time jobs and families though.
The second interview take home you mentioned is about as easy as it gets, most popular frameworks will scaffold all of that out of the box.
carne__asada@reddit
The actual test is that you know how to push back against users asking for ridiculous requirements š
hilberteffect@reddit
You just have to say no to assessments like this, because only one of two things can be true:
I have a hard 3-hour limit on take-home assessments. If the hiring team doesn't have an alternative format (e.g. live coding), I simply drop out of the process. My time is too valuable to dick around with unprofessional interview loops.
duskhat@reddit
Wow I thought this meant ādesignā as in diagram and maybe a brief write up. Implementing this for an interview is just crazy
Spider_pig448@reddit
This should be 2-4 hours for a senior engineer IMO. People in here are vastly overestimating this
fried_green_baloney@reddit
If these hiring companies aren't trying to get free work, they are doing a passable imitation.
Mundane_Anybody2374@reddit
Fuck that. I aināt working for free.
Fancy-Nerve-8077@reddit
Theyād better tell me what the salary before I do this bullshit because if I complete this big ass task in 2 days and the pay sucks Iām going to be pissed
alexxzan@reddit
Absolutely ridiculous, thatās a lot of fucking work for free. Which company was it, so everyone can avoid it.
aholmes0@reddit
No one is doing this. The requirements read like the job description of my job, and the entire department of other senior engineers I work with.
NorthWing__@reddit
Do backend if they let you do there backend š¤
throwaway1736484@reddit
Fuck these things. The scope is always silly large for the prospective employee and often time consuming for an eng on the other side to actually review. Juniors and mids will submit PRs that are harder to review. Good seniors wonāt do the test.
EkoChamberKryptonite@reddit
They just want you to work for free.
duh-one@reddit
Honestly itās to gauge if youāre qualified beyond stupid leetcode type questions. We use to give interviews take home assessments and it was an extension of the interview problem they received. Itās not supposed to take two days, but perhaps it to give you time given everyone is busy
fogcat5@reddit
that's pretty crazy. If they have all this code being submitted for hiring, they will need a team of experienced developers just to read the code. Who would want that job? I bet they have nothing and it's some weird scam.
ProfBeaker@reddit
That is completely ridiculous. I'm pretty sure nobody is doing that, because when we were trying to screen with a much smaller problem, and we gave scaffolding that did 80% of that smaller problem, we still got a really low completion rate. No way people are doing something like what you posted.
Low_Examination_5114@reddit
This is obviously AI generated, this company just got cooked
marvlorian@reddit
These kind of requests are inherently inequitable as they favor demographics with an abundance of free time and low non-work responsibilities. Not the kind of interview thatās going to favor bringing diverse perspectives.
Hot_Slice@reddit
That's the point. You could get this done with 2 12-hour days of solid focus time. They want someone smart, desperate, with no life.
bmain1345@reddit
They want bro to complete a 60 point epic in 2 days lmfao
DangerousMoron8@reddit
I hope you see this. Do not participate, this is a scam, no company or real job would ask this. Likely it is some random trying to get their backend business idea built for free. They'll just steal your code and ghost you.
randonumero@reddit
Are you supposed to design it or implement it? Personally unless they were paying, I'd take a pass. Even if 2 days is enough, asking someone to skip 2 days of work to maybe get an interview is a stretch. On the second one, I'd consider it depending on what they wanted. There's tons of frameworks that make setting up what amounts to a basic crud app trivial. I do think it sounds vague for a take home though
TyberWhite@reddit
This is an absurd request, and I hope everyone starts turning these down.
BertRenolds@reddit
People are obviously not doing that.
RealSpritanium@reddit
They're just trying to get people to design their system for free lol. Reminds me of the "contests" on freelancer.com back when I did graphic design.
mcmaster-99@reddit
Someone just wants an MVP through āassessmentsā.
Clear as day.
Thiht@reddit
Yeah thatās insane. They should just ask for the scheduling algorithm if itās relevant to the job. And also explain better what they ask, do they provide a cluster for the purpose of the interview? What kind of cluster are they even talking about?
tmilewski@reddit
The actual job: pixel pushing a submit button
lastPixelDigital@reddit
2 days is pretty long. it should be a couple hours at most.
Thefolsom@reddit
That's a ton of work. Maybe if it was a complete project where you could plug in some of those features, but that would still be a lot.
sockless_bandit@reddit
When a recruiter sends me stupid requirements I reply Iām not interested.