Is this takehome assignment reasonable?
Posted by boogerlad@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 222 comments
If you ask me, I think that 3-5 days is insufficient to do this and it's unreasonable to spend more than a few hours on a takehome assignment, but I don't know if this is achievable with ai or not. Or maybe I'm just a mediocre dev?
You can render the diagrams with https://www.mermaidchart.com/play
Here's the assignment: https://pastebin.com/xEHdaTpV
metaphorm@reddit
not reasonable. that would take a full sprint for an already ramped up developer at the company. a take-home assessment should be completable in about 2 hours.
ddarrko@reddit
If you were to follow the brief literally it would take longer. Even for a couple of engineers
metaphorm@reddit
I was only accounting for the part that they considered necessary, this stuff
and relying quite heavily on the premise that stuff like "basic search and filtering functionality" would not have to be a custom from-scratch implementation, but just wiring up something like AWS Redshift.
so basically two weeks worth of infrastructure and glue code work, definitely non-trivial and grossly inappropriate for a take home assessment.
boogerlad@reddit (OP)
Isn't that at odds with
How were you envisioning to use Redshift with the above? Or were you thinking to use just Redshift?
metaphorm@reddit
I honestly didn't spend that much time thinking about it. Redshift would be the target database here, and maybe that does break their constraints. Fuck em.
boogerlad@reddit (OP)
Yeah I'm not going to do this. Purely as an exercise, do you think Opensearch itself could be used? It's part of the requirements. It really boggles me why there would be two data stores.
Suburbanturnip@reddit
The requirements look exactly what a ChatGPT plan looks like.
I'm 99.9% a non/barely technical person 'vibe coded' this assignment up.
ddarrko@reddit
Presumably for fast (denormalised/in mem) search. However I wouldn't waste a single second more on this.
metaphorm@reddit
I might prefer to use a datastore designed for this kind of thing, like Clickhouse, or else to keep it simple just dump everything into s3 and query with Athena. There's probably also some convoluted solution using Kafka and OpenSearch, but that would be something to try only once we've proved the simpler solutions aren't up to it.
bobaduk@reddit
+1 for S3 and load it into Opensearch from there - why tf does this need Django and one of postgres|dynamo|mongo ? not only is it unreasonable, it's poorly designed.
Crazy-Platypus6395@reddit
Open search is excellent for querying time series data. It's what it's made for.
midwestcsstudent@reddit
Multi-tenancy alone would probably take a sprint to implement and test correctly.
turningsteel@reddit
I feel like they generated the prompt from AI, this is nuts. I would tell them good luck with that.
ddarrko@reddit
Agree with somewhere else in the thread. It might form the basis of a good architecture discussion where trade offs and approaches can be analysed. To actually expect someone to build all of this is absolutely mental.
Yweain@reddit
Sprint? There are companies with their whole business built around this take home assignment. If we are actually doing what it's asking to do even the initial version might take multiple months with a couple of engineers working on it.
SlaminSammons@reddit
Yeah I have no clue why he’s saying a sprint. Shipping this to production within a sprint would frankly be irresponsible
Charlieputhfan@reddit
There are whole SaaS solutions for that take home assignment on how much they are expecting , I think they are trolling 😭
Extra_Ad1761@reddit
Seriously. This is a stand alone service that would need designs and reviews before writing any code. As well needing to meet the inevitable scalability issues etc
DoughnutTurbulent830@reddit
Not even a full sprint unless you don’t care about testing
gluhmm@reddit
Sprint here is only for MVP version. But with all the requirements you would need more time for testing and fixing.
simpsaucse@reddit
If a dev knocked out the development portion of this in 10 days, that would be extremely impressive. But they also want 85% testing coverage and documentation lmao.
mkluczka@reddit
In 2h i would barely understand whats needed in this assignment
jaypeejay@reddit
Sounds like they want a legit paper trail built and looking for free labor.
foxj36@reddit
I usually disagree when people say this about take home assignments, but I think your spot on this time
Suburbanturnip@reddit
I've seen startups funded, based on MVPs that took less effort.
I think they are piecemeal building an app, via take home assignments.
jaypeejay@reddit
Yeah I almost always think people are exaggerating when they make that claim, but this seriously looks like a list of stringent requirements for a production level system.
funny_lyfe@reddit
One time I got an assignment that seemed like real work. Though it was much smaller. After I fixed it they used my work on their home page. The guy just repurposed my code. They did offer me the job 2 weeks later but I had already said yes elsewhere.
avoral@reddit
Yeah that was my takeaway from this
TheM1337@reddit
This is absurd, not remotely reasonable for a take home.
DeathByWater@reddit
I went from "this is kind of reasonable" to "oh no" around the Export Functionality, Realtime Streaming and Tenant Isolation features
v0gue_@reddit
Yup, first paragraph had me... Then I kept scrolling
Suburbanturnip@reddit
343 lines.
I've seen startups funded off MVPs that took less effort.
midwestcsstudent@reddit
As soon as I read “comprehensive” I knew it was unreasonable. No take-home assignment should be comprehensive.
calamercor@reddit
Curious as I'm unfamiliar with the design of such systems. What are the challenges on those 3 reqs?
petiejoe83@reddit
Just a lot of work with lots of edge cases to manage.
I wonder if they were trying to spark a discussion about feasibility in the time given.
Mabenue@reddit
As soon as I had to scroll it was too much. If you can’t fit the assignment on a single phone screen it’s too much
hurrrdurrrfu@reddit
Hahahhaha same dude. Holy shit once I saw the export i was like “uhh ok…” but then real time streaming and this is totally a fucking POC under the guise of a take home
tmarthal@reddit
The company is probably looking for free consulting / proof of concept implementation, and going to ghost OP after they submit their take home. 🤣
Turbulent-Week1136@reddit
Why? They can just pump this into ChatGPT and get something reasonable without possibly getting sued.
twnbay76@reddit
How about you go ahead and try your vibe code your way through this assignment and let me know where you end up in 3 days. I'll be waiting for your report.
Charlieputhfan@reddit
Same here , this shit is crazy . wtf is that , full blown tenant isolation all that I went wtf around that paragraph
starboye@reddit
What a tool
boogerlad@reddit (OP)
Should I ask for a different, shorter takehome or just say I'm not interested in the position anymore?
EducationalZombie538@reddit
I'd send them back an invoice.
twnbay76@reddit
This is the way
elementmg@reddit
That would be fucking hilarious
Ok-Craft4844@reddit
IMHO, you should not be interested in the position. They try to play you.
So, feel free to troll them.
Derp_turnipton@reddit
I think they deserve to be sent a link to RFC 3164.
Coldmode@reddit
Vibe code it and post the results here.
auctorel@reddit
I run a department of 80
Don't do this task and don't work for these people, they will take you for a ride
ebawho@reddit
I think you should share the company, we should all apply with really brilliant looking CVs, all get the THT. Use chat gpt to come up with some terrible spaghetti code solution, and just spam them with terrible solutions to waste their time as they seemingly have no respect for anyone else’s time
Fun-Dragonfly-4166@reddit
I do not know. Reasonable options would be
there is no winning option. if you ask for a different take home there is a good chance they will shit can you.
if you confine yourself to a reasonable time and do a good job considering the time there is a good chance that one of your competitors will not confine themselves and thus do a better job. they won't know this and they might shit can you for it.
however if you do not confine yourself to a reasonable time then you could easily spend a full week on this and for reasons entirely unrelated to you (they ran out of funding) you get nothing for your trouble
GarThor_TMK@reddit
circular filing cabinet
NoCardio_@reddit
I doubt that it will do any good to try and reason with them. Unless you’re desperate, I’d move on.
Ok-Craft4844@reddit
And if you're desperate, run like hell.
Especially when in desperation, one must be cautious. Think the situation now is dire? Imagine how it will be in a month when they decide they don't need to pay you.
AccomplishedLeave506@reddit
Tell them to go sit on a cucumber and rotate. Or ghost them. They don't deserve a response. Certainly not a polite one.
metaphorm@reddit
you should tell them your hourly consulting rate is $250/hr and ask them if they'd like you to proceed
CarelessPackage1982@reddit
They're looking for desperate people. If you're not desperate I'd just move on.
Sunstorm84@reddit
Yes.
Suburbanturnip@reddit
My first thought when reading the title 'oh, it's probably not that hard and they are a lazy dev'
My thought as I'm scrolling through the description
'what the bloody hell is that!?!? Are they piece meal building their product, via take him assignments for seniors developers???'
Even if you got the job, I think it would be a terrible place to work.
rednoodles@reddit
Copy/paste into v0.dev or bolt.new lol. Or use gemini cli. Review and edit what it gives you.
przemo_li@reddit
Negotiate B2B contract for that. It's that big. Describe to their plan, estimates, your approach to getting them involved.
In other words, trunk into a company selling project completion from scratch to a new customer.
Don't expect success though, it feels like a small chance of success, and even then they may decide to just not pay, so don't agree to payment on delivery.
arekxv@reddit
So they want you to implement Loki as a "take home" assignment? Main purpose is to ask for something which can be easily created and which you can use to see how a developer implements something. This isn't it.
TheAnxiousDeveloper@reddit
It looks like someone learned how to delegate. In this case delegate the development of that shiny new feature to the hiring team. It's efficient and costs nothing! /s
Anything that takes more than 2-4 hours (depending on the position) is just crazy, unrespectful and total waste of time for candidates.
sweet-arg@reddit
This can easily be completed in 3-4 hours.
boogerlad@reddit (OP)
How? I want to learn such powers. I'm not kidding. I'm grossly not effective with ai tools
Charlieputhfan@reddit
He’s trolling , there are literally SaaS companies around this whole ass assignment wtf
Objective-Grass-3647@reddit
Tell them the core design is flawed. The proposed REST API for audit logging has no way of guaranteeing that audit requests are processed and stored, e.g. in case of a crash, network outage or just high load. I would suggest a queue-based approach with each app implementing an outbox pattern wrapped in a transaction to ensure that only committed changes are logged.
kessler1@reddit
They’re asking you to build a system for them for free. Don’t do it.
Bobby-McBobster@reddit
This is beyond ridiculous, it would be months of work to do something like this at a professional level.
Not only that but none of the choices of database they offer should be used for this project lol...
viktorfilim@reddit
Why is storing logs in DB a bad idea? I want to learn that is why I ask.
Bobby-McBobster@reddit
It's extremely expensive and low performance for this kind of usage, especially in this particular requirement of of being able to handle high TPS.
To sray within AWS services since this is what the subject mentions, you should obviously just use CloudWatch which is a fully featured service to handle logs, but if this isn't suitable for you (and the likely only read for that would be because it's too expensive), you should store the logs in files in S3 in the parquet file format and query them from there (using AWS Athena for example).
midwestcsstudent@reddit
CloudWatch tho $$$…
But yes, good points.
travelinzac@reddit
Ok that sounds somewhat reasonable, challenging but lots of surface area to differentiate what candidates focus on etc...
Scrolls down
Holy God they're actually asking you to build their audit path for them absolutely don't do this. Beyond unreasonable ask and literally unpaid work. Wonder what features they have other applicants building...
midwestcsstudent@reddit
Anything “comprehensive” isn’t in scope for a take-home assignment.
Qinistral@reddit
I was expecting a system design homework.
So then when it got more and more detailed “wait did OP give us his design answer, oh oh no they want this implemented…!”
zogrodea@reddit
It does look very comprehensive, a lot more than any take home assignment I have seen.
My suspicion (which might be wrong) is that they are trying to get free work from you.
Some reply options (which I don't know if they will work):
You can ask them to pay you in advance for the assignment, because of how comprehensive it is and the uncertainty you will get an offer.
You could do the assignment and put a kill switch which breaks the solution if you want.
I would probably decline the role as this is too much for a person to do unpaid.
midwestcsstudent@reddit
Don’t do #2. They can host it themselves and you’re giving them free work anyway.
Iguyking@reddit
I haven't seen this good of requirements by product managers. This is only this well done when you are trying to contract it out.
Bitmush-@reddit
They want to see how well you will write code for them, so they’ve given you a few days’ work and you can impress them. You need almost the same type of assurance that your needs will be met too: and hey ! A few days’ trial to see how well we can keep our promises to each other - a few days’ pay should be promptly deposited into your account- without you having to chase it up, the full amount - as promised.
In what other fucking world do people get to do this with things they’re purchasing ? Ok, just strip the old tiles out and put the shower in - I really need to see if you can do the work. A month trying the various models of Escalade and associated trim options ? Yes, I think I will.
zogrodea@reddit
Yeah. I don't know any other field with take-home tasks like this. I know a teacher who had a "trial day" (or two of them), teaching students for a full day before being employed, but that was a paid opportunity. A lot better than how it is with the IT industry.
flowering_sun_star@reddit
It's apparently pretty common here for bar and restaurant staff to do an unpaid 'trial shift'. Which is meant to be an actual trial, but there are plenty of stories of people doing full unsupervised shifts only to be ghosted.
zogrodea@reddit
Thanks; I didn't know.
That sounds... like an improvement over the IT industry in the large scale (there is the promise of being paid and probably a good chunk do) but more painful at the individual scale (it's harder to let go of wasted time when you were promised of being compensated like in those other industries, compared to when there is no promise like the IT industry). Still bad in both cases though.
midwestcsstudent@reddit
What the actual fuck lmfao they just tryna get some free work out of job applicants.
Name and shame those fucks.
Iguyking@reddit
If it's more than an hour or two, it's not take home. It is a job task. They want that done, they can hire you.
trying-to-contribute@reddit
"Let's have the candidate implement a basic version of elasticsearch. Instead of using lucene, they can use postgresql and a timeseries extension, and then have preliminary optimization done."
Just wow.
prescod@reddit
As soon as I saw the word “comprehensive” I noped out.
_1dontknow@reddit
This is too much. Write them an email and ask how they wanna be invoiced and mention your hourly rate.
Breadinator@reddit
Zero take home assignments should have the term "AWS" in the requirements. This is a sham, friend. They only need one good candidate to do the work for them.
SpaceToaster@reddit
It sounds more like they are giving out epics from their backlog to interviewees to do for free labor.
High_qualityBeef@reddit
They are defintely expecting you to use AI to help build this. There is no way this can be done in 5 days unless you are cracked
more_than_most@reddit
LOL, GET OUT! 😂
selemenesmilesuponme@reddit
Curious. Is LLM good enough nowadays to write running code from this kind of spec?
Cobayo@reddit
No, you need to be way more specific, the bigger it is the worse the errors compound. This prompt may seem detailed but it's filled up with context you probably skip over due to your own experience, but you need to make sure to include the full context if you want a working output.
Stupid example, say you want to add two numbers. So you write a prompt like "Write a program to add two numbers. For example 3+5 should output 8." It's obvious what the program should be yet an llm may literally generate "if a == 3 and b == 5 then 8".
Simple things like these got patched up by tools that iterate over people's prompts and the output itself. But of course the more complex and less present in the database it gets, the less likely it gets fixed automatically.
brool@reddit
Well, the LLM will write code from this spec. But you won't be happy with it, and it will be a chore to get it to run, and it will end up being the most baroque weird Frankensteinish monster of a code base you ever saw.
more_than_most@reddit
I imagine this spec being the first step from an LLM session gathering features and requirements. And then there would be architectural planning and after that breakdown into manageable tasks. But I could not imagine an LLM taking that end to end.
boogerlad@reddit (OP)
That was what I was thinking too.
Mutant-AI@reddit
The whole assignment looks like it’s written by ChatGPT
bobaduk@reddit
Tell them to go fuck themselves. I'm pretty sure that this was generated by an LLM. If it wasn't, it was generated by a person who could be replaced by one.
It's wildly unreasonable. I agree that this is a substantial piece of engineering, and the design choices they have made for you (for some reason) are less than ideal.
TangerineSorry8463@reddit
This is a 3-5 days task for someone who knows exactly what they're doing and designed the task.
AhoyPromenade@reddit
I don't think the *core* of the exercise is too bad, particularly as they're suggesting you use Django. Knocking up a CRUD endpoints with basic auth, filtering, pagination for this in Django is trivial if you know the tool, I reckon it'd be a couple of hours work for me to knock those endpoints out with OpenAI schema generation on top using DRF and the ModelViewSet functionality, ModelSerializer etc. to reduce how much code you're writing.
But there's a lot of bonkers accompanying that basic stuff, and that really *isn't* trivial. All the infra stuff is way beyond what I think is fair for a tech exercise.
-Dargs@reddit
I'm not sure what's more dumb. That they think you'll do it for free or that they think you can do it in like 3d, lol. To put this into some more perspective, my employer would probably give me 2 months or so for this and pay me out around $42k in salary.
But you're going to do this for free? Lol
adzx4@reddit
Bruh what is this, I can't tell if the company is trolling using an AI generated test (the structure, formatting and content are a dead give away) or if you're doing the trolling.
starboye@reddit
Move on, name and shame the company
JakoMyto@reddit
I did this once. With a whole team. In very different timeline 😂
If this is an interview task I would ask if this whole thing is the assignment or part of it or maybe they wanted to have a design discussion. The answer of that will be the decision factor for me here. Interviews are two way streets 😉
th3_pund1t@reddit
That’s not a take home assignment. That’s a full startup.
Fuzzy-Race-2598@reddit
I was searching if the submission section mentioned "Your soul"
StatusAnxiety6@reddit
I did this exactly one time since I was actually interested in the job(actually interesting project) 3-4 days of work. They didn't even look at it .. I never did it again.
Qinistral@reddit
Same. I spent at least a day on one for like Epic games, only to be ghosted. F that.
In future I’ll only do it if they have skin in the game too, such as reviewing Homework as part of panel interview.
StatusAnxiety6@reddit
Funny you mention that actually, I declined to do Epic Games assessment after getting burnt by the first one.
mcjohnalds45@reddit
Jesus that is terrible. It boggles my mind how some developers can be so careless designing and evaluating these challenges, knowing full well how much work is involved.
MocknozzieRiver@reddit
Jesus Christ they're asking you to build like fucking SumoLogic from scratch. 💀
neums08@reddit
Spin up a grafana instance. Tell them they're overthinking it, and you just saved them $100k.
rruusu@reddit
Maybe they're looking for engineers who aren't afraid to submit realistic time estimates, and will hire the one who submits a response of "I can likely do it in two to three sprints, if you hire me. Here's a breakdown of the effort estimates."
ThePsychicCEO@reddit
So for shits & giggles I gave this to Claude 4 Opus with "Can you complete this challenge" and it had a most volumunious response
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/0971ba7b-9140-4835-8fb7-c0d092f9e446
I haven't read it. It's a lot!
What I wonder:
I suspect if you did get the job you'd regret working there. They lack judgement.
Constructively you could go back with "What are you trying to achieve with this assignment?"
Fuehnix@reddit
There's no way that claude wrote that much stuff without having some bugs lol
Fuehnix@reddit
I've been working on a production ready version of this take home assignment for a couple months as a solo dev. Granted, the past 6 weeks or so has been going back and forth on feedback, but still.
A good version of this assignment isn't a take-home, it's a whole quarter. Unless maybe you were like a consultant who regularly cranks out search implementations on contract.
If you're really interested in the company and think the job would look good on your resume, I say give it like a full evening or maybe a weekend worth of effort, and turn in whatever POC you can get. I doubt anyone applying with US work authorization is doing this entire assignment as listed. So if you just showcase a POC with the skills you know you can quickly crank out, that may be better than their other options.
GolangLinuxGuru1979@reddit
Not reasonable but it sure as hell looks fun. I would just do it just for the fun of it . But I am a masochist
DoughnutTurbulent830@reddit
That is a full on uni assignment 🤣
krolyat@reddit
WAlk away op
laser__beans@reddit
What is this “take home” garbage? Is this a new thing? It sounds like a loophole to get free labor…
ronnie-james-dior@reddit
Take home assignments have been a thing for many years
DeterminedQuokka@reddit
I’m not even willing to read that much for a take home.
If you want o submit something ask codex to do it
ronnie-james-dior@reddit
I just kept scrolling and scrolling like what the actual fuck
thepotsinator@reddit
LOL my thoughts exactly. Just reading the assignment was more time than I was willing to commit to it.
CarelessPackage1982@reddit
If you build this, just start your own SAAS at that point.
crumpet-lives@reddit
Actually, do build it and sell it! If they need it they can pay for it as a customer
secondhandschnitzel@reddit
Possible doesn’t imply that it’s a good idea.
This is not a reasonable take home assessment. Can you do it in 3-5 days, probably. But you’d be spending more time than is remotely reasonable doing free work for them. They don’t respect your time and don’t know what they’re actually hiring for. I refuse most take home projects and would absolutely refuse this one.
yetiflask@reddit
I am sorry, but the only response I would give to this is an email saying "go fuck yourself".
This is the most absurd thing I have ever seen
HoratioWobble@reddit
Insert Absolute cinema gif
Ridiculous, this is free work not a take home assignment
thehuffomatic@reddit
Salary is probably $65k. /s
joshua9663@reddit
Unpaid internship
Coldmode@reddit
Just give it to Cursor and send them whatever it spits out. They’ll probably deploy it to production.
That-Promotion-1456@reddit
You can setup a project, structure and all, show you are competent in the technology and then deliver part of it, sending in additional notes what needs to be done, and have this as a base for your in person tech interview.
Seniority is also show from your reaction to the task, it is quite possible part of the take home test is how you are going to react. This also tells a lot about your seniority.
Also they are potentially looking if you know how to vibecode :) because it is possible to deliver this specs within a day of vibecoding on claude code or gemini cli.
mrpurpss@reddit
Fuck no This is a whole product 😂
stupid_cat_face@reddit
Completely absurd. If I got that assignment I’d push back and mention it to the HR representative (or my contact) in the interview process. I’d say I don’t do work for free and this is clearly a full product design. If they want to evaluate my coding ability we can address it another way.
Bangoga@reddit
Lmao I got a take home assignment recently. It was genuinely no longer than an hour.
This. This is not what I'd consider reasonable
ollie2951@reddit
This is insane. Can we make a list of firms that give take home or is there already one 🤔
juvenile_josh@reddit
If this is a big player i could see this as a L5/L6 IC take home
If this is a no name company or startup, no way
xXxdethl0rdxXx@reddit
I've done takehomes, and I've thought a lot of them were reasonable. This is not.
They should take at most 1-2 days. Beyond that, it's not only exploitative, but you don't have the ability to clarify requirements with a product owner—which will mean you likely go way off the proverbial ranch.
As others have said, please name and shame if you are comfortable, because this is verging on malice at the very least.
Jealous-Weekend4674@reddit
> 1-2 days
that is already unreasonable, an engineer day is worth hundreds of dollars
aidencoder@reddit
Maybe they want to see how diplomatic you can be in the face of unreasonable demands. I doubt that tho.
flundstrom2@reddit
Wtf?! I read the other's comments and thought "it can't be THAT bad, can it?"
Then I looked at the specs, and was like "ah, OK. Maybe an experienced guy could set up something with a little AI. Oh, there's more... Oh... This looks like an AI-generated response to someone vibe-requiring something.. But, here's some /real/ requirements and API and sequence diagrams and. .. And it never fxxxing ENDS!". That's where I stopped reading.
I dont know what they expect? Being able to say "we got no qualified applicants because we didn't want any but company policy says we have to put out an ad and screen applicants". Or "ah, so you think it will take X weeks. Good, we got Y weeks and Z weeks estimates from other applicants, so we will offer our clients mean([X, Y, Z])." Or "ok, so you think we should go with (offer our client) X architecture and design".
Either way, their last word will be "bye!".
lordnacho666@reddit
A year ago: no, that's insane.
Now: Can absolutely be done if you have an AI doing the donkey work for you. Most of the tasks are pretty vanilla, there's just a ton of them and you'll run into all sorts of weird issues. Let an AI build the thing, build the tests, boom, done.
And don't work for whoever assigned this.
boogerlad@reddit (OP)
I've been living under a rock. Can I really just use this as a prompt for chatgpt, or should I use one of these AI IDEs? I've never seen anything but toys get built, and have never seen what the refinement process looks like.
lordnacho666@reddit
Get Claude to help you, that's my current favourite. Cursor will also work.
boogerlad@reddit (OP)
Got any videos or advice on how to practice using these AI tools?
Organic_Present_6078@reddit
Co-pilot in agent mode will be able to quickly help scaffold something like this, you'll need to do a lot of shearing and refinement afterwards though
local-person-nc@reddit
Clearly trying to get free work out of someone
Groove-Theory@reddit
What is wrong with companies these days jesus christ
VanillaCandid3466@reddit
Unless the salary is ludicrously high, this is free work for a company that owes you nothing.
not_logan@reddit
Even so, the amount of work here is ridiculous. It is a full-time free labor
bonisaur@reddit
Sometimes companies or hiring manager's will test to see if you push back. I personally think that it’s usually unreasonable to test an applicant this way to see if they communicate boundaries or limits. I will phrase a question like this - how would you react if you were told to build this in 3-4 days and given them the same docs. If the end result is to filter out engineers who don’t know how to communicate or plan resources then giving them a prompt is more transparent.
If I were you I’d just let them know you don’t believe this is reasonable in 3-4 days and you would like to trim down the MVP to something that would be reasonable. You can provide a response with suggestions in what you can reasonably deliver in the time allotted.
If you do this approach then one outcome is that you passed their assessment of communication and build the new take home, but now you know you have company leaders who will just test you in this way. The other outcome is that they are serious and you probably should rescind your application and thank them for their time.
33ff00@reddit
This is fucking nuts. And the export as both csv and json: this isn’t testing a separate ability with any significant distinction: it’s just a fucking ‘nother AC they can get you to build for them lol
YahenP@reddit
Sounds like a 6-8 month task for a team of engineers.
daH00L@reddit
Vibe code this.
CelebrationWitty3035@reddit
Give it to ChatGPT and just send them whatever it spits out 😁.
berndverst@reddit
Absolutely ridiculous assignment if you are expected to implement this. I know how to architect and implement this but to do it well would take me over a week working on it full time - and that's without having to integrate it into an existing code base which surely would be way more complex.
They should focus on 2-3 of those bullets max if they want to see an implementation. I do like this question as a high level architecture design and discussion, but I'd never want to see this complete architecture AND an implementation.
If all they want is a high level design of the various components then this is fair (though still too long).
Dabli@reddit
This would only take you a week?
berndverst@reddit
For a greenfield project where I can choose all the technologies for the project from the ground up it's a bit over a week for me I'd say. But of course that's not realistic because you will always need to integrate it into the development / platform choices of others. So in practice it will be much much longer.
ben_bliksem@reddit
You'll submit this and not hear from them again.
WeHaveTheMeeps@reddit
“Please spend 2-4 hours on this project”
The project: doesn’t compile. Packages are irreconcilable.
Well I know where my first hour is going
IronSavior@reddit
Is any take-home assignment reasonable?
NastroAzzurro@reddit
You’re getting brewdogged
Treebro001@reddit
Send them a 5k bill to give it to them.
kr00j@reddit
So, I read over the requirements and aside from being absurd for a take-home, the requirements are outright incorrect:
>> **Tenant Isolation**: Ensure complete data isolation between tenants
There's zero mention of the tenant in their logging API spec until you look further down and see that they state "with tenant ID".
>> Timestamp with timezone
I fucking despise anyone that's not using epochs; ISO 8601 is great... for presentation, but if all you need is an API, an epoch is far less ambiguous and prone to random serialization bugs.
>> - **Authentication**: JWT-based authentication
>> - **Authorization**: Role-based access (Admin, Auditor, User) with **tenant-based access control**
Which one is it, dipshit? "JWT-based authentication" isn't a thing, and it's API authorization, NOT authentication - go back to school. I think they mean "OAuth2 bearer-token" authorization, but they're too stupid to realize how complex that is to implement and how wildly inappropriate it is for a take-home assignment. RBAC-based authorization... based on what? If it's scope, then you certainly wouldn't pin those to principal-specific roles, as stated.
u/boogerlad, these people are morons.
Purple-Cap4457@reddit
Doable in 2 hours
valbaca@reddit
This is just straight up unpaid contractor work
boboshoes@reddit
This 6 months of work lol
dogo_fren@reddit
OpenSearch for FTS when using Postgres? Noobs.
weird_after_taste@reddit
Lmao this literally free work. A more reasonable interview question would be to have a System Design session to design this system instead of full implementation
devhaugh@reddit
Lol. I'd literally email them back "lol". I wouldn't do that if I was unemployed and had the time
deZbrownT@reddit
To me, this looks like a task generated by ChatGPT and nobody really took the time to read it. It’s huge because ChatGPT tends to be very verbose. The unreasonable time line is a dead giveaway, it clearly shows complete divorce between task complexity and time.
shaliozero@reddit
Dude I started reading the assignment and thought "Well, this looks reasonable and fair" and then it went on and on becoming a full blown application they can just steal and hook up into their systems for free afterwards.
What they want from you is a reasonable application for a newly hired developer, but nothing you'd do for free as a "take home" assignment at the risk of being rejected. Do such companies even consider that people aren't necessarily unemployed? You can pull a 180 afterwards and only hand out the source code for a fee when they rejecting you, but what they demand is trying to be cheaper than hiring a cheap fiver dev.
MiddleSwitch8@reddit
If you have to ask, it probably isn’t.
AppropriateSpell5405@reddit
Reply: "You can duck right on off."
Jddr8@reddit
This is almost doing Open Telemetry from scratch.
No way any dev can do this in 3-5, unless you are a machine (AI), or don’t have a life.
Ask them for a more reasonable take home test or look somewhere else.
Lunkwill-fook@reddit
What’s the pay half a million? There insane if that’s the take home. Why would you even want the job
WJMazepas@reddit
I would do this to have a portfolio and try to use it to skip code interviews whenever I could.
But yeah, it would take a long time.
Like, maybe it could be a home assignment if it was just a basic API, but having all that AWS integration increases the time needed by a lot, and also having to think of high throughput cases would eat a good chunk of time as well.
And not even using ChatGPT with that would save a lot of time since it's a lot of stuff for testing
dablya@reddit
I try to get this out of the way at the when going over the interview process. What is the interview process like? How many people will I be talking with, over how many meetings, what is the purpose of each? How long to they expect the assignment to take and what are they looking to evaluate? Most of the time, with companies that are actually looking to hire people, I don't even have to ask, it's the first thing they go over after the phone screen part is over.
I would stop the process when they said 3-5 days for the assignment... Not because I'm proud, but because it tells me the odds of there being an actual job at the end of this are non-existant.
PredictableChaos@reddit
This is ridiculous.
The point of an interview is for the company to determine if you would be a good member of the company/team you're interviewing for.
This type of take home interview would provide a signal to them that you will never say no to any request they make. I've turned down candidates because they wouldn't say no to any question and that's not a trait I want in an engineer (e.g. When asking about what is a red flag in teammates they wouldn't give any and when asked what would they do if someone took credit for their work they just said "move on to the next task and hope they don't do it again").
Is that a company you want to work for? Even if you're desperate, anyone that could build this should be able to find a job with a better company.
The other point of the interview is to tell you if this is a company you'd want to work for.
Would you want to work for a company that sent this out to a candidate? If you were referring a friend to this company would you be able to say with a straight face this is a useful evaluation tool?
elperroborrachotoo@reddit
Absolutely not, unless either their salary is "never worry about money anymore" level, or they see eye-to-eye with the effort they put in.
e.g., - you are already invited for an in-person interview - this is meant as material for the interview - they cover travel and lodging expenses, and aren't stingy with that
Best case, they were just lazy and re-used an spec they wrote down for something they already paid for. Best case.
ornoone@reddit
Love the "good luck" at the end 🤯🔫
baddymcbadface@reddit
I'm imagining the basement dweller that's willing to stand behind this and try to claim it's a reasonable assignment. His beard is somewhat pathetic yet still full of food.
AccomplishedLeave506@reddit
Utterly ridiculous. Don't even bother replying to them.
I could knock something together that would cover most of the basics in a few days. But it wouldn't be production ready.
I'd say they're trying to get free work out of applicants, but the requirements don't make sense for what they appear to want so I think they're just idiots. I wouldn't use one of the given data stores since none of them make sense for requirements. They're on AWS so OpenSearch would be a better backing store for what the apparent requirements are. But there are off the shelf systems that would do the job without Dev work. So either they are utterly incompetent and want free labour to do something nonsensical, or they're utter idiots who think they're going to get any value out of such a stupid test. I wouldn't want to work with them.
Idea-Aggressive@reddit
You should name and shame the company that is tricking people into free consultations. This is unacceptable!
TeeeeeFarmer@reddit
lol , where are folks that want take home assignments for interview ?
btrpb@reddit
Ridiculous
siqniz@reddit
fuck that, if it's more than 1 \~ 2hrs of work, get wrecked
canadian_webdev@reddit
Get rekt, even
Mountain-Way-5105@reddit
Like everyone else said, they are trying to get a PoC done for free
LightofAngels@reddit
What the actual fuck
NotGoodSoftwareMaker@reddit
That would take me something like a month
Would just pass and move on
isurujn@reddit
I'm on the take home assignments camp in the assignments vs leet code war but this is absolute insanity.
Working_on_Writing@reddit
At a very fast skim, quite a lot of this is already possible in AWS, e.g. log retention policies. This could be implemented as a thin wrapper around existing AWS services.
Given most of it is well specified, you could probably Blitz through to a working prototype using Cursor or a similar AI to do 90% of the work.
That said, as soon as a take home goes into business days of effort, absolutely not. It's totally unreasonable. Especially if you're expected to have it running - that would cost money.
boogerlad@reddit (OP)
I haven't used Cursor, but how is it supposed to configure stuff on AWS?
Working_on_Writing@reddit
It won't, but it can write the code around the AWS SDK.
Anyway, it's academic. Unless you really want this particular job or they're offering crazy big money, I'd give them a 2 word phrase beginning and ending in "f".
boogerlad@reddit (OP)
Agreed. I've just been living under a rock and don't really understand the full capabilities of llms these days.
minn0w@reddit
I agree with the others that this is far too much work. I just wanted to point out that it is written in the same way I would write out AI agent instructions. I'm sure it has been written by AI, but maybe they are seeing if you will dump it into Claude...
Writer-Decent@reddit
Just don’t do it
Spare-Builder-355@reddit
Just submit a url to elasticsearch GitHub.
Lol, one of the criteria is "documentation". Seriously?
humanguise@reddit
Give them the finger and move on. I did something similar a few years ago for a take home, but the scope was nowhere near as broad, and even back then it took longer than I would have liked. The coding portion took a few hours, but getting everything to work with docker compose because they wanted a way to spin up the entire app with a single command took the majority of the time. Turns out getting seed data into your docker service can be quite annoying, and a fair chunk of my time was spent writing the migration that was going to be run on a first initialization. Not worth it at all, considering how many rounds I went through with them only to be rejected at a later stage.
natidone@reddit
This seems reasonable only for staff vibe coders.
BeerInTheRear@reddit
Thank you for applying to ACME Box Company!
Before we can proceed, you'll need to demonstrate your abilities with a short take home assignment.
TAKE HOME ASSIGNMENT:
- Make a fully functional fullstack application for a Box Company. Opps, edit that part out. I mean, for a completely fictional "Bag" company. This application should have an amazing front-end, lightning fast backend, a seamless db architecture, and should be fully automated so we don't have to mess with it. I mean, so the fictional Bag Company folks wouldn't have to mess with it. It needs to handle billing, sales, invoices, all of it. Just post it to Github when you're finished, and we'll be in touch soon!
Primary-Walrus-5623@reddit
That would take me a month to do well and I'm mighty good at my job
superdietpepsi@reddit
Yea no me and the HM fighting lol
fhgwgadsbbq@reddit
This is ridiculous.
The specified stack choices are red flags that they want you to build something for them to actually use.
I'd reply with a price estimate at full contractor rates ☺️
JLaurus@reddit
I have seen a team of 3-4 devs employed full time build and support a system that is smaller than this. They are idiots
ItsNeverTheNetwork@reddit
Hahahahaha. They’re looking for a dev to build their stuff for free. This is ridiculous.
TheBrianiac@reddit
Start telling recruiters you do not perform take home assignments unless they pay.
niko2111@reddit
If you really want the job hire someone on upwork to do the assignment. I’ve done it before, usually for contract roles.
EkoChamberKryptonite@reddit
Name and shame, them OP. We need to ensure no one applies there till they correct their subpar practice.
ryo3000@reddit
That's not a take home assignment, that's a fully functional product right there
GlasnostBusters@reddit
Send them an invoice and ask them how they would prefer to pay.
Mast3rCylinder@reddit
It's too big for home assignment even with llm.
ninetofivedev@reddit
I didn’t click the links, but the answer is almost always yes.
chesterjosiah@reddit
You mean "no".
boogerlad@reddit (OP)
Maybe he was answering the "Am I mediocre dev" question hahahaha
Gortyser@reddit
No way I’m reading that whole description
EducationalZombie538@reddit
Send them back an estimate for the work. Cheeky fucks.
chesterjosiah@reddit
The purpose of a take home is to get a taste of a candidate's abilities. In this case, the company wants a smorgasbord.
Not even close to reasonable. Find something else.
avoral@reddit
Parroting what everyone else said here. They’re trying to get free labor out of someone.