Companies that do work samples minimize on-site coding interviews, because the whole point of offsite work sample testing is that most candidates can't provide an accurate picture of their aptitude in an on-site coding interview.
No interviewing software developer prefers an extra 6 hours of on-site interview to an off-site coding challenge.
The problem developers have with "homework problems" is really a problem with bullshit companies that won't provide timely feedback on their submission. Nobody wants to do homework that goes into a black hole, only to find out 6 months later that they were in consideration for the role. That's a problem with all hiring companies, and it is orthogonal to the structure of the interview itself.
The problem with take-home assignments isn't how long they take - it's how many you end up doing.
Resume-to-offer attrition rates are often as high as 99.9%. In-person interview-to-offer attrition rates are rarely worse than 90% and often in the 30%-50% range.
The thing about homework is that it costs companies basically nothing (one form email followed by an automatic grader in some cases), so they can afford to give it as early as possible - strictly by the numbers, this means offers cost on average 1000x8 hours. Whereas in the in-person interview case, the big cost is much later in the process, so it's more like 10x8 hours per offer.
Worse yet, this cost falls heavier on developers that have more trouble getting jobs, who are probably less likely to be able to weather that cost. Not a great situation.
>No interviewing software developer prefers an extra 6 hours of on-site interview to an off-site coding challenge.
Sure, Google/Microsoft have the legendary "6 hour" marathon interviews with multiple teams with lunch in the middle but for smaller scale of companies, they don't have bandwidth to mess around with all-day interviews. It's ~2 hours. In this thread, it shows I'm not the only one who prefers onsite whiteboard over homework projects so the "no developer prefers" claim is too absolutist.
>The problem developers have with "homework problems" is really a problem with bullshit companies that won't provide timely feedback on their submission.
Regardless if the feedback is received within 10 minutes or 10 days of submission, if I apply to 4 companies, I don't want to do 4 homework projects. I simply don't. At least with 4 onsite interviews, I see glimpses of the office and meet the interviewers.
This is just not true. I talk to interviewing developers every day, and very few of them are interviewing at Google.
The final round of on-site interviews usually eats a whole day, and is preceded by a whole battery of time-wasting phone interviews, which themselves eat as much time as a coding challenge and often involve coding with someone else over the phone or Skype.
There are companies that are not Google that have multiple rounds of on-site interviews.
No. Everyone interviews this way. The very most marketable candidates leverage personal brand and connections to dodge a lot of it, but you have to be good at sales to do that.
> No interviewing software developer prefers an extra 6 hours of on-site interview to an off-site coding challenge.
I'd prefer it, since if I pass the coding challenge, I'm likely in for a airplane flight and an on-site interview anyway, so I've still lost that time from my life in addition to the time spent on the coding challenge. Unless the coding challenge is conducted INSTEAD of an on-site hazing session, in which case, well, E-mail in profile!
The sensible solution, which I have seen done very successfully before, is to add a 1/1.5hr hr on site/skype step, in which the candidate goes over the solution, and asks for a small feature. It both proves that the code was written by the candidate, shows some of the personal stuff the homework didn't, and makes it far easier for the candidate to perform well, because they are familiar with the code, as they wrote it!
It's not an expensive investment for what you get, and since the meeting should happen soon after the code is written, it's easy to provide basic feedback.
Companies that do work samples minimize on-site coding interviews, because the whole point of offsite work sample testing is that most candidates can't provide an accurate picture of their aptitude in an on-site coding interview.
No interviewing software developer prefers an extra 6 hours of on-site interview to an off-site coding challenge.
The problem developers have with "homework problems" is really a problem with bullshit companies that won't provide timely feedback on their submission. Nobody wants to do homework that goes into a black hole, only to find out 6 months later that they were in consideration for the role. That's a problem with all hiring companies, and it is orthogonal to the structure of the interview itself.