What 5 years of interviewing software engineers taught me
lasselaursen.comTake-home test that takes 4-8 hours to solved? I.e. a whole working day. That's just ridiculous, IMO.
There's a case to be made to shorten the task time I agree, but as noted in the article, when considering the amount of prep-time needed to pass a Codility test, these platforms already expect this amount of investment for applicants - not that that's ideal either.
I think, ideally, companies should compensate candidates, but I don't see that as a likely outcome either.
My view on this is that the test should be so that the candidate does not need specific preparation, and should not take hours either.
Maybe I was lucky but in past interviews for hands-on jobs I was simply given a 45 minute test on paper with things someone who's claiming to have experience in the job and language should know.