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How to make a coding challenge to hire a new engineer?
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this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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In my experience, interview culture differs depending on the country. So, it would be better to provide some context around that.
I wouldn't spend more than 2-3 hours on a take home challenge. I would politely decline such a requirement and move on to contact other employers even if the potential employer offers paying my 30h+ hour work week preparing for the interview. In my opinion, a "take home" should be a conversation starter so that you can ask questions and try to understand the candidate's thinking. But, as I said, it may differ according to industry/country, etc.
Working culture is rather demanding and things tend to be quite ambigious, so to be honest the challenge reflects reality to some degree. But our team works with niche technology and therefore the pressure doesn't fully apply to our small'ish team. (Honestly, I wouldn't recommend the position to a not so experienced engineer or someone who doesn't know how to limit their working hours.)
You still run into the problem that generally experienced, skilled engineers are not likely to put up with a 30-hour coding challenge. I won't entertain anything over about 4 hours full stop, and it has to be a very compelling job to get me to spend more than 2. Among the people I know, the more skilled they are the less likely they are to be willing to do more than an hour or two of "homework", and some of the best people I know won't do that kind of thing at all because they don't have to. They can still get good jobs if they exclude every company that does a take-home challenge.
You're also biasing yourself against people who don't have 30 hours of free time -- anyone with caretaking responsibilities, anyone with health issues that means they need a lot of downtime after work, people whose current job requires a lot of overtime, etc. A lot of those people end up being the people tech already tends to have issues hiring, so it's just reinforcing the existing biases. Not great!
I'd look at timed problems on hackerrank/leetcode for inspiration, and aim for a 1-2 hour challenge. If there's a particular skill that you think is particularly important on the team, try to target that.