I work at a small company in a remote part of an openly backward state when it comes to startups, and yet got two hundreds applicants to file a javascrip developer position.
After interviewing 10 (say two three hours spent on each between contacting, scheduling up etc) it was clear every unemployed with 'can use word' as skill boosted their resume and applied.
I'm sorry for the real developers looking for a job but a company can't dump 20 days work on chasing and weeding liers.
I'm not a fan of homeworks myself but this is what it has come to.
I'd be payng but that puts the company and the prospect in a very difficult position them towards tax laws and towards their current employer non competes, the company toward again tax laws and then there's the absurd of paying for contract work delivered that's 99% of times not up to spec.
Beside, the unwillingness to compromise smells itself and given the choice I'd never get a potential troublemaker in that only thinks time=money and screw everything else.
That little empathy for both sided of the problems sure is a red flag.
Edit: well unless it's a contracting job then it's fine.
This seems like something a 5 minute FizzBuzz-esque programming assignment as a pre-filter could easily fix. The goal seems to be a barrier that only serious applicants will even bother to attempt, and that's fair. But when that barrier then becomes a 4+ hour time sink for the serious applicants it becomes a problem. There are plenty of hackerrank style sites where someone can show a bare minimum of competency without costing either side much time.
yeah I think 4 hours is a bit too much, in the end you only need competency as a screening.
we used to give out this http://play.elevatorsaga.com/#challenge=3 and asking for solution to level 3 which can be done in a short time + is the first non trivial challenge.
of course solutions can be find in internet etc, but it's pretty easy to look them up if they smell fishy and it'd all come down crashing at the face-to-face anyway
it's also a very good exercise in real world problem solving and a source of endless technical discussion since there's no single good approach, especially with two elevators to schedule.
After interviewing 10 (say two three hours spent on each between contacting, scheduling up etc) it was clear every unemployed with 'can use word' as skill boosted their resume and applied.
I'm sorry for the real developers looking for a job but a company can't dump 20 days work on chasing and weeding liers.
I'm not a fan of homeworks myself but this is what it has come to.
I'd be payng but that puts the company and the prospect in a very difficult position them towards tax laws and towards their current employer non competes, the company toward again tax laws and then there's the absurd of paying for contract work delivered that's 99% of times not up to spec.
Beside, the unwillingness to compromise smells itself and given the choice I'd never get a potential troublemaker in that only thinks time=money and screw everything else.
That little empathy for both sided of the problems sure is a red flag.
Edit: well unless it's a contracting job then it's fine.