Warning:
If You Get Offended by This Article, I Am Sorry, But I Am Trying to Help You and Your Business. I Don’t Hate Anyone. But This Shit Needs to Stop—It Had to Stop Years Before Generative AI Like ChatGPT!
The Article:
Let’s get one thing straight: take-home tests were always a garbage way to evaluate engineers. But now, with generative AI like ChatGPT spitting out code faster than a caffeinated developer, they’re not just garbage—they’re useless. If you’re still using take-home tests in your hiring process, you’re either lazy, clueless, or both. And if you’re a candidate grinding through these soul-sucking assignments, I’m here to tell you: you deserve better. Let’s break down why take-home tests are a dumpster fire and why we should burn them to the ground.
1. Take-Home Tests Are a Joke
Oh, you want me to build a small app in my free time as a “test”? Cool, let me just ask ChatGPT to do it in seconds. Poof. Done. What’s that? You want me to refactor it? Sure, let me copy-paste it into GPT-4 and ask for “clean, scalable code.” Oh, and while I’m at it, I’ll Google the exact test you gave me because guess what? Your “original” take-home test might already be solved and posted online.
Hiring managers, wake up: if your test can be aced by a chatbot or a quick search, it’s not evaluating skill—it’s evaluating who’s better at prompting AI. And if you think that’s a good measure of engineering talent, you’re delusional.
2. Take-Home Tests Were Never Fair (Seriously, Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?)
“This should only take 2-3 hours,” they say. BULLSHIT. That estimate is based on the person who wrote the test and already knows the answer. For the rest of us mortals, it’s a black hole of time. Research, trial and error, debugging, and oh, let’s not forget the pressure to make it “production-ready” for a job you don’t even have yet. What’s billed as a quick task inevitably balloons into a 20-hour unpaid internship.
3. Take-Home Tests Reward People With Free Time (And Screw Everyone Else)
And let’s talk about who this system favors: people with time. Unemployed candidates? Sure, they can grind away for days. But someone with a full-time job, kids, or other responsibilities? They’re screwed. Is that how you want to hire? By punishing people who are already busy? Well, I guess it’s their fault for being valued at work or having a life outside of work.
It’s fucking ridiculous. You’re basically filtering out great candidates for no reason besides your desire to get their unpaid time. If that’s your hiring strategy, you deserve every underqualified AI-powered candidate you get.
4. Take-Home Tests Enable Abuse (Because Companies Are Lazy and Greedy)
Let’s be real—take-home tests are a goldmine for shady companies. They hand you a “real-world problem” to solve, and guess what? That problem just so happens to be an actual issue they need fixed. You submit your hard work, and suddenly, the job opening disappears. Or they ghost you entirely. No feedback, no rejection—just radio silence while they quietly implement your solution.
And then there’s the classic excuse: “We’ve decided to pause hiring due to budget constraints.” Oh really? You figured that out after I spent 10+ hours on your test? Convenient.
Even when companies aren’t outright stealing your work, many don’t even bother to follow up. You pour hours into a test, and the hiring manager doesn’t have the decency to send a simple “Thanks, but no thanks” email.
It’s exploitative, unprofessional, and just plain lazy. If a company asks for a take-home test but can’t respect your time enough to respond—or if they “suddenly” change their hiring plans—they’re showing you exactly what kind of workplace they are.
5. There Are Better Ways to Hire (Stop Being Lazy)
If you’re still clinging to take-home tests, it’s because you’re too lazy to come up with a better hiring process. Here are some ideas that don’t suck:
- Live Coding Sessions: Watch me code in real-time. See how I think, how I problem-solve, and how I handle pressure.
- Pair Programming: Let’s work together on a problem. You’ll learn more about my skills in 30 minutes than you would from a 20-hour take-home test.
- Portfolio Reviews: Look at my past work. Ask me about my challenges, my solutions, and my thought process.
- Technical Discussions: Talk to me about systems design, architecture, or specific technologies. You know, like adults.
Conclusion: There’s No Easy Way to Hire, But Take-Home Tests Need to Die
Hiring is hard—there’s no magic formula to guarantee the perfect hire. But take-home tests? They’re lazy, outdated, and exploitative. They favor people with too much free time, encourage cheating, and fail to reflect real-world engineering.
It’s time to stop wasting everyone’s time. Candidates, stop bending over backward for companies that don’t respect you. And hiring managers, evolve or get left behind. The era of take-home tests is over. Let’s bury them for good.
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