To give more context from an employee's point of view [just my opinion and might be completely wrong]
For a job switch, I need to spend time in three different stages:
---------------
Preparation:
Leetcode (Blind 75) : 150 hours
System Design + DBMS + OS + Networking : 100 hours
Behavioural Questions (preparing STAR format answers): 10-20 hours
------------
Application:
Avg time for sending 500 applications: 20 hours (Assuming 1 application every 2.5 minutes)
-------------
Interviews:
Let's say I got 25 callbacks and 10 of them asked for takehome.
Person to person interviews time: 25 * 3 = 75 hours
Takehomes: 10 * 6 hours = 60 hours.
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All in all, I'm already spending 415 hours of unpaid work to get x% of salary increment. Not including the side projects or hackathons we may need.
So having a takehome exercise asking to make an active contribution to the company is....bad. Sure i can reject it but not everyone will. which is what led us into the multiple rounds of algo interviews hellhole.
I apologize if what I'm saying is harsh. All I want is for leadership to see us as humans with families and not monkeys jumping through hoops.
Not harsh and I don't disagree. On the flip side though if they have a large volume of applicants and they are a sub 50 company right now, it probably does not matter what kind of hoops they make people jump through, they will most likely identify candidate that match their fit. What I am saying is that nobody is wrong in this situation.
But you must remember that they don't want you. They already have more applicants than they can handle.
The trouble is that the leadership does see you as human, which results in them trying to say "Go away! You are not welcome here." as politely as possible.
My industry is related to the power grid. I've worked at two amazing companies. The first had me come out for a 3 hour interview for a summer internship where they accessed my work ethic and culture fit. Once I graduated, I was immediately given an offer letter. The second job required most of a day to interview and I had to prepare a PPT and then got an offer. I also interviewed for another gig that did like four one-hour interviews spread out across a month. What software developers do sounds like absolute hell. My industry has very high demand and very low supply of experienced candidates at the moment though.
It is not a problem with tech hiring in general, just hiring where there are millions of people lined up down the street vying for the same position. To be sure, the job will still most likely go to a friend or relative, but if you are willing to jump through insane hoops you might also be considered. But it is to be taken as a hint that says: "Unless you are extra super sure that you are so special that we can't turn you down, don't waste your time, or ours."
Most other jobs, including Mom & Pop Tech Co., are happy if anyone applies at all and will take what they can get.
They want candidates who care about their product, not people who merely rank companies by compensation, subject a constraint on time spent preparing. If you don't particularly care what you are working on, you would be better off at a big company.
I have worked at multiple FAANGs and even small startups. I have never once seen anyone care about leetcode, GitHub punchcards, stack overflow score, or any of the social media stuff people boast about here. Literally none of this fits in to any evaluation rubric.
For a job switch, I need to spend time in three different stages:
---------------
Preparation:
Leetcode (Blind 75) : 150 hours
System Design + DBMS + OS + Networking : 100 hours
Behavioural Questions (preparing STAR format answers): 10-20 hours
------------
Application:
Avg time for sending 500 applications: 20 hours (Assuming 1 application every 2.5 minutes)
-------------
Interviews:
Let's say I got 25 callbacks and 10 of them asked for takehome.
Person to person interviews time: 25 * 3 = 75 hours
Takehomes: 10 * 6 hours = 60 hours.
-------------
All in all, I'm already spending 415 hours of unpaid work to get x% of salary increment. Not including the side projects or hackathons we may need.
So having a takehome exercise asking to make an active contribution to the company is....bad. Sure i can reject it but not everyone will. which is what led us into the multiple rounds of algo interviews hellhole.
I apologize if what I'm saying is harsh. All I want is for leadership to see us as humans with families and not monkeys jumping through hoops.