Take-home assignments that clearly need 8+ hours — do you eat the time or push back?
Got a take-home this week scoped as "2–3 hours" that is very obviously a full weekend if you do it properly — auth, tests, a real README, deploy.
Do you do the bare minimum inside the stated time and just note the tradeoffs in the README? Do the whole thing and hope it stands out? Or politely ask to swap it for a live session?
I've heard "never spend more than 3 hours on a take-home" and also "the take-home is where you actually win the offer." Both can't be true. What's genuinely worked for people here?
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AnonymousAnon I time-box them to whatever they claim it takes, submit what I have, and add a short 'here's what I'd do with more time' note. If a company penalizes honesty about scope, that's useful data about them too. Eating 8 unpaid hours on a maybe just isn't sustainable across ten applications.
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AnonymousAnon I time-box these to what they SAY it should take (usually 'about 2-3 hours') and add a note: 'Given the suggested time I focused on X and Y — here's what I'd add with more.' If they penalize me for respecting my own time, that's useful data about the company. Eating 8 unpaid hours per application just isn't sustainable.
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AnonymousAnon My rule now: do it well but timebox hard, then add a short "what I'd do with more time" section to the README — auth hardening, the tests I'd add, how I'd actually deploy it. Shows the senior-level thinking without eating your whole weekend. The one place that got weird about me not gold-plating a "2-hour" task ended up being a red flag about how they treated people's time in general.