Comment by bartread

Before I go any further, broadly speaking, I'm not in favour of take home tests, but not for the reasons you mention.

I did a stint of hiring for a software company over a decade ago where they did use a take home test. Now we did get the odd person cheat on it, but I can think of only a handful of occurrences where that had happened - at least in a way where it had meaningful impact - out of the probably hundreds of people we interviewed.

The take home test was simply there to figure out whether or not it was worth inviting an engineer in for interview, at which point we of course did an in person coding assessment. If you cheat at the take home test, what happens at the interview? You get found out is what happens, and it can lead to quite an awkward conversation. If you don't get found out perhaps it doesn't matter anyway because you've just got through a coding interview anyway. That's not to excuse cheating but to point out that it's perhaps only a risk in terms of technical skill if it's your sole point of assessment of those skills.

But, anyway, as I say: I don't much like take home tests for other reasons. And I don't much like platforms like Codility either (with these I found the signal to noise ratio to be particularly poor). The reason I don't like any of this stuff though is that, if you're hiring, most likely it disadvantages you as an employer versus other companies who don't put candidates through these tests.

Unless you work for a company where everyone wants to work you have to ask yourself this question: why would anyone willingly go through our burdensome and tedious selection process when they can get a job on a similar, or maybe even better, salary elsewhere much more easily?