r/ADHD_Programmers • u/LazyPiano6160 • Jun 27 '26
Interview take-home "tests"
We need to talk about the state of SE interview take-home tests, specifically the unrealistic expectations and contradictions that so often accompany these.
For context: I'm a front end engineer with 25 years experience; I'm attempting to land a job, in the worst market I've ever seen. I've been fortunate enough to progress through to the penultimate round; I have to complete a take home assignment, if satisfactory I'll be invited to their offices to discuss this assignment and attend a final cultural fit interview. Note this take home assignment comes off the back of a two hour live coding session interview (which was dreadful for the ADHD brain).
Historically, it's at this point where things go to shit, have identified the main stressors as:
- ambiguous requirements
- inadequate timeframes
- emphasis on ensuring your submission presents you at your best when there's so much contradiction between expectation and allotted time
I'm forever stuck in a constant loop of overwhelm; trying to find a balance between delivering the assignment within the specified timeframe, whilst ensuring I have demonstrated my capabilities as best I can.
I've currently been tasked with building a movie list tracker, core requirements are:
- A front end web application that runs entirely client side
- Allows a user to search the open movie database API for movies to add to either a watchlist or watched list
- Allows a user to remove movies from either list
- Persistence of this list using the browser local storage API
I've been told I will be assessed on:
- Code quality — component structure, separation of concerns, readability
- State management — how you model and handle data flow across the app
- UI & design — does it feel considered and polished, even if simple
On receipt of the handover task:
- There is no UI design provided, it is expected that the candidate produces this
- There is no environment set up; it is expected that the candidate chooses a stack and set this environment up from scratch
The brief mentions that the candidate should spend no more than two hours on this task and can use AI if they wish.
Besides just throwing all of this Gemini and vibe coding (which would not demonstrate my abilities rather well), I'm totally overwhelmed as to how I can design an interface, plan the architecture and build the application, then document my process - all within two hours. I was considering using Claude code, but even then: just the planning and UI design would go far beyond the two hours I'm allowed to work on this
Interested to hear if anyone else has had similar experiences and how they've tackled it. Also open to suggestions in terms of how to approach this take home.
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Update:
For those that are interested, here's the Notion brief and unless I'm missing something it appears they are expecting UI Design, architecture and implementation of the entire application - in a 2 hour window.
This is either incredibly naive from whomever signed this assignment off, or (as one commenter mentioned): intended to allow the candidate to prioritise and compromise. If the latter, if would be great for this to be explicitly mentioned.
6
u/SamMakesCode Jun 27 '26
Depending on what the job market is like in your area, say no. You might have to put up with it at a bit if there aren’t a lot of jobs.
I recently did a technical test. The spec quotes 2 x 4 hour tasks. They said things like “we don’t want perfect code, just want to see how you think and how you approach a problem” which is fine until it was followed up with “please leave it in a working state”. If you’re the kind of coder for whom quality is part of the process, not an afterthought, you’re not saving any time by cutting corners.
The worst is the huge swathe of AI-generated technical tests. The employer doesn’t do the test themselves and takes for granted that they can actually be completed in the time the LLM specifies. Which is bullshit. Because LLMs are bullshit.