Reasonable reasons to refuse coding assessments

I'm pushing 40 years in the professional phase of my career, and I don't really push back much on that. That said, the more experience I get, the less often I'm asked for that sort of thing.

My general philosophy about this kind of thing is that a potential employer is free to conduct the interviews in whatever way they wish. How they choose to conduct them tells me something important about the company.

If they want to do something that I am just unwilling to do (such as a take-home exercise), I'll say that outright and offer a different way they can gather the information they want. If that's not acceptable to them, then I have a decision to make: is this really a company I want to work for enough to do it anyway? If so, I shut up and do it. If not, then the interview is effectively over.

But I have always had (even when green) an attitude about interviews. I'm not looking at them as the company evaluating me, I'm looking at them as me evaluating the company.

In ~40 years as an engineer, through 8 jobs and ~30 interviews, I don't recall that I have ever had a timed coding interview. (I mean, I've had "take 5 minutes and look at this code and tell us what it will do", which was not difficult enough to put me under any time pressure, so I'm not sure that it counts.)

If I had one... I'd probably do it, rather than refuse. Why not? But I might also consider it in my evaluation of the company. (Remember that you're interviewing them, too...)

The only real loophole I've seen is becoming a freelancer. You approach them as a salesperson, not an engineer. You sell the ability to complete the project as requested. This mostly works with non-technical clients, though technical clients will almost always be less strict about it - if they had the resources to run someone through the full gauntlet, they'd do that and save a little money.

I did pass one interview out of sheer luck. Small startup, their core person left and they had a tight deadline (i.e. waterfall). CTO asked me my opinion on architectures and stuff, I pulled out my laptop which was covering a lecture on architecture I was doing at that time. He was impressed, we agreed on culture and pay and stuff, and they offered the job the next day. One hour interview.

Interviews are two way though, and you should always evaluate that they have a competent team if they let you skip the coding interviews.

I’ve been coding for 25 years and I’ve never had an interview with a big coding exercise. I did do the triplebyte hour or two hour coding interview. I’m sort of a manager and consider myself close to a senior or so and can program a decent amount.

I’ve had many interviews where they ask me to write out a fizzbuzz or something but that takes a few minutes. And I’ve never minded doing that.

If someone gave be a big take home, and I wanted the job, I’d probably just do it.

I currently give a small take home assignment to applicants that I designed to take 15 minutes. Few refuse. If someone proposed an alternative, I’d listen as I’m really just looking to filter out people who can’t code at all (a surprisingly large number of people).

So you're not looking for reasons so much as alternatives? I've never been in a position to dictate the interview process as a candidate. I'd view differing opinions on acceptable interview practices as a good indicator that the role is not a good fit.

Maybe this changes at 20+ years of experience, but I haven't gotten that impression from my professional network.

Ultimately you want the job or you don't.

10 YOE. I don’t refuse timed assessments. I just don’t study for them.

If the company thinks inverting a binary tree is the best way to test my capabilities on a completely unrelated job, that reflects poorly on them. They might as well do a push up contest.

A company that thinks leet code is a good way to evaluate potential hires is not a company that is worth my time.

Are you okay with grinding leetcode and doing multiple rounds with leetcode hard puzzles as opposed to a simple take home assignment that can be done with help from AI assistants?

Lots of people cannot cope without doing things to control ppl...

Send them sample code. It gives them the same information or more.