Hey, thanks for taking the time to write such an elaborate response. What I can tell you from the start is that the company has presumably agreed that their assignment wasn't needed as they have invited me to an on-site interview - I didn't go, but that's another aspect.
I understand your points and I can tell you I don't find your views surprising. I can speak from my experience from interviewing in several different jobs across Europe. I have completed coding assignments for all kinds of companies and organisations in countries like Romania, Cyprus, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway, UK, Australia, Switzerland. They're always dull and inconclusive time wasters. I even interviewed at CERN and their coding assignment (JavaScript and Python) was very generic, easy and dull.
I've only suggested to make this coding assignments useful for the Open Source community. They could be like small issues to solve on GitHub and maintainers could submit them on a platform like CoderPad where companies could pick them up from.
And I reject this whole "we probably have less time to spare than you", as a business. My own time is just as important as theirs. Maybe even more important because when I am interviewing I will probably have lined-up several interviews and coding assignments and it won't help anybody if I am going through a living hell.
I also reject this idea that you need to have a specific set of skills and your assignment should look for those skills. This would only be valid if you are looking to hire an expert consultant on a 3 month project and you need them to have those specific skills. You all other cases, you would hire people who have a good track record of proven experience and ability to learn and adapt. It helps of course if they have the skills that you need and they can be productive right away, but this is not that important if you're looking to build a team that would stay together for a few years to come.
Hey, thanks for taking the time to write such an elaborate response. What I can tell you from the start is that the company has presumably agreed that their assignment wasn't needed as they have invited me to an on-site interview - I didn't go, but that's another aspect.
I understand your points and I can tell you I don't find your views surprising. I can speak from my experience from interviewing in several different jobs across Europe. I have completed coding assignments for all kinds of companies and organisations in countries like Romania, Cyprus, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway, UK, Australia, Switzerland. They're always dull and inconclusive time wasters. I even interviewed at CERN and their coding assignment (JavaScript and Python) was very generic, easy and dull.
I've only suggested to make this coding assignments useful for the Open Source community. They could be like small issues to solve on GitHub and maintainers could submit them on a platform like CoderPad where companies could pick them up from.
And I reject this whole "we probably have less time to spare than you", as a business. My own time is just as important as theirs. Maybe even more important because when I am interviewing I will probably have lined-up several interviews and coding assignments and it won't help anybody if I am going through a living hell.
I also reject this idea that you need to have a specific set of skills and your assignment should look for those skills. This would only be valid if you are looking to hire an expert consultant on a 3 month project and you need them to have those specific skills. You all other cases, you would hire people who have a good track record of proven experience and ability to learn and adapt. It helps of course if they have the skills that you need and they can be productive right away, but this is not that important if you're looking to build a team that would stay together for a few years to come.
Well, you are naturally entitled to your opinion. It is a different story when you've actually done extensive hiring.