GitHub — Technical Interview, take home exercise

Some time ago I had the opportunity to get into a Technical interview at GitHub for a senior software engineer role. During the selection, the first step I got assigned was a take home exercise, which I failed because I did not read properly the requirements.

Preface

I am not going into too many details and polemics about this kind of hiring process but frankly speaking, if you plan to assign hours of work to a candidate, you should, at least, present yourself first, explain the role and company and then, if you believe there is a human match, assign a take home task, which should be properly described.

The Process

The process I went through was quite anonymous and cold. I simply got an e-mail from the hiring HR manager stating that my resume was outstanding, they wanted to move forward and the first step would be a take home exercise. No calls, no interviews, no questions.

Few days later I got a GitHub URL with a small ASP.NET Core 3.1 web api project and a 300 minutes activation link. Within the 5 hours I had to:

• understand the project
• enhance it accordingly to very vague requirements
• fix the existing Unit tests
• add additional Unit tests
• create a PR with all the details

Now, considering the interview pressure (wow I am doing something for GitHub), the vague requirements and the various impediments a candidate might face, 5 hours is definitively not enough. Additionally, in their e-mail they stated:

We expect that this exercise will take around 2 hours to complete. We value your time and don’t want to set unreasonable expectations on how long you should work on this exercise.

Sure, but honestly, I write Software since 199x and I do estimations on a be-weekly basis using SCRUM and I would never state to one of my developers that: understanding a new project, enhance it, fix the unit tests and create new one, it is a reasonable time in 2 hours … Come on guys, put 24 hours so that the candidate can push some outstanding solutions; aren’t you looking for the best only, or are you looking for the fastest?

The Take home

The Take home is just a ASP.NET Core Api which allows you store, retrieve and delete objects. Where? Not explained. How…