I turned my interview task for Google into a startup
None of the places I&#x27;ve worked at had me do a coding challenge.  Either they already knew who I was through networking or they asked me to show them a personal project and explain how it worked.  Each job was a great opportunity.<p>When I start looking for a new opportunity in a year or two, I may consider coding challenges to be a soft red flag in that I don&#x27;t think they&#x27;re worth wasting time over.  I spent so many hours in the last 6 months doing various code challenges, some of which were borderline unreasonable, none of which landed me a position.  I ended up getting hired by one of the top 3 places I wanted to work, and it was mainly because I had already networked with my interviewers.  Maybe they looked at my GitHub, but I never asked.  Regardless, coding challenges of any kind have consistently been a waste of time for me.<p>Unless I really <i>really</i> want to work for a particular company, from now on I will immediately end my interview process if they ask me to do the following:<p>- On-site coding challenges<p>- Take home coding challenges<p>- Whiteboarding<p>- Brain teasers<p>I don&#x27;t have time to waste on that shit anymore.  If having years of experience and a GitHub don&#x27;t demonstrate to you that I can write code, then I really can&#x27;t help you with whatever it is you&#x27;re looking to achieve.  Developers have to shotgun apply to many places in order to play the numbers game of getting hired, and life is too short to work an extra hour or more every night to code something no one will ever use that won&#x27;t get me hired anyway.  People are generally biased towards feelings rather than facts, and any of the above bullet points mostly serve as a Rorschach test for interviewers who have already decided whether they like me or not.  Someone just breaking into the industry <i>might</i> want to go through the hazing process of hammering out coding challenges, but I refuse to have my personal time wasted.<p>To anyone reading this, networking <i>is</i> a biggie.  My dad used to tell me that and I never took him seriously because I hated the idea that schmoozing outperforms merit, but it&#x27;s absolutely true.  In reality, networking <i>should</i> be better because, at the end of the day, most people can tell whether you&#x27;re competent and if they want to work with you based on how you naturally interact with them.  Formal interviews barely work because everyone rehearses for them and they only prove that you were able to tackle one problem(which recruiters often alert candidates to anyway).