Tell HN: Interview take home assessments without feedback are frustrating
Totally agreed. After an initial 30 min interview, I then spent something like 12 hours working on an atypical (for me) take home project. Actually really loved the challenge and learned a lot along the way and was excited to discuss it and learn more.<p>Got a &quot;Thanks, you&#x27;re not moving on&quot; message and that was it. Man, the rejection is totally fine, but I really do wish they could&#x27;ve spent a few min just explaining some details. I&#x27;ve gotten more thoughtful rejections from just cover letters and resumes, not to mention public PRs in strangers&#x27; repos.<p>After spending so much time, it just feels like a betrayal of some unspoken developer ethos (vs say talking to a generic HR screener). If you&#x27;re going to make someone code for you for hours and then dismiss their work, please at least tell them why in just a few sentences. You don&#x27;t need to comment line by line in a code review, just general thoughts like &quot;better code org&quot; or &quot;poor architecture and readability&quot; or &quot;better tests would&#x27;ve caught this major bug&quot; or whatever.<p>In my case this was a small company I was super excited to work for, and waited more than a year to finally have a chance to apply for (once my current job ended). It was definitely disheartening and makes it hard to want to try again with them in the future.<p>But, you know, the other side of the coin is that maybe they&#x27;re just getting swamped with so many applications they can&#x27;t take the time to thoughtfully answer each one. I imagine I&#x27;m competing against a horde of more qualified ex FAANGers right now and maybe they&#x27;re too busy trying to decide between the top 3 or 4 vs the long tail of hundreds of us who failed the take home. Who knows...