Take-home assignments are divisive — and not going away. Handled well, they’re your best chance to show real work instead of talking about it. Handled badly, they eat a weekend for nothing.
Scope before you start
Ask how long they expect it to take, and treat that as a ceiling, not a suggestion. A reviewer would rather see a focused, finished submission than an exhausted, sprawling one.
Show your thinking
- Include a short README: assumptions, trade-offs, what you’d do with more time.
- Solve the actual problem first; polish second.
- Don’t gold-plate — done and clear beats clever and unfinished.
If a company demands days of unpaid work with no conversation, that’s data too. The best take-homes respect your time, because the best teams do.