I generally have a policy of "over 4 hours and I charge for my time." I did this in the 4-hour window, and it was a lot of fun. Much better than many other take-home assignments.

I don't do take home assignments, but when I did, I would offer to do it at my hourly rate, even if it was just an hour. It's time I would otherwise spend making money.

Anyone worth working with respected that and I landed several clients who forwent the assignment altogether. It's chump change in the grand scheme of things, and often a formality.

Does help that I have a very public web presence and portfolio, though.

For many reasons, you’re not gonna get into Anthropic with that attitude.

And Anthropic will never land heavyset_go with their attitude. I guess we’re at an impasse.

I don't care

Time is the issue, not money.

I couldn't care less about getting paid for a few hours, what's truly annoying when you're job hunting is the company having an extremely high rejection rate even at the take-home stage. That's an inordinate waste of time multiplied by a lot of companies.

If you have a >50% chance of rejecting, don't even give the candidate a take-home. Be at least 90% sure you want them before you get to that stage.

I have foregone our take home for exceptional candidates, but let me ask you, do you also demand compensation for in person or zoom call 1-1 interviews? Surely thats the same time of your life.

It signals a degree of investment from the other side if they're willing to burn their own time talking to you. I can understand a small screening process to filter candidates, but I'm not going to do your silly dance for multiple hours if you're not going to do it with me.

They're paying with their time, and I have questions I want to ask them. It's a mutually beneficial experience.

Being told "here do this arbitrary thing that will take 4 hours of your time and maybe we'll look at it, and then if we even bother to do that, maybe we'll respond" is different than an interview where both parties invest their time face-to-face.

> I generally have a policy of "over 4 hours and I charge for my time.

Worth mentioning that demanding to be paid to apply for a company is usually equivalent to rejecting the job. Most companies are going to end the interview there. Few HR departments would allow one applicant to be paid for the same interview loop as other candidates.

I was helping out in a mentoring program during the ZIRP period when the idea of charging companies for take-home interviews started to become popular. I can’t think of anyone it actually worked for in that group. I’ve heard anecdotes online of some people doing it with success, but any company like Anthropic is just going to close your application and move on if you request to be paid for applying. They have a zillion other qualified candidates in line.

If someone is giving a take-home problem that looks like you’re actually doing work for the company, that’s a different story. This problem is not actually work, obviously.

Yeah, I have told HR people this and been rejected. I do say this upfront because I don't want to send you a surprise bill. The main response I get is "OK, that's fine, don't spend more than 4 hours on it." The Anthropic recruiter told me, "no problem, it's a 4-hour test anyway."

> I do say this upfront because I don't want to send you a surprise bill.

Sending a company a surprise bill that they didn't agree upon is bad practice. Interviews are customarily not compensated, so it's unreasonable to surprise bill someone for it.

If you send a company a surprise bill for the interview, it's going to give the HR people a good laugh as they cross you off the candidates list. Everyone involved is going to forever remember you as the person who tried surprise billing for the interview and make a mental note to never interview you again at future companies.

It's not a good thing to try.

I only mention this because I think some people have done that.

4 hours continuous or no? I can't imagine finding 4 hours of straight focus.

These kinds of roles are for youngsters with minimal commitments who are looking for their shot to break into a wild industry. It’s not for the middle aged single parent with FTE and just enough free time to do an extra load of laundry.

Continuous

damn that sucks

i guess that ensures you either hire the childless

or those with children who are fine with be not present for that long willingly (so they are probably gonna be job-obsessed enough)

or they are currently unemployed so they won't have an existing job as anchoring leverage

well played, anthropic

I’m trying to imagine what would make it impossible to not pay attention to your children for four hours and the only thing I can think of that can’t be scheduled around is…a very young newborn, maybe? If they’re prone to waking up constantly?

Babies and toddlers need parental care and attention too.

Usually you can get four hours of time where they’re not likely to bother you from them.

I can't imagine wanting to hire someone as an FTE who is unable to spend 4hrs working in a day.

i can't but i put out staff level work and get paid happily accordingly for years now

nobody i know ever spends 4hrs uninterrupted working remotely lolol

If you look at it as a puzzle game then it's not any different than the time you use to play other games.

> it's not any different than the time you use to play other games.

This assumes that the candidate has a lot of time for playing other games.

I’ve been sent the Anthropic interview assignments a few times. I’m not a developer so I don’t bother. At least at the time they didn’t seem to have technical but not-dev screenings. Maybe they do now.

Care to elaborate the first part?

Did you apply for a position? Did they send you the assignment without prior discussion?

Why is writing code to execute a program using the fewest instructions possible on a virtual machine a waste of time?

The expected time you spend on it is much less than the expected time they'll spend on it.

you don't get paid for it

It’s kind of an interesting problem.