Ask HN: What's your take on companies that send technical test before interview?

1 shadowjones 3 8/1/2025, 9:41:59 AM

A few years ago I was almost never coming across this kind of process.

But over the past few weeks, I've had maybe 5 or 6 companies asking me for a technical test before any kind of interview.

I did it twice, the first took 2-3 hours, followed by 3 interviews, and I did not get the job.

The other was like a 15 minutes test, which seems more acceptable, but still annoying.

The last one was asking for a relatively big feature, with no time limit, and vague requirements, it's up to me to decide how far I want to push it, I'm hesitating to write even a single line of code...

A while ago I would have never tolerated this kind of process, but given how the market is at the moment, I wonder if I should just put up with it.

Do you see this as a red flag from companies that won't respect or value you and your time? Or is just the new "normal" and we should adapt?

Comments (3)

mtmail · 10h ago

Our company had this 15 years. Even sending a questionnaire would get less than 50% replies, tech questions or small asks "write a script which ..." much less replied. It's a filter. Goal was to filter out those candidates who apply to 100 companies per week, sometimes automated. See it as second or third step in a process. It's not against you personally, you're competing with dozens, with AI tools these days might be 100s, of low quality applications hitting the same email inbox.

laurent_du · 10h ago

The vast majority of people who claim to be software engineer (or apply to similar position) have very limited skill. This has been proven countless times. I think it's completely fair to ask the candidate to show some level of ability. I did some interviewing a few years ago and I was shocked at the abysmal level of some people who have been in this industry for almost 10 years. So the resumé in itself is not really indicative of anything.

unsupp0rted · 11h ago

Love it. It gets me clients that others miss out on.

I'd rather do a technical test for a couple hours and not get it than do weeks of fruitless job hunting.

If you're doing 3 or 4 technical tests and still not getting it, then that's another matter. You need to pick your prospects better and talk to them well enough to understand whether they're actually going to hire you if you pass.

Or perhaps they're just messing around with applicants for whatever reason (going through the motions to keep their boss happy, trying to look good to their investors/board, trying to fill an interview quota, trying to get free work out of applicants, etc).

Capitalism baby!