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job-search assessment

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November 3, 2025 Score: 22 Rep: 85,398 Quality: Expert Completeness: 30%

Ok so after a some clarification and comments from OP and other users I think we have reached an important observation and factor on this whole situation.

I still agree with what others have said, that if you don't like what you are being asked to do, you are in complete freedom to say no. However, the new clarifications change things... Quoting from OP's comments, emphasis mine, we have:

By looking at the requirements. I said it will take 3 weeks, they said OK

This brings a whole new light to this situation. It was not them who told you this would take 3 weeks time to make; it was you who came up with this time frame.

I made the mistake of thinking that my high-quality assessment app would enhance the desire to hire me, and that they would allow a 1 office day 4 remote days a week

Again, your call. Your desire to have some leverage to ask for more remote days led you to make this call, and thus why the time required for the assessment increased.

If you ever want something from an employer ask or negotiate for it directly, never assume that your impression on them will magically make them read your mind and offer it to you.

[...] the Tech Lead disaggreed without seeing the product. He said another dev did the assessment in 3 days. I told him the other dev probably handed in a low-medium quality product. The Tech Lead told me it's not about code, it's about making technical decisions and communicating them well. The assessment serves the purpose of figuring out the level of seniority. I understand but oppose it.

Bingo! What this Tech Lead said to you is a very very important comment and perhaps the core situation regarding seniority. I'm sorry but if you really understood that, I suspect you would not oppose it. Let me try to clarify this and help you understand...

Here is why I oppose it. If you would hand in an assessment without feature X, the employer could say "why no feature X?" or "we don't think you are senior enough".

We can see that you assumed again (the "could" on your comment, and the assumed answer "we don't think you are senior enough because you didn't do X").

But even if they did ask that question, which is perfectly valid, the "senior" answer would have been on the lines of the comment the Tech Lead said to you.

A perfectly valid and very "senior"-y answer could have been something like:

"That's a good point Mr. Tech Lead. Feature X is important because Y and Z reasons, and in a production environment it would be a must. However, as this was an assessment and only a development environment or POC, I decided to leave it out due to time constraints, as going for it and doing it well would take an unreasonable time for an assessment. However, when going for X, in general, the steps to take would be A, B and C".

THIS is the senior-level thinking and skills that they were testing. They even said it: it was not about the code, it was about making technical decisions and communicating them well.

October 31, 2025 Score: 41 Rep: 49,617 Quality: Expert Completeness: 30%

Three weeks' time? No way. You are likely being duped into working for free. And it's not only you, but every other candidate.

I've lived in a big city for most of my life, but once fell on some hard times and had to move way in the boondocks with relatives. I landed an interview back in the city, and I got sent home with an "assessment" like yours. Eager to get my life back, I spent hours and hours on the solution and e-mailed it in. The company never called me back. Then it dawned on me that I'd been suckered. I hadn't shared any details of my living situation, but the interviewers could probably infer my situation just by looking at how far I drove (about 80 miles) to get to that damned interview.

After that, I decided to set a boundary. If I show up at an interview and any kind of test "smells" like it's solving a production problem, I am quick to point that out and let it be known that I'm not working for free. The last time this happened to me, the interviewer didn't say a word in protest, but quickly changed the subject to something else!!!

You've been duly warned.

November 3, 2025 Score: 10 Rep: 152,039 Quality: High Completeness: 30%

With the clarification from the comments, I really think the company dodged a bullet there.

I applied for a senior role. The company asks me to do an assessment. This assessment takes approximately 3 weeks.

Your job as a senior is not to blindly follow any requirement given. Your experience as a senior means you should check the requirements given and if they do not align with what you know, you should give feedback why you think something must be wrong.

You estimated the amount of work to be done at 3 weeks full time work.

That is a huge red flag, an assignment should not take that long. Who would have that kind of time, people applying there as a senior supposedly already have a job elsewhere. And probably a family and life outside of work. 3 weeks fulltime work would be what? Like a quarter of a year in weekends? It is highly unlikely that that is what the company wants, to wait 3 months for the assessment to come back.

But you did not communicate that clearly. You said it "takes" three weeks, which I guess was fine with them because they thought "well, he has a family and a life, that probably means he has plans for the weekend and will do this the weekend after". That seems like a good timeline for a couple of hours of assessment to be done after work.

You didn't clarify whether you misunderstood something. You just went with the instructions which must be wrong and executed them. Probably to technical perfection. But what good does technical perfection do, if you cannot clarify the requirements until you are 100% sure you got it right?

Your biggest asset and selling point as a senior is your ability to question management. To look behind the curtain and say "wait, this cannot be right".

And you didn't. You did a junior job. Maybe with exceptional coding skills.

You failed their assessment. Not trough bad coding, but through bad communication before coding.

I don't think that communication part of the assessment was intentional from their side, but it served it's purpose anyway. Someone either asked for clarification or just got the requirements right the first time and did it in three days. Three days of two to three hours after work sounds about right for a good assessment.

October 31, 2025 Score: 10 Rep: 2,447 Quality: Medium Completeness: 40%

You must be paid for your time

A prospective employer may ask for a demonstration of skills, but that must be as short as practicable and in no circumstances longer than a single shift (typically 8 hours, but some jobs may be longer or shorter). If you work for longer than that you are entitled, by law, to be paid for your work.

October 31, 2025 Score: 5 Rep: 119,090 Quality: Low Completeness: 10%

What is the maximum amount of time an employer may ask for in an assessment?

They can ask for anything they like.

You are free to tell them to go jump if you think they are being silly.

October 31, 2025 Score: 4 Rep: 2,912 Quality: Low Completeness: 20%

As others have noted, that much work is an excessive and likely underhanded attempt to get free work.

However, it's worth noting that "trust to the applicant" isn't really a factor. Companies assessing potential employees are doing just that: making an assessment. There's not really room to "trust" the applicant, beyond reasonable professional respect.

How much work you're willing to do to convince them that you are up to the job at hand is a personal choice. For me, anything more than an hour or so would be too much

As a senior practitioner in one's field, it's your experience and past successes that say the most about you, not what you can cobble together in a short amount of time.

November 6, 2025 Score: -3 Rep: 5,255 Quality: Low Completeness: 50%

Yes it is a red flag, but odds are that you must live with it.

Reasons:

  1. You are already there, you can not switch to other company from tomorrow.
  2. They pay you for sitting on crap meetings. Your workplace duty is to sit there and hear them. Your workplace duty is to play that you have understood them, and that "you have got the mentality".
  3. That is not an exceptional thing by big companies, it happens very often. The likely background is that they have no work, so they create for them. Another likely reason is that they have no work for you, or for guys in similar position as you, but they still need to employ them (whose most likely reason is that they have a budget they want to fulfill).

If it happens regulary, for example, 30 or your 40 weekly work hours is going with various meetings instead work, you might consider a change.

If your life situation does not allow a change for you, you must live with it.

If it does, search for your next job and sit on their.... meetings until your first offer.