I don’t know if I would throw out “equal time” as my metric, but it’s not far off. There is always going to be some asymmetry in the interview process, especially in early stages, but there should be some balance to it, an ebb and flow.

Companies asking me to spend 2 or 4 or 8 or 16 hours on a take home quiz before I’ve so much as had a 15 minute screen with HR or the hiring manager go straight into the trash. I’m not putting in serious effort when you’ve put in effectively none.

Hate to be a snarky guy, but the more a company demands up front the more they tend to be a bullshit shop anyway. I have had some random no-name sub-contracting shop in the Federal space cold-call and ask me to submit to a take home assignment with a 16 hour estimated completion time. No surprise, they folded several years after I declined. No one worth a damn put up with their shit.

Recently, I had a recruiter tell me I needed to submit to an hours long coding challenge before any contact with the company. When I respectfully declined to proceed without at least a 15 minute phone screen, I got a reply that, as it turns out, they already had a pending offer out. Had I not held some standards with this employer I would have completely wasted my time.

> Companies asking me to spend 2 or 4 or 8 or 16 hours on a take home quiz before I’ve so much as had a 15 minute screen with HR or the hiring manager go straight into the trash.

Companies handing you 16 hour assignments without a phone screen should indeed go straight into the trash.

I've spent a few years volunteering on and off in an interview prep help mentoring program. For as much as everyone likes to talk about these "16 hour take-home without ever talking to the company" these extreme scenarios almost never come up for discussion.

Everyone comes into the prep group thinking that's how their job search is going to look. A few people apply to small, scammy companies who try to do these things but you have to be blind to miss the warning signs.

For the most part, all of the take-homes that people either share directly or talk about are nowhere near the 10-40 hour take-homes that everyone on the internet likes to complain about. I've seen a couple people share them, but it's not normal at all.