Hi , I want to understand the expectations from Apple in a take home coding challenge. This was for a Software Engineer role in the tools and engineering team for iPhone Hardware. I was given a coding exercise which was pretty simple and straightforward It was to read a text file and reorganize the file contents in a specific order based on some constrains and then finally output on the console. 1) I made sure that I got all the requirements and asked a lot of clarifying questions 2) Confirmed that they need a stand alone application runnable from command line 3) Confirmed that this application will be used by a single user and no need to scale it by building an UI or a REST API 2) Implemented a clean working solution and followed the coding guidelines and clean code practice 3) Commented the code heavily 4) wrote Junits with almost 95% code coverage 3) Stated the time complexity with optizmed solution 3) Create a design document of my application 4) created a readme.txt After a few days I was told they are not moving forward with my candidacy . I wanted to understand the expectations from Apple for take home coding challenge. I was given 5 days to turn in and I dont think I could have done anything more even if I was given the extra time. Would appreciate some feedback from people who have had experience with take home challenges from Apple. #apple #tech
I had exactly same experience recently with Square. I did implement the app like an production grade app (added comments, clean design, decoupled components), but at the end rejected. I decided, will never choose take home project.
If you want to send me your code I can give you feedback. I recently passed the square mobile interview.
True that.. I guess problem solving with the interviewer is much better where you can collaborate and ask questions while you are on the call .. anyways I had cleared the phone screen and then this was my 2nd interview
I had an interview with a manager for two hours and then he told me to take the home exercise which I should spend 8-10 hours and then I can take the onsite. I told him if we could change the order, so the onsite first, he said that wasn’t the best for his team time. Yeah not mine either. He would spend 5 minutes to grade my 8 hour long project to tell me whether I am good enough for his team to have an interview. Huge red flag for upfront asking something so unreasonable even after asking to change his mind nicely. Cannot imagine working for him for years!
Lol.. Good point . I spent more than 8 hours for this take home challenge from Apple and the same week I had an onsite interview scheduled for another company which I couldn't postpone. I wish I hadn't spent 8 hours on Apple!
You can interview with many teams at apple.
Yes this is utter BS. They try to save their own time by not having to conduct phone screens. I had a very similar experience with Fitbit a few years ago. I found out later what the optimal solution was that they were looking for. It’s basically that one solution with a specific insight that they want to see. I stayed up a night to complete that assignment and it passed test cases etc too. Just that it wasn’t using the specific technique they were looking for. Ofcourse that technique was the most optimal.
I had a take home challenge with Apple for a game with Mac HW Team. Passed it to move to virtual on-site. The stuff they are looking for: 1. Modularity and reuse. How you organize code in the first place. 2. Maintainability index. 3. Indentation, formatting and comments. 4. Algorithm/efficiency. 5. Corner cases and testing (unit) 6. User doc like readme.txt Edit: forgot 7. OOP concepts (was 2nd bullet point, but lazy to change all other numbers). You do meet a lot of the points above, so not sure what they were looking for.
Probably using dependency injection or cqrs in architecting application, Similar things happen to me and I realised that companies in general look for decoupled architecture from senior candidates.