If you want to completely fail the take-home coding challenge on software engineer interview follow these steps:

1. Jump into the code right away

When a company sends you a take-home challenge, start coding it without asking any questions and finding the end goal.

2. Wrong estimation

When the company will ask you how long it will take, say a non-realistic number without estimating how long it will really take.

3. Sloppy code

Write messy code that only you can understand and deploy it without formatting.

4. Blindly copying code

Find the solution to your take-home challenge in Google and just copy it without understanding what is going on here.

5. Overengineering the solution

Use every technology you know to code your solution. Add tests to every function, even adding tests to see if a variable is defined or not. Add comments to every line of code. Add bonus functions that only show that you are not adequately evaluating the task, like CI/CD to a simple weather application. Try to impress the company as much as you can. Show how much you know. Overengineer things.

6. Don’t add a README file

Don’t add a README file and make reviewers spend their time finding out how your code works and how to run it.

These are the things you should never do to nail a take-home coding challenge and land a job.

Cheers,

– Nick

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