A lot of people here need a reality check. This week, I volunteered as a security guard for the US open where we were working 12-15 hour days. Other people were getting $20/hour. We got there at 9am and didn’t leave until 2am most nights. Most of these guys had families and kids who they were not seeing for the entire month this event goes on. But they had to do this because they need to provide for their family.

You’re complaining about the process being ageist, but I think you need to wake up to reality that life is not fair and sometimes you have to make sacrifices. In our case, if you sacrifice your life for 1-2 months it can set you up at a nice job for the next 2+ years. That’s so much better than what most people have it like.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Most people with responsibilities simply don't have the time to do this. And as you get more senior, you realize how little knowing algorithms has with day to day work. They are filtering for young engineers that don't know any better and have the time to leetcode. These engineers are less likely to question management and they have already shown their time is cheap.

I also dont have much time. But I have big financial buffers as I assume most 30-40 year old developers do. We can afford to not work 3-4 months while learning and looking for a new job. And if thats not possible surely we can squeeze in 20 minutes daily doing leetcode on the job? Most of us don't actually put in 9 hours of actual work. Don't get me wrong I hate this process. I am just saying it can be done when you have kids.

Your assumptions are right. The people downvoting are mostly just salty.

So, having just had a kid, perhaps I can give some insight (from my perspective, at least).

Every minute I spend on take-homes (oh dear lord the take-homes) is a minute I'm dumping the childcare responsibilities on my wife. And she heads out to work, so I do a bunch of childcare in the mornings/evenings.

Then I also have a full-time job. Like, unless I want to stop sleeping I don't have a whole lot of time to do this stuff.

I just (mostly) finished one and it was because my wife took the baby out to meet other mums.

The worst part is that I have lots and lots of work online, plenty of GH repos and a bunch of really selective companies on my CV. And yet still every time I need to prove that I can in fact call read.csv and do a bunch of data manipulation/analysis.

And I love doing this work. I can only imagine what this is like for someone for whom it's just a career (which is totally fine, tbh).

Oh definitely, a kid under 1 is a different story. I would even say don't move jobs under 1 if you are an active parent. It is just brutal.

That being said, your child won't be a newborn forever. This is the most extreme part of the curve.

Definitely. She'll be one this Sunday, but the effort seems to be increasing for a while at least (I'm hoping when she can speak it'll get easier).

But the thing is, lots of the experienced people you want to hire will be in this position, so it's worth accounting for.