Ask HN: Is it normal to have to build an app for the interviewing process?

It depends on the job and mostly on your level of experience relative to their requirements. When I was very first entering software engineering, self taught, most of my interviews went like you’re describing. I had built a few apps which I was proud to demo, and usually they’d ask me to build something in 8-12 hours according to their spec.

I wouldn’t do it NOW, but just starting out it was actually a lot of fun and I learned some neat tricks along the way. That kind of interview landed me a great first job and launched my career.

So I wouldn’t consider that a red flag all by itself.

However I would push back if the scope they ask for is unreasonable, ie if it would take more than a Saturday or so.

Yes, it’s common. But it should be something simple - a toy app that you could build in an afternoon and that isn’t useful to the company.

If it looks like something they’ll actually use in production or if it would take more than a day to complete, those are big red flags (trying to get free work or just not respectful of your time and work-life balance).

The idea is to demonstrate that you’re able to do the type of work the company will want you to do using the technologies you’d be using on the job. It provides a sample of code to discuss in technical interviews to get a sense of our ability to communicate about technical topics. And because everyone gets the same coding project, it allows the hiring team to compare candidates’ skills in an apples to apples manner.

Let’s face it, if you can’t make a pong app for your platform in a few hours then you’re probably not an app developer. If you can’t point at a portfolio of work and/or customers then building a work sample isn’t unheard of.

That said, you will own the finished product (right?!) so add it to your portfolio when finished, eg post screenshots etc on your website.

Be cool about it though, make sure you’re enthusiastic and mention you will be posting the project on github or whatever (if that’s what you do). If they demand they own it then that’s a red flag.

Remember you are also hiring THEM as much as they are hiring you.

I actually like the idea. It provides a lot of opportunity to excel. Let us assume the project is to write a 'Hello world' application. You have 3 choices 1) ignore the assignment, 2) do a simple application 3) go overboard - create a requirements document, design document, project plan, code, test plan,....

If you do option 3 there will be one of 2 reactions - they decide you are overboard and do not want you, and really if they cannot appreciate the hard work, they are not worth getting wrapped up in, or they will go ga ga over you and want you immediately.

Really depends how complicated the app is and how close it is to their actual business. There are some startups out there that see this as a “hack” to get their mvp built. If it’s just a toy app that’s ok although it sounds excessive for an intern.

It's not uncommon, especially if you're working with mobile technologies.

There's a few perspectives here, not specifically for internships:

http://www.gayle.com/blog/2013/09/18/companies-who-give-cand...

I think the company should be very clear about the maximum amount of time you are expected to spend on tasks as part of the application process. There are some cases where companies do this kind of thing to get candidates to do unpaid work.

From your perspective, perhaps the most useful and actionable thing you can do might be to get more offers for internships / work from a range of other companies (easier said than done, of course). Ideally offers not just from startups -- larger orgs, despite their other faults, can have a more professional approach to hiring people.