If a company asked me that, I'd tell them thanks but no thanks and end the interview. Ask me a few questions, have me solve your riddles, see if I'd work well with your team/company. But building an entire production ready site? Ain't nobody got time for that.
I wouldn't end the interview then and there. Instead, I'd pull out a copy of my generic freelance contract, fill in my billable rate for the project after reviewing the scope, and end the interview after they refused to sign it.
My opinion is that companies that think unpaid "code challenges" are a good idea don't respect my time enough as an individual to be worth it to work for. It's a signal that they're either going to have an awful work/life balance or that they are filled with unjustifiably arrogant "rockstars" in a caustic environment of petty elitism (or both). The latter signal applies especially if the company's product is some web "application" for the young-20-something set.
Pretty sure no interviewer ever asked for a production ready site, this is just hyperbole from you and the author of this article.
If I were a front end developer, I would much prefer to be asked to write a quick, tailored to fit within the time allotment (e.g. one hour) web site rather than answering obscure coding puzzles that probably have little relevance with what I'll actually be doing at the company.
As the interviewer, I would phrase it as: "Build as much as you can in one hour, with the following functionalities in order of decreased priorities: login, cart, etc...".
Then I would judge you on how much of it you built, how solid each of the features are, etc. In my book, you can choose to go broad (build a lot of features, albeit superficially) or broad (only a few features, but well designed, tested, clean code).
> Pretty sure no interviewer ever asked for a production ready site this is just hyperbole from you and the author of this article.
How can you be so sure? Were you there? You're essentially calling the author a liar without even pretending to have access to more data than that author. Thats just rude.
If you know something that the rest of us don't that would lead you to make such a forceful assertion, please share.
> Pretty sure no interviewer ever asked for a production ready site, this is just hyperbole from you and the author of this article.
I'm sad to say that this is untrue, and that in writing this article I have not exaggerated the requirements in the least. I'm not going to name the company, but the requirements of the challenge indicate that it should be something you would be comfortable putting in production.
The "challenge" is a repo on the company's github. I'm sure you could probably easily find it with a bit of sleuthing.
I never claimed this happened to me, I was speaking hypothetically to the authors situation.
I have had companies ask for an idea or some sort of feature to develop for the company and refused because it was essentially a "do some work for us and we might hire you" deal.
