Mastering the Coding Exercise for Apps Developers

Welcome to the Interview Loop series where we go over each step of your interview loop.

• Intro to the Apps Developer Interview Loop
• Initial Phone Screen
• Technical Phone Screen
• The Coding Exercise
• The Algorithm Interview
• The System Designs Interview
• The App Specialty Interview
• The Hiring Manager Closing Interview

Remember, while some job interviews may include all these sessions, others might involve a subset. Prepare accordingly.

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If you’ve made it this far, it’s a good sign that the company you’re interviewing with likes you.

They’ve probably requested a take home exercise from you. A lot of companies are asking for these because they want to see how you code. They often ask the same exercise to every candidate so they can have a clear baseline to compare different apps developers.

While most candidates think they should do it, you’re actually confronted with 2 options:

• Complete the coding exercise and make it unique
• Turn it down and offer different code samples instead

We’ll go over how to make your coding exercise stand out, as well as when (and why!) you should probably just turn it down instead.

Nailing the Coding Exercise for Apps Developers

If you’re more junior or mid level and don’t have much code published online (non private), it’s usually a good idea to take on the coding challenge.

These challenges are typically time boxed. Expect anywhere between 1-4h to complete them.

They can be paid, but often aren’t. Most of the time, it’s all throwaway code.

As an Apps Developer, you’ll often be tasked to build a simple app with basic features. Something along these lines:

• Make a network request from an API that loads a list
• Build UI to display the list
• Maybe implement a search functionality

Exercises vary a lot across companies but often follow this type of structure.

So what do Hiring Managers expect to see when they review your code? Typically, they want a well architected product, that runs with no bugs, don’t contain typos, handles errors and that are written entirely by you. However, if you’re competing with 10 engineers for 1 position, and everybody writes good code, it comes down to the little something special that you’re doing. Here are a few ways to stand out (pick one):

• Bring some magic to your UI. Stand out as a product oriented engineer by making your UI beautiful and garnished with animations. Show your expertise building something special
• Make your architecture scalable and modular. While you’re only asked to build one feature, make it so you could build an entire app that could scale to millions of users.
• Make it run everywhere. Multi-platform is great. If you’re using Flutter, why not make it run on Mac, Windows and Linux as well as Mobile? Or share your business logic with Kotlin Multiplatform and build native Android and iOS UI

A well documented README is a big plus, and dropping a video of your product running saves everyone a lot of time. Always take the extra time on this to make sure you stand out.

Finally, you can ask a more senior engineer to help you review your code before submitting this. If you know someone, reach out! If not, our community has a code review channel to get some help from your peers to get a little extra polish.

Turning down the Coding Exercise

Why would you turn down a coding exercise when you’re trying to get a job?

It turns out most Apps Experts and senior to staff developers simply turn it down.

Refusing to complete a coding exercise often means exercising leverage on the company that is interviewing you. You’re sending a clear message that you are “too good” or “too senior” for this. It also shows that you may have other options that won’t require you to take 4-5 hours of your time to write some throwaway code.

But you should still demonstrate your experience and expertise.

The best way to do this is to have open source projects you’re willing to share. Whether it’s your portfolio, a small app or a past exercise that you’ve polished over time, anything that demonstrates your seniority and expertise is good to show. As for the coding exercise, you want to ensure that it shines at at least one thing. Whether it’s great architecture, amazing UI and animations, modularity etc… At least get one very very right, and the rest at least good.

Remember, this is the best opportunity you have to showcase how good you really are at your job, and the effectiveness of the signal you send when refusing a coding exercise and instead sending strong code samples will trickle down throughout the rest of your interview loop.

Conclusion

Whether you decide to complete a coding exercise or not is up to you. Always exercise judgement and read the room with the Hiring Manager to know what is appropriate.

If you decide to complete it, make it unique and amazing.

If you don’t, make sure you exercise leverage and that you have other great code samples to share.

Did you pass the Coding Exercise and are now scheduled for more interviews? Keep on reading to master the final steps of the Apps Developer Interview Loop.