Interviewer has given me a full functionality development (almost a complete web application) as an assignment. Is this correct?

manpreet Best Answer 3 years ago

I am interviewing for a "Full-Stack Developer" position at a start-up. I have cleared on phone interview and one onsite interview where I was asked technical questions. After the onsite interview, the interviewer told me that I would get an assignment which I will have to complete in 2 days.

When the assignment came, it surprised me as what they are asking me to do is almost like to add a full new feature set to their existing tool. I am mentioning the requirements below:

Solution must use the most recent version of Laravel framework, MySQL
and any other open source libraries/frameworks as required.

• Customers should be able to easily create, update and delete new
  documents within a password protected control panel.

• Documents can be either published or private. Private documents exist in the
  database but cannot be viewed publically.

• Customers should be able to customize document title, summary, body copy
  and add image or video assets.

• Users should be able to sign document by filling out a form consisting of
 name, email address and phone number.

• When users sign a document they should be presented with a customizable
 thank you message and receive a customizable thank you email from the customer.

• Customer should be able to view all users who have signed documents
  within a password protected control panel.

OPTIONAL Enhancements

• Reporting/Analytics
• User management
• Custom document fields
• Send users SMS thank you message upon signing documents

Isn't this too extensive to be a part of the interview? I am also curious that who has the rights on the code that I write. What if I do all this in 2 days and submit the code, they don't offer me a job and just end up using all the functionality that I created? Has anyone been in this situation before?

Any help from the seniors would be appreciated!

manpreet 3 years ago

I'd be very wary of anyone asking for something this extensive as an interview exercise, and would most likely pass over any "opportunity" with these people.

That said - you could code it up, whack it on a free tier on AWS and demonstrate it. You can present the code design and database from your own laptop. Just don't hand over any source code without payment.