1. Preparing for Live Coding
Start small with easy problems like LeetCode and practice core programming constructs until they become muscle memory, while also developing touch typing speeds of 90 words per minute.
Hear it at 0:06 →Engineering video
1:17 · 13 August 2025
How To Avoid Take Home Tasks Interviews As A Developer (Software Developer Interviews Tips 2025)
Key concepts in this video:
2. Negotiating the Interview Format
Friendly push companies away from take-home tasks by asking to switch to a 30 to 45 minute pair programming session with an engineering team member.
Hear it at 0:58 →Transcript
So, Bogdan, if we cannot do take home task, because they are such a bad deal for software engineers, what can we do instead? Get get to live coding. So, it's not easy, it's a meat to long-term bet, but trust me, it does pay off. You want to start small with easy problems, you can try lead code. Use the JavaScript ones, if you're a JavaScript developer, then go into inviting binary trees. And your aim here is just to get comfortable writing code and to get faster writing code.
Get super fast writing the four loops, the wire loops, recursion and do as much of that as you can because then it will become kind of muscle memory and you'll perform a lot better. You'll never blank out anymore. And do touch type, I'm still amazed by the amount of people, amount of developers that do not touch type. You want to aim for a speed of 90 words per minute, if the vocabulary is on English and 60 words per minute if you include punctuation and numbers, we use monkey type or typing club, but get very good.
This is a career long investment and trust me, it's worth every minute. And once you have all that, then try to negotiate the switch. So you try to push them towards a pair programming or a live coding interview, you just tell them, hey, what about, you know, 30, 45 minutes with someone from the engineering team, pair programming, do your folks offer that? You'll push it in a friendly way, so you see if that's a possibility.