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  • Clean code, but still rejected — what do juniors miss in take-home assignments?

    Aditi R

    Aditi R

    @aGoKU4J
    Updated: Dec 28, 2025
    Views: 191

    I’m a junior developer and I keep running into the same problem. My take-home assignments usually work, the code is clean, but I still get rejected — often without any clear feedback.

    I’m confused about what’s missing. Should I be explaining my intent more? Calling out trade-offs or things I’m unsure about? Mentioning basic security or edge cases even if I didn’t fully solve them?

    Take-homes feel less like tests of correctness and more like tests of thinking, but it’s hard to tell what reviewers actually notice.

    For other juniors — what part of take-homes do you struggle with the most?
    And for seniors or reviewers — when multiple submissions “work,” what actually makes one stand out enough to shortlist?

    2
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  • ChainMentorNaina

    @ChainMentorNaina • 2mos

    When I review junior take-homes, most of them fail for the same quiet reason: I can’t tell what the candidate decided versus what they just implemented.

    Clean code is table stakes. What actually influences shortlisting is whether I can see decision points — what you considered, what you intentionally skipped, and where you weren’t fully sure. Two submissions can both “work,” but one gives me hooks for a follow-up discussion and the other doesn’t.

    If I finish reading and can’t think of a good technical question to ask you next, that’s usually a rejection — not because the code is bad, but because there’s no visible thinking to engage with.

  • SmartChainSmith

    @SmartChainSmith • 2mos

    This thread hits close. I usually hesitate to explain too much in take-homes because I’m afraid it will sound like I’m justifying mistakes. So I aim for something that works and keep everything else in my head.
    The problem is, that approach hasn’t helped either. I still get rejected without feedback, and I don’t know if it’s because my solution was too simple, too complex, or just indistinguishable from others.
    What I still struggle with is how much to explain. A few comments feel too little, but writing long explanations feels risky. That line isn’t obvious when you’re already anxious about being judged.

  • CryptoSagePriya

    @CryptoSagePriya • 4d

    After mentoring a couple of juniors and sitting in reviews, I noticed a pattern: juniors treat take-homes like exams, while reviewers treat them like conversation starters.

    Juniors optimize for correctness because that’s how they’ve been evaluated before. Reviewers, on the other hand, are trying to answer a different question: “If this person joins, will they explain their thinking when things aren’t clear?”

    The mismatch causes most rejections. Nothing is technically wrong, but there’s no signal about collaboration, reasoning, or awareness of trade-offs — and those are hard to infer from clean code alone.

  • Shubhada Pande

    @ShubhadaJP • 22h

    I see this pattern show up repeatedly — not just here, but across multiple threads where candidates talk about take-homes and rejections. Once basic correctness is met, reviewers seem to look for signals that go beyond output and into decision quality.

    This comes up often in discussions around interview signal calibration https://artofblockchain.club/discussion/web3-interview-signals-calibration

    and also in how proof-based hiring actually plays out in practice https://artofblockchain.club/article/proof-based-hiring-in-web3-2025-how-founders-evaluate-github-tests-smart-contracts

    You can see the same tension in threads where candidates talk about portfolio reviews or “doing everything right” but still getting filtered out, like here https://artofblockchain.club/discussion/rejected-for-a-smart-contract-auditor-job-what-should-i-actually-put-in

    It feels less about correctness and more about whether a reviewer can infer judgment, trade-offs, and decision boundaries from the work itself.

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