--- title: "Inspiration from the Inside: Introducing Take Homes - CoderPad" description: "When our senior developer, Ayumi Yu, was starting out, she was having difficulty getting the developer job she wanted. She had majored in cell biology -- following her parents’ dream of seeing her become a doctor -- and had no formal computer science training." canonical: "https://coderpad.io/blog/product-updates/introducing-take-home-projects/" last_modified: "2022-01-14 10:22:27" --- [Back to blog](https://coderpad.io/blog/) # Inspiration from the Inside – Introducing Take-Home Projects July 14, 2020 4 Minute Read By Amanda Richardson [Product Updates](https://coderpad.io/blog/product-updates/) When our senior developer, Ayumi Yu, was starting out, she was having difficulty getting the developer job she wanted. She had majored in cell biology — following her parents’ dream of seeing her become a doctor — and had no formal computer science training. With her home-grown training to go by, potential employers didn’t have the vision to see how she could be successful with a degree that wasn’t software engineering or computer science. One day, Ayumi was talking with a recruiter and she convinced them to give her a take-home project. Drawing on her basic programming skills, knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, PHP, and Google from making websites just for fun, Ayumi knew enough to hack things together. She, of course, nailed the challenge. And that changed the game for her, opening the door to some excellent opportunities and starting her career as a software developer. It also changed the game for those companies who hired her: they got a fantastic employee they might have otherwise missed out on. Ayumi is one of the inspirations for launching our newest products, [take-home projects](https://coderpad.io/resources/docs/interview/quick-start-guides/interviewers/take-home-projects/), and fittingly was the lead developer in building it. We’re proud to introduce it to the world today: - Take-home projects make it possible for companies to hire the best talent, period. [New research](http://chrisparnin.me/pdf/stress_FSE_20.pdf) shows in technical interviews “performance is reduced by more than half, simply by being watched by an interviewer.” The same study concluded that companies might be “filtering out qualified candidates by confounding assessment of problem-solving ability with unnecessary stress.” Some of the best developers simply need time and space to work through a project, and our take-home projects give candidates another way to show off their skills. - Abstract coding tests are silly. Why quiz an experienced developer on obscure concepts that will almost never come up in real life? Interviews shouldn’t be “gotchas.” This is about seeing if someone can do the job well – the actual job, not a theoretical version of it. - Candidates are turned off by bad experiences. Great talent is always going to be in demand. So if their interview experience is arbitrary and unrealistic, it sends a bad message: it says the company doesn’t care enough to be thoughtful about the questions…or even to spend time reviewing a candidate’s responses. - Our best customers wanted it. Amazing companies — like the ones we work with — want a scalable, more real-world construct in assessing developer candidates. They told us that. So we built take-home projects as an efficient way for a developer to work on a problem they’d really encounter on the job. Efficient for the candidate and for the employer. You might be wondering what makes us different from other coding tests out there. Fair question. Like others, our take-home projects product delivers a standardized review process and an efficient way to assess more candidates in a shorter amount of time. But we offer some meaningful differentiators: - CoderPad take-home projects work like a real-life dev situation. This isn’t a standardized CS pop quiz but a real challenge you’d be asked to work on in that specific job and bring back your best solution. And we settled on the right challenge format with the input of some wonderful customers, interviewers and candidates. - CoderPad take-home projects respect developers and their work. A meaningless numerical score says nothing about someone’s skill. We offer a summary of [test cases](https://coderpad.io/resources/docs/interview/question-bank/test-cases/), final output, and an easy review of the candidate’s process to show precisely how they arrived at that output. - CoderPad take-home projects are candidate-centered. We care about candidates. Our test levels the playing field with a limited completion time — so people with all the time in the world can’t outperform, say, a busy working parent, simply because they have endless hours to devote to it. And it’s an appropriate technical challenge that’s geared toward the specific job. We’re really proud of our new [take-home projects](https://coderpad.io/resources/docs/interview/quick-start-guides/interviewers/take-home-projects/) product. It’s going to help our customers be more efficient. It’s going to empower more applicants to show off their problem-solving skills in the way that matters: working in the IDE. Ultimately, it’s going to help ground the interview process in skills and their application, versus relying on logos, alma maters, and who you know. And the idea that we can play a part in helping everyone get a fair shake at the good jobs? Well, that’s pretty kickass. [View our take-home projects guide.](https://coderpad.io/resources/docs/interview/quick-start-guides/interviewers/resources/docs/interview/quick-start-guides/interviewers/resources/docs/interview/quick-start-guides/interviewers/take-home-projects/) ## Subscribe for more CoderPad insights ## Trending Articles Previous slide Next slide [Product Updates ## Your Question Bank Is Leaking. Here’s the Fix. Every hiring team eventually hits the same wall: TA own raising the bar, don’t have the technical knowledge required to write questions that test for it. So teams are improvising, a shared question bank, a busy engineer’s spare 20 minutes, and last year’s assessment recycled one more time. It feels fine butt isn’t. Recycled and […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/product-updates/your-question-bank-is-leaking-heres-the-fix/) [Product Updates ## 2026 Product Recap: Technical Hiring Has Changed. We Built for What Comes Next. AI has fundamentally changed how engineers work. It’s not a tool candidates might use anymore. It’s embedded in how code gets written, reviewed, and shipped every day. In many teams, the majority of code is already AI-assisted—and growing. Which leads to a clear conclusion for hiring teams: Trying to remove AI from the interview process […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/product-updates/2026-product-recap/) [Product Updates ## Top 14 CoderPad Features of 2024 – Features That Were Too Good to Miss 2024 has been an exciting year for technical hiring, and we’ve been honored to be part of your journey. Whether you’re a recruiter working hard to attract the right talent, an interviewer crafting thoughtful assessments, or a candidate showing your best work in sometimes stressful situations, every step of the process matters. This year, our […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/product-updates/top-14-coderpad-features-2024/) [Product Updates ## CoderPad June releases You can now add a custom time frame for candidates to complete tests, give candidates the option to take a test in Chinese, export your pad and test usage stats... Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/product-updates/coderpad-june-releases/) [Product Updates ## CoderPad April Releases Learn what's new with CoderPad for April. Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/product-updates/coderpad-april-releases/) [Product Updates ## CoderPad March Releases Webcam proctoring, custom question insights, and more for March. Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/product-updates/coderpad-march-releases/) [Product Updates ## CoderPad February Releases New product features for February! Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/product-updates/coderpad-february-releases/) [Announcements ## The 2023 CoderPad year in review Please this countdown of the top features we think will help you make hiring and interviewing more real, fast and fair in 2024. Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/announcements/the-2023-coderpad-year-in-review/) [Product Updates ## CoderPad November Releases Find out what's new this month in CoderPad Screen & CoderPad Interview Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/product-updates/coderpad-november-releases/) [Announcements ## CoderPad October Releases It's been a busy October at CoderPad! Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/product-updates/coderpad-october-releases/) [Product Updates ## CoderPad September Releases Learn what's new in CoderPad this month. Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/product-updates/coderpad-september-releases/) [Product Updates ## CoderPad August Releases Learn more about the great things coming your way. Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/product-updates/coderpad-august-releases/) ## Hire with confidence. See why engineering teams trust CoderPad to evaluate developers with realistic, AI-ready hiring workflows. [Request a demo](https://coderpad.io/sales/)