Fifteen to Twenty Hours of Unpaid Work. Forty-Eight Hours to Finish. No Stipend.

A company sent a take-home assignment estimated at fifteen to twenty hours of work. No stipend was offered. The deadline was forty-eight hours — functionally impossible for a candidate already employed full-time. The job seeker asked Reddit: "At what point do you guys just say no to these massive assignments?" The post surfaced data points that have become routine in 2026 hiring discourse: fifty-eight percent of engineers believe they deserve payment for take-home work, but only four percent ever receive it. Well-designed take-homes correlate thirty-five percent better with job performance than whiteboard interviews — but scope creep has turned many into unpaid consulting engagements.