We’re often asked by employers what other companies are doing with their engineering technical assessments. So we ran a quick 2026 pulse check across:

• Engineering Leaders across 850 organizations (mostly startups)

• People/ Talent leaders across 500 organizations (mostly startups)

• Senior Software engineers (Leopard community members) who are actively interviewing (roughly 700+ active, 3000 total members)

Here are some of the trends: 

Engineering Trends:

Most engineers said they prefer take-homes, because they reflect how they actually build software 🙏.

“Take-homes better match how software is actually built.” -- Engineer, NYC

“They let me show judgment and product thinking, not just speed.” 

“The coding process is often iterative in that you take steps forward and frequently backtrack, and I feel that the expectations in a live coding session interferes with that process.” -- Engineering Manager, SF Bay Area

That said, candidates lose interest in take-homes when the scope is unclear 🙅🏽‍♀️.

“Take-homes almost always take longer than the company says.” - Staff Engineer, Remote

“I withdrew from the process once I saw how involved the take-home was.” - Engineer, SF

“I’ll only do a take-home if there’s a live feedback session.” - Engineer, SF

“It’s frustrating to spend hours and get no feedback.” - Engineer, NY

“If the take-home is five plus hours, I’ll pick live coding.” — Tech Lead, Seattle

For engineers, live coding is stressful, but preferred when the alternative is a long take-home ⚖️.

“It’s time-boxed, so I know what I’m signing up for.” - Staff Engineer, Remote

“I like being able to ask questions and collaborate.” - Engineer, SF

“It helps me understand what it would be like to work with the team.” - Engineer, SF

Employer Trends:

Most teams are using a short take-home (60–90 mins max) , followed by a live review / extension / discussion step, sometimes paired with systems design 📆. 

“We use the take-home as a conversation starter. Candidates review their code with us and extend the problem live. The AI ‘cheating’ debate feels stale when it’s obvious whether someone is speaking from real experience.” - People/Talent Leader

“We use the take-home as the artifact for discussion. Why decisions were made. What they’d iterate on.” -- Engineering Leader

“We generally do a review session where they think on their feet about small changes.” - Engineering Leader

“Another upside to the take-home is that multiple reviewers can give feedback.” - Engineering Leader 

Many engineering leaders now see standalone take-homes as low signal 🔦, especially when candidates can spend unlimited time polishing their work ⌛️.

“For the teams I have managed in the last few years at least, take-homes no longer provide sufficient signal. Any problem small enough to be a take-home can be one-shotted by a sufficiently strong candidate using AI.” -- Engineering Leader

“The job of software engineers has changed, and interviews should reflect that. It is now more important to be able to clearly write down what you want to accomplish, that you review generated code, that you have enough context to know the tradeoffs of different technology choices. Syntax knowledge and small scale problem solving are no longer particularly important.” -- Engineering Leader

“I don’t want to evaluate what someone did in eight hours. I want to see what they did in two.” -- Engineering Leader 

Some leaders are firmly live coding only ⏰ because it’s time-boxed, better for seeing how people think in real time, and easier to compare across candidates 💡

“Any problem small enough to be a take-home can be one-shotted by a strong candidate using AI.”  -- Engineering Leader 

Engineering Leaders assume candidates are using AI , so the focus has shifted toward assessing how candidates problem solve & explain their solutions 🦋. 

“For take-home assignments, you can safely assume the candidate will use AI.” - Engineering Leader

“It’s now more important to clearly write down what you want to accomplish, review generated code, and understand trade-offs.”  -- Engineering Leader 

My best experience has been a coding challenge where I met with an engineer to go over the exercise and then had the next hour to complete it on my own (then I was logged out). Using AI was encouraged and I had to include the logs in my final submission. -- Engineer, SF Bay Area

Some teams are redesigning live exercises to allow or require AI 🤖, using them to evaluate planning, judgment, and trade-offs . 

“AI assistance isn’t really a sin. The key is whether they can talk through the results convincingly.” -- Engineering Leader 

“We tell people in advance that they need to use AI to succeed.”  -- Engineering Leader 

Some leaders know the issues candidates have with live coding 👀 and offer multiple choices for candidates to choose from 🔢.

“My company is experimenting with both. We have traditional live coding, either FE or BE focused, with no AI allowed, and just designed a take home. We allow AI with take home but require a write up/logs with submission, and a live walk through to discuss the tech design, trade-offs, enhancements, etc. and we might ask for a small extension of a feature. We use AI tools at work, and we're interested in seeing how the candidate uses it as a tool and assess their critical thinking. -- Engineer, NYC

“At my company, we offer candidates the choice of a 1 hour live coding exercise or a 2 hour take-home. It seems to be that folks who (think they) are good at live interviews choose the first and everyone else (most people) chooses the second.” - Engineering Leader, SF

“Timed live exercises can be really hard for neurodivergent candidates. Take-homes paired with discussion tend to be more fair and still give strong signal.” - Talent Leader

“I have had some interviewers give me the option of a take-home test or live coding interviews, and I've really liked having that option” -- Engineer, NYC