Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025

Take‑home assignments and candidate time

• Strong disagreement over early take‑home tests. Some see any unpaid take‑home (even “2 hours”) as a red flag and report being ghosted after investing many hours elsewhere.
• Others feel this specific Unity/web-service task is trivial and fair; if it takes you more than ~1–2 hours, you probably wouldn’t enjoy the job anyway.
• Several argue take‑homes don’t scale for candidates applying widely and that “respecting time” should include paid assignments or at least an interview before asking for work.
• A minority says paid take‑homes change the equation and are much more acceptable.
• Some prefer showcasing existing code (GitHub, portfolio) instead of bespoke tasks, though others note many strong devs can’t share their prior work.

AI policies in interviews

• The article’s “no AI” rule sparked debate.
• Some companies now require AI use in interviews and even set goals for AI‑generated LOC, which critics see as misaligned with business outcomes and potentially dangerous without thorough review.
• Others use AI heavily in day‑to‑day work but still ban it in interviews to better assess personal problem‑solving, taste, and debugging skills.
• There’s no consensus: some claim AI is now essential to being an “engineer”; others are skeptical of productivity gains and reject the idea that non‑users are unprofessional.

Salary expectations and transparency

• Many think asking candidates first for expected salary is adversarial or a “dark pattern”; they’d rather see a range in the posting and avoid multi‑round surprises.
• Others argue salary discussion should be the very first step and is an efficient filter, especially for a low‑budget indie.
• Multiple commenters note that in the studio’s jurisdiction, posting a salary range is legally required above a certain size threshold, though applicability to this team is unclear.

Applicant funnel, late applications, and “qualification”

• The funnel numbers are praised for transparency but criticized as primarily a ranking mechanism, not a true “qualification” test.
• Commenters highlight that “didn’t qualify” is often flexible in practice; companies routinely hire people who don’t meet all listed requirements.
• Several are bothered by 46 “late” applicants being discarded without even a quick skim, seeing this as wasteful and disrespectful.
• Some defend strict gating as necessary when 150+ applicants arrive for one role and a tiny team cannot review everyone.

Game‑dev context and team size

• A few say this process is relatively humane by game‑industry standards, which often overemphasizes shipped titles over general dev skill.
• There’s discussion that 2–10 person teams can feel “cursed”: enough structure to need process, but not enough people to absorb its overhead. Others prefer small teams and find large studios bureaucratic.
• One thread contrasts indie hiring with the success of solo devs, suggesting that some highly motivated creators may thrive more on their own than inside a small studio’s vision and constraints.