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Introduction to Take-home Assignments

Take-home assignments have become one of the most common additions to PM interview loops at top companies. This module covers what take-homes are and how to approach them effectively.

Why take-homes matter more now

Anyone can ship something in a day using AI tools, so companies need to assess judgment, craft, and strategic thinking in a more controlled setting.

The format has gotten harder to fake. Everyone preparing for PM interviews has access to the same AI tools and the same research on what "good" looks like. Take-homes that stand out in hiring committees are usually the ones that feel specific: specific to this company, this team, this problem space, this candidate's point of view, and their defense of that point of view.

The two types of take-homes

Feature design

You're given a company, a user problem, or a growth challenge and asked to design a new feature. The deliverable is typically a structured presentation or doc: "here's the problem, here's what I'd build, here's how I'd test it, here's how I'd measure success."

The best feature take-homes are anchored to a specific metric from the start. The feature exists to move something that matters to the company, and every design decision traces back to that. A weak feature take-home introduces a solution before establishing the problem, or measures success with metrics that don't connect to the business.

Example prompts you might see:

  • "Propose a new Cowork or Claude Tag feature that helps teams solve more complex and/or larger problems. Focus on bitter-lesson-pilled big bets that is achievable by a small team of strong engineers in a 2 month timeframe" Asked at Anthropic
  • “We want to grow the adoption of Claude Code among Fortune 2000 companies. Propose a feature that would increase the virality of the product within an organization. You should choose a direction that is a compelling market (from a size, product-market fit, and competitive landscape perspective) and is achievable by a small team of 5 engineers in a 3-month timeframe.” Asked at Anthropic
  • “Pick any role in any enterprise industry. Design an AI-powered product that would fundamentally transform how that role creates value (think: 10x in what they can accomplish vs. just automating how they do work today). We're looking for moonshot solutions, not incremental solutions. Build a prototype of the solution you would build to address this problem using modern design/prototyping tools. Accompany the prototype with a brief PRD. Asked at Glean

Roadmap

You're given a role at a specific company and asked to produce a prioritized set of bets across time horizons. The deliverable leads with a crisp analysis of where the company is now, then lays out what you'd build in order of confidence and timeline: typically a quick win (a few days), a medium bet (a few weeks), and a strategic bet (several months).

Roadmap take-homes are about strategic judgment. The question they're really asking: given everything you know about this company, what would you actually do, and in what order, and why?

Example prompt you might see:

  • “We are working with a large global airline that launched its first Sierra Agent approximately three months ago. Today, Sierra’s chat agent on the airline’s website supports: FAQs (policies, flight status, baggage rules), Account lookups (reservation retrieval), and Routing to live agents.
    The airline considers the launch stable but early, and leadership is now evaluating where to invest next to expand the agent’s scope and impact. The airline has asked Sierra to help them determine which single new journey the agent should expand into next. These are the journeys we have jointly narrowed down to:

    • Reservations: Enabling customers to book or change flights, select seats, and manage paid upgrades
    • Loyalty Program Advisor: Helping customers understand points balances, expiration, redemption options, and tier benefits
    • Airport Concierge: Providing real-time airport support such as gate information, transfer timing, dining options, and disruption guidance

    Note: The airline has made it clear that only one of these initiatives will be funded over the next two quarters." (Asked at Sierra)

What interviewers are looking for

Take-homes are evaluated on your ability to:

  • Take a real position rather than presenting a well-organized survey of options, and commit to a defensible point of view
  • Build something that feels specific to this company, not something that could be submitted anywhere with the name swapped
  • Design a rigorous experiment, with metrics that connect to the business and tradeoffs that are named explicitly
  • Show a scope of thinking that matches the level of the role, from a well-scoped feature at junior levels to cross-team, sequencing-aware thinking at senior levels
  • Defend every claim you made in the live debrief

The debrief

Almost every take-home concludes with a live presentation and Q&A. While the assignment itself matters, the discussion is often where interviewers get the strongest signal.

Expect questions like: Why did you choose this metric? What would you do if the experiment failed? Who might disagree with this recommendation internally, and how would you handle that? What did you intentionally leave out and why?

The strongest candidates can speak confidently about every decision they made because they've thought through the tradeoffs, assumptions, and potential objections (versus relying on AI). As a result, they're able to answer follow-up questions clearly and concisely.

The next lesson in this module walks you through a seven-step workflow for researching, building, and stress-testing a take-home using AI. It includes copy-paste prompts for every step.

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