Ithaca · for PHP teams hiring now
Take-home tests stopped telling you who can code.
AI can now do most of the work in them. Ithaca checks what a take-home can't: your finalist fixes a real Laravel or Symfony app with any tools they like, then explains and changes their own code with me in a 30-minute call. You get a rubric-scored scorecard.
Free pilot slots for PHP teams hiring now.
How the pilot works
- You send me one finalist. Their name and email, when they're ready. They get a small broken Laravel or Symfony app within one working day.
- They fix it, AI allowed. Real bugs, a small feature and a cleanup, the kind of work they'd do on the job. Every candidate gets written feedback, hired or not.
- I run a 30-minute defense call. They walk me through their changes and make a small change live. You get a scorecard against a fixed rubric within a day of the call.
The first finalist is free. If the scorecard is useful, the rest of the round is paid, and you'll know the price before anything is booked.
Who it's for
- CTOs and engineering leads at Laravel or Symfony agencies and product companies
- Hiring PHP developers now or soon, without a recruiting team to design and review tests
- Tired of take-homes that come back polished but tell you nothing about the person
Why trust it
I'm Davor. I've hired PHP developers myself, and take-homes stopped giving me real signal once candidates could hand them to an AI. Ithaca is the process I wanted: a realistic task, a call where the candidate has to own what they submitted, and a scorecard you can compare across finalists.
What your finalist gets (from the real task):
1. Make the test suite pass
2. Add partial payments
3. Clean up invoice creation
4. Review it as if it ships tomorrowHiring a PHP developer soon?
Pilot slots are limited each week so every finalist gets a proper call.
Join the pilot list