The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework

I don't want to name names but one YC company I interviewed at left me with the distinct impression that they talked a big game, just to get me to work on one of their (apparently) "strictly-hiring-related toy projects" as homework. Homework, "sure", except it: 1) integrated with a real system, 2) mirrored something they actually did, and 3) they would only agree to proceed if I signed an IP/work contract and accepted their (sorry, too small) payment of USD450 for the (not insignificant) project.

I pushed back at the contract, and asked them to ask their lawyer if that was really necessary. When they insisted on a contract for the homework project I pulled out of the process. It just felt so wrong.

The worst part, is not that they would seek some way to freelance a small part of their system, nor that they would actually use ideas from hiring interviews in their product -- but that (it seems) they would so blatantly lie to someone they professed to want to hire that this was homework, when in fact it was not. Even worse was the feeling of disrespect that they wanted to freelance part of their system for USD450, trying to abuse the hiring process/ talking a big game about offers, to unfairly lowball the price. Like they are a well funded, established, largish YC alum, at least they can afford to pay market. Anyway, everytime I see "XXXX is hiring a YYYY in ZZZZ" on here from them, I'm reminded. Feels good to vent.

Just sad. Anyway, I'm not going to name names because this is unwise to do that in a public forum.

Anyway, I only added the above anecdote after writing the following comment.

This is why Triplebyte is so good. You do a single technical interview ( after a quick online quiz ), then get fast tracked to final interviews at various YC / silicon valley startups.

Sure, maybe not everyone wants to work for a smallish startup. But some of their clients are 200+ people. So...it's not all the same.

3 days of work is certainly an excessive commitment. But limiting the verbal interview to one hour then leaving the candidate with a a computer and a well defined problem that takes half a day to solve it's not unreasonable, in my opinion.

They have already committed that day to this interview, there is no abuse - show us you can solve problems and not give up after a couple of Google searches, like a good half of programmer-aspirants do.

Latest trend? Haven't we all gone through this before? Back in 2012 I did a "homework assignment" too, just to get an interview with a game studio. The task? Build a SOAP client and server that do some silly little thing, I don't even remember what. Basically, just something to prove competency. It took about an hour, mostly time I spent reading the manual for the programming language they requested. Trivial shit... WTF are people being assigned that takes multiple days? Ridiculous...

Here's how it works in many companies:

Hiring manager: Hey recruitment team, I've read articles saying doesn't work very well, we should try . solves

Recruitment team: Sure thing, we'll start with a parallel run so we can see how results compare with

Hiring manager: We've run both for a few months now, should we stop doing ?

Recruitment team: Some hiring managers still like it, as it addresses . We don't see it as our job to second-guess them. You can spend your time and political capital convincing every other hiring manager, if you like?

Hiring manager: I'm awfully busy with things that are a better use of my time.

I have noticed a trend of not naming companies here. Is it against the rules? I fell that we should name and shame companies that are disrespectful of peoples time.