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Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

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Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#31

Post by kioleanu »

water8 wrote: post #6
usgroup wrote: post #4

That sort of thing happens —- try and be really clear what you expect back if you do an assignment. Put it on an email. Otherwise I’d write to them and tell them that you have an issue. Chase a bit, presumably you don’t know the reason for the ghosting. Having said that they could be ghosting you because they are assholes. There are unfortunately a lot of inconsiderate assholes in tech.

There’s also a lot of people that think the world owes them something. Why do they owe you a response? OP agreed to do an assignment did but did they get the company to agree to call them back on a set date? A good job is like a hot girl they don’t have time to text back all the rejects

OP spent 6 hours of his time on an assignment requested by the company. This goes beyond basic human decency, so he is OWED that someone puts 2 minutes of their time and sends a short e-mail.

Asking someone to do so much work for you and dismiss them is a dick move in any culture.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#32

Post by yitchelle »

jjgreen wrote: post #19

For a 2015 ML job I applied for: | We are wondering if you would like to attempt our code challenge (C/C++ or | Python). It is a Computer Vision problem which we think can be solved in | about 8 hours. I'm afraid I wouldn't, 8 hours is far too much for a interview problem. However, thanks for considering my application.

Alternatively, you could say..."for my time spent after the 1st hour, I will charge you $200/hour. Are we good to proceed"

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#33

Post by blupbar123 »

aranw wrote: post #8

I've had this before from a big company in the Go space. They constantly still sent me job ads and requested for me to interview and repeatably ghosted me. Wasn't until I direct messaged the CTO on a public Slack community to find out that I had not passed and that was why they wouldn't consider me and why I had been repeatably ghosted. No feedback as to why I failed the test or anything

>No feedback as to why I failed the test or anything

As a company, you can't really provide feedback on why people failed the test. Hell of a lot of people will get defensive and get into arguments with you that you don't have time for.

I agree however that one should at least tell you you are being rejected instead of ghosting you. That's just bad manners.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#34

Post by androa »

I do a lot of interviews for my company. We do coding assignments OR let you bring some code. We just want to talk with you about code that you are very familiar with and confident to talk about.

Almost everyone chooses to do the small coding assignment, because they don't have code to bring.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#35

Post by roenxi »

willcipriano wrote: post #2

I've had the same experience. Submitted a working code test and crickets. I left it up on my GitHub named "{company name} coding test" and a couple of months later they asked me to take it down beacuse other people were plagiarizing it. Like them, I was concerned with the legal ramifications of providing any sort of contact, so I took no action and didn't respond.

A baffling response at many levels. Both by the company (isn't this a great signal not to hire someone for their coding ability? Maybe everyone should put up a decoy solution) and the plagiarists (do they think the company hasn't seen the task before?).

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#36

Post by AdvancedCarrot »

lr4444lr wrote: post #16

I just don't do them at all. It sets bad terms for the employer / employee relationship IMHO. I realize some devs just aren't that in demand yet and may have to subject themselves to this, but you should do your damndest once you get the job to build the skills not to have to stand for it in your next one.

Indeed. I've offered them before to people who were borderline - i.e. in the interview they didn't really shine but I wanted to give them a chance to redeem themselves. Goes either way really.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#38

Post by jstx1 »

nnoitra wrote: post #12

6 hours is too little, Google will make you practice algorithms for months and still people will willingly do it.

The thing is that if you practice for Google's interviews, at the same time you're also practicing for any other company that uses the same process (and that's many companies).

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#39

Post by coffeeblack »

jjgreen wrote: post #19

For a 2015 ML job I applied for: | We are wondering if you would like to attempt our code challenge (C/C++ or | Python). It is a Computer Vision problem which we think can be solved in | about 8 hours. I'm afraid I wouldn't, 8 hours is far too much for a interview problem. However, thanks for considering my application.

Alternative response: “Sure, I charge $xxx per hour, payable in advance. Please deposit to account xxxx and you get the solution 24 later.”

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#40

Post by wccrawford »

water8 wrote: post #20
salil999 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't interview to get "programming experience". You're interviewing to get a job. Definitely not a win.

Well apparently he needed it because they felt his coding skills weren’t good enough to hire

We don't know that. Perhaps someone else appeared to have more skill.
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