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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

#381

Post by rkangel »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #367
rkangel wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The software engineering profession is moving at light speed compared to any of those other careers. It is specific to us and not engineering as a whole too - as you point out, structural engineering does have qualifications required (chartered status). Medicine does move on, but a lot of what a doctor needs to do doesn't. And the bits that do are actually a problem with there not being a good way of ensuring that do…

But I think anyone that handles PID should be held to account, as to what happens to that data. We have been doing a terrible job of that. Many apps that I encounter, are pretty much bald-faced, unapologetic, data harvesters. That’s clearly their main purpose, and their stated purpose is really just the lure on an anglerfish. “Move fast and break things” sounds good, until you realize that said “things” may be people…

This is absolutely true, but it's a function of the business, not the individual engineer. It's not just about engineering at all - one of the biggest GDPR fines was to H&M for some internal data that managers were keeping on some employees.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#382

Post by djellybeans »

indigochill wrote: post #141
social_quotient wrote: post #71

Isn’t the root of this need to make developers code stuff to prove their skills because we don’t have an accredited body giving people meaningful certification? A dr would not do a quick surgery and a power plant engineer won’t build “just a quick test reactor” because they have credentials and the hiring bodies trust those creds. In software is the problem that we don’t trust what the resume implies? Where does the…

It goes beyond upfront accreditation. Doctors and lawyers get accredited credentials, sure, but more importantly they're also subject to strict regulations around malpractice. You can BS your way through most degree programs, but you can't BS your way through a law or medical practice because sooner or later you'll wind up doing something illegal and be stripped of the right to practice. In software, it would not be…

I suppose it has more to do with developers dealing more with logical systems than with physical and legal systems that have more direct and immediate consequences. In the case with doctors and lawyers, a bad process will have a more visible impact. In software, there's lots of "bad code" that still operates with the expected outcomes, regardless of the processes used (or ignored) that took them there.

Auditing and forensics does seem to get applied more frequently in cryptocurrency projects, but as you said, that sort of accreditation still has to be meaningful.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#383

Post by shagie »

smoe wrote: post #183
jerf wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You’re setting up a gigantic straw man." And called it the HN gestalt. Pretty sure I labelled it with what it is right up front. Nevertheless, I do think there are quite a few individuals who have an unexamined (in the philosophical sense) assumption that they just shouldn't have to do anything to get hired. I bet most of them, if they examined it, would realize that it's not a sensible assumption. I think it sneaks…

I haven't met many people that think they shouldn't do anything, what I see more commonly, is people assuming the way they personally prefer getting evaluated is the way it should be for everyone.

I've seen it more of a "this is the way that you should hire me." That's fine if there is only one candidate to be evaluated.

The difficulty with such is that these tend to be very time intensive on the employer side often requiring more time per candidate than the candidate spends with the prospective employer.

This can work for one candidate, but fails if one tries to scale it up to even 10 (much less 100) candidates. For that, a filter needs to be applied... and we're back at square 1 of a subset of people not wanting to do take homes (and so on).

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#384

Post by CodeyWhizzBang »

criddell wrote: post #238
pierot wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of companies perform rigorous assessment tests for high profile or high paying jobs. IT is not the exception.

If you get to the point where you are going to give an assignment, you have somebody that you believe could do a job that probably pays very well. Go ahead and give the assignment, but also be respectful and pay them for their time.

The assignment is an assessment though, it isn't actual business work. I've seen before this suggestion that companies are trying to get free work out of candidates, but I find that really hard to believe.

I don't know if you're suggesting that interviews should assign actual tickets in an interview, but that seems nearly impossible to do in practice. I've never got back work from an interview or assessment that was anything near production code - nor would I expect to. It's to get a sense of the level of their real world coding skills are since there is such a variance between developers.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#385

Post by earth_walker »

All industries and professions have the same problem - how do you know your new hire is right for you?

So you think that a 6 hour unpaid assignment is unfair. What do you think the alternative should be?

Many of the posts here point out that 'take-home-tests' aren't common in other professions, but completely miss how many free hours other professionals have to do to prove their suitability for potential employers.

Here are some examples:

- Designers, photographers and writers spent countless hours putting together and updating portfolios.

- Anyone part of a professional association (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, engineers, architects, pilots, etc...) spend many hours studying for and writing exams (for free), and then every other year spend hours documenting all of the professional development they have done to maintain their credentials (also for free).

- Many higher responsibility jobs, especially in public institutions and government, require months-long application processes complete with multiple interviews, essay questions, and personality tests.

- Consultants can spend 40 hours or more crafting proposals for every new contract they go after.

- Academics and researchers require regular publications and often do regular peer reviews for free.

I doubt anyone gets a job of any importance based on a resume and a quick coffee unless of course there's nepotism or greek letters involved.

So how should programmers prove themselves to a potential employer? Would you rather have a professional association? or standardize on coding portfolios? Or perhaps you want to go back to the days of three essay questions and a personality test?

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#386

Post by naniwaduni »

elpatoisthebest wrote: post #319
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Take-home assignment That's fine, pay me. >pair-programming Again, that's fine, pay me. >go through an existing project of theirs, discuss it, and extend it together The SaaS's I own and operate are closed-source and I'm not looking to take on any contractors at this time, but I'll let you know if anything opens up.

What's a fair rate to pay an interviewee? Should I pay you for an hour of your demanded salary? So somewhere in the $100/hr ballpark? Or some nominal fee, the same across all candidates? $100 for the interview?

You're hiring, you should have a decent idea of how much you're expecting to pay the hire. That's the amount you should expect the interviewee's time to be worth, since if you hire them that's how much you're expecting to pay them.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#387

Post by CodeyWhizzBang »

mathverse wrote: post #221
jeremymcanally wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally, someone with a sensible position on this. Interviewing sucks, but the people on the other side of the table don't know you or your skillset. You have to give them some sort of objective information to work with. The position I really don't understand are those who think as a "senior" (whatever that means) engineer you should be able to walk in, answer a few questions, and then be hired just because you have…

Trying to get an objective information to work with is fine. Expecting someone to work for free without any committment / investment from the company is TOXIC. I have a friend who set the expectations upfront (working from home) and was told it might not be a problem, finished the whole ordeal of take home assignments and technical rounds. The company liked him but he was told WFH is not acceptable (hello Tencent).

I think the point is they're not working for free - they're doing an assessment. If they're asking you to do real production work for free, that's one thing. But giving you an exercise to assess you is something entirely different.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#388

Post by datalopers »

mathverse wrote: post #366
datalopers wrote: post #50

It’s odd to me how people complain so much about being asked to write code (whiteboard, take-home, leetcode puzzles) in order to land a coding job. Is a prospective employer supposed to suss this out entirely through verbal questions?

It's odd to me that you have completely misunderstood what is the problem here. It's not the take home assignment that is the problem but the asymmetric relationship and toxic practices. I invest 6h of my time as a highly paid engineer to do a home assignment and at best I receive a reply "sorry we found a candidate that's a better fit?". That's what's unacceptable.

Have you considered that it took you 6hr and 2k loc is maybe precisely why they didn’t hire you and it, in fact, was a very successful candidate screening tool?

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#389

Post by dgudkov »

We pay for home assignments no matter if we like the result or not. First, it seems fair and it has never been a problem from a financial standpoint. Second, because we pay we can give less trivial and more realistic assignments that can take up to 10-15 hours of work. We look if the candidate uses the time to analyze the problem, ask more deep questions, write tests, annotate the code, and make it production-ready in other ways.

So far, this approach worked very well for us.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#390

Post by naniwaduni »

eternalban wrote: post #379
hotpotamus wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, when you know one of the words in a two word initialism, I suspect it helps the search engine quite a bit.

> Well, when you know one of the words in a two word initialism, I suspect it helps the search engine quite a bit. "Most working engineers don’t even bother with a PE." Engineer is right there, no need for you know the E of PE is for engineer. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=working+engineers+PE https://search.brave.com/search?q=working+engineer+PE https://www.google.com/search?q=working+engineer+PE You are giving o…

"Most working engineers don’t even bother with a Professional Engineer" doesn't really sound like a reasonable utterance unless you already know what you're trying to say.
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