Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 470 posts

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#401

Post by zelphirkalt »

Victerius wrote: post #163
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t know of any other industry who hires senior people the way we do outside of performing arts. Because nearly every other industry is credentialed, so proving your 3-8 years of university grind is enough to get hired. Outside of tech, any other white collar interview is basically a 15-60 minute coffee or lunch with the boss (the culture fit interview basically) and then, unless you showed some red flags, you g…

This. The popularity of coding bootcamps is another factor. Software engineers don't like the concept of formal credentials. Fine. But you'll have to demonstrate your skills at one of the interview stages. Or we could create something like the American Academy of Software Engineers, or the Society of Software Engineers, or the Software Engineering Institute, which would be tasked with accrediting schools and programs…

Who says that formal credentials are not liked? I value the hard work I had to put in, to finish my degree. I can often see how I took valuable lessons from it, which others are lacking.

Furthermore I do see a difference between being a person who knows how to write code and being a software engineer. The former can easily be achieved without any formal education, but the latter is more difficult to achieve without formal education. There is lots of stuff not learned in a coding bootcamp and it will take time to close the gap.

I do not think one can generalize like that and claim, that we all do not like formal credentials. I wish formal credentials worked differently though. Not through some university institution, which might or might not teach us important things, but maybe more practical and hands on, more projects, where actual work is done and we all get more opportunity to learn from thise experiences.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#402

Post by jeroenhd »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #341
jeroenhd wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever heard of a restaurant having applicants mix drinks behind the bar for an hour to see if they're really as good as they claim to be? How many administrative offices have their applicants perform regular tasks on dummy data sets? And, the other way around: how often do applicants have their prospective team lead perform an hour of work for them, to see if the company is a decent match? I think these tests…

As much as I don’t like unpaid take home tests, the restaurant industry does have unpaid tests for potential chefs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage_(cooking)

For cooks and chefs perhaps, but not for the entire workforce. Then again, the hospitality sector has a knack for abusing their workers, so I wouldn't be too surprised if they make waiters work for free as a "trial" as well.

It's still silly to expect to have to work for you for free. You can discuss technical topics (design experience, programming language preferences, etc.) without doing a whole exercise. Honestly, it's insulting that people will ask you to come in for an interview and basically tell you that they don't believe what you've put on your resume and start quizzing you to confirm that you know what you claim you know.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#403

Post by ghaff »

ryandrake wrote: post #378
bluGill wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never seen a license or formal certificate that means anything useful. I'm open to the idea, but the burden is on those providing them to prove they are useful. We do have apprenticeships in programming, we just don't call it that name. You start out at the bottom of the ladder and more senior people help you learn. Most medium and sized and bigger companies have some variation of that. Sure you can start as t…

> I have never seen a license or formal certificate that means anything useful. They are useful in that they at least convey a tiny bare minimum level of skill--something many, many software engineering candidates lack. Passing the bar exam for lawyers and the medical board exam for doctors signals at least some minimal knowledge and qualification. They don't tell you the professional's whole story, but enough to all…

I'd agree with that. Though obviously getting certified in law or medicine is a significantly higher bar than passing some tech industry certification.

Still, if I need someone who knows Linux, something like a current RHCE tells me they have at least some minimal level of competency. (Certs seem to be more of a thing for sysadmin knowledge than general programming however.)

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#404

Post by maury91 »

I had a similar experience, did go through:

- initial interview with HR

- technical interview with devs

- home assignment ( you can find it on my GitHub with the name 2048 )

- discussion of the assignment with the same devs of the technical

After every step they said they were very impressed, I did reach the step where they were scheduling the final interview with the CTO then they weren't able to schedule it and they disappeared for months with the excuse of hiring freeze. Apparently they hired someone else and they decided to put me on hold indefinitely

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#405

Post by ghaff »

drawkbox wrote: post #280
jerf wrote: post #76

According to the HN gestalt, you shouldn't do a whiteboard interview because that's too unrealistic because nobody programs on a whiteboard, you shouldn't expect programmers to code with their laptop in an interview because that's too much pressure and also unrealistic, you shouldn't expect programmers to be willing to do a take home exam because that's too much work without money (and if people did pay, the complain…

Contract to hire is the way to go, even if a short time. Most jobs are like that anyways, the first weeks/months are still part of the hiring process. This tests the worker in the actual environment. The contract could even be remote and sectioned off from the larger enterprise, just like any contractors added currently. The important part of contract-to-hire is it shows how the person will communicate while working,…

>Most jobs are like that anyways

The difference is in the presumed defaults.

If you hire me, my assumption is that outside of company/organizational problems/changed of some sort, you'll keep me around so long as I'm reasonably competent.

Contract to hire on the other hand , sends off a vibe of we'll probably hire you if you wow us. Which, if someone already has a job or has other good offers in hand, is not going to sound like a great deal unless it's a company/position they really want and are very confident they can do.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#406

Post by ghaff »

crispyambulance wrote: post #191
jerf wrote: post #76

According to the HN gestalt, you shouldn't do a whiteboard interview because that's too unrealistic because nobody programs on a whiteboard, you shouldn't expect programmers to code with their laptop in an interview because that's too much pressure and also unrealistic, you shouldn't expect programmers to be willing to do a take home exam because that's too much work without money (and if people did pay, the complain…

> Apparently the approved HN method is to arrange the resumes on a dartboard, throw darts at it, and commit up front to hiring whoever you hit unconditionally for at least two years without no possibility of having to fire them. Yes, but to be fair, I am not convinced that such a method would yield drastically worse results than what is already done at many places. I am not totally being facetious about that either!…

Every job I've gotten since the one out of grad school has been directly through someone I knew. (Not many of them but a large span of years.) And, yes, one of the interviews was having an informal lunch with the CEO and COO when I hadn't even directly asked about a job yet.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#407

Post by lbreakjai »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #291
lbreakjai wrote: post #135

We let the candidates decide: Take-home assignment, pair-programming, or we go through an existing project of theirs, discuss it, and extend it together. The take-home assignment is short. It shouldn't take more than an hour if you really really want it to be polished, which we heavily insist we do not care about. The overall process is a bit longer, because we then discuss it together. For the pair programming sessi…

>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.

> Again, that's fine, pay me.

The point of offering pair programming is that we invest the same amount of time. You don't spend five hours coding to my five minutes reviewing.

If we're at this stage, then it means you are interested by the company, and the company is interested by you. An interview is not unidirectional, you review the company as much as they review you.

> 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.

That's fine. I interviewed a very junior candidate this afternoon. She went through a coding bootcamp, only has one year of agency work. She didn't feel confident going into a pair programming session blind (which is perfectly understandable, it's not my favourite exercise either).

She however had a bootcamp project she was quite happy with, and that she chose to explain.

You can maybe get in on reputation or network alone, but for every person like you there's two hundred juniors who do not have that luxury, and we're trying to play as much as we can on their strengths.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#408

Post by ghaff »

risyachka wrote: post #315
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…

Most devs have a shit ton of projects, code etc to show. This is way more than enough to estimate skill level and bypass leetcode memorization performances and 90% of other tech elements of interview. Corps basically just offload this work on the candidate as this is obviously cheaper and more convenient, instead of spending time and looking into his profile.

>Most devs have a shit ton of projects, code etc to show.

I question how true that is.

In any case, GitHub as resume basically tells applicants that if you don't work in open source for your day job and don't have the time/inclination to do coding as a hobby, don't bother applying. Which is going to be pretty discriminatory against a number of demographics.

It's fine if someone wants to show off some project, but it shouldn't be a mandatory filter.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#409

Post by Ancalagon »

blackoil wrote: post #64

First, Ghosting is a shit move. No reason HR can't send a standard lawyer approved boiler plate rejection mail. 2nd aspect is unpaid take homes. It's complicated. Companies do pay a lot to fly candidates, put them in hotels and feed them for onsite interview. So financially company can afford to pay something. But it adds a moral hazard as you are paying cash irrespective of any expected quality or commitment. Other…

I haven't had an in-person onsite in the ~20 onsites I went to for my last job hunt. I think they're going the way of the dinosaur for technical interviews.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#410

Post by mr-yamasi »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #370
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about the systemic problems that would arise if it were customary to pay applicants for the interview. You'd immediately have application farms spamming out fake resumes. They'd bomb the actual interview but collect $100+ each time.

I'm not asking to be paid for the interview, I'm asking to be paid for doing contract work.

Before I agree to pay you for contract work, I need you to do an assessment proving that you are worth being paid for your contract work.
Post reply on HN