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

461–470 of 470 posts

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#461

Post by CodeyWhizzBang »

ipaddr wrote: post #420
CodeyWhizzBang wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You pay them for the time to complete your testing materials. It ensures that your test is not overly lengthy and it's more likely to be reviewed by someone and not used as an intake filter because you are investing in the candidate.

I genuinely don't get this mindset at all. Even if they were to pay you, they're hardly going to pay you very much to do some coding assessment that's a few hours work.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#462

Post by kasey_junk »

warrenm wrote: post #457
kasey_junk wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong in the jurisdiction I live in (Illinois) where an employment contract is allowed to state that outside work is not allowed. Most contracts I’ve had will actually state “without manager approval” but that’s just as bad in many instances. [later] Actually this became illegal in Illinois at the beginning of this year, though the protections don’t extend to clients or competitors.

The contract may state it It's unenforceable, according to everyone I've interacted with in the state :)

It is now. As of Jan 1 2022. I can assure you it was enforced before that.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#463

Post by em-bee »

unbalancedevh wrote: post #278
jasode wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>no-one complains about -- a take-home piece of work paid at a reasonable rate. I've seen multiple comments in past HN threads of programmers complaining about any after-hours coding homework (even if paid) because "they have kids and don't have time or energy for that" . Probably the only suggested interview method that gets the fewest complaints from candidates is the "let's have a casual chat and just shoot the br…

> they have kids and don't have time or energy for that I don't have a lot of sympathy for this argument. If they have time to take half a day to go to an interview, then it doesn't seem like it should be much different to take half a day to work on an interviewing problem.

usually both are required, so now it adds up to a full day.

if i interview at 10 companies suddenly a lot of vacation time is gone.

so i am not going to take time off until i am reasonably certain that i want this job and can get it if i pass.

likewise i'll be willing to take time off for a take home assignment only when that is the last test i need to pass.

if companies want the assignment before they'll even look at my CV, then that's to much.

steps should be:

look at the CV to see if the candidate is basically quslified.

talk to the candidate to get to know them, answer any questions, agree on salary and benefits.

once that is all sorted, bring on the coding test.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#464

Post by em-bee »

morelisp wrote: post #123
tommoor wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also visas, almost anyone on an employee sponsored work visa is not permitted to undertake contract work.

Also people with no visas. At the point in time we're hiring, many of the people we're talking to don't have the legal right to work for us.

that's not true if they are in their home country.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#465

Post by morelisp »

em-bee wrote: post #464
morelisp wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also people with no visas. At the point in time we're hiring, many of the people we're talking to don't have the legal right to work for us.

that's not true if they are in their home country.

That's true for a small group of country pairs, and also depends on any corporate structure the interviewee has set up. (Most have none set up, which makes it more difficult.)

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#466

Post by androa »

rajasimon wrote: post #83
androa wrote: post #34

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.

For personal project there will not be a TDD so coder not willing to share their existing codes. I rather showcase my skills in a new development than say already done one.

Yeah, in our case the point isn't really the code, but how you reason around it. How able are you to explain the flow of the code. And also reason about choices made.

There is a real treasure trove of things to talk about.

Questions like: - Why is it like Y? - What is good and bad about Y? - Why do you think X would be better? - Why did you end up doing Y instead of X? - How would you approach changing it to X?

Discussions like these on both a macro and micro level is very valuable.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#467

Post by em-bee »

morelisp wrote: post #465
em-bee wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's not true if they are in their home country.

That's true for a small group of country pairs, and also depends on any corporate structure the interviewee has set up. (Most have none set up, which makes it more difficult.)

it should be true for the majority of countries in this world that allow their citizens the freedom to do contract work, whether with a local or a foreign company. some may require registration as a sole proprietor of some sort, but not all. the primary difficulty is figuring out income taxes.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#468

Post by im_dario »

antisthenes wrote: post #441
im_dario wrote: post #167

I did a home assignment that required far more than 6h. The feedback was atrocious, as they just said "not fit". Not a single comment on what they disliked or how could I improve. Actually, the assignment was "take this shitty service and make it production-ready". It had some pitfalls that I avoided, and I introduced monitoring, automated deployment, API documentation, etc. There was a bug - a minor misunderstanding…

Making something production-ready is not a take-home assignment, certainly not part of an interview process. Full stop.

In the context it meant "it should work, it can be deployed in a simple way, and it can be observed at runtime".

It was just fixing the buggy implementation, write down a Makefile with everything I thought useful (linting, security scanning, Docker image generation, etc), and integrating with Datadog and Rollbar's SDKs.

Re: Tell HN: Unpaid home assignments are not ok

#470

Post by shafyy »

LocalPCGuy wrote: post #357
shafyy wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, why not offer an option. But I'm convinced that take home tasks are generally better because that's much closer to the way you actually work as a programmer. People who don't get nervous during live coding might like take home tasks because it's more of a time sink, but I'd wager that they still do good on them.

There are a lot of problems with take-home assignments in general and I feel like it discounts that to just say "they are better generally". I disagree with that statement both personally, as an interviewer, and in reading others' anecdotal experiences. It is better "for some people some of the time", but I firmly disagree that can be generalized to a best practice.

What are some of the drawbacks of take home tasks in your opinion?
Post reply on HN