How I didn't become a SoundClouder | Hacker News Reader

How I didn't become a SoundClouder

vojtastavik.com

410 pointstethys210 comments

Sadly this scenario is not uncommon even among bigger employers. I was with a big investment bank abroad when after a few rounds of redundancies that I somehow managed to survive over the few months I was with them, we were finally told the situation was now stable and we have lots of work planned for the next few years.

Hooray. Tell wife, terminate nursery contracts for our kids in our country of origin, arrange moving our stuff to the country I was working in for good, commit to renting a new apartment for the next 12 months, buy airline tickets and lots of other expenses.

Then I get the news. The remaining few people are being let go. No apology, no compensation. Just like that.

To some degree it's a game of luck, I guess, but I've been actively refusing their offers ever since. Fool me once...

I hope so much that as many people as possible read your story. Don't trust the word of people who profit from your trust. Don't bet your whole family on your boss.

Agreed.

This is part of why it's important to attend to one's own financial security -- if one doesn't have a safety fund (6 months of living expenses minimum) that should be number one priority. makes all the difference when navigating employment transitions.

I also really liked the suggestion elsewhere in the comments to negotiate in the offer letter/contract 3 months of pay after the last day of work. I haven't tried that but it's something I'll consider in the future.

The 'six months of living expenses minimum' plus 'fridge+car+laundry machine' fund get touted around a lot, but they ignore the reality that, while living expenses have only been going up, pay has stagnated. Most families are barely scraping by with only ~€300 a month leeway. Assuming €3000 living expenses a month and a combined income of ~€3500 (removing ~€200 a month for random expenses that always pop up), saving €18.000 would take 5 years assuming absolutely nothing bad happens in the mean time. Add to that the fridge+car+laundry fund and some bad luck, and you're looking at 8-10 years of no-fun-expenses-allowed saving. As one would say: get real.

I 50% agree with this, and 50% can't help notice (in the US) restaurants are full, it is common to have a recent iPhone, and 85% of vehicles on the roads are newish SUVs.

Many people are scraping by on minimal income and have minimal expenses.

Many others are scraping by because their spending is out of whack with income.

Of course, reining in spending doesn't address the societal stagnant income problem. It only helps an individual not find themselves in a desperate situation because of job loss.

Come on now. Eating out a dozen meals a week, a new $800 phone ever 2 years and a 2-3 year old X5 are inalienable rights.

>> and 85% of vehicles on the roads are newish SUVs.

Average age of vehicles on road hits 11.6 years in the United State, which is a new record. When you have low/under-employment people aren't rushing out to buy new vehicles as they were in the past.

> Average age of vehicles on road hits 11.6 years in the United State

This is like saying, "How bad could the favelas be? Brazil's population density is 64ppl/sq mi."

That is a good stat. I also wonder what the median is (although there probably aren't THAT many vintage/classic cars skewing the average).

My phone contract costs me 25 pounds a month for an iPhone 6s (new at the time). With an older iPhone, that would have been closer to 15 a month. (Which incidentally is the sim only price of the plan I'm on).

Regarding vehicles. There's almost certainly a bias there. I'm on foot at the moment, and looking at the main road in front of me, the majority of the vehicles are 6-8 years old small to medium care, with a more modern saloon being more common than an SUV.

However many people rely on cars, and unless you're clued in it's easy to overbuy. If my car broke down today and i needdd it to get to work, my options are (broadly) buy an 800 pound banger, buy a 3-5k 5-6 year old vehicle or buy a new vehicle. If I have. O money, then buying an 800 pound banger isn't an option. I don't know where I'd go to get a loan for less than a thousand pounds, other than a payday loan company, or possibly a credit card. Meanwhile, I can walk into my bank ask for 5000 pounds for a car loan and leave with the cash in my account, with no deposit, no security. Funnily enough when you look at the repayments of one of those loans, they come out at near identical to a PCP (or PCH, not sure which) lease agreement on a brand new car, probably a model or two better than the one I could buy with a loan.

Recent iPhones are cheap. You get them with the contract. And for most carriers, choosing not to get the subsidized phone doesn't affect the monthly cost of service.

You'll need a citation for the 85% of vehicles are newish SUVs stat.

You are still paying the $800 for that iPhone - it's built into the contract. There are plans that much much less without a subsidy. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/11/16/republic-wireless-...

Not many. And in the US, if you choose not to take the subsidy on your plan, you don't get a lower price. You can switch carriers, but a lot of those discount carriers suck. So if you're going to be charged for the subsidy anyway, best to get the best phone you can, if for nothing but future proofing.

> (in the US)

in SF, maybe

Yet many of those same families don't bat an eye when taking out loans for nicer cars than they actually need, maxing out the amount of mortgage they can afford, buying the latest TV or game system on credit, etc..

I don't underestimate how hard it is to save, but also many people are perfectly happy buying more than they need to maximize what they can do with their income in the short run..

Also: any family should be saving for retirement, childrens education expenses, etc. anyway.. so long as the first-level pool is liquid enough to support emergencies such as this, it should work as well. Might have to work another year when older, do some sort of side job, or take some other cuts, but point stands

I understand that many people really truly don't have any other options. Their kids need to be fed and clothed, etc. Or maybe they just don't earn much due to the economic landscape or whatever. It can happen easily and quickly, unfortunately. I certainly don't blame these people for not saving!

On the other hand, its because these things can happen so quickly and easily that one should really prioritise getting a little safety net tucked away. I'm not saying "no-fun-expenses-allowed", but putting away something is a good idea (or paying off (some of) the high-interest debts like credit card debt would be a good too), if you can at all afford it.

€3000 a month? Where do you live? Or do you talk about a 4 people family? In a family you also have two incomes, pay less taxes, and actually don't have a 2x increase in costs, since many costs can be shared.

On €1500 you can live quite well in most of Europe. And getting a 6-month safety package shouldn't take more than two years to save up.

what course of action -- either individual or societal -- do you suggest?

It's a very multi-faceted problem. This[1] graph about the Chinese vs Western middle class is very telling. The world is equalizing due to globalization, and as they say, equality feels like oppression (in this case depression) to the privileged.

There's also the fact that as urbanization continues, real estate in big cities will keep raising in price. People will see real estate more and more as an investment. This completely chokes the housing market since everyone overpays, everyone thinks 'fuck you, I want to get mine', housing becomes unaffordable for starters.

Then there's automation which also hits the middle class a lot. A lot of jobs are cheaper fulfilled by manual labor than automation, and difficult jobs are yet out of the reach of machines.

Add to that the fact that ever more wealth keeps getting stuck at the top (especially the 0.1%) and its a very bad cocktail.

A good beginning to fix it would be an inheritance tax of 100% with a cutoff at ${million} (1 million? 10 million? whatever is reasonable but doesn't give your kids a crazy advantage). Assets would count towards this. Right now we're in a sort of pseudo-feudal system where once you're over a certain amount of wealth, your family/kin is set for life. I'm not against working hard and leaving something for your kids, but there should be limits.

A negative income tax (a sort of basic income light) would also help, as there would always be a proper fallback should you ever have bad luck. It also moves a lot of leverage from employers to employees.

Cities (especially big cities) should no longer seek to extract the maximum amount of tax per piece of ground (resulting in only expensive developments) but should have policies that aim for maximum societal gain: this means building housing to the exact class percentages of the population. 10% rich, 40% middle class and 50% working class in the country? That's what cities should aim for.

Universities should be public and admit students purely on merit. No legacy systems, no positive discrimination. However, I am okay with limiting foreign students (say 10-20% max).

Even with all these things I am probably missing a ton of pitfalls. As I said, its an extremely complex, multi-faceted problem.

[1]http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1564426/original.jpg

"Cities (especially big cities) should no longer seek to extract the maximum amount of tax per piece of ground (resulting in only expensive developments) but should have policies that aim for maximum societal gain: this means building housing to the exact class percentages of the population. 10% rich, 40% middle class and 50% working class in the country? That's what cities should aim for."

This. Unfortunately it's fallen out of fashion... everyone wants to become the richest city in the world, even if all it means is that you will price yourself out of it, literally delivering it in the hands of the few 0.1% for whom it's just another new toy to play...

Violent revolution.

You might get along with your boss, your boss might seem great and be a nice guy. You might even be friends. Hell, he may even mean well and genuinely want what's best for you. But always remember:

1) At the end of the day your boss' job is to take as much from you as possible and give you as little as possible in return. Same as customers. The difference the company makes there is literally the definition of profit.

2) If you're non-union in the US, you have zero power. Your only real recourse to any grievance or unfair treatment is to quit, forgoing your severance and losing your health insurance. Your only weapon is a freshly updated resume.

Agreed.

Additionally 3) Even a geniune nice promise from your boss probably won't consider your risks. Human brains only are good to evaluate the risks to themselves, and if you don't get what the boss promised the risk to him may be relatively low.

Very true. My ex- was nervous about accepting a vet tech position for about a year before she started vet school.

She was nervous because they "required"/"only wanted" someone who "was going to be there long term".

I asked her: "They want you to make commitments to them that you will be there for a long term. Are they willing to make the same commitment to you? Or are you out the door the moment you are unneeded?"

Early in my career, I thought I was always doing someone a favour by making them a job offer. After all, I'm just giving them more options to choose between, right?

Later I learned people who end up out of a job won't see it that way. Especially if they've quit a secure job and relocated.

In my case I was on the fence about a guy I interviewed, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, it didn't work out and I had to fire him. Hiring someone just as you're about to have big layoffs is even worse, as the blame isn't shared - it's all on the employer.

Now when I hire, I do everything I can to avoid this sort of mistake :)

I used to work as a developer in a logistics firm.

For a short while it was going through some financial difficulties. It was no secret among the staff, many of whom were jumping ship. Those that weren't (myself included) were making plans to do the same.

Despite this the MD insisted on keeping the recruitment process going and carrying through with the graduate recruitment scheme. His reasoning was that he couldn't claim that his company was growing if it wasn't hiring. It was deception plain and simple, but for this particular MD morals were merely something he had once heard about.

Come the hour they did have to withdraw firm offers for both experienced hires and five graduates. It was particularly nasty for the graduates as they went through a ridiculously extensive recruitment process - including spending a weekend away at a woodland activity centre where they were forced to do team building exercises and climb a mountain in the dark.

Long story short, they kept the recruitment process going to make it look like the company was doing better than it was.

It was brutal, but the MD didn't care. He was probably more worried about where his next Merc was coming from.

Reminds me of my recent interview with Buzzfeed for a SRE position. It consisted of

* A half hour introductory call with the recruiter

* Another half hour call with an engineer about the position

* An hour-long technical phone interview

* Eight hour onsite technical interview

* Coming back in for a final interview with the product manager and then a "work party" where I had to show a "lead" how to do regexes because he couldn't figure them out (this dude had been working there for four years)

So I did all that - including missing a day of work and thus pay - and was told that I was the first person who actually made it through the whole process. I then asked if that meant I'd be receiving an offer / moving forward and they said no, because the team was "Still figuring out the interview process" and that in the future they would be sure to think of me. I reached out about possible remuneration, because I had already given almost 20 hours of my time to them as well as actionable expertise. Still haven't heard back.

Sad story for the new hires.

A couple of thoughts:

Large companies fail too in much the same way so I'm not sure how much "startup" specific this is.

Businesses that are struggling may continue operations as normal, including recruitment, while they seek additional funding or some other inflection point.

Companies are often transparent when the times are good and much less so when struggling. It's self-preservation. If they say were in big trouble, the top talent leaves first. It's manifest destiny. So, they put their heads down and try to steer the company through it.

It's a terrible situation all around when a business fails, everyone loses.

I think you accidentally or intentionally revealed your location by mentioning "woodland".

As a layperson, I'm surprised this is legal.

First and foremost, why wouldn't you be entitled to whatever notice/pay your employment contract stipulates? Even in an at-will environment, I imagine if the contract says the employer must give you 4 weeks of notice, well, that's what they owe you.

Furthermore, at some point, hiring people that you have good reason to suspect you won't be able to employ must become fraudulent, no?

I'd talk to a lawyer unless the contract was never signed.

I don't know how it's in Germany but I'd imagine it to be pretty much the same as in the Netherlands: most if not all contracts will have a trial period where the contract can be terminated by both parties on the second.

This is the risk of changing a job, even more so if the new job is in another country.

edit: based on some other comments in this thread the German law on this does not seem to be the same as the Dutch laws.

In Germany it's 2 weeks. So they should pay him at least 2 weeks :)

No, it's 6 months.

Typically in the EU (or at least here in The Netherlands) you can be fired on the spot (without a notice ahead of time) in the first month (usually referred to as a "trial month"). I suspect this is what SoundCloud took advantage of.

That’s Netherland-specific. EU countries have very different probationary period terms. In Germany you have at least 2 weeks notice during the probation period which is usually six months long.

OP should ask a lawyer. I think this is not legal.

It's the same in France as well, you can be fired any time the first four months, no reason needed. Equally you can also leave any time you want if you don't like the job.

So normally, you can't leave a job you don't like after 1 month? What is the process for quitting like? Here in the US, I've only ever seen '2 weeks notice' be a courtesy - you could just stop coming to work, or announce that the current day is your last.

  What is the process for quitting like?

From the perspective of professional employment, e.g. programmers:

If the employee and company part on bad terms, they can still part pretty fast. There's no mechanism to force someone to come into work (besides the threat of a bad reference) and if they did come in, there's not much stopping them spending all day distracting people and moaning about how much they hate the place.

If the employee and company are parting on good terms, the employee will hand in a written notice then work their notice period, with the possibility of ending it sooner by mutual consent. The employee generally wants to finish up what they can and hand over what they can't because they like their job and co-workers.

Needless to say, if you're a senior guy who's been at the company for years, there'll be more stuff you know and responsibilities you've assumed that you need to pass on to other people. For junior employees and recent hires, there will obviously be much less.

That's appropriate in 'right to work' states (which is most of them): you can stand up in a meeting & announce "I quit" (or hear "you're fired"), and that's sufficient notification to end your employment. In other states and countries, usually there is a notification period written into your contract which stipulates how much warning you must give the other party before terminating the contract (rule of thumb is 2 weeks + one week per year of employment).

"Right to work" is about forced union membership (i.e. "union shops"). What you are describing is "at-home employment". It's a mess of state laws and exceptions, but the only state that doesn't really operate that way is Montana.

You're right, that legal these refer to different concepts. My US employer didn't worry about distinguishing between them when I went through harassment/discrimination training.

You probably mean "at will".

I did. Nice catch.

Same in Finland.

I believe in Germany it's mandatory to give at least two weeks notice for the first 6 months. I also believe they legally can't cancel the contract before it starts, so notice must start on the contract start date. So he would be entitled to two weeks pay.

Real question is it worth chasing them for it.

http://www.kanzlei-hasselbach.de/2014/kuendigung-und-kuendig...

Two weeks notice during probation period. - What's more relevant:

If they actually signed a legal contract they also need to provide him with a written and signed contract termination. As far as I understand a signed contract exists and no written notice has been delivered. The notice period is counted starting from the day of the delivery of that physical mail.

https://www.anwalt.de/rechtstipps/die-kuendigung-vor-arbeits...

It would be great if he turned up to the office saying "Legally I still work for you guys and I've not been given anything in writing to state otherwise. So... When do I get paid?" :D

Employer is entitled to recompensation if the employee does that (cancel just before starting), unless there's a clause in the contract, so it apparently works both ways.

1) Send amazing offer letters to your competitor's workers.

2) After they've quit, moved, uprooted their life, but before they actually start working -- fire them.

3) Win!

What contract? He signed an offer letter. An offer letter means that, if neither you or employer change minds in interim, you will have a job on a specific date with specific title, pay and benefits.

> The challenge wasn’t trivial and I spent the whole weekend working on it (~20hours)

For this shit alone they should be burned to the ground. Why do recruiters do these silly "homeworks"? Every time I hear this during a recruitment I'm like "ooooh, so you just do a mass-casting, and see who's the most desperate?". Nope, nope, nope...

I'd rather spend 20 hours in a weekend doing an homework like this than inverting a binary tree on a whiteboard. At least I can actually show that I know something other than just sweating and look really dumb.

Last time I was hiring an iOS dev, we had a cool 2 hour pairing session (it was supposed to be 1 hour, but time flies when you're having fun), doing something really simple in the scope of the project. He shown how he works, and tackles problems, answered some questions, got hired. You really can hire in a humane way, you just need to want it.

If it's worth your time, its worth my time. I am happy to do any interview testing and activities as long it is on location.

Any "homework" longer than an hour or so is disproportionally a burden on the candidate. I feel it is unethical and a dealbreaker for me.

Pair programming tests are fair because the company is investing the same time as candidate, just like any interview.

Asking candidates to do tests on their own time is rude and dumb.

Except when you deliver the homework, working, with tests, and then you receive a rejection with incorrect bikesheddy feedback , or even worse, no feedback at all.

What's wrong with that? If they leave feedback people can argue and claim it's invalid. Interviewing at a company isn't a free mentoring resource.

Professional or even human decency?

Candidate just devoted significant portion of an entire day with no compensation in hopes to work for you, you basically say 'no' and give nothing back.. its using peoples labor for free and trashing them.

Interviewing candidates also isn't a free labor source (in event that 'homework' has some professional use, which it often could)

Because it's classless. You inveigle a candidate to spend their time on a test you owe them the courtesy of feedback.

I once spent two hours on a test for a contract development company. I'm an accomplished senior developer and normally i would have told them to F off, but I was curious so i did it. I did pretty well on it, but never got a response. Zip, nada, nothing. I emailed them multiple times and even called HR. Still no response.

Anytime other devs ask me about that company, i say don't waste your time, they are super shitty.

Everything.

Other than obviously or blatantly incompetent coding, I'd expect that as a minimum, a code review would be a part of the equation.

This is similar to you working on a project, your boss looking over it, not saying a word, dragging it to the Recycle Bin, and walking off.

See it as minimum payment for the time the applicant spent on it. (feel free to disregard if you pay them for the time they spend on the homework with actual money)

I get your point, but this still applies to the binary tree... That's the interview process. Yes, companies can make a better effort to give feedback, but I think that's secondary to give me the right opportunity to show what I can do.

Maybe you should learn how to invert a binary tree and save your time instead of doing unpaid work for others.

Even better: spend some time becoming comfortable with the most basic data structures, so you don't need to 'learn' anything. Because if someone struggles to combine swapping two values with basic tree recursion, they're probably much less skilled a programmer than they think. Even if they can google the shit out of a simple iOS app at home.

Who cares, I'd rather not know this and look elsewhere than work with someone who had this sort of attitude

The problem, from my perspective, is you think this is something that needs to be 'known', rather than a basic skill. I think it is basic.

I don't want somebody who 'knows' how to invert a tree, any more than I want someone who's learned the answer to Fizzbuzz.

The point is not that you know how to do it, but that you can naturally perform basic manipulation of very simple data structures. If you can't swap two values, or you can't write recursive code, you may think you're a competent programmer, but I don't agree. What is basic, if that kind of thing is advanced?

If you think an employer expecting that level of competence has 'a sort of attitude', then I don't know what to say. How would you react to someone who felt that way when asked if they could code a loop over a pair of lists, or return a function from a function, or any thing else you consider routine (do you consider anything routine)?

It worries me that programming has become 'copying and pasting from Google' and that people would find it offensive that anyone could possibly have a higher standard than that. If that's a horribly elitist, unacceptably arrogant attitude to you, then again, I don't know what to say.

ah did you edit this? I noticed you wrote "you may think you're God's gift to programming, but you're wrong." before removing it (it was gone once I had refreshed). Did you realise you know nothing about me so saying something like that is ridiculous?

I just think people starting out should be supported and being arrogant about it doesn't really help anyone.

I did edit, sorry for the original wording. I also get myself into trouble using 'you', which I mostly meant 'one' rather than you specifically. You're right to call me out on it. Sorry again.

So, do you feel like answering the questions in my edited and toned down version?

I confess I am really struggling with this at the moment, because this kind of thing seems to keep coming up. And I honestly cannot figure out where I'm going wrong to expect programmers to be able to do this kind of thing.

> And I honestly cannot figure out where I'm going wrong to expect programmers to be able to do this kind of thing.

Adjust your expectations.

Nah. Programmers who write everything by googling+copy-pasting will eventually be replaced by robots. Which will be created by programmers who can come up with an algorithm on their own.

Why would AI that good only end up replacing the 'shitty' coders?

Methinks you left the last and obvious/inevitable step out.

Thanks for the laugh today, I needed it.

I interviewed with one company whose approach to this was smarter than most: they gave me a little problem to solve, but paid me a couple hundred bucks as compensation for the time I'd need to put into it. That took the sting out of having to do a homework assignment on my own time.

I suppose the main objection to that would be "but we'd end up paying out so much money to people we don't hire!", but that feels to me like it says more about that company's recruiting process. Just wait until you're serious about potentially hiring somebody before you bust out the homework assignments and you're fine.

Was going to comment with this.

I think homework assignments can work great, but compensation for the time seems totally logical, and it should somewhat be in the area of reasonable too, not just a 'spend 20 hours but get 200 bucks' either.

Also incentivise the company to select a problem that is related to the actual work that they do / need done.

While I don't think a 20 hour project is reasonable -- I do like the option of doing a shorter project when offered in lieu of a timed coding test or an hour interview.

I think it's one of the most close-to-actual-work things you can do (especially if they give you a problem at least close to what you're going to be working on everyday).

Designed well, I could imagine a test that would take 1 to 2 hours (of course you can't control how long someone will work on something, but if I ask you to reverse a string in python I don't think it's reasonable for that to take hours), and succinctly test for clean architecture and good general software engineering principles.

In my experience designing these things, 1-2 hours only provides enough time for very simple assignments, which aren't enough to actually inform the reviewer much at all about you as an individual.

It's hard to get one at 4 hours, but that provides just enough to really see something while still being respectful of candidates' time.

Of course, this is entirely dependant on the type of programming that you're hiring for!

The problem is that most of the time is like solving newspaper puzzles.

Last time I got a stupid exercise about counting amount of 4s and 0s in a number, while obeying to a specific pattern, then generate numbers that according to that pattern would match a specific formula, while taking into consideration some GCD relations among those numbers.

Yeah, cool exercise for a weekend. Zero value when writing enterprise distributed systems with web/native GUIs.

While I agree that 20h working assignment is ridiculous I saw some serious primadonnas while interviewing who declined to do a simple 15-30 minutes on-site coding challenge because they have extensive github or whatever they told me.

Needless to say those candidates didn't got hired.

Why even ask for resumes if you're going to ignore them? I also get very annoyed when people ask about your experience, then in the very next breath pretend none of it matters and you should do fizzbuzz.

If we as an industry don't trust/value the stated experience of others, why do we continue to ask for it? Maybe tech companies should just stop accepting resumes then?

The failure rate on fizzbuzz is spectacular. That's why; far too many resume/CVs are full of nonsense. It's not always the candidate's fault, either. When doing technical interviews for contractors, I've gotten into the habit of giving the candidates the version of their CV passed to me by their agencies to check; a good percentage of candidates horrified to see what had been claimed by the employment agency on their behalf.

There's various levels of bullshit, of incremental bullshitness

a) I won't believe you got your PHD legitimately, do fizzbuzz for me.

b) You're faking both your diploma and your 4 year experience at Megacorp, prove me wrong via fizzbuzz.

c) Alright your credentials check out, do this entirely unrelated to the job assignment to prove that you have what it takes to do the job.

d) Alright you aced your assignment which despite being entirely unrelated to the actual job, domain and language, convinces us you got what it takes. Now, tell me an example of when you resolved a conflict with a colleague and how you did it...

We had a surprise at my company. The candidate had a masters degree and 2 years experience in a known software company.

We relied too much on the resume and mostly talked during the one hour interview. After hiring the person turned out that our new employee would have had serious issues with FizzBuzz. Maybe even looping through arrays...

When we interview people know we test for basics, regardless of their resume.

I'd consider the interviewer as much of a problem as the hire in this case. Talking to someone for an hour and not being able to figure out if they could write basic code? Hiring someone based on their background and not doing a background check (after getting their approval ofcourse)?

How do you find out if they can write basic code without asking them to write some code?

If you talk about past projects, they talk about architecture and project management. If you ask about code they have written, they say it's all proprietary.

Ask them to think up a way to implement a function to do X. Keep X simple, simplify further until you find common ground. Any other ways to implement? Tradeoffs? What about under this or that constraint?

Ask about some peculiarities of their favorite languages.

Have them describe a recent difficult bug (very insightful - in their description's wording, the scope of the bug itself, steps taken to solve, etc. - but could be 'proprietary').

At smaller companies who have trouble attracting better talent, avoiding technical questions is a (flawed) way of showing deference to the prime candidate. It's a way for the company to say, you are special to us and we respect you so much you don't have to do tricks for us.

Again, it's flawed, but trying to find and attract talent at a small company who maybe can't pay top dollar makes people take risks like this.

At least that's my experience!

Your attitude seems to be that of a bad cop - "you are guilty until proven innocent." If I were interviewing with someone that expressed the level of suspicion that you have here, I would cut the the interview short. Interviewing is a two way straight and I can't imagine working with someone with that level of skepticism. Obtaining a PHD illegitimately? Honestly you sound very jaded.

I used to believe that. I even passed up on a job that I should have taken because of it.

Then I sat on the other side of the interview table too many times. If my company is going to pay you or (more importantly) if I'm going to trust the success of my project to you, I really do want to know you can do the job. If that offends you, I'm sorry.

I suggest you reread my comment and try to understand my point.

I understood your point just fine.

Spoiler: Their four scenarios are written from the pov of a hypothetical hiring manager that offends the applicant with bullshit (the "bullshit" they refer to at the start of their post) no matter the context.

You think that they wrote those scenarios with their own voice, so you are misreading the point.

Nowhere in the OP's original comment is it clear that this is third person point of view from a "hypothetical hiring manager."

Had they articulated "A hiring might think" at the beginning or even anywhere in their post then yes it would have been clear.

Regardless you don't want to work for anyone - fellow team mate, hiring manager or company that harbors that level of suspicion towards candidates. It's a red flag. I did not miss the point.

"I did not miss the point".

Really though? You're going to be like that? You're going to be the guy that tells the person making the point they didn't mean what they meant, after failing at reading comprehension?

The post I responded to said:

"Why even ask for resumes if you're going to ignore them? I also get very annoyed when people ask about your experience, then in the very next breath pretend none of it matters and you should do fizzbuzz."

Which I called bullshit. Then I listed a bunch of things that are also bullshit of the same kind but they get incrementally more bullshitty, among them was this:

"Alright you aced your assignment which despite being entirely unrelated to the actual job, domain and language, convinces us you got what it takes."

Which somehow you took literally.

Because somehow, you believed, someone would actually not only do that, but they would actually think that. They would actually knowingly hand a candidate an assignment they know is entirely unrelated to the job opening, and they would go online and detail their though process on this.

Was this a one time incident or do you go responding to every piece of irony on the internet pointing out that the writer must have meant what they said.

>"Was this a one time incident or do you go responding to every piece of irony on the internet pointing out that the writer must have meant what they said."

You seem to have greatly over-estimated your articulation and communication. But rather than entertaining the possibility that your intent might not have been universally understood, you are going resort to condescension and ad hominem remarks. Not very mature or constructive.

I also don't think you did

I think they did. If the point was that easy to miss, then the author needs to rethink their point.

Because despite the apparent skills on people's resumes, a lot of people still seem to fail to write fizzbuzz in an interview.

I have no problem with short sanity checking exercises during interviews. The problem is when they expect a lot more unrealistic whiteboard code.

Agreed, I have come to believe strongly in the value of Fizz Buzz and other simple tests. Many candidates have strong resumes but large companies destroy their souls and skills by sticking them for 8+ hours a day in rubbish meetings. Go without coding for a few months of this and your ability to Fizz Buzz will be compromised. Most smaller companies are looking for active, hands-on developers and Fizz Buzz is a quick check to ensure that the candidate spends a substantial part of the day writing code and designing software.

I don't know why knowing modular arithmetic is a requirement for knowing the syntax and how to code in a specific language/on a specific platform?

Yes. Always have an easy problem in analysis & coding, like constructing a simple Boolean predicate from some comparisons. You will thank yourself later when you don't hire the fantastic-looking candidate who had absolutely no idea how to work the problem.

Resumes get you the interview. Interviews get you the job.

You can't just hire someone because they say they know something, you'd end up spending a fortune on employee turnover when everyone you've hired turns out to have exaggerated their resume.

Two things:

1) Who cares if they've exaggerated their resume? The question is supposed to be whether they can contribute well to your code base/business right? I see this as a point towards getting rid of resumes -- maybe companies can stop bullshitting on what they "require" from candidates, and test more literally for what they want.

Don't take my resume, but if it's a backend position where the focus is erlang and postgres, test as specifically as you can for that, with fizzbuzz-like business requirements mixed in, for the best of both worlds.

2) I often wonder if there's anyway to lessen the costs of employee turnover. Obviously there's less you can do about time spent interviewing, but there's gotta be some cheaper way to figure out if someone is going to be a good employee while on the job? I mean that's the best test you could possibly have. Is it just the legal/logistical framework that's missing?

Also, I often wonder if running a company where it's hard for newcomers to ramp up and easy for newcomers to break things is a failing of the CTO and executives/managers all the way down to the newcomer (of course the newcomer is to blame as well if it's flagrant but I also think top-of-the-line tech orgs have (mostly) bulletproof process that evolved with them and got them to where they are (i.e. newcomer can't break your build if commits to shared branches/environments are gated by automated testing to begin with).

Then there was that time a subcontractor sent someone for a US Federal government job who wasn't a US citizen.

FizzBuzz is a great way to see if the dev experience listed is total bullshit.

Not sure about that.

FizzBuzz is an interview question you just expect.

RosettaCode has every FizzBuzz solution out there. Tons of people know how to FizzBuzz.

This is just "learning enough to pass the test" - a canned answer like the one you know you have for "How do you deal with multiple simultaneous high priority projects?" or "What's your biggest weakness?"

You may be filtering out lazy lazy candidates with FizzBuzz. But just because they can do it doesn't mean they can ship code.

The idea isn't that you hire everyone who can FizzBuzz, it's that you don't hire (or waste any more time interviewing) those who can't.

What is the answer to those questions? I can Fizzbuzz in any number of languages, but the first response that springs to mind for the others is "Fuck off."

Really? As a potential member of my team, I really do want those questions answered because how you answer them tells me about your character, personality, and thought process.

I don't care what your biggest weakness is. You could have severe OCD or addiction. You could battle depression. You could be a chronic procrastinator. None of those matter. What does matter is if you give a solid straight honest answer, rather than some canned crap you read on a web site somewhere.

Same goes for how you manage multiple high-priority things. Every job I've worked on, every team, it always happens that there are multiple high priority things. Do you try to do them all and then crash and burn? Do you do them half-assed? Do you fight to get priorities aligned? Do you call the sponsors together and share information about the deadlines? Do you under promise and over-deliver? Do you ask for help from your team?

The way you answer is often more important than what you answer. Unless it's "Fuck off."

FizzBuzz itself is too well known, but the world is full of other trivial questions that can filter out the no-hires.

I usually cook my own questions that involve a loop and an if statement. I kid you not, plenty of candidates cannot do simple stuff, and they're interviewing for a developer position.

If you don't know how to reverse a string, or split an array of ints into two with even and odd ints, or write a while loop that terminates on a specific word - I have zero belief that you can fill the position I have available.

Not sure how knowing modular arithmetic and writing code are dependent.

I'll gladly tell them how the modular arithmetic works, I just want them to fill out the rest. Many are unable to, which tells me that they don't know even the simplest constructs in programming.

yeah like that one company asking me to do Slack to work at their inventory management startup ;-) Totally related, in so many ways.

It is more fair to do fizzbuzz. Seeing someone being taken over you because he is good at bullshitting is super infuriating. Might be fine if the position was "sales", not fine for engineers.

Fizzbuzz is cool. I am quite confident I can do it.

I've had PhD candidates who were unable to do a proper link tag in HTML.

CV doesn't matter.

If you're a Ph D that's interviewing for a job that requires you to write HTML, or a company interviewing Ph D holders to write HTML, something is wrong.

That's why you have on-site for, I can ask my super-duper-master friend to make the homework for me ;-) It's not a proof of anything.

At unis I know nobody could outsource PhD in computer science as it takes serious commitment and scientific publications to get one...

I'm still a student, but I have a feeling, if a job interview asks me to do a big 'assignment' of sorts, I'll ask them how long it would take an average dev to do. I'd do the assignment, provided I get paid those hours * a dev wage.

Surely if they were serious about me, they'd pay me to do a stupid task, right? Or am I way off base?

Don't negotiate like that. Instead, just keep score.

If they offer you a homework assignment that you think is going to take some time, and they give you a week to do it, and you can do it on your own time, just do it. Stay positive and upbeat. But learn from the homework. is it trivial? Or is it related to the work you'll be doing?

If, however, they make you come to their office or be available for specific times, and they don't offer to compensate you for skipping your other job or obligations, take that as a sign that they aren't considerate. You could put that as a negative in the "core values" bucket.

But yea - don't demand anything during an interview. You may certainly ask politely, but don't demand. It's a two-way street. Even when you negotiate your salary, don't demand. Be firm, but be nice.

> If they offer you a homework assignment that you think is going to take some time, and they give you a week to do it, and you can do it on your own time, just do it. Stay positive and upbeat.

This is only true if they give you a coding assignment after you have interviewed and you actually want the job. Under no circumstances should you waste your time with companies that are just so swamped that you have to jump through hoops so they'll deign to talk to you. Interviews are a two-way street and even an interview for a job I eventually pass on is a two-way street--coding tests aren't, not materially. You learn a little about the company but basically nothing about the people or about the current state of the market (both of the reasons why you should be interviewing even if you're happy with your job--to network with others and to keep your finger on the pulse of the industry).

You probably shouldn't do it if it'll take you more than an hour or so, either, as it communicates how much they respect your time. You can tell if someone can write code in short order. And you would be well-advised not to waste the time of people with ample open-source code you can check out instead. (Shouts, company-that-looked-at-a-completed-CloudFormation-management-stack-and-then-asked-me-to-write-two-for-loops.)

What's actually important is whether you can work with the person, which coding tests don't tell you (and, just as importantly, they don't tell me if I can work with you).

I agree and disagree.

If you have ample open source code, lots of experience that's relevant to what I'm doing, then gosh yes - nobody should be giving you homework to do.

To your point about only doing homework after you interview, look at it this way:

If you're unproven, then you're getting the homework because I don't trust resumes. I've seen college profs and career counselors tell people "If you've dabbled in it, put it on your resume." Combine that with people who don't have any code online because "I have a life outside of work" or "all my work is NDA", and I'm sorry - I need to see if you can do the job.

Look, I know it sucks to do homework as a candidate before you interview. You're taking 5 hours to do it. And I know it feels like a disrespect for your time.

But there are devs on the other side who are part of the interview process too. And for each candidate most companies interview, there's about 2 hours for every hour interview per person. Cos there's usually some kind of prebrief, the interview prep, the interview itself, then filling out scorecards and the debrief. That's a time investment too.

And if I'm interviewing tons of people, and then give them the homework, and it turns out they're great people but can't do the job we need them to do, then we wasted their time, got their hopes up, and wasted a lot of our time. Hiring people for a team is extra work. If I spent 3 hours in interviews today, guess what? I still have to get my work done too.

The argument against homework from the candidate always comes down to "Why should I have to prove I can do what I say I can do?"

Because that's what interviews are. And if you can demonstrate you can do what you say you can do, you'll make six figures sitting behind a computer screen in air conditioning.

Sounds like a sweet deal to me.

> If you have ample open source code, lots of experience that's relevant to what I'm doing, then gosh yes - nobody should be giving you homework to do.

So last time I needed a job, I interviewed at something like 38 places. All had my Github, smack dab at the top of the resume. Exactly two (2) out of a total of like 10 responses that passed through the first phone screen and wanted a coding test said "you have a Github so we don't need you to do the coding test."

So...I agree with you, but they totally do ask anyway. ;)

...

> That's a time investment too.

Those devs are getting paid for it, though. If you want to pay for my time, then that obviously changes things.

(If you are picking up that I do not care that the company spends money, you would be correct. People matter, not LLCs or corporations. ;)

> The argument against homework from the candidate always comes down to "Why should I have to prove I can do what I say I can do?"

I disagree. The argument I generally hear (and I'm more sympathetic to your position if somebody is a non-person on the internet) is "you aren't paying me for work you are asking for." Which is the framing that, IMO, makes much more sense. Neither of us should be working for free and we should be pushing back against upper management if they want you to be complicit in trying to make me work for free (or vice versa).

> Hiring people for a team is extra work. If I spent 3 hours in interviews today, guess what? I still have to get my work done too.

I 100% empathize, but this speaks to a failure of management. If an interview isn't being counted as filling space/reducing story points for that sprint/whatever-Agile-Agile-Agile, then management dun goofed.

But what's the solution? How do I know you can do what you say you can do if you don't have a Github account? I mean, if I met with you for 2 hours and we paired on something, that's still making you code for free, right? It also requires us to find a time to sync up. If you're cool with that, then why not doing it async instead?

That aside, There are tons of people out there who simply do not have the extra time to do open source work. Families, other obligations, health issues, you name it. It's pretty great to be able to do self-promotion via open source code, I certainly hate the idea of saying "no Github? Sorry, no interview". But I also can't just take people at their word because people either embellish or outright lie during interviews and resumes.

I've had a ton of people who said they could do soemthing during an interview, but didn't actually demonstrate that on the homework. Way more than you'd think. Especially with less-experienced folks.

It's all about negotiation really. Being a junior doesn't give you enough leverage to make this kind of demands IMHO. Juniors have this weird tendency towards overestimating their value. Don't make this mistake in the beginning of your carrier (been there, done that).

I am self-employed as a contractor/consultant doing frontend work - this is similar to how I started the relationship with my biggest and best client.

They had a post looking for a full-time contractor, I contacted them and they gave me 4 hours of paid work. That was good, so they gave me 8 hours next. That was good, so they gave me a week's worth of work next. That was good so they gave me a month's worth of work.

By the time my half day + day + week + month was up, they had a nice contract ready for me to sign and we've been happy ever since!

I really like the way they onboarded me - there was small, but increasing risk shared equally between them and me as we started our relationship and learned to trust each other. It's been great, and if I was going to hire somebody on I'd do the same!

That's a good idea, and I'd love to have been able to do it on either side. That said, it kinda ducks did someone already employed looking to change jobs.

That's how I interviewed for my current job. I was given a task to do and was asked my contracting rate and told to keep a log of how long I worked on it and what I did, got the cash a day or so after completing the task. Got the job a couple days after that.

This is a good way to guarantee unemployment for yourself.

A student? You'd get laughed out the door.

Experienced dev? Someone pay the man.

Sorry, we've all gotta pay our dues.

While I rather like "Pri madonna", it's originally simple Italian for "first lady": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prima_donna

So what?

It's difficult when you don't have a lot of free time to spend doing random mundane interview questions. It's doubly frustrating when this is because you're spending a lot of time doing work on free (libre) software and technical recruiters can easily see tons of your code and communication style openly on Github and whatnot, but for various reasons this isn't adequate for them.

I've seen some who should have declined, because I then spent half an hour tutoring them in the syntax of their chosen programming language.

Sounds like you passed on some good candidates.

More likely I've passed some skilled assholes which my team is not interested in working with at all.

Early in my career I interviewed at a small game company. It was located in a crappy town, and when I arrived the CEO walked me around their work environment, which was mostly cubicles in hallways and multiple devs crammed in offices.

Then we sat down in his office and he handed me a programming quiz. While young, I was an accomplished dev with my name on a multiple published products. The first question was unclear, it didn't specify if I was to optimize for speed or memory or maintenance cost. So I got up, walked out, handed him the unstarted exam and left to take a job at Apple. Where I was highly rated in every performance review and extolled for my ability to work well with others.

People who don't want to take coding exams fall into two rough categories.

1) They are fakers, their resume claims are BS and they are afraid of being unmasked.

2) They are very good developers, and don't like tests. Maybe because of test anxiety, maybe they find them insulting given their career accomplishments, or mostly because they know they have little to no bearing on how good a developer they are. The reasons I refused the test that day was a combination of all three.

One example, even today I can't whiteboard anything to do with binary trees, because in 30 years of professional development I've never had to do anything with them, and can no longer remember any of the binary tree algorithms from my comp-sci classes.

My recommendation to you (as someone who has hired over 40 devs in my career) is to do paired programming tests with candidates. You can get a much clearer idea of their thought process and abilities, and it's a far friendlier and respectful process.

Too many managers measure the process cost only in their own time. They think, oh, I'll give 10 candidates a test to filter out the worst ones and then I only have to spend my time interviewing the top two or three. First you are ignoring how easy it is to cheat those tests and how little they apply to actual dev work, which means your top two or two are not likely to be your best two out of the ten. But you are also ignoring the possibility that four others refused to test and two of them were likely as good or better than anyone in your test group.

I will never take a coding test again. When someone requests one, they tend to be a crap company with poor software dev practices and a huge noisy open floor plan.

> My recommendation to you ... is to do paired programming tests with candidates

As someone who, without really bullshitting, is in box #2 of what you describe--this is a great recommendation. Coding tests are largely a joke. I test fine, but I have somewhere north of a hundred thousand lines of open-sourced code out there. I can write code. You're not helping me learn anything as I help you learn whether you want to hire me with your (probably bad) coding test.

But we both benefit from pair programming. Because it's fun, it's usually more thought-provoking, and it teaches me about a company and a person I might run into again in the future.

> When someone requests one, they tend to be a crap company with poor software dev practices and a huge noisy open floor plan.

...also this. Coding tests are the warehoused, wholesale way to hire developers. You probably deserve to at least be handled retail.

As developers we are really fortunate that we often don't have to put up with this shit, but i have some designer friends (mostly fashion) where the job market isn't nearly as good and they have to go through shit like this all the time, because there is just no alternative.

In those cases, if you don't agree with those weekend projects, you will most likely just not get a job because someone else will do it. If you ask for compensation for your time you will most likely hear a mad laugh and a "Nope"

We started doing challenges like this in our hiring process some years ago. Our challenges are open-ended so the time spent on it really is up to the applicant, but you can come up with a good solution in a few hours.

The feedback from candidates (including those we didn't hire) has been extremely good - they much prefer this to puzzles or whiteboard coding sessions.

Note that we give such challenges to candidates after they passed through a phone screen and a first interview with a pair of engineers.

>"The feedback from candidates (including those we didn't hire) has been extremely good - they much prefer this to puzzles or whiteboard coding sessions."

This whole idea of asking people do use up their nights and weekends to do free work is completely ridiculous. And the justification is always the same - "we think its better than implementing algorithms on whiteboards."

Well who ever said writing code on a whiteboard was necessary? This justification is ridiculous as it suggests there are just two possibilities for hiring people - algorithmic puzzles and unpaid work.

This is why it needs to be a challenge related to the employer, but not an actual feature they're going to go and use.

At my last place we used one, said "please don't spend more than 5 hours on it" - it was a challenge to read a specific industry format (e.g. test you can go and find something to read it, not implement a library to do so ... not reinventing the wheel) and present it in a basic RESTful web app (testing that you know what REST is, and can implement basic CRUD).

Never had an issue getting it done, and it was very illuminating, some people who passed through the initial interview with flying colours turned in absolute crap.

>"please don't spend more than 5 hours on it"

Stated another we don't want you to give up more than an "entire evening" or your "entire Saturday afternoon." This is messed up.

What's even more messed is that you generally won't be given the opportunity to you discuss your thinking or choices on your project. It's just pass fail.

Did you go over your reviews with the candidates that put in 5 hours who failed? And while a company says things like "don't put in more than X hours", the reality is people will put in much more time than that because they know they being put under a microscope and judged as if its production code.

We always gave feedback, even to those we didn't invite back.

It's either that, whiteboard interviews, or restrictive probation period if we don't test their coding ... each have their downsides, and it was decided the coding project was the most fair.

I would just make a short on-site, and not waste more of the time. It's super simple ;-)

What's the feedback from candidates who don't do the challenges?

If you already interviewed them twice, why in gods name do you need an easy to cheat programming challenge? Why not do paired programming instead?

>"Why do recruiters do these silly "homeworks"

It's not the recruiters, they are just the messenger. But yeah this is a joke.

If the challenge feels like "silly homework" then something is clearly wrong, but completing challenges during an application process if very, very necessary.

I've been in a couple of "hiring manager" roles and many times the challenge completely exposed under par developers with otherwise interesting cv's. Sloppy code, beginner mistakes etc. It's maybe a sign of the times where hiring managers need to actively test whether someone is propping up their CV with stuff or is actually knowledgeable. I wish it were different, but alas it is not.

Your challenges are biasing and filtering results in ways you aren't aware of.

I bet doctors don't have to do "surgery challenges" or "whiteboard anatomy pop quizzes" in order to get hired at a new hospital. What is it that their industry is doing that software engineering is not? This is a rhetorical question--we all know what they are doing, but everyone here's usually against it.

Doctors go through heavy schooling, residency. Do you know how many hours they work a week while in residency? Don't even compare.

You can't come out of it knowing any less, I think I'd mostly be happy to do it.

I can't imagine that you don't get any compensation. Germany has good rights for employees. I would contact an attorney for employment law. Maybe you can get something. I mean you are in a very unpleasant situation.

All the best for you.

It's not legal. I looked this up when I joined my company (in Berlin) last year. Even if you don't sign anything but the recruiter says/writes that you will be hired, this is already regarded as an "Absicht" (Intention) and they have to compensate you for some time. Get a lawyer to sort this out. Will be worth it.

Would he need a German or US lawyer? Or is the general practice to get a local lawyer and let them handle all the cross-border details?

The contract almost certainly specifies that the choice of law will be German law. Either way, it seems the author is based in Prague currently, so I'm not sure how US law would figure into it.

I thought SoundCloud was a US company?

Soundcloud is a German company. Also, if a American company is operating in Germany they follow German laws. That is why he would need a German lawyer.

Soundcloud is incorporated in the UK but German Law would apply in this case.

I'm still thinking about it.

After German employment rights (I am not a lawyer, so no guarantee) you signed an employment contract, they need to pay you. First when you receive a written notice you are out, currently you should be a member of the company from the date which is written down on the contract, which you signed.

Germany is really employee-friendly I really would contact an attorney.

I'm German. I would strongly advise to talk to a lawyer in this situation. Lawyers are very affordable, especially if you just want to check to make sure the law is on your side.

I'd just look for a lawyer specializing in employment contracts and pay for a <1hr visit to ask them their opinion on the situation. They can also tell you whether it's worth pursuing legally but the most important thing is that you'll know better next time and be able to say "No, you can't do that, you have to pay me for X weeks" if that's what the lawyer says is your right.

EDIT: Having a lawyer is handy if you need to sue someone but the real value comes from knowing with confidence when you're right and when you're not. This defends you against FUD, which can be powerful.

Having been in a similar situation myself I can sympathize. And knowing companies just get away with it helps you realize that you should never ever feel any loyalty towards an employer, potential or current.

Oh you're entering house of pain believing "companies are loyal" ;-) Definitely NOT in Berlin.

This is disgusting behavior from Soundcloud upper management, they need to be held liable for breach of contract. How could upper management be allowing recruiting at the same time they are planning massive layoffs. Ridiculous.

This is completely fine business decision-making. The only feedback that matters to people who make these sorts of decisions is money, so the only effective action to take here is: 1. contact a lawyer who specialises in workplace law & sue; 2. unionise and strike.

Very unfortunate and hopefully there is a way for the victim to be compensated. I once worked at a financial instituion where they hired a bunch of contractors for a project which didn't have an approved budget. Somehow the budget was never approved and after a week or two all of the contractors were let go. Many of them moved from several states away and left previous jobs. I guess there is an increased level of risk if you're a contractor but I still thought it was pretty callous to hire 15+ people from all over the country if the budget wasn't a stone cold lock for approval.

OP got screwed eastern European style. Over here we have short sides of all three sticks: no job security, miserable salaries, and non existent social support. What's infuriating for me personally is that managers deciding to fire oftentimes are employed themselves by a subsidiary in a country with high job security (e.g. Germany, Sweden), playing with the EU's free movement of workers in a very nasty and exploitive manner.

It’s bad, but not as bad as a making an offer to someone (me), having that someone leave the country to finalize get the work visa and finalize the move, and then cancelling the offer. That was not cool.

Oh good old times when I ‘trusted’ these mother fucking companies.

So I believe the CTO referred to in the article is Artem Fishman from Yahoo based on this article:

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/soundcloud-co-founder...

I know this story takes place in EU but just FYI, this would be an unfortunate but completely legal situation in USA.

Their CTO is 6 months on the job and moved to Germany for the job. He quite possibly doesn't understand EU law. He also seems to have inherited a shit sandwich and is being forced to eat it.

Honestly this is what scares me about moving countries to join startups and small companies (and even established companies). It doesn't help that I have 3 months notice at current job - plenty of time for the company to dissolve the contract.

In fact, a friend of mine did the very same thing (wanted to move to a Berlin startup two years ago) and also he was terminated before he arrived. Don't know how the financial side of the issue was solved though.

Regarding the notice period, regulations probably differ by country, AFAIK in some countries notice is period is gradually increasing, i.e. on day 1 it's measured in days, not in weeks/months. That complicates things a lot. When you move countries, the company is in much more comfortable position for the first few weeks.

There's always a "grass in greener" risk for all sorts of reasons. And that risk is almost certainly amplified for companies that are smaller/less well-established/on rocky financial ground/etc. And, of course, relocating magnifies the effect of those risks even more.

Not to say you should never voluntarily change jobs of course. But I've known a lot of people over the years who have basically hopped from a stable position with some degree of dissatisfaction into something that just didn't work out from which it took a fair bit of time and effort to recover.

This behaviour just further adds to my list of reasons I will not trust any company no matter how cool they might try to act. A company is ultimately only interested in itself. It's not your friend. The fact this guy was moving country just makes it even more disgusting.

This is unfortunate. I hope you find a new place quickly - having the rug pulled out from under your feet does not seem to make for a pleasant experience.

It's an interesting look into a management team convincing itself of a better financial situation then what the actual situation was, and makes you wonder how far down the chain any indication of impending layoffs / tight financial situation traveled. I must imagine the CTO would know himself, but perhaps he was given explicit affirmation that financials would be alright for hires like this, until all of a sudden it wasn't?

Don't give 20 hours of your life to a programming excercise for a job application, unless they are compensating you.

If your new employer sets your start date 7 weeks in the future, keep interviewing. You don't have a job yet.

I recently signed an offer letter with a firm that required a drug and background screen and a start date 2 weeks out. So knowing i didn't actually have a job yet, I kept interviewing, received two more job offers, and took the best one. i called the first company the friday before my monday start and told them i wasn't coming in.

I personally enjoy programming exercises and have no problem spending a few hours tackling these types of problems.

However I'd refuse to do it for free if it's obviously something they're going to use in their product or if it's something that takes 20 hours to complete.

The CTO who made the phone call appears to be Artem Fishman: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/12/soundcloud-co-founder-take...

You should definitely consult a lawyer as i'm guessing you have a german contract. Even if you haven't started but signed everything you have something called trial period (Probezeit) which has at least a two weeks notice for termination.

> In the evening, I finally received a response from the recruiter. She was on the sick leave without knowing any details about the situation. She forwarded me to her manager.

It's very likely the recruiter was laid off too.

I'd be interested to read that employment contract.

long story a little bit short with details 1. OP quit his original job and applied for SoundCloud 2. OP passed the code challenge and interview and was recruited, its quite positive 3. OP is about to relocate to Berlin but 4. SoundCloud then announced the layoff and OP was one of them! Just before his contract is going to be activated 5. OP is now unemployed, alone in Berlin, frightened and hopeless

The OP should be happy. He may have dodged a bullet on work environment. Shady is as shady does.

WHY on earth is this FLAGGED!? it is important to draw attention to acts of gross negligence, like this hiring at soundcloud, so that companies (1) see the impacts of such irresponsible behavior and hopefully do not repeat something like it (2) find help for him to get back on his feet immediately. i am a current soundclouder (iOS developer) but was not part of the interview process for him. i can vouch that the situation was awful well before he got the offer, and they mislead him. the hiring should have stopped long ago, and soundcloud has put peoples' lives off course in the short/medium term because of their reckless hiring when they were running out of money. shameful

hacker news has once again shown itself to prioritize being a home for trolls more than a legitimate news forum that helps the community

Welcome to a democratic voting systems. What people see as the new shiny is what get voted in.

ew, if only we can turn around the bro + gossip culture and actually focus on important things for once in this industry

Probably some folks at Soundcloud who are salty...

And now this has been flagged? Why???

HN should really implement some kind of system where flagged posts would be listed, together with a reason (and maybe, why not, an appeals process).

And a way to vouch for posts, just like you can for comments.

You can vouch once something has become [dead], the difference between posts and comments is that posts have the additional state where [flagged] shows but they are not [dead] yet.

How much karma do you need to vouch?

I'm surprised it's still on the front page despite the flagging, maybe HN did change something.

IMO it should show you the list of users who flagged it, so you can clearly see who might have an agenda.

edit: I don't suggest this lightly. Flagging is not the same as voting. It carries enormous weight and can outright kill submissions. Because of that, IMO the usernames of flaggers should be public.

Why is this flagged?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that someone at SoundCloud didn't like this appearing on Hacker News.

Maybe the empathy is misplaced, but this seems like 90% of airing of the dirty laundry of Soundcloud and 10% of asking if anyone is looking for someone to hire. I think you could have done the latter without throwing Soundcloud under the bus _too much_.

Yes, they screwed you out of what was an accepted job offer, and you should definitely do everything in your power to get anything that was owed to you, after carefully reading the employment contract and researching your rights, however I'm sure that CTO (and the company as a whole) is not having a great time either. There was already cause for some reservations given the bad press that was circling the company... Shit happens.

Who gives a fudge about "CTO having a bad time"? It was their duty to actually keep head above the water, and maybe... not hire people knowing the shit is going to hit the fan? Unless the CTO didn't know, then it's a completely different level of indolence, and the company is going down, super hard, super fast.

Right -- people sometimes fail, or make mistakes, non-maliciously. Even if it's 100% the CTO's fault that doesn't stop you from being gracious -- It's not like you chewing out the CTO is going to bring back the company's position. If you think it was malicious (or you think the person should be held personally accountable), file charges -- otherwise I think it helps to at least think of the position the company as well as the CTO that's personally delivering the bad news to you.

When "shit happens" and you're responsible (as SoundCloud is here), you sure should try to compensate for the trouble (big trouble in this case as he left a job and moved to another city just for the job). Here they just said 'sorry' and left him hanging. They clearly still have money and should have paid him, IMO, at least some compensation. I'm not sure how do you justify advocating for them. They totally deserve being thrown under the bus and the blog post barely did it. It just stated the facts.

It's not that I'm advocating for them -- I do believe he should be compensated for the position, within the bounds of the contract (as others have mentioned I think the required notice period is a good thing to go by at least, and obviously some more because of the relocation) -- but this kind of blog post should come AFTER you've written your grievances in writing, and what you feel you should be compensated, and they've blown you off, not before. There's so much of the conversation left out -- I'm not ready to grab my pitchfork yet until I know SoundCloud is actively trying hard not to compensate this person (and the CTO is not just a dummy).

Part of me is saying that while the guy was screwed over by SoundCloud, he simply didn't cover his bases in the contract.

There is simply no way I'd sign a contract that requires me to quit my job, let my accomodation go, move to a different country, without some clause about compensation for termination.

It may seem obvious now, but I always require 3 months of pay from the last day of employment - this is in effect from the moment they sign the contract, so they can cancel it all they want, but they still have to pay me 3 months of salery. If they don't want to sign on that, I don't consider it a serious offer anyway. This is only for jobs in a city where the jobs are plenty. For moving to Berlin it'd have to be higher.

I agree, but I think it is incredibly uncommon for people to think critically about employment contracts in Tech. People generally just take whatever "standard" contract they receive at whatever small-mid-large size company, and I would guess that most don't even read them all the way through.

Even as someone who likes to think that they consider contracts carefully, I recently signed a contract with a 12-month (!!!) non complete cause. Clearly I don't think critically enough about employment contracts either. It's so hard to know things like this without experience, and there aren't enough people spreading (this kind) of knowledge.

I heard once from a German boss of mine, that these non-compete clauses are anyway illegal in Germany ;-)

Oh yeah I was going to add that (but didn't think it was relevant) -- they're very un-enforcable (and a lot of the time illegal) in a lot of places (including where I am). I'm going to stick to it, though, for a few reasons:

1) I did sign it, and maybe a little bit of suffering will go a long way to helping me remember this lesson forever (and read contracts more critically).

2) I have almost 0 interest in the space the company was in.

3) I'm confident I can make a living without working in that space for a year.

Uh oh, but the non-compete clause is for an industry, e.g. You can't go from BMW to Audi, or from SoundCloud to Apple Music ;-) It doesn't mean you can't work for anybody for a year, LOL :D That one would be 100% illegal, nobody can force you to be unemployed for a year :-D

FWIW under German contract law, even in the case you describe the clause is only valid if you receive a compensation for as long as the non-compete is in effect.

s/space/industry/g

yeah I meant the industry, I don't really mind not working in any related company for a year :D

It's called ethics. The CTO and the company evidenced little of it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com