Comment by ilikehurdles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ilikehurdles | Hacker News Reader

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I was referred to a company that eventually handed me “6 hour” (likely much more to complete sufficiently enough to advance) take home project a few weeks ago and I still can’t bring myself to start it. I read their Glassdoor reviews and the number of folks are reporting either being ghosted or getting a negative response minutes after submitting, after putting days of effort into this exercise, is disturbing. It seems like you lose by not playing the stupid game of asking questions while working on this inane project, so correctness and effort isn’t even enough — you must also pretend to be a moron who can’t figure things out on their own.

I also submitted one of those exercises for a different employer — that one took me about 6 hours but of course they estimate it at “about two”. I submitted it a week ago. They acknowledged receiving it immediately. And that was the last time I heard from this employer.

I’ll follow up tomorrow, but I’m kind of ticked as I was pretty happy with my code, and it’s not even something I can open source if they don’t like it. I also just got an offer elsewhere and I bet mentioning that fact will expedite their process more than me putting in effort into dancing around like a monkey.

Anyway, I’m done ranting, and I’m done doing take homes. I used to be a fan, but only because I preferred them to whiteboard algorithm puzzle questions.

> it’s not even something I can open source if they don’t like it

What? Of course you should... make sure you create a repo with the company name and people can create issues to collaborate on a better ToDo sample code.

You’ll get hit with a DMCA takedown notice if you do that.. most companies protect interview questions they ask and solutions to them quite severely.

There is no way to copyright someone else's work. Whoever produced the solution owns the copyright.

That is probably incorrect in the United States if it is "Work made for hire".

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf

I doubt they paid for the interview work.

It is mostly correct. Unless you sign very carefully worded IP assignment agreement to that effect, even work you get paid for remains under your own copyright. And frankly anyone who would sign that kind of thing on a employment test exercise is... Naive.

To be a work for hire, the work must be produced by an employee within the scope of their employment. Consequently, you cannot do work for hire if you have not been hired.

This is not true. If the problem statement itself is a unique creation, and the solution is publicly viewable and gives details on the question itself, the question writer may have the copyright even if you signed no NDA when solving it. Even if not, if a company wants to sue you to try to keep their interviewing IP private (as they see it), they can tie you up in court at a trivial cost to themselves but a life destroying cost to a lone developer.

Source: I once had a dragged out legal dispute with a company that used a GitHub DMCA takedown to tell me to remove a public repo in which I solved their takehome challenge (I had signed no NDA or otherwise any type of agreement of any kind prior to solving it).

If it's not an original question find the original source (a source that is older than the company would be especially nice), and post a solution to the question posed by the original source. The world is a big place, a lot of question are not original.

Heads up, tomorrow is a holiday many places in the US, just do you expect at least a day of delay.

More people are getting the day off but it's still less than half at 45 percent.

Downvote if you want but according to Bloomberg 4 hours ago that's the official stat.

Downvote facts. I don't care about the fake worthless internet points. It is just pathetic that people downvote actual facts without having an actual rebuttal or intellectual counterargument. Nope just be a coward and downvote because I don't like it.

Not sure why you got downvoted, but I’m also not sure what point you are trying to convey. Facts are facts like 1 + 1 = 2, but it’s unclear what that fact brings to the conversation.

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