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Comment by theseatoms | Hacker News Reader

> give it to them as a freelance job

I've always wondered why this isn't more common. It's win-win to be able to test the waters in this way. What downsides am I not seeing?

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Difficult to hire people who already have a job and aren't interested in moonlighting.

In addition to what the other commenters wrote, take-home assignments are also negative for diversity as they pre-select against candidates with less free time, which likely includes single parents and people from low-income backgrounds.

Gotta be honest about this. You are applying to a job of 40 hours a week and 6 figure salaries, and you cant make time for 10 hours of work?

You might currently be working a job that is 50 hours a week -- or 60! Also with the example of a single parent they often can't make room for yet another 10 hours of a work in a week because they need to spend time with their children/take them to activities/cook dinner etc. Manageable when you are working 40 hours a week but it quickly becomes unreasonable. To me a job that wants me to work for them before I have an actual job offer is a red flag. I don't even work for them yet and they don't respect my time. What's it going to be like when I do work for them?

Sorry, this triggers no empathy to me. This is alledgedly a workforce that requires years of study ,training and practice.

Being unable to work 10 hours to prove it shows you are a pauper, all the other excuses are complacency.

Quitting your job or dropping some other responsibilities might he reasonable for some people who can live off of their parents money or their own savings, but for many people that means losing their home, their car, or even their children. Indigo945 isn't making excuses for them or himself; he's telling you that for them to make that 10 hours would cost them far more than the new job might give.

Also, if anyone should be able to make another 10 hours in their week to work in tech why not say Steve who works at $BigTechCo? Now I know we just asked Steve for another 10 hours, but lets go ask him for another 10. No, the circumstances shouldn't matter, he's making 6 figures after all. Let's ask him again. And again, And again. Oh, Steve quit? What a pauper.

> Indigo945 isn't making excuses for them or himself; he's telling you that for them to make that 10 hours would cost them far more than the new job might give.

Thats not a "people cant do 10 hours" its a "they dont want to" which is perfectly reasonable. The company that gives 10 horsu of work better be appealing.

But saying that take home assignments are bad because they take time people cant afford to give is complete bs.

I have trouble believing you aren't being facetious, trolling, or willfully ignorant. If you've spent any sort of time in this industry at all, you know that people apply to many places at once. Sure, one 10-hour assignment isn't much, but although you seem to live in a fantasy world where people only apply to (and receive) one "job application homework assignment" at a time, that's not actually how the real world works. Companies that tend to pull such nonsense also tend to have poor work cultures. I suppose it self-selects for people who don't have a family or out-of-work commitments, but maybe that's what they're going for.

The same can be said for requiring candidates to have a github or using a college degree as a filter. Not everyone has the luxury to take out 10's of thousand in debt and spend 4+ years of their life learning instead of earning.

So unless you advocate for completely blind interviews that do not rely on a resume and only take up 3 hours of someone's day, your point is moot.

It's a part of hiring someone to have them send in a resume and verify that they have the skills needed to do the job. I contest that it is not fair to disqualify candidates because they cannot meet arbitrary and unreasonable demands for their time. A phone interview is almost always reasonable. A 10 hour work sample due this week would often be unreasonable. It depends a lot on context and conanbatt discarded that.

I like that rhetorical tactic where people who don't bend to you wishes due to having better options are surely complacent paupers.

It is interesting to watch, but not convincing as an argument.

What about I am not doing that, because there are places with same salary and more consideration for people who work.

There is no bending, there is an ask, and a response of "the ask is impossible to fulfill", which isn't. Its dishonest, but worse, its dumb because its obviously false and couterproductive.

Not spending 10 hours to decide where you might spend the next 20 thousand is plain penny wise, pound foolish. If a job ceteris paribus pays 5% more on a 100,000 income, and doing the work assignment gives you 50% changes of getting that 5%, its like getting 2,500 U$S per year for 10 hours. It pays for itself.

The kind of place that treats 10 hours this way is a kind of place that will treat you badly as employer. Same attitude will be applied in all aspects. The same very real considerations will be treated as dishonest excuses later on. Expect regular and long crunch and no control over when overtime.

Also, the assumption that forfeiting those 10h will make one financially worst off is likely wrong, especially in long term.

Lastly, we are not talking about 10h deciding, we are talking about 10h of a single take home assignment - there are more companies to talk with and decision making time is not in it.

Then it works as a great signaling, its just not the match.

Yeah, well except the complacent paupers part and dishonest part where very real considerations and decision making is casted as something shameful that makes you less capable. Likely serves to tilt the culture toward not speaking up about these openly.

Or you know your worth, and as soon as you change your status to “actively looking” on LinkedIn, you’ll have job opportunities flooding your mailbox.

I could put aside ten hours for an opportunity and not consider it an issue.

Applying ten places and getting 100 hours of homework knowing there's a good chance of ten businesses ghosting? I have plenty of empathy for people who have to make that choice.

If you are applying to only one job, you are either in a position where you don't have to do silly homework exercises (i.e. you already have a foot in the door) or you're not doing job searches right. For most people, it is far more reasonable to assume that they might apply to 3-5 jobs at once, and going by your estimate of 10 hours of work per job prospect, they would need to take an entire week off just to get to the point where they're offered an interview.

Everything else regarding your argument has already been covered by other users.

When I was applying for a job about 3 years ago, I scheduled six phone screens from different companies in one day. They all led to invitations for in person interviews, and all four in person interviews I ended up doing led to “40 hour a week, six figure jobs”. I’m no special snowflake - except for my network of local recruiters.

Why would I go through the song and dance? The salary ranges for senior developers/architects were all around $20K of each other. Unless the company is offering salaries in the 80th percentile, why would I jump through hoops just to work on a company’s software as a service CRUD app?

My last job hunt, I found the job that met all of my criteria (salary, technology, commute distance, size of company) within two weeks of looking.

Lots of good arguments against here. But assuming this assignment is in lieu of the usual 6+ hour whiteboard exam, then I say bring it on -- it's a lot less intrusive to my schedule.

You're basically limiting your skill pool to those without a job. Or a family. Certainly not both.

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