Airbnb invokes DMCA to take down coding challenge source code | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb invokes DMCA to take down coding challenge source code

github.com

9 pointsecaron6 comments

It seems odd to claim that the "solution" to a problem is copyrighted by anyone other than the person who coded it, especially since... clearly, if you're interviewing, you're not an employee.

It would be nice to give some context here because from what I gather, most of those files (e.g. the CSV files) are given as part of the problem's description. They're Airbnb's property, and I don't know the terms of that "coding challenge" but it's possible that participation requires transferring copyrights to your work to Airbnb.

The context is on line #2: * All the files in this repository are copyrighted by Airbnb and not in the public domain. This individual has posted them without our consent. (It is an interview programming problem we use and we don't want people searching for a solution online).*

(I had to read the notice a couple of times to err... notice line #2)

That line seems to be contradictory. It's either the problem ("It is an interview programming problem") that Airbnb created, in which case they do indeed own the copyright, or the files were the solution ("people searching for a solution online"), in which case they don't own the copyright.

It's the problem. If it was publicly available, people could then search (elsewhere) for the solution.

It doesn't matter if the solution is publicly available - if their interview process is based on the assumption that the candidate is completely unaware of the problem, this method neglects the (more common) case of a candidate asking other people in her network who've interviewed at Airbnb what happens in the interview.

In the interviews I've done, I have actually had a recruiter (Robert Half Technologies) ask the candidate about the interview, the candidate discusses my coding challenge with the recruiter afterward, and then the recruiter made sure all other candidates knew of the problem long before my interview so they could be prepared.

My solution has been to have a multi-stage problem that shifts in an unexpected way - if from the 1st stage the candidate anticipates my "plot twist" I end the interview because they've been caught cheating (think "Design a car" and then later "turn this car into a boat" - if from stage 1 the car has boat-like tendencies, they're cheating.)

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