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Comment by donretag | Hacker News Reader

Not quite the same, but I once had a no name company (getglue) tell me that I need to do a 3-hour programming assignment before I can interview with them. I have too much self-respect for myself to put myself through that process. I declined the "opportunity" to interview with them.

The interview process is broken and many of the interviewing techniques either do not correctly judge a candidate, or place too much burden on them. I guess the reasoning is that a false negative is better than a false positive.

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Good decision. I regret very much that I didn't make the same decision you did.

I did a 5-7 hour programming homework assignment, didn't hear back for weeks, and then it was just from a recruiter (sorry, we've decided not to continue the process).

I won't do it again, ever. It's not the wasted time that I regret so much. I do agree with you that there is a self-respect element to this.

I'm curious, is this a money issue, i.e., you refuse because it feels like working for free? Or is it just a principal thing?

I doesn't seem unreasonable to me to ask even a senior developer to do a small coding assignment as part of the interview process unless they can show a good, relevant coding sample.

If we're going to agree that whiteboard coding isn't a great way to evaluate someone, and we can't ask you to do an assignment on your own, what else is left? Talking about past experience is great and an important part of an interview, but I think most people want to (rightly so) see some code at some point before extending an offer.

I'm curious, is this a money issue, i.e., you refuse because it feels like working for free?

Not OP, but it doesn't "feel" like working for free. It is working for free.

Having someone perform work for you without paying them is illegal in the United States (see minimum wage laws).

There's a simple solution; pay them $x per hour to do your 3 hours of work. Even if you pay them $100 per hour that's a cheap way of filtering out pre-screened candidates.

Hm, I guess I didn't think about it that way since we wouldn't actually ever give out "real" work, we give out the same problem (which is an extremely scaled down version of a real application) to most everybody who passes a phone screen.

I think paying them is perfectly reasonable, but I'll also note anecdotally that having done this for many candidates for years, I think very few people have ever declined.

>>...which is an extremely scaled down version of a real application

You're putting the candidate in a very vulnerable and stressful position:

You're potentially asking a candidate to solve a problem with your application (even if scaled down)--

The question/assignment could be a long-standing issue your staff have been unable to address on their own and you want to try to find out whether you can get a free solution from qualified people.

The candidate(s) could get the correct answer, yet you could walk away from the process with a free solution.

>> "I think very few people have ever declined"

That's short-sighted - they're not declining because the want/need a job and are already vulnerable during the process; many would not, understandably, have the presence of mind to decline.

You're really twisting my words quite a bit here. We give out a very greatly simplified version of a real (solved) problem so that we're screening for skills relevant to the position, not because we need people to work for free.

I just don't see a couple hours spent on a interview programming assignment as being any different from the 5-6 hours you spend in the office being interviewed, which by the way, you don't get paid for either (excepting reimbursements, etc).

Interview programming assignment = work? I don't agree with this.

I think they wanted him to do a 3 hour code test before they even talked to him

Would you rather go to an in-person interview and waste half/full day?

I'll do a take-home programming assignment anytime over an in-person interview to gauge mutual interest.

I once had a no name company (getglue) tell me that I need to do a 3-hour programming assignment before I can interview with them

In that case, I would think I was the subject of a psychological experiment entitled, "How far can we push developers".

Although it would be tempting to accept the offer and then write whatever code they asked for in QuickBasic 4.5 (circa 1988) telling them they need to use something more stable than the crap they're using.

Write the answer in Scheme.

I've only ever answered one interview question in Scheme, the problem was perfect for it. :) I first had to check if the interviewer knew Scheme, and he did!

I fear it has been long enough that I could not repeat such a stunt now days, but last week a resume came by my desk that had LISP listed on it, so I prepared some problems that would be trivial in LISP just in case. Unfortunately it was as I had suspected, a stale language listing that should have been removed from the resume long ago.

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