Comment by deniswolf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deniswolf | Hacker News Reader

10 hours. It's the time I have spent last week for some open-source coding. I was happy to give my time for free to those projects I supported. It's about 10 hours that I have spent with a friend of mine who visited me from other city this week.

I can't imagine spending this time for someone I don't know, someone who never ever bother to talk to me but demanded them.

Few years ago I have spent few days of work planning project with people with whom I had interview - just because I started to like them in 10 minutes of the interview. I ended up working for them for the next few years and some of them are still my close friends.

I could ignore the offer, decline it (as I did) and live on. But if nobody will tell those guys in fat cat corporations that they are wrong - they will continue to think and treat people as "resources", not persons.

You could be ok with that - they do have great salaries, career opportunities etc. But accepting this treatment as a norm is unthought to me. It's not about ego, it's about some tiny respect of a human being for a human being.

I seriously doubt that the problem here is that Facebook is trying to make you a cog in their wheel (at least not with respect to the coding puzzle). Rather, I think it's just because they feel that requiring this work will lead to better candidates. If you don't like doing this, vote with your feet and just tell them "Thanks but no thanks". If enough people do that, they'll probably stop offering those kinds of questions.

I'm afraid that Facebook will make a precedent that will turn 10 hours free coding in a standard, moreover - before even a phone interview.

It's simple supply and demand. Facebook no doubt have hundreds of applicants beating down their door every single day.

Some of these people will be great, some will be ok and some will be useless.

Throwing up a filter like this weeds out people who have no chance of a successful interview or those who don't want the job all that badly.

You would seem to fall into the latter camp.

8 - 10 hours for a prestigious job like FB isn't all that much. I have heard of people doing weeks of unpaid work for a chance at a minimum wage job.

Yup, agreed with this completely. But it doesn't mean this is a right way. I definitely don't want end up in a future 10 years later where every company asks for unpaid work as an interview taking example from the Big Guys. Do you remember how many companies started mind blowing puzzles in 90s after Microsoft made it famous?

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