DuckDuckGo: To apply, first do some work for free. Is this ethical practice? | Hacker News Reader

DuckDuckGo: To apply, first do some work for free. Is this ethical practice?

duck.co

8 pointsnotoriginal12 comments

My opinion: Though I do respect the company so far, I view this as a negative requirement. I tried to frame the question so as to not prime everyone for a negative perception.

I've seen applications that require you to go through some challenge(s) before you can submit an application. I don't necessarily see that as a negative because it can be used to measure a real example of an applicants skill (assuming they legitimately solved it).

I've also had the impression that Mozilla, for example, wants you to have a history of open-source work, especially on Mozilla products. If this is an expectation, I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing because they are not a for-profit organization.

I understand the challenges DuckDuckGo must be facing to establish a sustainable business model while maintaining a commitment to user privacy. However, they are still a for-profit company, and this requirement in the application process seems to do little to demonstrate an applicant's skill, but instead it directly benefits DuckDuckGo financially because it increases the power of their product, at the sole expense of the applicant who I imagine is very unlikely to get hired, considering the popularity of their website versus the size of their team.

This turned me off from applying to the company, even though I'd love to work with them. A quality job search already requires so much time, and I don't want to do work for free when I know it's probably a long-shot from being hired anyway. That factor is compounded when the want you to just be a contractor for a few months at first and then decide whether they actually want to hire you.

I was curious as to how the HN community views this practice in general. If you view this as ethical, then do you view it as a "good" practice, or something that's likely to dissuade quality applicants?

>> A quality job search already requires so much time, and I don't want to do work for free when I know it's probably a long-shot from being hired anyway.

- I agree that a quality job search requires a lot of time ( -creating your resume, -tailored cover letter, -getting your resume into company x system, getting your resume noticed, researching the company, researching the product, interview prep, the interview process, waiting for the decision, ... )

>> This turned me off from applying to the company, even though I'd love to work with them.

ALL of the above noted job search items, are an investment on your behalf, with absolutely NO guarantee of any return

IF you were "truly" interested in working for ddg ( the product, the company)

WHY would you not want to consider something like this?

YES you are investing a certain amount of your time without any guarantee (just like you would to apply to any company)

BUT if the time you invested contributes to making a product that you use and love, BETTER, how is that NOT still a win/win situation?

AND if you do get hired, well SCORE for you!

DISCLAIMER: I have no duck in this race(aka affiliation with DDG) but i do think this is a potentially awesome idea (depending on their execution).

TLDR: YES i think it has te potential to be both a good practice and ethical, assuming that the company demonstrates some level of transparency in its processes.

EDIT: formatting

I have an interest in many things, especially privacy. I've used DDG primarily for years (even before the NSA leaks). I do like the idea of improving the product, but as another commenter pointed out, one can have many passions with much more limited time.

While applying for a job doesn't guarantee a return like you said, it's necessary investment so that companies can pick the best fit. This extra requirement, working on their platform to directly improve their service with no compensation before you can even apply, is what I view as bad practice. People can be deeply interested in something without having already directly contributed to it.

Would you view this in the same way if Google started adopting this process?

When i submit a "resume, coverletter, interview answers, ..." all of my personal info(PI) goes into a black hole at company {X}. I don't know what they do with my PI, dont know how they determine who is a match and who is not, essentially I am giving up my time and my PI to a process I have 0 control over.

If I were to submit some "actual work" and that "work" was assessed and evaluated by {any} company in relation to others submitting "work" in what I believed to be a fair and open process, I don't think that I would have a problem using this process with any company.

I don't understand this process at all. Top-tier devs are in high demand and can find positions at highly-desirable companies quite quickly and easily. What top-tier dev is going to spend 1-3 months of their time doing this when they can get a comparable position elsewhere without the hassle? This could likely be tens of thousands of dollars of lost salary. Seems like this process would serve only to filter their applicant pool to the most desperate.

I don't see anything ethically wrong with this, but I can't imagine why anyone would do it.

Top-tier devs just give you skill and experience; that in itself doesn't give you passion.

What you consider an act of desperation, DuckDuckGo sees as an act of passion and strong interest. If a skilled developer values his time more than his passion, perhaps that isn't a good fit for DuckDuckGo.

Desperate people can apply, but they must be able to prove they have the technical capacity to deliver too. Which means they need to meet the calibre of developers who are in high demand, which means perhaps they aren't desperate?

This process doesn't look much different to participating in an open source project in your own time, and then after your contributions have been assessed a decision/invitation extended to be part of the Core Team. Except that invitation is also an employment contract with a salary.

You're assuming the programmer is dispassionate in all things asides from Duck Duck Go work.

Quote from the page: We'll also ask a few of our own and assess whether there's a fit for a paid project or other next steps.

I went through this process. It's ethical IMO.

I was mostly referring to creating an instant answer for their search engine before you can even submit an application.

Though the potential for continuing to work for free for a few months after that only compounds the problem in my opinion.

How much work is that? It sounds like something that might be a few hours of work, maybe? I haven't looked that closely at it.

Personally I'm totally okay with expecting a code sample. The best hiring process I've been through had me writing some trivial code in the employer's favourite framework (which required me to learn the basics of that framework), and then present my code to the programmers, who would ask questions and then (by email) vote. It was not code that would be used in production, but it was a great way to look at how people worked.

In the DuckDuckGo case, it looks like it might be something that would be used in production, which would make it a bit less ethical, as it would make it technically work for free.

I agree. I think a few hours is a good estimate - once I saw that the instructions were starting to get complicated I said forget it.

From time to time a potential employer asks me to write some code _after_ my job interview.

When they do this, I don't call them back.

My view is that if they wanted to determine whether I have the chops, they should have determined that before they interviewed me. It's not as if they can't just look up my work in the trade press.

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