Ask HN: Cancelling a homework code test? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Cancelling a homework code test?

I recently received a code test as part of the interview process. My impression of the assignment is that my work, verbatim or modified, could be used part of their production work. Moreover, the assignment was completely irrelevant to the role that I was applying.

I had a feeling that the company wanted me to do unpaid work; it is not clear whether the company actually wanted to hire me. I politely told the company in the middle of the assignment that I wish to stop the interview process.

The company seems to be upset. Was there something that I could have done differently?

Edit: I wanted to clarify that the company pushed for the coding work despite my previous objection that their interview questions were irrelevant to my experience and role applied (and the company seems to admit the irrelevance).

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You could tell them exactly what you wrote here and see what happens. There's a chance that your test was going to be used as work. There's also a chance that it was: (I've given people both)

- something that was already solved, so that they could compare with existing approach

- some realistic task which wasn't exactly what you're going to work on, so that you don't think they're going to use it

Ultimately it's down to the communication between you and the company. And trust.

I assume that you could have asked how this was relevant to your position/future work, what they were evaluating with it, and if they could do something different that might not be so closely linked with the product.

However that said i have done work recently (10 hours) that was a task set out to solve an issue on the product - something that could 100% go into production but actually is very relevant to the position and skills i need to demonstrate. They are also of a size & expertise that makes me worry less about them just making me do it for un-paid work.

Indeed. I politely raised an objection prior to the code test that I found work like this irrelevant. The company nevertheless told me it wants to push ahead with the homework.

I am glad that things worked out well for you.

They might have been annoyed because they expected to put the work in production soon... haha

Can I check: how irrelevant was the work to the applied for position?

But to answer your question: cancelling the recruitment process is totally fine. It's much better that you politely tell them now than go through the process and tell them later.

The company itself admitted the irrelevance when I raised an objection. The nature of the work was fundamentally different (and not even same language/technology).

There's no need to fret about it, as a candidate, if you feel something's wrong, you're probably right too. Perhaps they wouldn't have used your code in production, but the fact that they sent an ambiguous signal here isn't a good sign, and you could have had other problems later.

Don't worry about it. You've withdrew your candidacy for the position, now it's time to move on.

Out of curiosity, when you say the assignment was completely irrelevant to the role, was the assignment more related to something else at the company?

Wise words.

The assignment was indeed related to core production code at the company using a different language/technology than what my primary job would require.

Did you explain to the company why you decided to stop the process? If not, maybe that is one thing you could have done. Otherwise it sounds like what you did was perfectly appropriate.

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