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"Have the candidate come in to work with you for a day. " I'd only agree to this if I got paid for it. Interviewing is one thing, but actively contributing to

by j_baker 17y ago

"Have the candidate come in to work with you for a day. " I'd only agree to this if I got paid for it. Interviewing is one thing, but actively contributing to a company's codebase is another. I don't think it's asking too much to get paid for what I do. Plus, it would be difficult for me to shake the impression that such a company is cheap and is trying to get free labor. If they're not going to pay me a day's pay, how can I trust them to pay me a yearly salary or provide me the tools I need? How likely are they to be in business a year from now?

sorbits 17y ago
“actively contributing to a company’s codebase” You think you will provide value which exceed the knowledge you might gain from learning about their systems and working/talking with their other employees, etc.? It is a great chance to get to work with new people if the domain is exciting. I would welcome such opportunity w/o demanding money for my “services” which probably consists of asking a lot of questions :)
- barrkel 17y ago
  Such "opportunities" to donate work for free quickly get old.
  - sorbits 17y ago
    If I were seeking a job, the primary motivator would be having peers/assignments from which I can learn, I will gladly invest a day of my time to ensure the place I am going to spend the next many months/years of my life, is actually an interesting place — even if the other party might (also) get something out of it. Though if I know in advance that the “trial day” will consist of me “donating work for free” then I doubt it is a place for me. This might sound like a cliché, but money is the last thing on my mind when selecting a job or employee (I am presently an employer), and I am somewhat surprised by the point assignments given to the parent and grand parent comments.
    - j_baker 17y ago
      "Though if I know in advance that the “trial day” will consist of me “donating work for free” then I doubt it is a place for me." It sounds like you and I actually agree for the most part. Both the hirer and the hiree have the same problem: hiring is almost like extracting War & Peace from a newspaper. Is it necessarily fair for me to turn somebody down for wanting me to do a "trial day"? Of course not. But I have to go on what I have to go on. Just like it's not fair for an employer to hire me using a cover letter, a resume, and a couple of hour-long interviews. So if a company asks me to work for free for a day, should I draw the conclusion that they're really wanting to evaluate me well or that they're cheapskates who won't pay people for doing work? Just like you'd probably rather turn away a superstar than hire a dud, I'd rather turn down a kickass company than work for a crappy one. So I'm probably going to go with the latter. Don't get me wrong, money isn't what I'm in this for either. But that doesn't mean I should let people take advantage of me.
      - sorbits 17y ago
        Presumably we have different views of what was originally meant with “come in to work with you for a day”, seeing as this has now turned into “work for free for a day” ;) Of course the intent was not to just get someone in to work for free, but more like when you take a first meeting with a new accountant or similar, you may ask him lots of questions related to your situation, and he will answer you based on his knowledge and experience. Most will not charge for the first meeting, presumably under the assumption that providing the client with useful information only increase the chance of having the client pay for future services. Similarly if you come work with me for a day, and I am impressed with your abilities, you can be rather sure I will hire you. If I am not impressed by your abilities, I am almost certain that you will have learned something from the experience (either about your own skills or the tech. we work with), so for the client I would say this is win/win.
    - barrkel 17y ago
      Maybe it's something that happens as you get older. The risk / reward trade-offs change. Taking a lower salary in return for a chance of big rewards starts looking less appealing than selling your accumulated skills and experience for the market rate. The breadth of skills and experience are themselves what will help select for interesting work; and if the new place doesn't work out, no big deal, it's easy to move on to somewhere else.
- j_baker 17y ago
  "You think you will provide value which exceed the knowledge you might gain from learning about their systems and working/talking with their other employees, etc.?" That's not the point. I program for money. Therefore, me writing code for someone else is a business transaction. If I want to get experience without compensation, I'll contribute to an open-source project. But I'm not donating my time to a for-profit organization unless they donate money to me.
  - sorbits 17y ago
    The disconnect probably stems from types of job. You say you can get the same experience from contributing to open source, so it sounds like the job you have in mind is pretty much just a consultant gig, i.e. “here is your assignment, write the code” — that is not exactly the type of job I had in mind when involving giving a day of my time to find out if the job is a good match (for both parties).
gfodor 17y ago
I don't know about you, but in my experience it takes a pretty long time for new hires to produce anything of much value. If you're going in for a "trial day" at a place full of engineering neophytes who will look to you as a God for 8 hours, then you didn't do a good job of screening that company out as a potential place for you to work. (This is assuming "trial day" happens after an initial pass of the usual phone screens and whiteboard coding sessions.)
eladgil 17y ago
Thanks for the comments! In our case we would explicitely tell the people who interviewed that we would throw away all their code at the end of the day. It was pretty unlikely anything they did would actually be valuable to us in such a short period, and giving the candidate something mission critical to work on was a no go. In 1 case, we did have someone come in for a week (on the UX side) and we paid the person for their week of work. She actually was the one who suggested a full week with us, so she could really get to know the team and see if it was a fit (it wasn't, so it is good we tried it out) It is not unusual to end up spending 5-8 or more hours interviewing with a company - you would not ask to get paid to come interview, and the code exercise was another form of interview. Finally, this was a great opportunity for the candidate to get to know us as well - how did we collaborate on stuff? What process did we use? What was the team environment? This allowed a candidate to come in with "eyes wide open" (well, more open) regarding our workplace....

by j_baker 17y ago

sorbits 17y ago

“actively contributing to a company’s codebase” You think you will provide value which exceed the knowledge you might gain from learning about their systems and working/talking with their other employees, etc.? It is a great chance to get to work with new people if the domain is exciting. I would welcome such opportunity w/o demanding money for my “services” which probably consists of asking a lot of questions :)

barrkel 17y ago
Such "opportunities" to donate work for free quickly get old.
- sorbits 17y ago
  If I were seeking a job, the primary motivator would be having peers/assignments from which I can learn, I will gladly invest a day of my time to ensure the place I am going to spend the next many months/years of my life, is actually an interesting place — even if the other party might (also) get something out of it. Though if I know in advance that the “trial day” will consist of me “donating work for free” then I doubt it is a place for me. This might sound like a cliché, but money is the last thing on my mind when selecting a job or employee (I am presently an employer), and I am somewhat surprised by the point assignments given to the parent and grand parent comments.
  - j_baker 17y ago
    "Though if I know in advance that the “trial day” will consist of me “donating work for free” then I doubt it is a place for me." It sounds like you and I actually agree for the most part. Both the hirer and the hiree have the same problem: hiring is almost like extracting War & Peace from a newspaper. Is it necessarily fair for me to turn somebody down for wanting me to do a "trial day"? Of course not. But I have to go on what I have to go on. Just like it's not fair for an employer to hire me using a cover letter, a resume, and a couple of hour-long interviews. So if a company asks me to work for free for a day, should I draw the conclusion that they're really wanting to evaluate me well or that they're cheapskates who won't pay people for doing work? Just like you'd probably rather turn away a superstar than hire a dud, I'd rather turn down a kickass company than work for a crappy one. So I'm probably going to go with the latter. Don't get me wrong, money isn't what I'm in this for either. But that doesn't mean I should let people take advantage of me.
    - sorbits 17y ago
      Presumably we have different views of what was originally meant with “come in to work with you for a day”, seeing as this has now turned into “work for free for a day” ;) Of course the intent was not to just get someone in to work for free, but more like when you take a first meeting with a new accountant or similar, you may ask him lots of questions related to your situation, and he will answer you based on his knowledge and experience. Most will not charge for the first meeting, presumably under the assumption that providing the client with useful information only increase the chance of having the client pay for future services. Similarly if you come work with me for a day, and I am impressed with your abilities, you can be rather sure I will hire you. If I am not impressed by your abilities, I am almost certain that you will have learned something from the experience (either about your own skills or the tech. we work with), so for the client I would say this is win/win.
  - barrkel 17y ago
    Maybe it's something that happens as you get older. The risk / reward trade-offs change. Taking a lower salary in return for a chance of big rewards starts looking less appealing than selling your accumulated skills and experience for the market rate. The breadth of skills and experience are themselves what will help select for interesting work; and if the new place doesn't work out, no big deal, it's easy to move on to somewhere else.
j_baker 17y ago
"You think you will provide value which exceed the knowledge you might gain from learning about their systems and working/talking with their other employees, etc.?" That's not the point. I program for money. Therefore, me writing code for someone else is a business transaction. If I want to get experience without compensation, I'll contribute to an open-source project. But I'm not donating my time to a for-profit organization unless they donate money to me.
- sorbits 17y ago
  The disconnect probably stems from types of job. You say you can get the same experience from contributing to open source, so it sounds like the job you have in mind is pretty much just a consultant gig, i.e. “here is your assignment, write the code” — that is not exactly the type of job I had in mind when involving giving a day of my time to find out if the job is a good match (for both parties).

gfodor 17y ago

I don't know about you, but in my experience it takes a pretty long time for new hires to produce anything of much value. If you're going in for a "trial day" at a place full of engineering neophytes who will look to you as a God for 8 hours, then you didn't do a good job of screening that company out as a potential place for you to work. (This is assuming "trial day" happens after an initial pass of the usual phone screens and whiteboard coding sessions.)

eladgil 17y ago

Thanks for the comments! In our case we would explicitely tell the people who interviewed that we would throw away all their code at the end of the day. It was pretty unlikely anything they did would actually be valuable to us in such a short period, and giving the candidate something mission critical to work on was a no go. In 1 case, we did have someone come in for a week (on the UX side) and we paid the person for their week of work. She actually was the one who suggested a full week with us, so she could really get to know the team and see if it was a fit (it wasn't, so it is good we tried it out) It is not unusual to end up spending 5-8 or more hours interviewing with a company - you would not ask to get paid to come interview, and the code exercise was another form of interview. Finally, this was a great opportunity for the candidate to get to know us as well - how did we collaborate on stuff? What process did we use? What was the team environment? This allowed a candidate to come in with "eyes wide open" (well, more open) regarding our workplace....