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Were you paid for your time when doing that? Kind of curious (I guess 2 hours isn't a lot of time but there's the principle)
by rtpg 11y ago
Were you paid for your time when doing that? Kind of curious (I guess 2 hours isn't a lot of time but there's the principle)
- collyw 11y agoI have had a few of these the last year or two. Never been paid. More than half of them are a waste of time. I have refused quite a few of them. The last "shouldn't take you more than two hours" exercise that I was given involved jumping through hoops to get set up on Instagrams API, only to discover that I was in a sandboxed mode, and needed my account approved before i could get anything more than metadata out). I didn't even get started coding, so I am not sure what exactly the test was meant to achieve.
- mseebach 11y agoNo, there's no principle, there's a ~20 minutes old idea that we engineers are so obviously awesome that companies should actually be paying us for the privilege of interviewing us. There may exists engineers obviously awesome enough for that to be feasible, and great for them (but they are probably also obviously awesome enough to not have to go through coding tests, so it's a moot point) and even if I could perhaps (judging by certain recruiter-emails) scrape by as one of them, I certainly couldn't five years ago. Back then, if I'd had to be good enough on paper alone to warrant not just being put through the recruitment process, but to be paid for it was well, I am not convinced I'd have been considered (and yes, I did a take-home test, and I aced it and it made up for my near-total lack of on-paper qualities). Of course, companies shouldn't waste their applicants time with needlessly extensive tests, but there certainly exists no 'principle' by which you have a claim to be reimbursed for spending a few hours on an application.
- aurelianito 11y agoActually, for actors it does. If you go to a casting session, you should get payed for it. That's because they had a first chance to filter you out and they are not entitled to waste people's time. For the first filter, they use their CV and their reel (video of the actor showing itself). I think that the same rules should apply for programming jobs. Just look at my resume and my publicly available code (that is linked from my resume). If you decide I am good enough to interview me, pay a reasonable hourly rate. This would stop the abusive practice of giving big problems to solve in our free time.
- tptacek 11y agoIf this is true of programmers as well (and I have no opinion on whether it should be), it should be even more true of standard on-site job interviews, which are more disruptive to your work schedule and more demanding of your time and attention. But, of course, people do not generally get paid to go on job interviews.
- zingermc 11y agoIt's at least reasonable to cover travel costs for interviewers. I was given a $40/day stipend for food and reimbursed gas and hotel when I interviewed at my current job.
- tptacek 11y agoYes, the norm is that the interviewer pays expenses.
- aurelianito 11y agoOff course. Castings are on-site.
- cp9 11y agoI just value my own time. It's not entitlement, it's merely knowing what my free time is worth
- ap22213 11y agoI'd so much rather do a project with my own tools and from the comfort of own home than commute several hours across the city for a several hour interview. If all it required was an hour phone call and a small project, I'd totally do it for the right company. I'm too well-paid and busy to do interviews.
- lagadu 11y agoI was not, at any of them. Yes, I was effectively giving them my time but it doesn't sound unreasonable when you compare it to the alternative: I'd spend that same time answering whatever obscure coding questions or far-fetched exercise they had but in a far less comfortable setting (and arguably less representative of my skills). Not to mention how I'd probably have to do the interview at a time they're working, instead of doing it on a snowy Sunday evening, at my discretion.