4 ms·

How do you try to hire people who currently have jobs with strict anti moonlighting policies? (Or maybe the answer is just don't bother, and you can afford shr

by dmoy 9y ago

How do you try to hire people who currently have jobs with strict anti moonlighting policies? (Or maybe the answer is just don't bother, and you can afford shrinking the applicant pool without any big adverse effects)

pwthornton 9y ago
If someone is experienced, you can talk through code and APIs and get a good sense for them. But if you can work with someone before you hire them full-time, you'll greatly increase your hit rate. This may not always work, and it may not even work 50% of the time, but the more people you can hire that you have worked with either through internships or contract work or from previous jobs, the better.
- the-pigeon 9y ago
  > But if you can work with someone before you hire them full-time, you'll greatly increase your hit rate. Sure but you also filter out a ton of good candidates. I can't do my full time job plus family life stuff and work for someone else on a side project. And I'm not going to resign from a job for a "maybe" contract to hire type position. So it's just a non-starter. And most other programmers I've talked to are the same. It's different for younger people who don't have families but that's exactly my point. You filter out whole demographics with the contract to hire style.
geofft 9y ago
Has anyone tried offering to pay but permitting candidates to decline payment? (My current and previous jobs have these restrictions, but they also pay well enough that I care quite a bit less than I did when I was a college student / funemployed / etc.) It seems like it's likely to work similarly to bug bounties: it's not like you stop getting security reports from people who can't accept the bounties, you just don't get the benefit of the incentive, and maybe the money gets donated to a charity of their choice instead.
- compiler-guy 9y ago
  Not paying for the work doesn’t circumvent most moonlighting policies. The first company still likely claims ownership of your work. Enforcement of that can be tricky, but I doubt that’s a battle most people want to have.
  - geofft 9y ago
    Why wouldn't such a policy prevent you from writing code during an interview? (Amount of code?)
    - compiler-guy 9y ago
      A careful reading of most policies would show that the company claims it does own the code you write during an interview. They just don't care to enforce it because that code never really goes anywhere. These policies are actually fairly onerous as written. Most of us just get by because the company doesn't care to enforce.
      - geofft 9y ago
        I mean, an asshole company's incentives to enforcing "You shouldn't interview at competitors" are extremely strong. I'd expect that the reason that they don't enforce "You can't write code at interviews" is not that the company doesn't care to enforce it, but that either they can't legally prevent people from interviewing with industry-standard practices (nb, I am guessing this with zero knowledge/training in employment law) or that they know that this will end poorly for them PR-wise, because people won't interview for them. So those incentives, I think, also apply to take-home projects. Those are also about as industry-standard these days as in-person coding interviews, and so any legal or social pressures against saying that you can't write code in person should also apply to saying that you can't write code for a few hours on an evening as part of an interview. Meanwhile, the legal situation for "you can't get paid" is very different because so many legal things are different when money is involved, and the social pressures for "you can interview via whatever means they want you to interview, you just have to refuse payment" are going to also be very different.
djsumdog 9y ago
Those people made poor choices for signing those policies. I personally never sign non-compete agreements. I've also seen agreements where any OSS projects you work on need to get approved. I walked away from that bullshit.
- monocasa 9y ago
  It depends on your state. Non-competes aren't valid in CA for the most part, but they are for most of the rest of the country.
- Clubber 9y ago
  You are right, but usually the people who come up with that crap aren't tech people. Most likely they are biz people who just googled NDAs and noncompetes on the internet and picked the harshest one.
holtalanm 9y ago
personally, i think anti-moonlighting policies should be illegal.

by dmoy 9y ago

pwthornton 9y ago

If someone is experienced, you can talk through code and APIs and get a good sense for them. But if you can work with someone before you hire them full-time, you'll greatly increase your hit rate. This may not always work, and it may not even work 50% of the time, but the more people you can hire that you have worked with either through internships or contract work or from previous jobs, the better.

the-pigeon 9y ago
> But if you can work with someone before you hire them full-time, you'll greatly increase your hit rate. Sure but you also filter out a ton of good candidates. I can't do my full time job plus family life stuff and work for someone else on a side project. And I'm not going to resign from a job for a "maybe" contract to hire type position. So it's just a non-starter. And most other programmers I've talked to are the same. It's different for younger people who don't have families but that's exactly my point. You filter out whole demographics with the contract to hire style.

geofft 9y ago

Has anyone tried offering to pay but permitting candidates to decline payment? (My current and previous jobs have these restrictions, but they also pay well enough that I care quite a bit less than I did when I was a college student / funemployed / etc.) It seems like it's likely to work similarly to bug bounties: it's not like you stop getting security reports from people who can't accept the bounties, you just don't get the benefit of the incentive, and maybe the money gets donated to a charity of their choice instead.

compiler-guy 9y ago
Not paying for the work doesn’t circumvent most moonlighting policies. The first company still likely claims ownership of your work. Enforcement of that can be tricky, but I doubt that’s a battle most people want to have.
- geofft 9y ago
  Why wouldn't such a policy prevent you from writing code during an interview? (Amount of code?)
  - compiler-guy 9y ago
    A careful reading of most policies would show that the company claims it does own the code you write during an interview. They just don't care to enforce it because that code never really goes anywhere. These policies are actually fairly onerous as written. Most of us just get by because the company doesn't care to enforce.
    - geofft 9y ago
      I mean, an asshole company's incentives to enforcing "You shouldn't interview at competitors" are extremely strong. I'd expect that the reason that they don't enforce "You can't write code at interviews" is not that the company doesn't care to enforce it, but that either they can't legally prevent people from interviewing with industry-standard practices (nb, I am guessing this with zero knowledge/training in employment law) or that they know that this will end poorly for them PR-wise, because people won't interview for them. So those incentives, I think, also apply to take-home projects. Those are also about as industry-standard these days as in-person coding interviews, and so any legal or social pressures against saying that you can't write code in person should also apply to saying that you can't write code for a few hours on an evening as part of an interview. Meanwhile, the legal situation for "you can't get paid" is very different because so many legal things are different when money is involved, and the social pressures for "you can interview via whatever means they want you to interview, you just have to refuse payment" are going to also be very different.

djsumdog 9y ago

Those people made poor choices for signing those policies. I personally never sign non-compete agreements. I've also seen agreements where any OSS projects you work on need to get approved. I walked away from that bullshit.

monocasa 9y ago
It depends on your state. Non-competes aren't valid in CA for the most part, but they are for most of the rest of the country.
Clubber 9y ago
You are right, but usually the people who come up with that crap aren't tech people. Most likely they are biz people who just googled NDAs and noncompetes on the internet and picked the harshest one.

holtalanm 9y ago

personally, i think anti-moonlighting policies should be illegal.