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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

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.

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.