7 ms·

This literally happened to me last week. On a Friday night before my girlfriend's birthday they sent me -- without warning -- an assignment that "should take a

by maxk42 9y ago

This literally happened to me last week. On a Friday night before my girlfriend's birthday they sent me -- without warning -- an assignment that "should take about 8 hours". I told them to give the job to someone hungrier than me which was the politest way of telling someone to stuff it I could think of. The company in question advertises here on HN's "Who's hiring?" threads, but the role was brought to my attention by a recruiter. Here's a little tip: If you expect to take more than 2 - 3 hours of someone's time, you should be paying them. Contract-to-hire and trial contracts are very common in the industry and most people have no problem with them. If you require a significant time commitment to interview someone then you should be respecting their time. I don't want to work for any company that doesn't respect my time.

exodust 9y ago
But you didn't say how long they gave you to do it. Could you hand in the assignment a week later? I've never been given a homework assignment for a job interview, but I would love it. I absolutely hate the tests they give you on the spot, the last one I did was awful and made me angry! I would much prefer an 8 hour homework assignment. That pressure would be fun, and I get to work with my tools in my comfort zone. I spend 8 hours playing video games (over a few days), so putting that aside for a challenge with possible good job at the end seems okay to me.
- maxk42 9y ago
  They wanted it done by Monday. Then I got to choose which day of my weekend I wanted to sacrifice: I chose none and I'll begin my new position at a company that respects my time Monday. To be clear: I've been given take-home "challenges" that take 2 - 3 hours each. Including at the company I wound up going with. I have no problem with these. If you expect me to sacrifice a full day of my time then you can pay me or find someone more desperate than I am.
  - exodust 9y ago
    Okay, they wanted it by Monday, yeh that's rough.
- gricardo99 9y ago
  I've done interview assignments a few times. In every instance I made it clear I needed a 2-3 weeks to complete the assignment (which was < 8 hours of work) due to my schedule. They never had a problem, and the interviews advanced to the next stage after they reviewed my submission. I think most people are ok spreading 8 hours of work over a couple weekends. Paid shows the company is more respectful of your time, but in the end if they're taking up much of your time they should absolutely be flexible, or they will definitely pick-up a selection bias in their candidates.
- kokx 9y ago
  8 hours really is a lot of time to work for free. They are basically expecting you to dedicate some of your spare time to doing work for them. To me, this means the company does not value my own time, and it might even be a red flag which indicates unhealthy expectations about your work-life balance. If they had an assignment which would take about an hour, maybe two, fine. But any more than that and I think you should be paid for that.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  I've gotten a couple of 24 hour tests - they were released electronically so you are timed from when you choose to start to when you turn it in and both times was graded on how much time it took you - more than 24 hours and you failed. One of them had two puzzle questions and I understood how to one of them in an hour or so but didn't figure out the trick for the other one until I took a shower a couple of days later but since I could only do one of them I immediately just told them I would pass on it.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  > I've never been given a homework assignment for a job interview, but I would love it [...] I spend 8 hours playing video games (over a few days) The problem becomes, but then when would play videogames? It's fine to be eager for an occasional puzzle challenge, but don't forget about the opportunity cost. They want 8 hours of your videogame time for something that likely has a low return on that time investment (ie, the homework assignment is [not] productive code; there's no guarantee you get the job as that homework assignment is only input in the process, etc). That sort of opportunity cost favors the young (with no or small families, and a stronger ability to live on fewer hours of sleep), the eager (passionate for that particular job), and generally those with fewer work/life balance concerns (what if you need those 8 hours to stay healthy or protect your family?). If you are already employed, you risk burning out by trying to burn the candle at both ends and do unpaid work in your off-hours. There's a possible opportunity cost that your day job's productivity suffers and you potentially lose your job. Even when unemployed there are opportunity costs at play (if two companies need 8 hours in the next 12, which one do you turn down). The old adage is that unemployment is a full-time job (hunting for prospects, networking, talking to recruiters, dealing with unemployment wage systems, etc), and is stressful enough without adding additional unpaid labor on top of it.
- gaius 9y ago
  but I would love it. I absolutely hate the tests they give you on the spot, the last one I did was awful and made me angry! It’s not “instead of” it’s “in addition to”
dominotw 9y ago
This is the format at almost every single company these days. 1. Initial phone screen with recuriter - 30 mins 2. Phone screen(s) - 1-4 hr 3. (optional) phone live-coding on coderpad - 1 hr 4. Take home assignment - 4 - 8 hrs 5. Full Day onsite interview - 2-3 days if traveling. Rinse and Repeat for atleast ten interviews minimum you are looking at almost 1 month of pure interview time. Add on practise time for algorithms and puzzles.
- user5994461 9y ago
  This is stupid. They should always do the take home test first or after a short phone call. It's easier and saves everyone time.
  - tzakrajs 9y ago
    Part of the interview process is selling the organization and its people. Maybe companies prioritize phone screenings and interviews first to steer the process and educate the candidate about the company and the position. Maybe candidates would be less likely to try the coding project if they hadn't built some rapport with an employee.
    - rozenmd 9y ago
      Also need to figure out if the candidate is a lizard person - having a real life conversation with them about the company is a good start.
      - tzakrajs 9y ago
        I will also add that lizard people require a lot of electricity to keep them at the optimal temperature.
  - exDM69 9y ago
    > They should always do the take home test first or after a short phone call. Absolutely not. If most applicants need to do 4-8 hours worth of homework, they'll never have the time to review the results for every applicant. And making me do 4-8 hours of work without getting it reviewed thoroughly and getting personal feedback is not valuing my time. In the process above there already was a screen sharing coding test. Adding the homework on top is redundant. You should be able to tell if someone can code in one hour of screen sharing, but you can't really tell if someone is mediocre or top notch from a single homework assignment. Only once have I been given a homework from an interview and it was a solid 10-20 hours worth of work. I refused to do the work and I got the offer anyway, but I turned it down in favor of another offer.
amyboyd 9y ago
I had the same experience recently with first-time founders on HN "Who's Hiring?" (Fat Lama). They expected 4 rounds of interviews and a tech test. Delusional.
kybernetikos 9y ago
> If you expect to take more than 2 - 3 hours of someone's time, you should be paying them. Do you want to work with team mates who have been vetted over less than 2 hours? I've worked with people who couldn't code, it's not a fun experience. There are a lot of people who can talk a good talk but can't actually code. This was the reason for the FizzBuzz test (which I dislike, but it was invented to solve a real problem). My current employer would not be able to do contract-to-hire or a trial contract for legal and policy reasons, and I strongly believe that a homework assignment taking approximately 2 hours, when combined with another 1.5 hours in person provides the best signal of all the methods I've tried. That's a total interview process of 3.5 hours i.e. about half a day. If you can find half a day for an in person interview then you can certainly find the same hours split up differently for homework + in person. Trying to make it about sexism is crazy. Homework is much more flexible as to when you do it than in person interviews. Just because you're looking after kids doesn't mean you won't be able to take a couple of hours when they're asleep or in school. If doing homework is a problem, then I'm sure doing an inperson is even harder. Our homework + inperson extension is on a topic related to our real field, not just a compsci quiz (which means it gives you a chance to show off domain knowledge if you want the extra points), allows no frameworks (except testing), produces an interesting artefact at the end, and can be completed in less than 100 lines of functional code plus a smattering of test code (although many will do more, sometimes crazily so - for which they lose marks). There are exhortations in the instructions to keep it simple. You can schedule when you want to work on it yourself, work on it with your own tools and hardware, split the time over a couple of weeks if it's difficult to get a block of time together. The only real question is the time commitment. I've targeted 2 hours, but many spend around 3 or so, and some spend more on it. Setting an 8 hour challenge for my kind of work woud be entirely unfair to the candidate, unless that was the total time spent on the entire interview process. I've hired with a number of different processes, and this one takes the least total time for the candidate and seems to have given me the best results.
- romwell 9y ago
  I don't think the parent sees a problem with an 8 hours challenge in general. The problem seems to be with unpaid 8-hour challenge. Recruiting is not a cost-free process to begin with, and perhaps this is not the right place to cut these costs.

by maxk42 9y ago

exodust 9y ago

But you didn't say how long they gave you to do it. Could you hand in the assignment a week later? I've never been given a homework assignment for a job interview, but I would love it. I absolutely hate the tests they give you on the spot, the last one I did was awful and made me angry! I would much prefer an 8 hour homework assignment. That pressure would be fun, and I get to work with my tools in my comfort zone. I spend 8 hours playing video games (over a few days), so putting that aside for a challenge with possible good job at the end seems okay to me.

maxk42 9y ago
They wanted it done by Monday. Then I got to choose which day of my weekend I wanted to sacrifice: I chose none and I'll begin my new position at a company that respects my time Monday. To be clear: I've been given take-home "challenges" that take 2 - 3 hours each. Including at the company I wound up going with. I have no problem with these. If you expect me to sacrifice a full day of my time then you can pay me or find someone more desperate than I am.
- exodust 9y ago
  Okay, they wanted it by Monday, yeh that's rough.
gricardo99 9y ago
I've done interview assignments a few times. In every instance I made it clear I needed a 2-3 weeks to complete the assignment (which was < 8 hours of work) due to my schedule. They never had a problem, and the interviews advanced to the next stage after they reviewed my submission. I think most people are ok spreading 8 hours of work over a couple weekends. Paid shows the company is more respectful of your time, but in the end if they're taking up much of your time they should absolutely be flexible, or they will definitely pick-up a selection bias in their candidates.
kokx 9y ago
8 hours really is a lot of time to work for free. They are basically expecting you to dedicate some of your spare time to doing work for them. To me, this means the company does not value my own time, and it might even be a red flag which indicates unhealthy expectations about your work-life balance. If they had an assignment which would take about an hour, maybe two, fine. But any more than that and I think you should be paid for that.
stevenwoo 9y ago
I've gotten a couple of 24 hour tests - they were released electronically so you are timed from when you choose to start to when you turn it in and both times was graded on how much time it took you - more than 24 hours and you failed. One of them had two puzzle questions and I understood how to one of them in an hour or so but didn't figure out the trick for the other one until I took a shower a couple of days later but since I could only do one of them I immediately just told them I would pass on it.
WorldMaker 9y ago
> I've never been given a homework assignment for a job interview, but I would love it [...] I spend 8 hours playing video games (over a few days) The problem becomes, but then when would play videogames? It's fine to be eager for an occasional puzzle challenge, but don't forget about the opportunity cost. They want 8 hours of your videogame time for something that likely has a low return on that time investment (ie, the homework assignment is [not] productive code; there's no guarantee you get the job as that homework assignment is only input in the process, etc). That sort of opportunity cost favors the young (with no or small families, and a stronger ability to live on fewer hours of sleep), the eager (passionate for that particular job), and generally those with fewer work/life balance concerns (what if you need those 8 hours to stay healthy or protect your family?). If you are already employed, you risk burning out by trying to burn the candle at both ends and do unpaid work in your off-hours. There's a possible opportunity cost that your day job's productivity suffers and you potentially lose your job. Even when unemployed there are opportunity costs at play (if two companies need 8 hours in the next 12, which one do you turn down). The old adage is that unemployment is a full-time job (hunting for prospects, networking, talking to recruiters, dealing with unemployment wage systems, etc), and is stressful enough without adding additional unpaid labor on top of it.
gaius 9y ago
but I would love it. I absolutely hate the tests they give you on the spot, the last one I did was awful and made me angry! It’s not “instead of” it’s “in addition to”

dominotw 9y ago

This is the format at almost every single company these days. 1. Initial phone screen with recuriter - 30 mins 2. Phone screen(s) - 1-4 hr 3. (optional) phone live-coding on coderpad - 1 hr 4. Take home assignment - 4 - 8 hrs 5. Full Day onsite interview - 2-3 days if traveling. Rinse and Repeat for atleast ten interviews minimum you are looking at almost 1 month of pure interview time. Add on practise time for algorithms and puzzles.

user5994461 9y ago
This is stupid. They should always do the take home test first or after a short phone call. It's easier and saves everyone time.
- tzakrajs 9y ago
  Part of the interview process is selling the organization and its people. Maybe companies prioritize phone screenings and interviews first to steer the process and educate the candidate about the company and the position. Maybe candidates would be less likely to try the coding project if they hadn't built some rapport with an employee.
  - rozenmd 9y ago
    Also need to figure out if the candidate is a lizard person - having a real life conversation with them about the company is a good start.
    - tzakrajs 9y ago
      I will also add that lizard people require a lot of electricity to keep them at the optimal temperature.
- exDM69 9y ago
  > They should always do the take home test first or after a short phone call. Absolutely not. If most applicants need to do 4-8 hours worth of homework, they'll never have the time to review the results for every applicant. And making me do 4-8 hours of work without getting it reviewed thoroughly and getting personal feedback is not valuing my time. In the process above there already was a screen sharing coding test. Adding the homework on top is redundant. You should be able to tell if someone can code in one hour of screen sharing, but you can't really tell if someone is mediocre or top notch from a single homework assignment. Only once have I been given a homework from an interview and it was a solid 10-20 hours worth of work. I refused to do the work and I got the offer anyway, but I turned it down in favor of another offer.

amyboyd 9y ago

I had the same experience recently with first-time founders on HN "Who's Hiring?" (Fat Lama). They expected 4 rounds of interviews and a tech test. Delusional.

kybernetikos 9y ago

> If you expect to take more than 2 - 3 hours of someone's time, you should be paying them. Do you want to work with team mates who have been vetted over less than 2 hours? I've worked with people who couldn't code, it's not a fun experience. There are a lot of people who can talk a good talk but can't actually code. This was the reason for the FizzBuzz test (which I dislike, but it was invented to solve a real problem). My current employer would not be able to do contract-to-hire or a trial contract for legal and policy reasons, and I strongly believe that a homework assignment taking approximately 2 hours, when combined with another 1.5 hours in person provides the best signal of all the methods I've tried. That's a total interview process of 3.5 hours i.e. about half a day. If you can find half a day for an in person interview then you can certainly find the same hours split up differently for homework + in person. Trying to make it about sexism is crazy. Homework is much more flexible as to when you do it than in person interviews. Just because you're looking after kids doesn't mean you won't be able to take a couple of hours when they're asleep or in school. If doing homework is a problem, then I'm sure doing an inperson is even harder. Our homework + inperson extension is on a topic related to our real field, not just a compsci quiz (which means it gives you a chance to show off domain knowledge if you want the extra points), allows no frameworks (except testing), produces an interesting artefact at the end, and can be completed in less than 100 lines of functional code plus a smattering of test code (although many will do more, sometimes crazily so - for which they lose marks). There are exhortations in the instructions to keep it simple. You can schedule when you want to work on it yourself, work on it with your own tools and hardware, split the time over a couple of weeks if it's difficult to get a block of time together. The only real question is the time commitment. I've targeted 2 hours, but many spend around 3 or so, and some spend more on it. Setting an 8 hour challenge for my kind of work woud be entirely unfair to the candidate, unless that was the total time spent on the entire interview process. I've hired with a number of different processes, and this one takes the least total time for the candidate and seems to have given me the best results.

romwell 9y ago
I don't think the parent sees a problem with an 8 hours challenge in general. The problem seems to be with unpaid 8-hour challenge. Recruiting is not a cost-free process to begin with, and perhaps this is not the right place to cut these costs.