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Having worked at a startup I would not be surprised if they used that assignment in order to get some of their work done. The startup I worked at wanted to use

Having worked at a startup I would not be surprised if they used that assignment in order to get some of their work done. The startup I worked at wanted to use Kaggle competitions in order to improve their AI code that they ripped from other sources (all while the marketing team made them look as if they were a legit company at the top of the field).

droithomme 8y ago
> they used that assignment in order to get some of their work done Yes, that's a common technique. Another, depending on how they found and contacted this startup, is that the test isn't really from the company it claims, the contact person is actually a candidate who is tricking people into completing the take home assignment on his own interview somewhere else. A third technique, when the questions seem like homework questions, is that it can be a student somewhere impersonating a company and posting fake job ads in order to get other people to do his school assignments. Generally one should verify the company exists and that their contact works at the company before proceeding with these. Also if the assignment appears to be exactly something that would be of great benefit to the company and also takes a good amount of work, it is best to decline as some companies use sham job interviews to get free contract work done.
- iamben 8y ago
  Friend of mine interviewed for a role where they explained a problem and asked how he would solve it. He spent 90 minutes explaining possible solutions while they made notes. It's a pretty specialist domain so he knew others who were interviewing. After the interviews they pulled the position - I suppose no one will ever know for sure, but after putting their heads together and doing some digging they figured the whole set of interviews was put together to solve a problem the business was having, and it was just an easy way to get a bunch of solutions from very specialist / expensive people.
  - dba7dba 8y ago
    I actually went in for a job interview as a sys admin. Turns out they were just trying to dig for some information from my current company. Both were pretty in similar domain. I was a junior level so probably didn't prove them with any useful info...
sonnyblarney 8y ago
I don't get this. A few lines of code by some random person are not going to help your company, unless there is 'deep insight' i.e. maybe some high end AI thing, etc.. Code needs to be owned, maintained, up to spec, documented, integrated. There's nary some random person can do remotely with little guidance that's going to help. The 'coding' part isn't that hard, it's all the details etc. that matter. You'd waste far more time and energy trying to get the right person, the right bit of code, changing it to suit the common architecture etc.. Obviously there are ethical questions, but they're moot if it's a stupid exercise to begin with.
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droithomme 8y ago

> they used that assignment in order to get some of their work done Yes, that's a common technique. Another, depending on how they found and contacted this startup, is that the test isn't really from the company it claims, the contact person is actually a candidate who is tricking people into completing the take home assignment on his own interview somewhere else. A third technique, when the questions seem like homework questions, is that it can be a student somewhere impersonating a company and posting fake job ads in order to get other people to do his school assignments. Generally one should verify the company exists and that their contact works at the company before proceeding with these. Also if the assignment appears to be exactly something that would be of great benefit to the company and also takes a good amount of work, it is best to decline as some companies use sham job interviews to get free contract work done.

iamben 8y ago
Friend of mine interviewed for a role where they explained a problem and asked how he would solve it. He spent 90 minutes explaining possible solutions while they made notes. It's a pretty specialist domain so he knew others who were interviewing. After the interviews they pulled the position - I suppose no one will ever know for sure, but after putting their heads together and doing some digging they figured the whole set of interviews was put together to solve a problem the business was having, and it was just an easy way to get a bunch of solutions from very specialist / expensive people.
- dba7dba 8y ago
  I actually went in for a job interview as a sys admin. Turns out they were just trying to dig for some information from my current company. Both were pretty in similar domain. I was a junior level so probably didn't prove them with any useful info...

sonnyblarney 8y ago

I don't get this. A few lines of code by some random person are not going to help your company, unless there is 'deep insight' i.e. maybe some high end AI thing, etc.. Code needs to be owned, maintained, up to spec, documented, integrated. There's nary some random person can do remotely with little guidance that's going to help. The 'coding' part isn't that hard, it's all the details etc. that matter. You'd waste far more time and energy trying to get the right person, the right bit of code, changing it to suit the common architecture etc.. Obviously there are ethical questions, but they're moot if it's a stupid exercise to begin with.

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