7 ms·

I billed companies for 2 out of my last 3 take homes and they paid me

41 points by starpilot 7y ago

clay_the_ripper 7y ago
I had 2 take homes in a late stage interview, but up front they told me I would be paid a reasonable hourly wage to complete them. honestly the practice of doing lots of take homes seems like a waste of everyone’s time. Companies should only do it for their final few candidates and pay them to do it. In the grand scheme it costs the company basically nothing - think about the enormous profit these companies make on a good employee for a few years. At my company I do trial projects (real actual work we need done) for prospective employees. We pay them to do it. It’s never anything that would cost more than $500. The point is not to test how committed they are or how above and beyond they are. The point is to see if they know what they are doing in the simplest, fastest, cheapest way possible for everyone involved.
- solipsism 7y ago
  Why does it matter if it's real work, versus just resembling real work? At some companies the work may be of a nature that it's easy for someone to jump right in and do $500 worth of work in a reasonable time. At other companies, identifying the work, scoping the work, vetting to work, finding an owner for the work, etc adds up to enormous effort and is not even close to worth it. For those companies (by far the majority I would guess), it's going to pay off to have one or a few projects that they give everybody. To the candidate, it doesn't matter. Whether they see it as a waste of time or an investment depends only on whether they end up getting the job.
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
it's worth noting, the only 2 companies that paid out were willing to take the next hiring step with him. In the grand scheme of things, paying out a couple thousand is nothing compared to how much those companies will pay out to the recruiters, so it makes sense if they want to hire the guy. i mean they already spent 50k or so on the recruiter, what's another 1-5k for an assignment.
starpilot 7y ago
...and, it's gone. Guy deleted his reddit account as well. Tl;dr he billed three companies for the time spent on take-home assignments, with his normal hourly rate. Two of three companies paid, around $8,000 total, and one of them hired him fulltime.
- phamilton 7y ago
  > $8000 Assuming an hourly rate of $250/hr, that's a lot of hours. Split evenly between the two companies, that's 16 hours for a single take home. My expectation on a take home is more on the order of 4 hours, but maybe I'm off on that? And maybe this guy was a deep expert who charged $1000/hr?
  - praneshp 7y ago
    WHen it was up, the commment said one of the take homes was 35 hours of work (ended up being the company they signed with)
- shyn3 7y ago
  https://www.removeddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/bprxxc/i_billed_companies_for_2_out_of_my_last_3_take/ https://www.removeddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/bprx... After college I was hired at a web consulting company and after a year I quit to become an independent web consultant. Now two years later I want to go back to working for a company. I have been applying online to many different companies and I have gotten quite a few hits. I've done 3 take homes so far. To be honest, I didn't really what to do for take homes up until now since I had never had one. So when the companies asked for my time to do an assignment I finished the assignment and billed them for my time. Here is how that went: Company 1: Spent around 10 hours on the take home (1 day). I sent them an invoice and billed them for my time at my hourly rate of $165/hr. They responded the next day with an offer for an onsite and they also paid me. After the onsite I did not get an offer. Company 2: Really difficult and long take home on this one. I spent 35 hours on the take home over 3 days and again, sent them an invoice. They paid me a week later and responded with an onsite, which I went to and did well on. I received an offer and ended up signing it. I start in 3 weeks. Company 3: Fairly easy take home. I spent 6 hours on this one and billed them for my time. The company responded later the same day and told me that they are not willing to pay me for my time and that they have decided to not proceed with the process. They also told me that nobody had ever been as absurd as to request payment for a take home. Since I have only taken 3 take homes I am somewhat confused here. Are you supposed to bill companies for your time? Or does it depend from company to company? The two that paid me are actually both very large companies (over 50k employees) so I assumed it was standard, until the third company sent me their response.
pyb 7y ago
He said that, being from a consultancy background, it hadn't even occured to him that they might want the work done for free.
blablabla123 7y ago
Unless I'm almost certain that I really want to work at the place and it's just a last step of the interview process I'm fine with coding for a few hours, be it on-site or at home. But otherwise, if it's more than 2 hours, there is no way I gonna do that again, such a waste of time. The longest one I did was more than 10 hours and I didn't even get any feedback about the code. Billing is smart though, I'll always ask for that from now on.
dahdum 7y ago
He billed these companies without first confirming the rate, estimate, or if he would receive any payment. I wonder if these invoices were sent to the hiring manager or just sent to AP directly hoping they’d pay it out accidentally.

41 points by starpilot 7y ago

I had 2 take homes in a late stage interview, but up front they told me I would be paid a reasonable hourly wage to complete them. honestly the practice of doing lots of take homes seems like a waste of everyone’s time. Companies should only do it for their final few candidates and pay them to do it. In the grand scheme it costs the company basically nothing - think about the enormous profit these companies make on a good employee for a few years. At my company I do trial projects (real actual work we need done) for prospective employees. We pay them to do it. It’s never anything that would cost more than $500. The point is not to test how committed they are or how above and beyond they are. The point is to see if they know what they are doing in the simplest, fastest, cheapest way possible for everyone involved.

solipsism 7y ago
Why does it matter if it's real work, versus just resembling real work? At some companies the work may be of a nature that it's easy for someone to jump right in and do $500 worth of work in a reasonable time. At other companies, identifying the work, scoping the work, vetting to work, finding an owner for the work, etc adds up to enormous effort and is not even close to worth it. For those companies (by far the majority I would guess), it's going to pay off to have one or a few projects that they give everybody. To the candidate, it doesn't matter. Whether they see it as a waste of time or an investment depends only on whether they end up getting the job.

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

it's worth noting, the only 2 companies that paid out were willing to take the next hiring step with him. In the grand scheme of things, paying out a couple thousand is nothing compared to how much those companies will pay out to the recruiters, so it makes sense if they want to hire the guy. i mean they already spent 50k or so on the recruiter, what's another 1-5k for an assignment.

starpilot 7y ago

...and, it's gone. Guy deleted his reddit account as well. Tl;dr he billed three companies for the time spent on take-home assignments, with his normal hourly rate. Two of three companies paid, around $8,000 total, and one of them hired him fulltime.

phamilton 7y ago
> $8000 Assuming an hourly rate of $250/hr, that's a lot of hours. Split evenly between the two companies, that's 16 hours for a single take home. My expectation on a take home is more on the order of 4 hours, but maybe I'm off on that? And maybe this guy was a deep expert who charged $1000/hr?
- praneshp 7y ago
  WHen it was up, the commment said one of the take homes was 35 hours of work (ended up being the company they signed with)
shyn3 7y ago
https://www.removeddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/bprxxc/i_billed_companies_for_2_out_of_my_last_3_take/ https://www.removeddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/bprx... After college I was hired at a web consulting company and after a year I quit to become an independent web consultant. Now two years later I want to go back to working for a company. I have been applying online to many different companies and I have gotten quite a few hits. I've done 3 take homes so far. To be honest, I didn't really what to do for take homes up until now since I had never had one. So when the companies asked for my time to do an assignment I finished the assignment and billed them for my time. Here is how that went: Company 1: Spent around 10 hours on the take home (1 day). I sent them an invoice and billed them for my time at my hourly rate of $165/hr. They responded the next day with an offer for an onsite and they also paid me. After the onsite I did not get an offer. Company 2: Really difficult and long take home on this one. I spent 35 hours on the take home over 3 days and again, sent them an invoice. They paid me a week later and responded with an onsite, which I went to and did well on. I received an offer and ended up signing it. I start in 3 weeks. Company 3: Fairly easy take home. I spent 6 hours on this one and billed them for my time. The company responded later the same day and told me that they are not willing to pay me for my time and that they have decided to not proceed with the process. They also told me that nobody had ever been as absurd as to request payment for a take home. Since I have only taken 3 take homes I am somewhat confused here. Are you supposed to bill companies for your time? Or does it depend from company to company? The two that paid me are actually both very large companies (over 50k employees) so I assumed it was standard, until the third company sent me their response.

pyb 7y ago

He said that, being from a consultancy background, it hadn't even occured to him that they might want the work done for free.

blablabla123 7y ago

Unless I'm almost certain that I really want to work at the place and it's just a last step of the interview process I'm fine with coding for a few hours, be it on-site or at home. But otherwise, if it's more than 2 hours, there is no way I gonna do that again, such a waste of time. The longest one I did was more than 10 hours and I didn't even get any feedback about the code. Billing is smart though, I'll always ask for that from now on.

dahdum 7y ago

He billed these companies without first confirming the rate, estimate, or if he would receive any payment. I wonder if these invoices were sent to the hiring manager or just sent to AP directly hoping they’d pay it out accidentally.