6 ms·

I may be in the minority here but I think that it is asking a lot of someone to build out a UI just for the prospect of getting hired. I think it borders on exp

• DanI-S 16y ago
  I think the point is that if you don't already do this stuff for the fun of it, you're not who they're looking for. I just spent a few minutes writing out some pseudocode, and I have a slight adrenaline rush. Even if I don't submit anything, I've got to play with a neat problem.
  • hessenwolf 16y ago
    I don't program for fun. I program for a goal, and I enjoy doing it. My time is too important to me to waste on entering a competition for a job, so I am clearly not who they are looking for.
    • droz 16y ago
      Exactly. If you go into the business for the "fun of it", you are going to get exploited and you are going to get burned by your enthusiasm. Program to make money, make a difference to do something great, but don't do it because it's fun.
  • aprrrr 16y ago
    There are sooo many interesting problems in the world, I never run out of stuff to do for fun. If you want me to implement your spec that takes more than 15 minutes or so, then a) you are a great non-profit for a cause I care about, or b) you have to pay up. But it's true, I'm not who they're looking for, and I don't want to work for reddit. I'm sure plenty of 21-year-old reddit fan(boy|girl)s will leap at the chance, and good for them.
    • grammaton 16y ago
      Exactly. If I'm looking for stuff to do for the sheer hell of it, I've got loads of ideas of my own. I don't need to jump into an "oohhh please pick me, pick me!" arena to find interesting things to do.
• jedsmith 16y ago
  Near the end of the post, they responded to this: > Well, first off, it's supposed to be fun. If you don't see the joy in either of these puzzles, please don't apply. If you don't consider implementing something like tgrep fun, you're in the wrong line of work. I've actually thought of something like that before, for my own logs, but never gotten around to trying it out. They want people who consider what we do fun -- if you don't, they don't want you.
  • dpritchett 16y ago
    It is fun, but if you're the type of person who does this sort of thing for fun you should already have a nice portfolio to show them rather than needing to submit spec work.
  • hackinthebochs 16y ago
    >If you don't consider implementing something like tgrep fun, you're in the wrong line of work. This is a silly statement to make, and honestly I'm tired of seeing this sentiment repeated. Different people find different things fun. A big part of the fun in implementing some random project is yourself identifying the problem and coming up with a possible solution. Just trudging through someone else's spec is missing the fun aspect of problem solving. Furthermore, for me at least, there is a tradeoff to when a project loses it's "fun" and just becomes grunt work. When there's a large creative aspect to it, that makes it fun. When the problem is fairly well-defined with an obvious solution but just needs to be fleshed out, that leans towards tedium. For someone to assume that anyone that doesn't find their exact types of problems fun is in the "wrong line of work" is being a presumptuous prick.
• aridiculous 16y ago
  If they don't get hired at Reddit, it could be a good portfolio piece to show another employer. It's just a good reason to make something.
  • kls 16y ago
    If I had a dollar for every-time a potential client thought their app was so cool that I should be begging to work on it just to get a portfolio piece, well, I would have quite a few dollars. To be quite honest I would look at some half implemented Reddit mock-up as a half implemented amateur example of someones work. I want to see fully working apps that a developer can explain to me what portions they built and why features where built. To be honest I would be embarrassed to use a few hour throw together as an example of my work. When I have far better examples of applications that are professional and complete. My intent is not to be arrogant about the matter but the reality is there are very few professions where asking someone to work for free to get a portfolio piece would be met with a straight face. Lawyers do pro-bono to help the downtrodden doctors do research work to advance the state of the art but nether do routine work to get a portfolio piece. So unless you are asking someone to do state of the art groundbreaking research work or it is charity (open source) to ask someone to do it for portfolio work is akin to asking a lawyer to take your DUI case or a doctor to fix your problem to get some portfolio work.
• ryandvm 16y ago
  Agreed. Tgrep is a nice take home challenge, but a client-side Reddit clone is far too much to ask for. The only applicants they're going to get for the front-end position are Reddit mega-fans with too much spare time - though I suppose that may be what they're looking for. Regardless, most real "rock star programmers" (as much as I hate the term) aren't going to be blowing a day or two on spec work.
  • jasonkester 16y ago
    Funny, to me writing a quick and dirty frontend for a reddit clone seems like a fun mindless 3 hours. Building a replacement for grep and profiling it until it's fast sounds like the kind of pain I pay other people good money to avoid.
• wccrawford 16y ago
  I think it's fine to ask someone to code something as a pre-interview so long as it's short (can be done in 48 hours by just about anyone) and it's something you're actually going to use on your system. I was recently asked to write a simple CRUD page for contacts (name, address, etc) as a pre-interview test and that's well within the above. You have to keep in mind that people can't apply for many jobs if they are all doing that, though. You're going to severely limit the number of applicants you get. It'll limit it to only people who really want to work there, but also to people who have enough free time to throw away to do the interview.
  • hessenwolf 16y ago
    48 hours meaning 5 days work; 48 hours meaning two full time days; or 48 hours meaning two evenings after a full time + usual overtime day, so about 4.5 hours with a beer?
  • trotsky 16y ago
    As a hiring manager, I think it's inappropriate to ask a candidate to spend significantly more time in the iapplication process than you're willing to spend evaluating them. High end talent search where you or your board will spend days agonizing over every candidate? Totally OK to ask for a significant amount of their time. Asking for some time consuming unique delivery from people that you won't necessarily even interview? You're just being abusive. When you're in a position of power, either because jobs are rare or yours are uniquely appealing it's very easy to fall in to this mode, but that doesn't make it right. Especially in a case like this where you'd expect a high number of applications you're likely to dismiss out of hand (ie, sorry, no high school students) - at the very minimum you should be willing to do that first screening before you request anything needing a time investment.
• eurohacker 16y ago
  agreed - the fact that they let candidates build the whole interface - leaves the impression that the company is just looking for cheap young talent, if you get hired and start to ask for more salary - they will hire new young talented people
  • Luyt 16y ago
    It's their right to cultivate a company culture like that, should they wish so. Apparently a lot of young 'rockstar' programmers are attracted to that, being able to work and hang out with all the cool guys from a Web 3.0 company. Pay is probably less important than status (and a good looking entry on your résumè). I wonder whether the rockstar programmers are allowed to bring in their groupies to admire them during work? Like this guy observes: http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7023615/ http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7023615/ Edit: typos
• jedberg 16y ago
  I understand your concerns, and we thought about it a lot ourselves. "Are we asking too much?" We came to the conclusion that what we are asking should be fun for you to do. Something you might even do without us asking. Also, it shouldn't take you more than a few joyful hours. If it does, you probably aren't the person we're looking for. We gave the task to a couple of trusted folks beforehand, people who we would love to hire if they weren't already doing something they loved, and they said that the tasks were pretty straightforward and quick to do. We already tried doing it the other way around, and we realized that it just didn't work. The guy that turned out to be the best was the one we almost rejected because he had a bad resume and cover letter. We don't want to make that mistake again. If you think it is too much to ask, well, I guess you just don't apply. <shrug>
  • jpeterson 16y ago
    We came to the conclusion that what we are asking should be fun for you to do. Something you might even do without us asking. ... And something that you guys just so happen to benefit from. I understand what you're saying, but it still smacks of exploitation in my opinion.
    • jedberg 16y ago
      Actually, we won't really benefit at all. We already have tgrep, and a single user local storage frontend won't really be useful to us (and already exists).
  • VladRussian 16y ago
    you system is perfect to filter in people who don't value their time and ok to work in the company that doesn't respect their applicants (but supposedly starts to respect applicants the second they turn employees - some may believe that too). There is definitely a business sense in hiring such naive gullible people, no questions here.
    • DanI-S 16y ago
      Judging from jedburg's post, I'd argue that it allows them to hire people who would rather spend 3 hours up-front writing some code than spend 3 hours up-front writing a cover letter. Which is preferable for the programmer, too, since the up-front, likely 'wasted' time is spent doing something enjoyable. The investment in writing a cover letter only comes after.
• jemfinch 16y ago
  > I think it borders on exploitation there are a lot of young individuals with wonder-lust that see a name like Reddit and will put in significant hours just for the possibility of maybe getting hired. First, it's not exploitation. It can't be. It could only be exploitation if reddit were somehow planning to benefit from their implementations--e.g., if it would actually deploy one in production. Second, I think you're making a false assumption that "young individual with wonder-lust" putting in "significant hours" on a task like this is time wasted. I've spent far more time writing IRC bots just for the fun of it, but was that time wasted? Of course not. I learned new skills, gained new knowledge, and was able to approach the real world of software development with the confidence of having actually implemented my own project end-to-end. Though I think the two projects differ substantially in their difficulty, either project would benefit implementor in itself even apart from any prospects of getting hired.
  • jpeterson 16y ago
    First, it's not exploitation. It can't be. It could only be exploitation if reddit were somehow planning to benefit from their implementations... Did you miss the part where they're using this as a recruiting screen?
    • jemfinch 16y ago
      Did you miss the part of my sentence where I listed an example of what would qualify as actual exploitation? Obviously I know they're using it as a recruiting screen. It's completely appropriate for them to do so.
      • hackinthebochs 16y ago
        > It could only be exploitation if reddit were somehow planning to benefit from their implementations The point is that having a ready-made recruiting screen is benefiting from the implementations.
• axod 16y ago
  The other thing is that if working at Reddit, you'd effectively be doing the work of a founder, but for no upside. Just how exciting is "standard benefits" to anyone here?
• leon_ 16y ago
  reddit is built around exploitation. they are owned by conde nast yet they have to beg their users for some "premium subscription" to upgrade their servers/hire new people.
• khafra 16y ago
  I think with the number of people Reddit currently employs, it's silly to expect them to have a good HR department.