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I paid a prospective candidate for project work like this. It was more than the market rate for the role they were applying for. For context, this was in India,

I paid a prospective candidate for project work like this. It was more than the market rate for the role they were applying for. For context, this was in India, and I'm also Indian, and so is my company -- this was not an offshoring/outsourcing thing. They disappeared for a month, sent me 20 lines of python that did not work and demanded payment. I made the payment, as promised. Obviously, I did not hire. For a small company like mine, which I'm funding from my own pocket, I don't think I can afford too many candidates like this. I've stopped that practice. Now I only hire people I've worked with on previous jobs before. I know the quality to expect and I know the price I'll be paying.

_throwawayyyyyy 7y ago
I'm sorry they wasted your time and money. I think if someone disappeared for a month that would break the expectation of payment, but a small contract would settle that.
- sumanthvepa 7y ago
  The cost of litigating a contract would have far exceeded any value I could have possibly gotten from the project. The distraction and reputational damage from the ensuing fight would have been even worse. The best policy was to be be polite, and make the payment promised and move on. No need to belittle or argue with the candidate. I chalk it up to a learning cost in the business. I now know one way of hiring that won't work for me. The irony is that the project had no value to me. I had already implemented that feature, and just wanted to understand if the candidate would be able to do the work I'd already done for myself. Indeed I picked the problem because I had solved it myself under timed conditions and knew how long it would take me. I wrote the code for the feature in about 20 mins and then tested and checked-in under an hour. I expected that a new person with less experience and skill than me would take about 3-5x the time, and that would still be okay. Even if they took a day that was not an issue for me. Which is why I paid them for one day of their time. They might have taken a whole day. But 30 days was somewhat too long. Thankfully I'd priced it at a fixed cost. So my downside was fixed. Still the learning was not cheap. I was paying what would be considered consulting rates in India.
  - _throwawayyyyyy 7y ago
    Hopefully you can find a standard contract template online that you can use without having to pay much, if anything. A contract would have had a specific date the result was expected, and if the candidate breached that, it would have clearly been their fault and you wouldn't have had to pay anything.

_throwawayyyyyy 7y ago

I'm sorry they wasted your time and money. I think if someone disappeared for a month that would break the expectation of payment, but a small contract would settle that.

sumanthvepa 7y ago
The cost of litigating a contract would have far exceeded any value I could have possibly gotten from the project. The distraction and reputational damage from the ensuing fight would have been even worse. The best policy was to be be polite, and make the payment promised and move on. No need to belittle or argue with the candidate. I chalk it up to a learning cost in the business. I now know one way of hiring that won't work for me. The irony is that the project had no value to me. I had already implemented that feature, and just wanted to understand if the candidate would be able to do the work I'd already done for myself. Indeed I picked the problem because I had solved it myself under timed conditions and knew how long it would take me. I wrote the code for the feature in about 20 mins and then tested and checked-in under an hour. I expected that a new person with less experience and skill than me would take about 3-5x the time, and that would still be okay. Even if they took a day that was not an issue for me. Which is why I paid them for one day of their time. They might have taken a whole day. But 30 days was somewhat too long. Thankfully I'd priced it at a fixed cost. So my downside was fixed. Still the learning was not cheap. I was paying what would be considered consulting rates in India.
- _throwawayyyyyy 7y ago
  Hopefully you can find a standard contract template online that you can use without having to pay much, if anything. A contract would have had a specific date the result was expected, and if the candidate breached that, it would have clearly been their fault and you wouldn't have had to pay anything.