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For what it's worth, I went through a hiring process with this person and it was one of the worst/cruelest interview experiences of my life. I emailed him in re

For what it's worth, I went through a hiring process with this person and it was one of the worst/cruelest interview experiences of my life. I emailed him in response to a thread on Twitter where he indicated he was looking to hire diverse/nontraditional engineers mentioning I was self taught. He replied immediately with a take home project that ostensibly only required 3 hours but took me close to 24 hours. He responded saying it wasn't up to par and then ghosted. I was way more green back then and looking over the project I sent him now, I understand what wasn't "up to par" about it, but I think it's fucked up to immediately send someone a take home without a quick phone screen unless you know them already, and also to ghost on someone who's put in a ton of work for you without giving any feedback or advice, especially when you claim to be interested in hiring nontraditional candidates. Anyway, as a result of that experience I no longer do take homes as a rule, and I am continually rubbed the wrong way by how much love Sahil's blog posts on being such a progressive employer get in these parts.

chucksmash 4y ago
Why do you feel the interaction was cruel? A brief "no" seems like all you'd get from most companies too. My understanding is the policy is intended to avoid pointless debates and inadvertent legal liability (e.g. "when you told the candidate 'good luck with the new baby' at the end of the rejection convo, it created the impression they were not selected because they have kids.") Why did he owe more feedback than "this isn't up to par?" Based on past threads on HN I'm in the minority in preferring take-home projects and not feeling I'm owed compensation for the time it takes to complete them. I like them because you have more of an opportunity to demonstrate your craft versus a standard leetcode whiteboard session where the 45 minute time constraint means you need to focus on pumping code out as quickly as possible. Also a good one can be an entertaining diversion in it's own right. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  I think the hurt of it made it feel cruel. But I don't think it was cruel. Just because I am hurt doesn't mean someone erred.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - insightcheck 4y ago
    I can see it both ways. I initially thought the employer was already nice enough to give the applicant a chance, instead of denying at the outset. But then I remembered my own experiences of putting in a lot of work to apply for an opportunity, and then getting a curt denial saying I wasn’t what the employer was looking for, or not up to the task at the time. I think it’s important to remember the feelings of getting rejected like that. Later on, when I was in a position of rejecting candidates, I volunteered the time to send longer responses with minor feedback despite the opportunity cost, just because I remembered what it was like to be an applicant.
- valeness 4y ago
  Why do you feel like you're not entitled to compensation for your labor? Where is the line? I've experienced take home projects that were expected to take "10 hours". If I spend 10 hours on a take home instead of my consultancy I'm out thousands of dollars. I understand preferring take home projects, I prefer it over whiteboarding too, but I don't understand why you wouldn't be owed compensation. In my opinion the best evaluation is to work with the team on an actual story, task, ticket, etc. where you are paid the listed salary pro-rated for your hours.
  - chucksmash 4y ago
    > If I spend 10 hours on a take home instead of my consultancy I'm out thousands of dollars. My reasoning for not demanding I should be compensated: 1. Presumably something about the opportunity on offer is more compelling than your second best option of working on your own consultancy earning $200+/hour, otherwise why are you applying for the role in the first place? I'd argue that if the opportunity is otherwise compelling in the long term, demanding breakeven for one day's work is being penny-wise and pound foolish. Taking it to an extreme, if there was a job that paid $10 million/year but the interview process was so involved I needed to burn an entire year's worth of vacation time to interview for it, whether I'd do it would come down to expected value of the decision (i.e. probability of passing the interview), not the absolute investment I was making. 2. I'd consider this form of cost-analysis rationale a weak one because it can be applied to basically any decision in life yet it gets applied selectively, so it's kind of a roundabout way of saying "I don't want to do that." Nobody (probably?) is applying this analysis to sleeping 6 hours a night versus 8, yet that would yield 10 more billable consulting hours (per week!) too.
  - bratbag 4y ago
    Because of how easy that is to scam. Also the cost is prohibative. I'm not paying dozens or hundreds of applicants to spend 3 hours writing code when most of them are going to be utter shit. If you want to deselect yourself by not doing it without pay, feel free.
codazoda 4y ago
I've also interacted with him via email and was put off by his response but after reading some of his blog posts I think this is how he gets stuff done with limited resources. The email was short and to the point, which feels "rude", but it gave me exactly what I needed in a few short words. Steve Jobs is famous for his very short emails and I suspect they evoked similar responses from people. I like to give more detail in my own correspondence, but it does take significant time.
asoneth 4y ago
Similar to how you decline take-home projects after getting burned by it, I decline to provide candidate feedback after getting burned by it. Unless I have some personal backchannel to pass feedback through I typically send a form-based response. While I tried to make sure any messaging isn't worded cruelly, it's still a rejection at the end of the day and that doesn't feel good.
- vector_spaces 4y ago
  I've been rejected before by companies that gave feedback, and I remember some of them pretty fondly. There was one in particular who sent me resources and suggested books and projects I could work on while I was self-teaching. To be clear, I don't expect everyone to go that far out of their way, I just expect a modicum of humanity: do a proper phone tech screen so that we don't waste each other's time, and give me some specifics about how it wasn't up to par -- especially if I tell you I'm a self-taught candidate and it's clear I spent a lot of time on your process. Anyway, something I've learned both about prospective employers and relationships in general is that if someone takes an adversarial approach to any relationship, especially when there's a power differential that's not in my favor, it's worth steering clear. In the case of prospective employers, it's pretty much always a sign that I'm going to be treated like pure utility and not much else.
  - asoneth 4y ago
    Certainly all employers should provide an initial phone screen before requesting that a candidate do some kind of work including presenting or traveling. Or even doing take-home work if they still do that sort of thing, though I'm glad to see that becoming less common. I would consider it rude and unusual for a company to do otherwise. I'm solely referring to offering to rejected candidates the opportunity to discuss specific critical feedback about what factors contributed to us turning them down instead of the standard boilerplate responses like "we went with someone with more relevant experience". I'm not sure whether you consider declining to provide critical interview feedback to be taking an "adversarial approach" but in my experience it is extremely common. In most cases a followup call really is rewarding for both parties, and if I have some social connection to the candidate I still offer it. And even when I don't I still sometimes do it despite reservations. But after having candidates become argumentative and having a coworker get burned by a litigious candidate I'm more wary of spending the time and incurring risk as a general practice. If I was running my own company then I hope I would go back to offering a followup call because I think it engenders goodwill and the overall utility vastly exceeds the risk. But at a BigCo my risk/reward ratio is different. If HR and Legal get involved it doesn't matter how meritless the accusations are, everyone is about to have a Bad Time.
eagleinparadise 4y ago
Sorry, but you admitted you produced work that wasn't "up to par" and he gave you immediate feedback that he was no longer interested. Why does he owe an unqualified candidate more time if they can't produce the minimum standard of work? And he's "f'ed up" for doing what any employer who has an unqualified candidate in front of them? You're being unfair to him
jjav 4y ago
> [...]took me close to 24 hours. He responded saying it wasn't up to par and then ghosted. And this is why I'll never do a take-home project for an interview. The time commitment is completely asymmetrical. The company can easily send the work to hundreds of people they have no interest it and it costs them nothing other than ~1 minute to send the email with some links. At least in an in-person interview every minute I spend on it, the company has to spend the same amount of time from some employee.

chucksmash 4y ago

Why do you feel the interaction was cruel? A brief "no" seems like all you'd get from most companies too. My understanding is the policy is intended to avoid pointless debates and inadvertent legal liability (e.g. "when you told the candidate 'good luck with the new baby' at the end of the rejection convo, it created the impression they were not selected because they have kids.") Why did he owe more feedback than "this isn't up to par?" Based on past threads on HN I'm in the minority in preferring take-home projects and not feeling I'm owed compensation for the time it takes to complete them. I like them because you have more of an opportunity to demonstrate your craft versus a standard leetcode whiteboard session where the 45 minute time constraint means you need to focus on pumping code out as quickly as possible. Also a good one can be an entertaining diversion in it's own right. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

jvanderbot 4y ago
I think the hurt of it made it feel cruel. But I don't think it was cruel. Just because I am hurt doesn't mean someone erred.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- insightcheck 4y ago
  I can see it both ways. I initially thought the employer was already nice enough to give the applicant a chance, instead of denying at the outset. But then I remembered my own experiences of putting in a lot of work to apply for an opportunity, and then getting a curt denial saying I wasn’t what the employer was looking for, or not up to the task at the time. I think it’s important to remember the feelings of getting rejected like that. Later on, when I was in a position of rejecting candidates, I volunteered the time to send longer responses with minor feedback despite the opportunity cost, just because I remembered what it was like to be an applicant.
valeness 4y ago
Why do you feel like you're not entitled to compensation for your labor? Where is the line? I've experienced take home projects that were expected to take "10 hours". If I spend 10 hours on a take home instead of my consultancy I'm out thousands of dollars. I understand preferring take home projects, I prefer it over whiteboarding too, but I don't understand why you wouldn't be owed compensation. In my opinion the best evaluation is to work with the team on an actual story, task, ticket, etc. where you are paid the listed salary pro-rated for your hours.
- chucksmash 4y ago
  > If I spend 10 hours on a take home instead of my consultancy I'm out thousands of dollars. My reasoning for not demanding I should be compensated: 1. Presumably something about the opportunity on offer is more compelling than your second best option of working on your own consultancy earning $200+/hour, otherwise why are you applying for the role in the first place? I'd argue that if the opportunity is otherwise compelling in the long term, demanding breakeven for one day's work is being penny-wise and pound foolish. Taking it to an extreme, if there was a job that paid $10 million/year but the interview process was so involved I needed to burn an entire year's worth of vacation time to interview for it, whether I'd do it would come down to expected value of the decision (i.e. probability of passing the interview), not the absolute investment I was making. 2. I'd consider this form of cost-analysis rationale a weak one because it can be applied to basically any decision in life yet it gets applied selectively, so it's kind of a roundabout way of saying "I don't want to do that." Nobody (probably?) is applying this analysis to sleeping 6 hours a night versus 8, yet that would yield 10 more billable consulting hours (per week!) too.
- bratbag 4y ago
  Because of how easy that is to scam. Also the cost is prohibative. I'm not paying dozens or hundreds of applicants to spend 3 hours writing code when most of them are going to be utter shit. If you want to deselect yourself by not doing it without pay, feel free.

codazoda 4y ago

I've also interacted with him via email and was put off by his response but after reading some of his blog posts I think this is how he gets stuff done with limited resources. The email was short and to the point, which feels "rude", but it gave me exactly what I needed in a few short words. Steve Jobs is famous for his very short emails and I suspect they evoked similar responses from people. I like to give more detail in my own correspondence, but it does take significant time.

asoneth 4y ago

Similar to how you decline take-home projects after getting burned by it, I decline to provide candidate feedback after getting burned by it. Unless I have some personal backchannel to pass feedback through I typically send a form-based response. While I tried to make sure any messaging isn't worded cruelly, it's still a rejection at the end of the day and that doesn't feel good.

vector_spaces 4y ago
I've been rejected before by companies that gave feedback, and I remember some of them pretty fondly. There was one in particular who sent me resources and suggested books and projects I could work on while I was self-teaching. To be clear, I don't expect everyone to go that far out of their way, I just expect a modicum of humanity: do a proper phone tech screen so that we don't waste each other's time, and give me some specifics about how it wasn't up to par -- especially if I tell you I'm a self-taught candidate and it's clear I spent a lot of time on your process. Anyway, something I've learned both about prospective employers and relationships in general is that if someone takes an adversarial approach to any relationship, especially when there's a power differential that's not in my favor, it's worth steering clear. In the case of prospective employers, it's pretty much always a sign that I'm going to be treated like pure utility and not much else.
- asoneth 4y ago
  Certainly all employers should provide an initial phone screen before requesting that a candidate do some kind of work including presenting or traveling. Or even doing take-home work if they still do that sort of thing, though I'm glad to see that becoming less common. I would consider it rude and unusual for a company to do otherwise. I'm solely referring to offering to rejected candidates the opportunity to discuss specific critical feedback about what factors contributed to us turning them down instead of the standard boilerplate responses like "we went with someone with more relevant experience". I'm not sure whether you consider declining to provide critical interview feedback to be taking an "adversarial approach" but in my experience it is extremely common. In most cases a followup call really is rewarding for both parties, and if I have some social connection to the candidate I still offer it. And even when I don't I still sometimes do it despite reservations. But after having candidates become argumentative and having a coworker get burned by a litigious candidate I'm more wary of spending the time and incurring risk as a general practice. If I was running my own company then I hope I would go back to offering a followup call because I think it engenders goodwill and the overall utility vastly exceeds the risk. But at a BigCo my risk/reward ratio is different. If HR and Legal get involved it doesn't matter how meritless the accusations are, everyone is about to have a Bad Time.

eagleinparadise 4y ago

Sorry, but you admitted you produced work that wasn't "up to par" and he gave you immediate feedback that he was no longer interested. Why does he owe an unqualified candidate more time if they can't produce the minimum standard of work? And he's "f'ed up" for doing what any employer who has an unqualified candidate in front of them? You're being unfair to him

jjav 4y ago

> [...]took me close to 24 hours. He responded saying it wasn't up to par and then ghosted. And this is why I'll never do a take-home project for an interview. The time commitment is completely asymmetrical. The company can easily send the work to hundreds of people they have no interest it and it costs them nothing other than ~1 minute to send the email with some links. At least in an in-person interview every minute I spend on it, the company has to spend the same amount of time from some employee.