4 ms·

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

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.

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.