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No. You have an adverse selection problem. If you're looking to hire really great contractors, then you're mostly looking to hire people who have continuing wo

No. You have an adverse selection problem. If you're looking to hire really great contractors, then you're mostly looking to hire people who have continuing work with their extremely happy customers, leads that their extremely happy customers referred to them, etc. They don't need you that badly. So, you ask them to work for $40 an hour for, say, a week. They could make at least 4x that if they worked for other clients. Why should they, the super awesome coder, take you on as a customer? You're asking them to pay a big opportunity cost for business they don't need that badly, and you're showing that you're price-sensitive, and are likely to try to get a discount off their full rate after the trial too. The people this will most scare away are the very best, the ones who don't need you, the ones you really want to keep. So yes, do a trial if you're not comfortable committing to a big contract with them. But treat the difference between the rate you want to pay for the trial and their rate as part of the cost of finding great talent. Don't squabble over what's going to end up being a very small percentage of what you pay the person over their whole time with you at the risk of sending the best talent straight out the door. It's too great a cost. Also, if you want great talent, double your expectation of what contract rates should be. $40 an hour as a contract rate in a 1st world country is not a "decent rate".

its_so_on 14y ago
I guess I didn't make what I had in mind more clear, as I didn't finish "if they can do the work of 3 days (or a week or three weeks, or 'unusable') of one of the 'other' devs" correctly." I meant, "in a day". What I really had in mind is about a day's work, like an extended interview, but paid. Basically, someone saying, "Look, I don't know how to tell a hadoop expert from someone who can only code bad html and bad php", so instead of three unpaid interviews before you land your next job, how about one 8-hour paid interview (320 dollars). If you're what I'm looking for I'll hire you on the spot, but if you're just full of BS like the last three guys I couldn't tell were BS artists, when I'll just have to make do with a tiny bit of progress. My point was, interviews are also an opportunity cost, and that not being able to tell apart bad php coders from awesome database engineers is also an opportunity cost. Also I don't know what market you have in mind, but 40 dollars an hour is more than what someone who just does some html and php badly (i.e. couldn't complete fizzbuzz) is worth in almost every city. That would be 80k per year salary. I think the point is to bridge the gap between "completely unpaid interview" and "I have to pay you 100 dollars an hour for a week". How about an 8-hour or 4-hour "free trial" before I take you on full-time at 200k per year? Only instead of actually free, I'll actually pay you 320 dollars for your audition. Seems like this beats the hell out of doing two or three unpaid interviews...
- its_so_on 14y ago
  I guess you just don't like this idea. But samples are typical in loads of professions, you can get sample tiles, and so on. Not for free. Why shouldn't you pay for a sample at a rate that is not the rate you will be buying the full product. Maybe my specific examples are for a different market (always hard to say where people are writing from: is it the bay area, or a smaller city) but depending on what the developer and company are looking for and their stage of financing, etc, this can enable fits that otherwise just can't happen. Both of them take a risk (the shop that is non-technical and can't tell who is the right one, the developer who doesn't really want to work for 4 or 8 hours for 160 or 320 dollars) but if they do, it can pay off. When there is trust I just don't see why this is so bad. Loads of long relationships form this way (paid at normal market rates or higher - higher, explicitly due to the fact that the client is not in a position to shop around, can't do technical interviews, etc. Wouldn't you want a client like this? Where if you prove your ability above their other candidates, they can't find a replacement for you and are going to pay you approaching the "monopoly price" - what the business case makes your services worth to them?)

its_so_on 14y ago

I guess I didn't make what I had in mind more clear, as I didn't finish "if they can do the work of 3 days (or a week or three weeks, or 'unusable') of one of the 'other' devs" correctly." I meant, "in a day". What I really had in mind is about a day's work, like an extended interview, but paid. Basically, someone saying, "Look, I don't know how to tell a hadoop expert from someone who can only code bad html and bad php", so instead of three unpaid interviews before you land your next job, how about one 8-hour paid interview (320 dollars). If you're what I'm looking for I'll hire you on the spot, but if you're just full of BS like the last three guys I couldn't tell were BS artists, when I'll just have to make do with a tiny bit of progress. My point was, interviews are also an opportunity cost, and that not being able to tell apart bad php coders from awesome database engineers is also an opportunity cost. Also I don't know what market you have in mind, but 40 dollars an hour is more than what someone who just does some html and php badly (i.e. couldn't complete fizzbuzz) is worth in almost every city. That would be 80k per year salary. I think the point is to bridge the gap between "completely unpaid interview" and "I have to pay you 100 dollars an hour for a week". How about an 8-hour or 4-hour "free trial" before I take you on full-time at 200k per year? Only instead of actually free, I'll actually pay you 320 dollars for your audition. Seems like this beats the hell out of doing two or three unpaid interviews...

its_so_on 14y ago
I guess you just don't like this idea. But samples are typical in loads of professions, you can get sample tiles, and so on. Not for free. Why shouldn't you pay for a sample at a rate that is not the rate you will be buying the full product. Maybe my specific examples are for a different market (always hard to say where people are writing from: is it the bay area, or a smaller city) but depending on what the developer and company are looking for and their stage of financing, etc, this can enable fits that otherwise just can't happen. Both of them take a risk (the shop that is non-technical and can't tell who is the right one, the developer who doesn't really want to work for 4 or 8 hours for 160 or 320 dollars) but if they do, it can pay off. When there is trust I just don't see why this is so bad. Loads of long relationships form this way (paid at normal market rates or higher - higher, explicitly due to the fact that the client is not in a position to shop around, can't do technical interviews, etc. Wouldn't you want a client like this? Where if you prove your ability above their other candidates, they can't find a replacement for you and are going to pay you approaching the "monopoly price" - what the business case makes your services worth to them?)