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But this isn't an employer-employee relationship. It's a prospective employer-employee relationship. During the first interview would you consider paying for t

But this isn't an employer-employee relationship. It's a prospective employer-employee relationship. During the first interview would you consider paying for the time of the person interviewing you? My day rate to customers is £1000 and while I'm interviewing you I can't be doing that work so let's call it £125 an hour to read your CV, answer any questions you may have about the role and so on. Yes they potentially want you to work there, but you presumably also are interested in working there. If that's the case why is your time valuable but theirs not? And if you're not interested then why are you interviewing at all? Quick edit: I think I've been slightly misunderstood. I'm not suggesting that the candidate should pay anyone anything, just drawing a (possibly bad) parallel. A good interview is a chance for a candidate to see if it's a good job - that's worth investing time in. The organisation get to see if the candidate might be a good employee - that's worth investing time in. But both are making an investment and both are getting something out of it. To me it already looks like an equitable deal, I don't see why introducing money is helpful, particularly in a lopsided way. As to why the actual code base and an actual problem - because it's the best test for both sides. What does a candidate learn more from, the actual code base and a real world change or a OSS project? I'd suggest that he's at least as likely to learn something material about the company and the product as they are to get usable code out of the candidate.

jwarkentin 13y ago
A first interview should never be sitting down with code. That's a waste of everyone's time. The first interview should probably happen over the phone, though it could be in person. There are too many people out there looking for programming jobs that can't pass the idiot test. In the last interview I went on the first thing they had me do was write a for loop. They explained that, while it may sound stupid, too many of the people that came in couldn't even do that. Where I work right now, we have been trying to hire for a PHP job, but most of the people they've brought in don't know basic things like what an associative array is. Assuming you've at least weeded out the many people that are a waste of time and money, then I think it's fair to pay anyone you bring in a reasonable rate for a couple hours of work. Also, with most companies that contact me, I don't really know if I'm interested at all until I go in and talk to them. Don't presume that all candidates are interested in working there. It's hard to know until you know more about what they do, their processes, the culture, the type of people you will be working with and what the management is like.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  I agree about the first interview, though I'd also say that you should agree in advance what's covered and if both parties want to code while it's not what I'd do then who am I to say they can't. But you're missing the bigger picture. As a employer, interviews are massively disruptive and time consuming. For us over two interviews you'll speak to at least one manager, two or three developers and probably someone from the test team and or an analyst. All those people will read your CV, prepare questions, spend time interviewing you and then get together to discuss and make sure we've given you proper consideration and provide feedback. These are people who are generally relatively well paid and have other things they could be doing. We'll read 3 (pre-screened) CVs for each first interview, 2 short first interviews for every second interview and probably 3 long (several hours) second interviews for each offer. So to get to one offer we'll have read 12 CVs, done 6 first interviews and 3 second interviews. I don't think we're abnormal - that's about typical for places I've worked (though I've heard of places who are far more demanding). Much of that is done based on little evidence (usually a CV which may or may not be totally factual) and it's certainly not an indication that we want a candidate to work for us, merely that it might be something that could work out. Understanding whether it's more than that is why we're doing the interview. My point is that we put a lot of time and effort (which has an associated cost) into seeing whether someone is a good candidate for us (and if we think this is a good job for them). We don't ask for compensation for that time so why is it reasonable for a candidate to do so? A candidate absolutely has the right to say that they aren't willing to submit to a particular interview process but I think asking for money to interview requires a very lopsided view of the process and, as a hiring manager, would have me pull the plug instantly.
  - jwarkentin 13y ago
    Sure, your company invests the time of many people in the process. But you do it because you've determined that overall it adds value to have another employee. It's worth the cost. Hopefully, most things that they would otherwise be doing if not searching for a candidate would also add or maintain value of some sort (whether monetary or not). So really, it's just another value adding task that must be done. So we've established that in the end you gain more value by having that employee than it costs to hire them. From the employee perspective they may or may not actually be looking for a job, versus casually interested in all possibilities (like me). They also may or may not already have a job, in which case they'll have to take the day off to go through such an extensive interview, giving away work and potentially IP for free. If I have a job and/or I'm not really desperate, then the cost of the interview may be greater to me than what I see as the potential gain. Especially when compared with the other possibilities out there. There are a lot of companies that will pay for any significant amount of time spent coding for an interview. Why would I waste my time with a company that doesn't value my time (esp. taking it off work), the work they're asking me to do, or potentially the IP I give them (e.g. if I come up with a new way of looking at a problem or a new solution they haven't thought of during the code interview). A couple hours is a reasonable sacrifice, IMO, but may depend on each candidates situation. If I as asked to spend more than 2 hours coding, I would ask for compensation or turn down the interview.
bane 13y ago
Remember, you need the employee. The employee doesn't necessarily need the job if they're already employed (and sometimes even if they aren't). Sorry hiring people is a burden, BTW, my 1-day contract labor rate is $25,000/day. Why should I waste my time doing your labor for free?
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  If they don't need or want this job why are they coming for an interview at all? If after research and any questions they want to ask ahead of an extended interview they still aren't sold on the reasonable possibility that it's an interesting opportunity it doesn't seem a good use of my time, let alone hard cash. How many sales have you made at that price? My figure isn't hypothetical, it's our standard day rate which we sell at and is the opportunity cost for those people's time. I'm not seriously saying that we'd ever consider charging candidates, just saying that the company is already making a significant investment in the person. Maybe this is a local thing and supply and demand are more out of whack where you are than here (the UK) but what's being proposed doesn't feel equitable to me even in a candidate driven market. (See also the edit above in response to your earlier deleted post).
  - bane 13y ago
    > If they don't need or want this job why are they coming for an interview at all? If you can't answer that question yourself without assuming that every candidate is a desperate unemployed mook on their last dollar you can bend over a barrel to squeeze some free labor out of then you probably shouldn't be in a hiring position. Flip the question around, if you didn't need somebody to do work for you, then why are you bothering to open a position? > How many sales have you made at that price? You're the one with a problem so big and urgent that you're willing to take a random person off the street and put them onto your production code for a day. As the person solving that problem for you, I get to dictate the price, not you. If you think you can sustain your daily charge rate and grow your business without adding more people, why aren't you doing that instead?
    - 13y ago
alandarev 13y ago
In your perspective, businesses paying for travel expenses of candidates are being scammed. I would disagree with you. First of all, it is unclear of the role he was screened for. 1. It is clear that they needed the 'job' (features) done today, so a very likely of actual value to the company. 2. The candidate offered working on OSS project. Being a contributor to OSS project is a great value (not bukks though) itself, so I would not say it being 'free'. Saying that working for free on OSS is same as working for free on company's proprietary codebase is wrong... 3. Not everyone is "omg I will work here even for free, because it is awesome and I am changing the world". The candidate might have no difficulties finding job offers, and he values the money over excitment of a project. That is his choice, some professionals know what they are worth. 4. Employer - employee relationship is straight forward: pay for value, get paid for value. If I have been interviewing him, I would instead give him a plus for not being "yah I will work for free, just give me a job" - a signal of desperation and troublesome candidate.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  1) Maybe it's just the UK but paying travel costs isn't standard here. That might change if someone was coming a long way but that would be very rare. 2) That's been discussed elsewhere in the thread. My personal view would be that unless the candidate had existing domain knowledge as well as technical skills, the lead developer would likely have been able to do the job faster themselves. If they are being used as a freelancer for a day then I'd agree that that's exploitation but it's such a dumb thing to do (is any company really getting an unknown interviewee in to write production code to a deadline in a way their lead dev can't without the help) I very much doubt it's the case. If the developer had reason to believe that that was the case then they shouldn't ask for money, they should run away fast as the company is being run by idiots. 3) I agree but from the company's perspective to invest a day of a developers time (even without the money) I'd want to address as much of that doubt as possible up front. 4) As per point 2, I don't believe there is likely to be significant value in the code, just in learning about the candidate and that's reciprocal - the candidate is getting valuable information about the company which will form a . Turn it around, would you want to work for a company so desperate for talent that they have to pay you to come to an interview? To me it just sounds like you don't want this job much and the best outcome for both parties is that you go your separate ways.

jwarkentin 13y ago

A first interview should never be sitting down with code. That's a waste of everyone's time. The first interview should probably happen over the phone, though it could be in person. There are too many people out there looking for programming jobs that can't pass the idiot test. In the last interview I went on the first thing they had me do was write a for loop. They explained that, while it may sound stupid, too many of the people that came in couldn't even do that. Where I work right now, we have been trying to hire for a PHP job, but most of the people they've brought in don't know basic things like what an associative array is. Assuming you've at least weeded out the many people that are a waste of time and money, then I think it's fair to pay anyone you bring in a reasonable rate for a couple hours of work. Also, with most companies that contact me, I don't really know if I'm interested at all until I go in and talk to them. Don't presume that all candidates are interested in working there. It's hard to know until you know more about what they do, their processes, the culture, the type of people you will be working with and what the management is like.

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
I agree about the first interview, though I'd also say that you should agree in advance what's covered and if both parties want to code while it's not what I'd do then who am I to say they can't. But you're missing the bigger picture. As a employer, interviews are massively disruptive and time consuming. For us over two interviews you'll speak to at least one manager, two or three developers and probably someone from the test team and or an analyst. All those people will read your CV, prepare questions, spend time interviewing you and then get together to discuss and make sure we've given you proper consideration and provide feedback. These are people who are generally relatively well paid and have other things they could be doing. We'll read 3 (pre-screened) CVs for each first interview, 2 short first interviews for every second interview and probably 3 long (several hours) second interviews for each offer. So to get to one offer we'll have read 12 CVs, done 6 first interviews and 3 second interviews. I don't think we're abnormal - that's about typical for places I've worked (though I've heard of places who are far more demanding). Much of that is done based on little evidence (usually a CV which may or may not be totally factual) and it's certainly not an indication that we want a candidate to work for us, merely that it might be something that could work out. Understanding whether it's more than that is why we're doing the interview. My point is that we put a lot of time and effort (which has an associated cost) into seeing whether someone is a good candidate for us (and if we think this is a good job for them). We don't ask for compensation for that time so why is it reasonable for a candidate to do so? A candidate absolutely has the right to say that they aren't willing to submit to a particular interview process but I think asking for money to interview requires a very lopsided view of the process and, as a hiring manager, would have me pull the plug instantly.
- jwarkentin 13y ago
  Sure, your company invests the time of many people in the process. But you do it because you've determined that overall it adds value to have another employee. It's worth the cost. Hopefully, most things that they would otherwise be doing if not searching for a candidate would also add or maintain value of some sort (whether monetary or not). So really, it's just another value adding task that must be done. So we've established that in the end you gain more value by having that employee than it costs to hire them. From the employee perspective they may or may not actually be looking for a job, versus casually interested in all possibilities (like me). They also may or may not already have a job, in which case they'll have to take the day off to go through such an extensive interview, giving away work and potentially IP for free. If I have a job and/or I'm not really desperate, then the cost of the interview may be greater to me than what I see as the potential gain. Especially when compared with the other possibilities out there. There are a lot of companies that will pay for any significant amount of time spent coding for an interview. Why would I waste my time with a company that doesn't value my time (esp. taking it off work), the work they're asking me to do, or potentially the IP I give them (e.g. if I come up with a new way of looking at a problem or a new solution they haven't thought of during the code interview). A couple hours is a reasonable sacrifice, IMO, but may depend on each candidates situation. If I as asked to spend more than 2 hours coding, I would ask for compensation or turn down the interview.

bane 13y ago

Remember, you need the employee. The employee doesn't necessarily need the job if they're already employed (and sometimes even if they aren't). Sorry hiring people is a burden, BTW, my 1-day contract labor rate is $25,000/day. Why should I waste my time doing your labor for free?

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
If they don't need or want this job why are they coming for an interview at all? If after research and any questions they want to ask ahead of an extended interview they still aren't sold on the reasonable possibility that it's an interesting opportunity it doesn't seem a good use of my time, let alone hard cash. How many sales have you made at that price? My figure isn't hypothetical, it's our standard day rate which we sell at and is the opportunity cost for those people's time. I'm not seriously saying that we'd ever consider charging candidates, just saying that the company is already making a significant investment in the person. Maybe this is a local thing and supply and demand are more out of whack where you are than here (the UK) but what's being proposed doesn't feel equitable to me even in a candidate driven market. (See also the edit above in response to your earlier deleted post).
- bane 13y ago
  > If they don't need or want this job why are they coming for an interview at all? If you can't answer that question yourself without assuming that every candidate is a desperate unemployed mook on their last dollar you can bend over a barrel to squeeze some free labor out of then you probably shouldn't be in a hiring position. Flip the question around, if you didn't need somebody to do work for you, then why are you bothering to open a position? > How many sales have you made at that price? You're the one with a problem so big and urgent that you're willing to take a random person off the street and put them onto your production code for a day. As the person solving that problem for you, I get to dictate the price, not you. If you think you can sustain your daily charge rate and grow your business without adding more people, why aren't you doing that instead?
  - 13y ago

alandarev 13y ago

In your perspective, businesses paying for travel expenses of candidates are being scammed. I would disagree with you. First of all, it is unclear of the role he was screened for. 1. It is clear that they needed the 'job' (features) done today, so a very likely of actual value to the company. 2. The candidate offered working on OSS project. Being a contributor to OSS project is a great value (not bukks though) itself, so I would not say it being 'free'. Saying that working for free on OSS is same as working for free on company's proprietary codebase is wrong... 3. Not everyone is "omg I will work here even for free, because it is awesome and I am changing the world". The candidate might have no difficulties finding job offers, and he values the money over excitment of a project. That is his choice, some professionals know what they are worth. 4. Employer - employee relationship is straight forward: pay for value, get paid for value. If I have been interviewing him, I would instead give him a plus for not being "yah I will work for free, just give me a job" - a signal of desperation and troublesome candidate.

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
1) Maybe it's just the UK but paying travel costs isn't standard here. That might change if someone was coming a long way but that would be very rare. 2) That's been discussed elsewhere in the thread. My personal view would be that unless the candidate had existing domain knowledge as well as technical skills, the lead developer would likely have been able to do the job faster themselves. If they are being used as a freelancer for a day then I'd agree that that's exploitation but it's such a dumb thing to do (is any company really getting an unknown interviewee in to write production code to a deadline in a way their lead dev can't without the help) I very much doubt it's the case. If the developer had reason to believe that that was the case then they shouldn't ask for money, they should run away fast as the company is being run by idiots. 3) I agree but from the company's perspective to invest a day of a developers time (even without the money) I'd want to address as much of that doubt as possible up front. 4) As per point 2, I don't believe there is likely to be significant value in the code, just in learning about the candidate and that's reciprocal - the candidate is getting valuable information about the company which will form a . Turn it around, would you want to work for a company so desperate for talent that they have to pay you to come to an interview? To me it just sounds like you don't want this job much and the best outcome for both parties is that you go your separate ways.